Past and present collide

“Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares,
and take the winds of March with beauty”
William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

Mart Belden stood at the edge of a cluster of free-lance reporters and photographers near the front of the great hall of the Louvre, where the press conference was scheduled to take place in another minute.  He had been waiting for several hours, jockeying for position with fifty other journalists and art critics.  All around him, the air buzzed with excitement and anticipation.  A long-lost Rembrandt was being loaned to the Louvre for a six-month exhibition.  According to the wishes of the donor, it was to be auctioned afterward, with the proceeds going to support elderly holocaust victims living in Israel. 

Suddenly the gabble of conversation ceased.  A bald, distinguished-looking man took his place behind the hammered aluminum podium, set up in front of an urn filled with bright yellow daffodils.  Mart recognized Jean-Luc Fournier, Curator Directoire of the Louvre.  He made sure his camera was focused and ready.

Fournier cleared his throat and checked the microphone.  After a brief pause, he pulled a card from his pocket and read.   “I regret to inform you all that there has been a change in the plans for exhibition of the newly acquired Rembrandt.  The exhibit has been postponed.”

An outcry of protests broke forth and several journalists began to shout questions.  Fournier raised a hand for silence.  “My apologies for your inconvenience, but I can take no questions.  The exhibit has been postponed.  No further details are available at this time.”  The Curator Directoire bowed and hurried away.

The announcement was repeated in English, German, Spanish, and Italian.  The roomful of reporters seethed.  Discontented muttering rose to a loud buzz and chairs scraped the marble floor as the assembled journalists began to disperse. 

Mart sighed.   This press conference was to have been a major event in the art world, as well as a major story for him to cover.  He’d flown across the Atlantic for it, and now – now his trip seemed pointless.  He jammed his hands into his pockets and felt the press pass which entitled him to a free lunch at the Louvre café.

After all, a free lunch is a free lunch, he mused.  In a moment he had packed up his tripod and camera, and put away his notepad and pencil.  With his tools packed away in a satchel, he headed for the new satellite café located at the front of the building.   Most of the milling reporters had already gone outside, and he could see the hazy wisps of smoke from their cigarettes rising into the clear spring air.  Mart thanked his stars he’d never started that habit, and made his way to the counter to give his order.

Sitting at his bistro table inside the café, Mart munched on a club sandwich and mulled over the significance of the Rembrandt exhibit’s postponement.  The curator’s announcement had been terse.

He wondered about the real story behind the announcement.  Maybe the painting was found to be a fraud, he thought.  So many works of art had gone missing during the Second World War, and when they surfaced again, provenance wasn’t always easy to determine.  Or what if the owner decided against the charitable gesture she had made?  What if her family learned of it and blocked the donation?  Mart didn’t know any details about the prospective donor except that she was an elderly woman.  Still, the donation had been publicized in newspapers all over the world.  It would be a big loss of face for the Louvre if it became known that the prestigious museum had accepted a fraudulent piece.

In a dark mood, Mart stared out the windows without seeing the newly bloomed daffodils turning their bright faces to the pale rays of the late March sun.  He had dug deeply into his meager savings to make the trip to Paris for one reason – to see the new Rembrandt, photograph it, and write a story of its acquisition and history.  The money he’d expected to earn from that story’s sale was to have started an emergency fund that would see him through the next gap in assignments from the National Geographic.  A career as a writer/photographer for the prestigious magazine was exciting and rewarding in many ways, but financial security wasn’t one of them.  Now he was in Paris, and he vowed to find something to do to make the trip worth the cost of his airline ticket.

Gazing toward the Seine, he strained his eyes to see the Eiffel Tower across the river in the seventh arrondissement.  The graceful monument was the site of his one and only marriage proposal – a proposal which had been declined … most definitely declined.   Nearly ten years ago, he had proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Diana Lynch, at the top of the tower.  Mart allowed his mind to wander back to the occasion.

“Mart, what are we doing up here?” Diana asked.  She clung to his arm with a hand that was both icy and slippery with sweat, and refused to move closer to the railing, from which one could view the city of Paris spread out in a panorama of pale, early spring color.

“Diana, I love you!”  Mart pulled her closer, stroking her black hair with one hand, while the other clasped her waist securely.  “There’s something very important I need to ask you.”

“You know I don’t like heights.”  Diana tilted her face up toward his, her brows drawn together in puzzlement.  “I never have.” 

“Di, please!  I won’t let you fall.”  Mart tried to smile reassuringly at his girlfriend.  “You know, I’m going to graduate in a couple more months.  Don’t you think it’s time we got married?”

“Time we got married?”  Di jerked away from him, although she lost even more of her normal color.  “What do you think I’ve been doing?  Waiting around for you to graduate?  Mart, I’m learning about myself as a person, becoming someone on my own for the first time.”   Gripping a railing as if her life depended on it, she tossed her head.  “I’m not ready to start being someone else’s accessory.  I want to do something on my own, travel, find out who I am.”

“But Di!”  Mart was flabbergasted.  “I thought you wanted to be with me, have a couple of kids, to settle down and run your own home.  I thought you were only studying here for a semester and then coming home.”

Diana glanced down at the ground far below and swayed, but she dragged her gaze back to meet Mart’s.  “I’ve found a new world here, and while I might not have the talent to make a living as an artist, there are exciting things I can do in the art world.  I’m not going home, Mart.  I’ve decided to transfer to the Sorbonne for my senior year as well.” She was distinctly green now, the pasty hue of her skin ghastly against her lilac wool coat.

“Mart, please!  I’ve got to go down.  I’m going to be sick.”  Diana crumpled and he had to grab her to keep her from hitting the floor.  Her eyes rolled back in her head.  He dragged her to the elevator and supported her limp form as it descended with agonizing slowness.  She didn’t vomit, but he was on eggshells until they were back on solid ground.  Once the elevator finally stopped, he carried her over to a nearby bench and lay her down.  After a moment or two the color came back into her face and her eyes fluttered open.

“What happened?  How did we get down?”  Her violet eyes were wide with fright.  “I thought I was going to fall.”

“You fainted and I brought you down on the elevator,” Mart told her.  “Do you remember what we talked about?”

Diana stared at him for the space of a long breath.  “Yes,” she finally said.  “Oh, Mart, I don’t want to hurt you.  But I’m not ready to give up the journey I’m on now.  I need more time, time on my own.”  She struggled to sit up.  “Can’t you see?”

Mart was in shock.  His whole life stretched before him – without Diana, without his dreams and plans for a family.  He didn’t – couldn’t – say anything for a long minute.  Finally he managed to speak.  “I guess I can’t.  I thought we both had the same dream, but I guess we don’t.” 

“Mart, I’m really sorry.”  Diana stared down at her lap, where her hands twisted in a life of their own.  “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I’m sorry, too.”  In his pain, he couldn’t resist the jab.  “That ticket was three months of tutoring.  The ring was the other nine months.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say after that.  Mart stayed for the weekend at a youth hostel, as he had planned, and took in the sights of Paris without Diana.  Di had classes and a volunteer job at the Louvre to occupy her time, and they met only once for supper.  It was a very quiet meal, and Mart couldn’t enjoy the flavorful coq au vin he ordered in the tiny restaurant tucked away on a side street near the great museum.  It tasted like sawdust to him.  Diana picked at her meal, too.

She saw him off at the airport, but it was almost as if they were strangers.  When she turned away as he moved to the boarding line, it felt like a piece of his heart had been cut out.

Mart shook his head.  He had moved on, had dated many interesting women, and the odd thought of Diana no longer sent him into a funk.  Still, whenever he came to Paris, memories of her flitted through his mind.

At a nearby table, chairs scraped the floor as two men sat down.  Mart’s ears pricked up when he heard a scrap of the conversation.  He made an effort to listen closely while not appearing to do so.  While his spoken French was passable, his accent was atrocious.  However, he had no trouble understanding French speakers.

“Yes, the new acquisition is definitely a forgery,” one man said.  “I suspected it straightaway.  Mademoiselle Lynch has just confirmed what I feared.” 

Mart cut his eyes to try to identify the speaker, and felt an electric current go through him when he realized it was the assistant of the Louvre’s curator-directoire.

“What was the tip-off?” asked the other man.

“Actually, Monsieur Fournier had a phone call.  The caller, a German named Max Emmerich, insisted his grandfather owned the original painting and had concealed it in an unknown location after the Second World War.”

“Couldn’t he have been lying?” The other man seemed skeptical.

“But of course.”  The assistant waved his fork.  “He could still be lying about the original being in his possession.  But the painting we have, which was obtained from a reputable collector, is definitely a copy, not an original Rembrandt.”

The buzz of a cell phone interrupted the men’s conversation, and the second man pulled his phone from a pocket.  Mart took the opportunity to walk casually to the counter and ask for a refill of his drink while covertly studying the pair.  Fournier’s assistant ate, while his companion spoke just a few words before ending his call.  “So tell me more,” he urged the curator’s assistant.

“It’s a good one,” the assistant acknowledged.  “Very much in Rembrandt’s style, and had been cleverly treated to appear old.  In addition, the original had been in a private collection almost since it was painted, so had never been thoroughly examined by experts.”

“So, do we even know there is an original?  And what happened to the original, if there is one?”

“Emmerich believes he can take us to the painting.  He spoke with Monsieur Fournier late yesterday.  In fact, the young man, Max Emmerich, is supposed to meet me at my office in…” he checked his watch.  “…thirty minutes, to discuss this.  According to him, the elder Emmerich wants to donate the painting to us; he feels bad because the philanthropy of the original donor can’t be achieved.”

Mart felt his reporter’s instincts kicking in.  The cancellation of the exhibit had been a blow to his plans for a big story, but it could be an even bigger story to report the investigation that led to the painting being determined to be a fraud.  And if an investigation led to the discovery of the real painting, he wanted to be in on the ground floor.  He pulled out his ever-present reporter’s notepad and jotted down the name Max Emmerich.