The Forger Read Online Free
Author: Paul Watkins
them, Paris was so far away it was as if I’d slipped into a world of dreams and was unreachable. In their minds, I had become as distant as my father.
The days spent on the ship on my way here had left the faintest rocking in my skull, the slow pendulum swing of the Atlantic’s deep sea swells. I dropped away into sleep with the vertigo rush of falling off a cliff.
Chapter Two
O NE HOUR LATER , I woke with a start when a car backfired down in the street. I raised one hand to rub the sleep-creases from my face and realized I was still holding the ticket to Fleury’s gallery show.
I decided I would go. I had to get something to eat, anyway, and I didn’t feel like spending my first evening stuck by myself in the apartment.
The gallery was on the Rue des Archives. I asked directions from Madame La Roche, who was sitting on a collapsible metal chair in front of the apartment building, smoking a little pipe.
The streets were busy. I passed dozens of restaurants whose awnings sheltered the pavement. Hand-holding couples stopped to check menus. They leaned toward the chalkboards on which the specials were written. Soft light pooled on their faces. Diners were jammed elbow to elbow at small tables. Waiters with long white aprons and slicked-back hair navigated through them, trays raised above their heads. Smells of garlic and wine wafted into the street. Some places had beds of ice on which oysters and sea urchins and shrimp were laid out. I could smell the faint salty sweetness of fresh seafood. My stomach cramped with hunger. But I didn’t want to sit at a restaurant by myself. Not tonight, anyway. I figured I would wait until after I’d gone to the gallery show, then buy some bread and cheese and maybe some wine and head back to the Rue Descalzi.
The brightness of restaurant lights and streetlamps and the dark emptiness of shops that had closed down gave me the sensation of everything drifting about, unattached, rushing by in a flickering hallucination. Hunger and my tiredness and, it seemed, the boom of Pankratov’s voice still an echo someplace in my head all piled together to make my walking in the streets like walking in a dream. I’m finally here, I thought, and at the same time I expected to wake up at any minute and find myself back home, in the summer heat, my old dust-greasy table fan creaking around on the windowsill and blowing a feeble breeze over the block of ice I went out and bought each August night. I brought the ice back to my apartment wrapped in brown paper and set it in a large spaghetti bowl. I put the fan behind the bowl and turned it on. In the mornings, I would wash my face in the cold water from the melted ice. I used to wait for the sound of the fan to work its way into my sleep. I listened past the rumble of the city for that faint persistent sound, which would be proof this was a dream. When it didn’t happen, I breathed out a sigh from the bottom of my lungs.
The closer I got to the gallery, the more nervous I became. Fleury was right about these openings being work. I never did well at them, even though I knew they were a necessary part of the business. I felt a sickening sharpness in my guts, as if I had swallowed broken glass, whenever I thought about the fancy-dress slaughterhouse of art openings. At the last show of my own work, I arrived late, walked once around the room and then ducked out the back door. I was halfway to the train station before the gallery owner caught up with me and convinced me to come back.
Ten minutes, I thought to myself. Give it ten minutes and then leave, even if Fleury asks you to stay. Or five, even. Five minutes. I was locked in a reverse bidding war with an auctioneer inside my head.
I saw where the gallery was half a block before I came to it. People spilled out into the little side street, hugging glasses of champagne in one hand and cigarettes in the other. I listened to the hum of party talk. Everyone was smoking. A blue-gray cloud of tobacco
The days spent on the ship on my way here had left the faintest rocking in my skull, the slow pendulum swing of the Atlantic’s deep sea swells. I dropped away into sleep with the vertigo rush of falling off a cliff.
Chapter Two
O NE HOUR LATER , I woke with a start when a car backfired down in the street. I raised one hand to rub the sleep-creases from my face and realized I was still holding the ticket to Fleury’s gallery show.
I decided I would go. I had to get something to eat, anyway, and I didn’t feel like spending my first evening stuck by myself in the apartment.
The gallery was on the Rue des Archives. I asked directions from Madame La Roche, who was sitting on a collapsible metal chair in front of the apartment building, smoking a little pipe.
The streets were busy. I passed dozens of restaurants whose awnings sheltered the pavement. Hand-holding couples stopped to check menus. They leaned toward the chalkboards on which the specials were written. Soft light pooled on their faces. Diners were jammed elbow to elbow at small tables. Waiters with long white aprons and slicked-back hair navigated through them, trays raised above their heads. Smells of garlic and wine wafted into the street. Some places had beds of ice on which oysters and sea urchins and shrimp were laid out. I could smell the faint salty sweetness of fresh seafood. My stomach cramped with hunger. But I didn’t want to sit at a restaurant by myself. Not tonight, anyway. I figured I would wait until after I’d gone to the gallery show, then buy some bread and cheese and maybe some wine and head back to the Rue Descalzi.
The brightness of restaurant lights and streetlamps and the dark emptiness of shops that had closed down gave me the sensation of everything drifting about, unattached, rushing by in a flickering hallucination. Hunger and my tiredness and, it seemed, the boom of Pankratov’s voice still an echo someplace in my head all piled together to make my walking in the streets like walking in a dream. I’m finally here, I thought, and at the same time I expected to wake up at any minute and find myself back home, in the summer heat, my old dust-greasy table fan creaking around on the windowsill and blowing a feeble breeze over the block of ice I went out and bought each August night. I brought the ice back to my apartment wrapped in brown paper and set it in a large spaghetti bowl. I put the fan behind the bowl and turned it on. In the mornings, I would wash my face in the cold water from the melted ice. I used to wait for the sound of the fan to work its way into my sleep. I listened past the rumble of the city for that faint persistent sound, which would be proof this was a dream. When it didn’t happen, I breathed out a sigh from the bottom of my lungs.
The closer I got to the gallery, the more nervous I became. Fleury was right about these openings being work. I never did well at them, even though I knew they were a necessary part of the business. I felt a sickening sharpness in my guts, as if I had swallowed broken glass, whenever I thought about the fancy-dress slaughterhouse of art openings. At the last show of my own work, I arrived late, walked once around the room and then ducked out the back door. I was halfway to the train station before the gallery owner caught up with me and convinced me to come back.
Ten minutes, I thought to myself. Give it ten minutes and then leave, even if Fleury asks you to stay. Or five, even. Five minutes. I was locked in a reverse bidding war with an auctioneer inside my head.
I saw where the gallery was half a block before I came to it. People spilled out into the little side street, hugging glasses of champagne in one hand and cigarettes in the other. I listened to the hum of party talk. Everyone was smoking. A blue-gray cloud of tobacco