Stealing Picasso (10 page)

The grace bestowed on the pathetic and deluded is that they don't realise they are pathetic and deluded.

Turton Pym is watching himself in a mirror held in his left hand. His aged face is framed by his lush Wagnerian side levers. In his right hand he is holding a brush. He is painting himself for another attempt at another Archibald Prize. He is not a famous Australian, as the rules of the competition dictate the subject of any portrait must be. But if he is caught stealing the
Weeping Woman
he will be famous. So he is imbuing his face with a compassion and wisdom that will explain to the world his honorable intentions in that theft. He is painting this portrait so it will live after him, as long as the crime itself, refuting all the scuttlebutt and slander his detractors might bestow on him.

Because if some suspect a vengeful motive in what he is doing, if some suspect a case of sour grapes, they are wrong,
Turton tells himself. Though it is undeniable he has not been recognised as he should have been; undeniable that for decades he has been one of Australia's most talented artists, but is nowhere known. Does he command his own shows in state galleries? He does not. Is he hung in the very gallery he serves? He is not. If Weston Guest is ruined and made to look a fool by this episode will he, Turton, don mourning rags? He will not. He will, as Eliza Doolittle said, get dressed and go to town. But this theft is not an attempt to destroy those who have hindered his advancement, he reassures himself.

He fears it will be said of him (and he knows the cowards who will say it. And, by God, his ears burn when he imagines such things said), when he is no longer here to denounce and vilify the rumourmongers, that he was an old man suffering under the thrall of a beautiful woman – her firm breasts and her laughing eyes. A sphinx with hips like Ava Gardner, who came from nowhere and restored his manhood. He fears it will be said she put a spell on him and made him do her bidding. That after she lay with him that night beneath the two
Weeping Women
and made him a man again, he cast himself at her feet and offered himself up as her willing slave. (Slave! Slanderous bastards. Turton Pym has lived his life as a Marxist.)

He was old, they will say. He craved a woman's touch. The sweet things a woman can whisper were, to him, a tonic. In his decrepit state the flattery and regard of a beautiful woman had become so rare it took on a great power. Thus was he led, they will say. A pig with a ring through his nose, hauled along by sweet nothings and a blow job. A pathetic and deluded character.

Turton tells himself he doesn't care what they will say. Damn them, anyway – this self-portrait (the furrowed brow, the sage eye) will refute it all.

Which is not to say that something about the woman doesn't tickle his fancy. To have heard her wail as Turton served it up to her in the Hall of the Great Europeans – loud, loud, loud, baby. Thomas de Keyser's portrait of Frederick van Velthuysen and his wife, Josina, is hung to the left of the
Weeping Woman
, and as he screwed Mireille, Turton saw Fred van V. reach out with his lace gloves to block Josina's ears, lest Mireille's squeals enlighten the old girl as to what she has been missing out on and she start making demands above and beyond those his gout-knotted body could deliver.

And yes, a man is always pleased, and shocked, to deliver a woman such apocalyptic pleasure. It leaves one feeling awed at one's own voodoo, as it were. Like kicking a football over a silo. It puffs one's chest. To be honest, it makes one feel terrific. So, Turton admits to himself, her thrashings and weepings were a tonic to a fading man.

But the all-knowing gang of arselickers that run the gallery will also snicker, ‘Oh, she praised his art.' And they will tut-tut at the unfairness of that. Because we all know that, while old Turton's art isn't any bloody good, he is a sucker for a kind word. ‘The shameless woman feigned admiration for his still lifes. How could she?' It will be generally agreed she bullshitted him royally. But Turton has endured a lifetime of flatterers, and he does not count this woman as one. She looked him in the eye and called him ‘artist', and she meant it. No, she didn't con him. He didn't steal the
Weeping Woman
for her.

As he paints this noble self-portrait, he asks his noble painted self, why did he steal the painting? And he tells his noble painted self, while adding a point of white intelligence to his pupil, that
he did it in the belief that Art had become so tainted by Price that if his small adventure could use the abomination of Price to aid Art, then it was well done and wholly justified. He did it in the steadfast belief that Pablo Picasso, whom he paddled around Barcelona in a canoe in his youth, and who had a soul as large as Quixote, would have done it himself, had he known that his woman's glory was now measured in dollars and she sat imprisoned and mocked by the public, like Marie Antoinette.

A Christian, when faced with a problem, a choice, an opportunity, will often ask, ‘What would Jesus have done?' as a simple way of cutting a path through the morality of any dilemma. Let Jesus be your guide. ‘A bank clerk has struck a keyboard one too many times and added a zero to my life savings. What would Jesus have done in my shoes?'

Turton is not a Christian. Before agreeing to cooperate in this heist he did as Mireille suggested and asked himself what Picasso would have done. He closed his eyes and smoked a pipe and asked the great Spaniard. And Picasso came to Turton in a vision, a dream, his eyes alight with enthusiasm for the scheme. It was Picasso himself who stole the
Weeping Woman
. He took Turton by the hand and pulled him through the green door. He tiptoed into the gallery alongside them, sniggering, hopping foot to foot at the adventure of stealing his own work. Because, for Picasso, stealing a Picasso was a far more exciting way to come by a Picasso than to paint one. He could paint one any time. And don't forget Picasso believed in stolen art. (He was implicated in the theft of the
Mona Lisa
from the Louvre in 1911 at a time when her fortunes were flagging. There is nothing like an abduction to furnish stature to a fading beauty's reputation.) Picasso knew what an abduction would do for his
Woman
's fame.

When Harry, Mireille and Turton arrive in the Hall of the Great Europeans, Turton notices Picasso is hopping from foot to foot, grinning impishly, his tongue flicking out, tasting life again; bald, barrel-chested, eyes aflame, as high and coltish as a prisoner on day-release. Which, Turton supposes, he is. Released from the prison of Death for this one excursion.

Straight away Picasso skips up to a Manet,
The House at Rueil
, and cocks his leg at it like a dog leaking on a tree. The painting does have a tree in the middle of it, but he isn't pissing on the tree, Turton realises, he is pissing on Manet. Turton hisses a pissing noise as he watches Picasso, smiles to himself when he hears Picasso say to Manet, ‘You boring man. You vector of ennui', and laughs as he sees Picasso bare his teeth sleepily at the canvas in contempt. One shouldn't piss on other people's art. But as a tool for self-aggrandisement it is entirely understandable. The critics know this.

It is rather embarrassing for Turton to see Picasso behaving as a poodle might. There is no need for a man so indisputably great to mark his territory. On the other hand, it is a guilty thrill to see a giant debase icons. I mean … pissing on a Manet. Unthinkable sacrilege, but if you want any more proof of Picasso's genius, well, there it is. One's mind must be free of dogma to do such a thing. Alone. Out there in a galaxy of self-regard where genius lives.

Turning, triumphant at having put Manet in his place, Picasso spots a Brueghel across the hall and prances over to it, dropping his strides and brown-eyeing it at point-blank. Harry is shocked – he has a soft spot for Brueghel – and puts his hands to his face, watching through laced fingers while Picasso waggles his arse at those chubby-faced Flemish peasants held spellbound, unable to respond, food halfway to their lips. Mireille is laughing, urging the old rascal on, ‘Oui, oui, monsieur.'

Next he strides up to a naked Caravaggio,
St John the Baptist
, shucks off his own clothes, takes hold of his wedding tackle and shakes it at St John, denouncing the inferiority of his and Caravaggio's equipment. ‘With this, I have slain harems. With that bloodless thing,' he points at St John's penis, ‘you could not slay a rabbit.'

He then pretends to vomit on a Sickert and shields his eyes from a Vermeer as though it is too hideous to gaze upon. Picasso isn't entirely happy hanging alongside these also-rans. He curses them under his breath and waves at his
Woman
as one might at a lover imprisoned in a tower.

Mireille has taken a screwdriver from her pocket. Turton has never seen such a tool before. It has a triangular head that fits the triangular apertures in the security screws holding the
Weeping Woman
to the wall. Where did she get it? How did she know it was needed? He hadn't even noticed these strange screws.

But she is laughing so hard at Picasso's antics she can't fit it to the screws. Turton sees the great man lay his hand on hers to steady her. Picasso begins to concentrate now the theft is underway. He becomes a hero in a pantomime, determined to free his lady from her tower, glancing this way and that, cocking an ear for the footsteps of her jailers. He helps Mireille unscrew the frame from the wall. When this is done he dances a pas de deux with her, making Turton wince at the possibility of a crash. As he dances, Mireille sticks a location card on the wall where the
Weeping Woman
had hung. While Picasso whirls with his woman Turton leans forwards and reads the card.

2nd AUGUST

THIS PAINTING HAS BEEN

REMOVED FOR RESTORATION

Signed: the Australian Cultural Terrorists

 

‘Who are the Australian Cultural Terrorists?' he asks Mireille. He is shocked. He has never heard of them.

‘We are.'

‘We are? You might have told us.' He is now indignant – unauthorised use of one's name and all. Besides, they sound dangerous.

‘They are red herring.'

‘But we are them?'

‘We are.'

‘Then … really. This is too much. Who is our leader?'

‘You.'

‘I am?' Despite knowing nothing about this crowd, Turton is chuffed. A nod from one's fellows is always welcome.

‘President?'

‘Secretary-general.'

‘But what's the point of us? Who do we terrorise? I don't want to terrorise anyone.'

‘A handful will be unnerved, at worst.'

‘I'm unnerved myself. We don't slash anything, do we? Or blow anything up?'

‘We break nothing, burn nothing, murder no one nor even produce a sabotage. We are the red-herring-fish organisation who do only red-herring-fish activities. The mere puff of bullshit for the police to investigate.'

It sounds like a happy, harmless group that even, perhaps, has its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, and Turton feels a sudden thrill to be its secretary-general, like being the national
president of Rotary or the premier of Victoria, chief of some well-meaning brotherhood whose members meet for a few hours each week to escape cantankerous wives. Red-herring-fish activities. He looks forward to red-herring-fish activities as if he were wearing waders and had a rod in his hand.