to the conference room Gabriel had passed. Here the light was better. There was a small clerestory window.
First the man held it up to the light, admiring the watermark. Gabriel studied him. In the light, the small wisps of hair left on the top of his head stood up straight, waving like seaweed in a current. His hands were flaky, and Gabriel fought a shiver of repulsion.
Tombale turned the drawing over, looking for a dealer’s mark that wasn’t there. Gabriel hadn’t thought of inventing one, but now he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t—the man could have easily looked up its history in his catalog. Absence wasn’t proof, but presence of the wrong element would be a red flag.
“It’s never been sold before,” Gabriel said.
The man turned the drawing around again slowly. He put it down on the table and stood up above it. Then he took out a magnifying glass and examined the drawing in sectors. During what must have been fifteen minutes, his face registered no expression whatsoever. Even more amazingly, the croissant flake held steady to his lip.
Finally, he sat back down. “Bah,” he let out a Gallic sigh. “Well, it’s very good, and the paper is authentic.”
Gabriel realized he’d been holding his breath.
“But I can’t be sure if it’s a Connois original. Without a provenance, I will have to compare it with other Connois sketches. This will take time.”
Gabriel’s face must have shown his disappointment. His rent was due, and he didn’t have money to pay it.
“You were expecting cash on delivery? Monsieur, we are not a Chinese takeout restaurant.” Tombale looked Gabriel over with obvious disdain, settling on his shoes, the soles of which were held to the body by electrical tape.
Gabriel saw then that he should have dressed up. Looking like a desperate artist wasn’t going to convince this established dealer that he had a treasure in his attic.
“This is a beautiful drawing,” Monsieur Tombale continued, sounding to Gabriel’s ears like his thesis adviser. “But we simply cannot take it on without further investigation. There have been so many nineteenth-century drawings of late. Too many.”
Gabriel stood up, and though he wanted to snatch the drawing out of the man’s grasp, he resisted. He waited for the dealer to pack the drawing up, then shook the man’s dry, scaly hand, thanking him for his time. He walked quickly out, ignoring the ancient receptionist. On the street he stood in the gray light, fists clenched. Why had he thought he could sell it to Christie’s? He should have started more modestly. It had been so easy to get rid of Febrer. But that was twenty years ago. Now everyone was much more savvy; now databases were accessible with the click of a mouse, without having to search through archives. Dating methods had become less expensive and more accurate. Maybe Klinman was right—he did need his help. He was the talent, yes, but Klinman understood the way the world worked. Gabriel was incompetent at anything that didn’t have to do with art, and even, possibly, incompetent at art.
Gabriel quickened his step. He held an imaginary conversation with Klinman where the man laughed at him for showing up, in jeans and sneakers, no less, with an unauthenticated drawing at one of France’s most important auction houses and attempting, on the spot, to have one of its experts declare it sellable.
And now the drawing was tainted. Tombale wouldn’t soon forget it. Gabriel wasn’t going to be able to sell it without a provenance, and if it came up for auction with a fabricated story Tombale would be suspicious. The drawing was now not even worth the paper it was drawn on. Gabriel could have sold it blank for more money.
He felt like crumpling it up and tossing it into the Seine, but he had affection for the drawing. He passed a bar and went in to order a panaché. A girl’s drink, but one he still enjoyed. He didn’t want to get drunk. He wanted to think.
Above the bar, instead of the polished mirror typical of a neighborhood café, there was a boar’s head. Sanglier. He remembered the word, the way some bizarre French words—huissier (bailiff), etalon (studhorse)—seemed to glue themselves to his memory while more common ones—like the ones for “broom” and “great-great-grandfather”—remained forever out of reach. The bar was an odd sight, slightly foreboding. And then, looking around, he saw many other taxidermied game animals presiding over the few tables.
The bartender noted his interest. “I