The Chrysalis Read online

  “I see,” Michael said, with a note of sympathy in his voice. She glanced down suddenly, uncharacteristically shy, and saw the manila folder on the Baum case sticking out of her bag.

  Mara counted to ten and looked back up. Her poised, professional demeanor was in place, and she asked about Baum v. Beazley’s. This new conversation did not go as smoothly as the more personal one, almost as though Michael resented her return to the topic that had brought them to Maggie’s in the first place. He withdrew into the banquette and spoke in a much more clipped tone. He even pushed away his wineglass and folded his napkin on top of the table. Mara ignored his tinge of disappointment and listened intently.

  Michael explained that a former client, who wished to remain anonymous, had hired Beazley’s to sell a painting—The Chrysalis by Johannes Miereveld—as part of a prestigious Dutch art auction timed to coincide with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s much-anticipated Dutch exhibit. Once Beazley’s circulated the auction catalog with its photograph of The Chrysalis, it received a barrage of calls and letters from the self-styled true owner, Hilda Baum, who claimed she had been searching for the painting for decades. She asserted that the Nazis had taken both The Chrysalis and her parents’ lives. Specifically, they had labeled her Catholic parents Jewish, shipped them off to a concentration camp, and then stolen their art collection. Beazley’s explained its practice of investigating a painting’s lineage and shared The Chrysalis’s crystal clear provenance with Hilda Baum, but she was not appeased. She wanted The Chrysalis back. The suit soon followed, and Beazley’s was forced to pull the painting from the auction pending the outcome of the case. Mara’s job was to keep The Chrysalis from her.

  Michael signaled for a waiter and paid the check, though Mara protested. “Can I walk you to a cab?” he asked. Clearly he was ready to leave, and Mara feared that she’d upset him somehow but knew it wasn’t the time to indulge her feelings. They both had a lot of work ahead of them in order to win this case.

  As they crossed the street to catch a cab going downtown, a livery car ran a red light and screeched to a halt at their feet. Michael reached for her hand to steady her. For that moment, the warmth of his grip felt completely natural; at Georgetown, she’d often wondered how it would feel to hold his hand. But when he slid his hand away, Mara pulled herself back into the present moment.

  After Michael closed the door of a cab behind her, he leaned through the open window and asked, “Are you free next Thursday?”

  “I think so,” Mara answered hesitantly.

  “I’d love it if you could come to the auction.” She thought she saw a flirtatious twinkle in his eye but dismissed it as a trick of the light, perhaps a projection of her own feelings. After all, he had given her no real reason to think he shared her attraction, except for initiating their personal banter, which could easily be explained by his affable manner. “We’ll even call it business, meet with some people beforehand. Will you come?” He waited for her answer.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, knowing that whatever else she had penciled in on her calendar she would erase the next day.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MARA HEARD THE FAMILIAR TREAD of Sophia’s step before she heard the knock on her closed office door. Mara shut her eyes. She wasn’t ready yet to dissect her meeting with Michael, least of all with Sophia, the one person who could pierce through any barrier Mara erected in the way of full disclosure. Still, she knew that silence would only make Sophia more curious. So, removing her reading glasses and tucking a misbehaving strand of hair behind her ear, Mara crossed the little room and let Sophia in before she knocked a second time.

  Sophia entered, closed the door behind her, leaned against a bookshelf in Mara’s minute but tidy office, and cocked one eyebrow. On the outside, Sophia embodied composure, but Mara knew that inside, Sophia was in constant motion, like a hummingbird. Her poise was a sleight of hand from her arsenal of tricks.

  When Mara resumed her seat but failed to respond to the interrogating expression, Sophia’s deportment gave way, and she slumped into the chair across from Mara’s desk. “Come on, I can’t believe you’re making me work so hard to find out about the dinner meeting with your big new client. How’d it go?” Sophia asked in her soft southern drawl, a disarming device that belied her sharp intellect like cotton candy wrapped around a blade.

  Mara paused for a long moment before answering. “It went well.”

  “Why so hesitant? Aside from the hell of working for Harlan, you should be thrilled with the opportunity he’s giving you.” Sophia knew the torment that Harlan had inflicted on Mara in past assignments with his manipulative games and general meanness, yet, better than anyone, she understood that Mara must endure his machinations if she really wanted to progress. The bottom line was that Mara’s advancement to partner hinged on his approval. Sophia had been slightly more fortunate in that the senior partner of her department was not as overtly power-hungry and controlling as Harlan, but she also maintained that Mara was particularly susceptible to Harlan’s maneuverings because his mercurial standards and blatantly conditional approval reminded Mara of her larger-than-life politician father. It was no secret between the two friends that Mara had gone to law school and joined this particularly competitive firm as much to please her father as to please herself. But Mara claimed to have embraced partnership at the world-class firm as her own goal and said that Harlan’s tricks took a toll on her only because she endured them so frequently.

  “I am thrilled,” Mara reassured her, knowing that Sophia wished one of her own corporate partners would select her to be the point person on the initial assignment for such a sought-after, high-profile client. Sophia, too, was up for partnership that year and would love the positive reinforcement of such a project. Mara believed that Sophia, with her boundless appetite for long hours and slavish adherence to the rules of the game, deserved partnership even more than she did.

  Yet Michael crept into Mara’s thoughts again, and she felt her cheeks grow warm and flushed.

  Sophia stared. “Mara, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re blushing. What’s going on?”

  “It turns out that I know the client from college.”

  “Aw, Mara, you didn’t date him, did you?”

  Mara shook her head. “No, nothing like that. We were friendly; we had a class together.”

  “Then why are your cheeks as red as an apple? Don’t forget what happened to Lisa.” Lisa Minever’s very public failed relationship with a powerful client had led to the loss of millions in business for Severin and an ongoing legal malpractice suit that named Lisa, a law firm classmate and acquaintance, as a defendant. More than once the night before, Mara had indeed thought of her, and she understood why Sophia felt the need to threaten her with Lisa’s demise. Sophia envisioned that, years down the road, the friends would become the grandes dames of Severin, and so she needed Mara to share her ambition, required the strength she drew from their mutual efforts to advance, and feared any misstep that Mara might make on that path. Sophia had risen far from the poverty of her small-town Carolina upbringing, and Mara served as Sophia’s lifeline in her new existence.

  Mara started to open her mouth. She would love to reveal the emotions Michael had stirred up, to laugh with Sophia and strategize together. But in her play-by-the-rules striving for success, Sophia had turned the yearning part of herself off and would not understand. So Mara sealed the near fissure and tucked her secrets more deeply out of view. This one she’d work out on her own, and, anyway, she needed to quash her feelings toward Michael. “It was just really strange seeing him after all these years,” she said, “especially as a client.”

  Eyes askance, Sophia took a long, hard look at Mara, but she didn’t probe any further. She wanted to believe Mara’s assurances; there was no room in her plans for alternatives. So Sophia adjusted her tightly wound blond braid and said, “I hope so. I wouldn’t want anything to spoil this opportunity.”

  three

  LEIDEN, 1644<
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  THE BUBBLE FLOATS TOWARD THE COTTONY SKY. HE GIGGLES as he sees the clouds catch it in their vaporous arms, tossing it back and forth in a merry game. He dips his hollowed-out scallop shell into the bowl and blows another bubble. The sun joins in the sport, ensnaring the iridescent orb in its rays and turning it from vermilion to ultramarine to verdigris. He knows the colors from his palette.

  The bubble pops.

  For the first time, he realizes he is alone by the canal. He cranes his neck to make sure Judith is not keeping watch over him. Then, with silent steps, he creeps down the cobblestone walk, toward the little bridge over the canal.

  His eyes cannot help but see how the lines of perspective converge on the arched bridge. His instructors are teaching him the mathematical method for creating three dimensions out of a mere two on a page, though they need not. He knows it without schooling, a fact they find curious. The cobblestones, the steps near the water, even the boats on the canal—all conspire to produce orthogonals, diagonal lines that recede and meet at a single spot on the horizon, just below the bridge’s center arc: the vanishing point.

  The lines hook him like a lure and reel him in. Riding them over the crests of the canal’s wake, he nears the vanishing point and reaches out to grasp it. Yet it disappears the closer he draws.

  He hears his name being called. It is Judith. “Johannes, what would the townsfolk think of your father if they saw you unattended?” she chides. She marches toward him, her meaty hand outstretched, her corpulence spilling out from the tight leather laces of her shift. Her advance cuts through the orthogonals, disrupting the order.

  A shaft of sunlight reaches deep into the corner of her wimple. It reveals her florid cheeks, normally hidden from view. They are as doughy as the bread she kneads every dawn. As scrumptious as her boterkoek, her almond butter cake.

  His hand securely lodged in her fleshy palm, they return to the whitewashed archway of his home. Cobalt light streams through the leaded glass windows of the back door. The light washes the scurrying chickens in the kitchen courtyard periwinkle and stains the drying laundry indigo. Judith drags him past the gleaming copper pots and the glazed earthenware to the voorhuis, the formal living room used to receive visitors.

  Judith cries out for his mother. Punishment must be meted out for his wandering, for the inevitable judgment of the neighbors.

  The gentle tinkle of the harpsichord stops. Peering around the corner, he glimpses the landscape painted on the underside of the virginal’s raised cover. He catches Mother’s eye in the convex mirror that faces the instrument. Before she fashions the admonishing expression expected by Judith, she smiles at him, at her Johannes—her conspirator.

  They wait until Judith leaves for the market. Canvassing the lane for familiar faces, all dangerous, they slip out the back door. Mother’s story for traveling the way of scullery maids is at the ready. But mercy provides an empty path.

  He knows the way by touch, for they have traveled it after nightfall on holy days, with nary a candle to light the way. Testing himself, he closes his eyes and runs his hand along the uneven brick walls of the narrow alleyways. His fingers memorize the undulations of certain corners, the roughness of particular stones, and the end of the passage. He wonders how to capture the texture of the mortarwork with his paints, settling on hues of white over reddish brown with brushstrokes of different widths and concentration.

  He opens his eyes. The illuminated windows of a diminutive house blink at him with wide-eyed innocence. Only the initiates know the truth: The smallness of the exterior masks a subterranean expanse that billets a banned Catholic meetinghouse. Here, far from the Calvinist sight of Father, far from the condemning view of the townspeople who pretend to practice religious tolerance but, in truth, see themselves as foot soldiers in the battle against the remnants of Spanish Catholic tyranny, Mother furtively worships.

  Pushing aside a rough-hewn wooden door, they descend a steep staircase. Though it is Monday, the hall teems with familiar faces, all of which greet them with nods. Like so many Catholics, Mother attends Calvinist service on Sundays—as marital vows dictate—then repents on Mondays.

  They wait in silence for Mass to begin. Except for the paintings of Jesus and the saints that adorn the walls and altar, the whitewashed, vaulted interior and rows of wooden pews remind Johannes of the Calvinist church they attend with Father. Mother says the pictures are meant to help achieve a prayerful state, to bring them closer to God. Yet he learns in Sunday school that Catholic worship is heresy and idolatry, that the Word alone should be used for spiritual meditation. Johannes pities his Calvinist teachers, that they cannot feel the sacred power of the art.

  The procession to the altar begins. The priest leads the pageant, resplendent in robes embroidered in gold and silver thread, and incants the Introit and Kyrie at the foot of the altar. He welcomes the congregation: “Dominus vobiscum.” Of his own volition, for Mother does not demand participation, Johannes greets the priest in reply: “Et cum spiritu tuo.”

  During the Mass, the priest places his left hand on his chest and lifts the censer to incense the altar. As the censer swings like a pendulum, candlelight catches on its golden surface, irradiating dark corners and shadowed faces for a moment before arcing to brighten others. It gives all the chance to share in the light.

  The incense rises. Johannes inhales the heady, sweet-smelling perfume, as exotic as his cimarron paint or perhaps the Indian yellow. He watches the smoke ascend high in a pleasing offering to God, an emblem of their prayers.

  four

  NEW YORK CITY, PRESENT DAY

  JUST BEFORE 4:00 P.M. THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY, MARA PAUSED at the entrance to Beazley’s. She had passed the mansion before and marveled at its design, a fanciful construct of its former owner, a nineteenth-century coal baron. But she had a different appreciation for its grand scale now that she stood on its steps, poised to enter the massive front doors.

  Once inside, she found her way across the festooned lobby by weaving through the bevy of female assistants in charge of setting up the auction and festivities. Almost all of them sported pin-straight, shiny hair, pearls, the latest Manolos, and headsets. They were preoccupied and utterly oblivious to her. Mara had chosen a black Calvin Klein sheath with a figure-skimming jacket for the event, but she felt dowdy compared to everyone else.

  After checking in with a formidable receptionist, Mara sat down on one of the scattered chairs covered in blue brocade. She eyed the collection of auction catalogs that were fanned out expertly on the marble coffee table. Though wary of disrupting the display, she slid out the Dutch auction catalog.

  The glossy publication contained painting after painting of vast light-filled churches, serene domesticity, minutely crafted still lifes, and bucolic scenes of villagers: all the subjects that made the Dutch artists famous and their artwork coveted. Mara recognized certain pictures and artists. The night before, she had pored through her musty college art history books, trying to refamiliarize herself with the golden age of Dutch painting so that she could speak intelligently to Michael about the auction’s artwork. Her crash course reminded her why the seventeenth-century Dutch artists once captivated her: Their exquisite, unprecedentedly realistic paintings were rife with symbols and puzzles, something Nana would have loved. She had scoured through her textbooks trying to determine where The Chrysalis’s creator, Johannes Miereveld, primarily known as a gifted portraitist, belonged amid the pantheon of artists, but his approach didn’t fit into any of his contemporaries’ molds.

  As Mara perused the catalog, fragments of a hushed conversation drifted into her awareness. The conspiratorial tones piqued her interest, and she strained to see the speakers without being seen herself. She leaned forward to replace the catalog on the coffee table and glanced over at two men waiting on a nearby couch, with their backs to her.

  “I hear that Masterson’s is being accused of putting up a Hebborn for auction,” she heard one man whisper to the other. Though she was u
nfamiliar with what she assumed was the artist’s name, Mara had become acquainted with the art auction house Masterson’s over the previous few days. The firm was Beazley’s fiercest rival.

  “Let me guess. A Hebborn that looks like a Corot?” the other man murmured back.

  “Who knows? It could be a Hebborn that resembles a Mantegna or a Tiepolo.”

  Suddenly, Mara realized that the two men must be talking about a master forger.

  “Well, I know that I wouldn’t want anyone looking too closely at the ‘Castigliones’ we’ve sold in the past.”

  Mara listened to the two men chortle at the thought. Engrossed in their tête-à-tête, she jumped when Michael tapped her shoulder. She looked up and noticed that his cowlick dipped down as he stooped to greet her and that the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. Mara admonished herself. The evening before, she had given herself a stern talking-to: She acknowledged her attraction to Michael, but she reminded herself that she had a clear line to walk and a professional relationship to build. She knew she couldn’t strike that balance if she allowed herself a physical reaction to him.

  He shepherded her into his office, which was aglow with the afternoon sun. His antique captain’s desk of gleaming wood and brass fittings sailed on the waves of a richly hued Aubusson rug and cast its sights on a panoramic view of Central Park. The walls were buttery suede and covered with art. On a prominent wall closest to his desk hung several black-and-white sketches of a man in robes. The subject seemed familiar to Mara, and when she asked Michael about them, he told her they were drawings of Saint Peter by a Renaissance artist with whom she was unfamiliar.

  Arms crossed, Michael rested against his office door; he was clearly awaiting her reaction. Mara had given up her romantic delusions of a book-lined, mahogany-paneled lawyer’s office long before, and she was having a hard time imagining the luck of working in this richness. As she ambled around the room, running her fingers along shelves and tabletops, the compliments tumbled out one on top of the other.