A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,56

it as looking at it. She stepped over and took the top three drawings from Colette’s pile. The first was by Delacroix, undated, unsigned. It was an apparent study, for Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret, of an oarsman, muscled back to the viewer. It was beautiful, and Elm’s heart had sped when she first saw it in the ornate public conference room. The seller was getting divorced (a common, if sad, method by which many drawings and paintings came to sale), and needed to sell his collection as part of the settlement. He was a small man, emotional when handing over the drawings, which he held by their edges like photographs in danger of being smudged. His few strands of hair were combed in concentric circles on the top of his head, and when he looked down to say good-bye to his Delacroix, Elm could see the delicate flakes of dandruff woven like cotton in a bird’s nest.

This was the kind of sale Elm loved. Not that she was glad to profit off someone’s disintegrating marriage, but she rejoiced to see others who felt the same connection to the art that she did. This man was selling more than a ripe investment, more than a decoration. He was selling something that was as close to his heart as his wife must once have been. He had lived with the art, loved it, saw in it the accomplishments of mankind, the sensuousness of nature, the artist’s raw talent and unique vision. That’s what would ultimately separate Elm and this man from the Colettes and the Greers of the world: art could still bring Elm to tears.

It was truly beautiful. She would be sad to see it at auction, but, then, she knew she would secretly root for it as its lot came up. She often grew attached, rejoicing when a piece fetched a higher price than expected, flushed with pride as though she had drawn it herself.

Elm put it aside, assigning adjectives to it for the catalog entry: paramount, influential, emblematic. She watched Colette, who had returned to her loupe, minutely peruse a drawing. This was not the way to examine something, Elm thought. You hold it away from you, judge it as a whole, not scrutinize each individual stroke of the quill or pencil. Unless you were trying to authenticate it. Then you might look for telling details.

The two women stared in silence. Colette straightened and said, “You have not contacted Monsieur Klinman.”

“I’m so sorry, I’ve been busy,” Elm said.

“Well,” Colette said, reminding Elm of her high school French teacher, whose disappointment when Elm didn’t complete her homework hurt worse than the F she’d receive for the assignment. “Unfortunately, the drawings I mentioned have been dispersed, but he has acquired other artists: Canaletto, Piranesi, some contemporaries of the Impressionists. I will forward you the PDFs. I think you will like what you see.”

Elm said, “I’ll take a look.”

“Well,” Colette said, after a pause. “I’ll say good-bye.”

Before Colette left the room, she rolled her skirt up and put on another coat of lipstick, smoothing her hair in its bun. The sight of her primping disgusted Elm. Her willingness to use sex to further her ambition, the strength of that ambition, reminded Elm that she had entered a different age. An age where having children was no longer possible. The light, when Colette closed the door, was an odd brown shade, nearly ochre, thrown up either from the play of light against the dark carpet or, more likely, from the palimpsestic echoes of the brown wash lingering in Elm’s visual cortex.

By the time Elm got back to her office, Colette had sent the PDFs from her contact, Augustus Klinman. Did she forgo her coffee with Franz? Elm wondered. She opened up the file.

The images were actually quite interesting. The first seemed to be a Piranesi. The subject matter was typical Piranesi—blueprintlike attention to architectural detail. An arch, in ruins, with Romans strolling nearby. And the line was spontaneous in the manner of a study for an etching. And certainly, the wash and ink, the exaggerated shading, and the lack of interest in nature all suggested that the famous artist had created this with his own hand.

There was also a gouache by that artist who was a contemporary of Connois, that Greek guy, what was his name? Elm could never remember. It was of a little girl, a bow in her hair, petting a white dog whose tongue lolled out of its