money. After all, aren’t you the one who wanted to run off and live like Gauguin?”
“Richter’s willing to pay for all this?”
“He’s willing to pay a generous commission.”
“But nothing up front?”
“Just all our expenses and two steamship tickets. First-class.”
“Isn’t Richter a German name? Does he know you’re Jewish?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Can’t you believe that someone would be willing to back me for once?”
He brushed past me and stood by the window, pushing aside the gray curtain. Our room faced an air shaft: the view was an identical room.
“Just meet him, Sara.”
Richter was nothing like the rotund industrialists Rivera had depicted in his mural. He was thin to the point of daintiness and not much taller than I was.
He greeted us himself at the door of his pied-à-terre, a marble mansionette not too far from Binky’s. He kissed my bare ring finger with a refinement that bordered on menace and called me “Frau Ehrenreich.” He wore a maroon smoking jacket and Moroccan slippers. He offered us champagne, Philip a box of blond cigars. I plucked out one for myself. He said he had a surprise for us. Taking us each by an arm, he led us into his library, a room bricked solid with leather tomes. A steamship brochure lay on his desk, Pearl of the East. A giant pink hibiscus bloomed on the cover. A tiny bare-breasted hula girl cavorted on the flower’s lengthy pistil.
Richter unfolded the pamphlet. The top half was a map of the South Pacific with a white ocean liner silhouetted in the corner. The ship’s route, a red line, zigzagged through the islands—the Friendly Isles, the New Hebrides, the Solomons. The bottom half was a wide-angle photograph of a first-class stateroom, all teak and plush.
“It’s a remarkable voyage,” Richter said. “I believe the ship crosses the equator three separate times. You see the mark there?” His fingernail tapped on what looked like a printer’s error, an ink dot in the middle of nowhere. “That’s Ta’un’uu.”
Philip and I both leaned closer. Cigar ash spilled onto the brochure. Philip carefully brushed it off.
“It’s a Japanese shipping line, a merchant vessel,” Richter explained, “but as you can see, no expense is spared for the lucky few passengers who tour with it. The Japanese are extraordinary hosts, and of late, they’ve become rather enchanted by the South Seas. The ship is calling at every major port, and where it’s not officially calling, arrangements can be made. For a collector like Philip it’s the chance of a lifetime.” He slipped the brochure into Philip’s breast pocket, then replenished our champagne flutes. “When you finally get to Tokyo, if you’d both like, you can return by land. The Trans-Siberian sleeping cars are said to be from the tzar’s time, true Victorian carriages. We can rendezvous at Lake Como.”
“If war doesn’t break out in Europe first,” I said.
“All the more reason to be off in the South Seas,” Philip said.
“You don’t think the pact between the tyrant and the thug will hold, Frau Ehrenreich?”
I asked him who was who.
“Why, Stalin is the tyrant. Adolf is only a thug. Do you know how I know?”
I said I didn’t.
“The size of their mustaches.”
He motioned for us to follow him into a high-domed chamber off the library. Its walls were bare and pocked with nail holes. “I must apologize. My treasures were put in storage yesterday. It takes so much preparation for them to be shipped home. I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye to your masks, Philip. All I have left is my private collection. Would you like to see that?”
He opened another door to yet another domed room. On every surface—the antique tables, the rosewood bookcases, the marble pedestals—carved figurines copulated, or mated with animal deities, or squatted licentiously.
He picked one up and set it on the platter of his palm—a six-inch-high
“Richter’s willing to pay for all this?”
“He’s willing to pay a generous commission.”
“But nothing up front?”
“Just all our expenses and two steamship tickets. First-class.”
“Isn’t Richter a German name? Does he know you’re Jewish?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Can’t you believe that someone would be willing to back me for once?”
He brushed past me and stood by the window, pushing aside the gray curtain. Our room faced an air shaft: the view was an identical room.
“Just meet him, Sara.”
Richter was nothing like the rotund industrialists Rivera had depicted in his mural. He was thin to the point of daintiness and not much taller than I was.
He greeted us himself at the door of his pied-à-terre, a marble mansionette not too far from Binky’s. He kissed my bare ring finger with a refinement that bordered on menace and called me “Frau Ehrenreich.” He wore a maroon smoking jacket and Moroccan slippers. He offered us champagne, Philip a box of blond cigars. I plucked out one for myself. He said he had a surprise for us. Taking us each by an arm, he led us into his library, a room bricked solid with leather tomes. A steamship brochure lay on his desk, Pearl of the East. A giant pink hibiscus bloomed on the cover. A tiny bare-breasted hula girl cavorted on the flower’s lengthy pistil.
Richter unfolded the pamphlet. The top half was a map of the South Pacific with a white ocean liner silhouetted in the corner. The ship’s route, a red line, zigzagged through the islands—the Friendly Isles, the New Hebrides, the Solomons. The bottom half was a wide-angle photograph of a first-class stateroom, all teak and plush.
“It’s a remarkable voyage,” Richter said. “I believe the ship crosses the equator three separate times. You see the mark there?” His fingernail tapped on what looked like a printer’s error, an ink dot in the middle of nowhere. “That’s Ta’un’uu.”
Philip and I both leaned closer. Cigar ash spilled onto the brochure. Philip carefully brushed it off.
“It’s a Japanese shipping line, a merchant vessel,” Richter explained, “but as you can see, no expense is spared for the lucky few passengers who tour with it. The Japanese are extraordinary hosts, and of late, they’ve become rather enchanted by the South Seas. The ship is calling at every major port, and where it’s not officially calling, arrangements can be made. For a collector like Philip it’s the chance of a lifetime.” He slipped the brochure into Philip’s breast pocket, then replenished our champagne flutes. “When you finally get to Tokyo, if you’d both like, you can return by land. The Trans-Siberian sleeping cars are said to be from the tzar’s time, true Victorian carriages. We can rendezvous at Lake Como.”
“If war doesn’t break out in Europe first,” I said.
“All the more reason to be off in the South Seas,” Philip said.
“You don’t think the pact between the tyrant and the thug will hold, Frau Ehrenreich?”
I asked him who was who.
“Why, Stalin is the tyrant. Adolf is only a thug. Do you know how I know?”
I said I didn’t.
“The size of their mustaches.”
He motioned for us to follow him into a high-domed chamber off the library. Its walls were bare and pocked with nail holes. “I must apologize. My treasures were put in storage yesterday. It takes so much preparation for them to be shipped home. I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye to your masks, Philip. All I have left is my private collection. Would you like to see that?”
He opened another door to yet another domed room. On every surface—the antique tables, the rosewood bookcases, the marble pedestals—carved figurines copulated, or mated with animal deities, or squatted licentiously.
He picked one up and set it on the platter of his palm—a six-inch-high
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