The Quality of Her Tears

A crazy period began while I took every opportunity to be out of my desolate apartment. I was busy traveling to Europe and Asia, so the few contacts with my lawyer lady were short and hasty. Not that they would have been more fruitful if they had been longer. Mia hid in a pool of silence. I never got to hear from her or her lawyer. Her sports car started gathering dust, as did her stuff in the bedroom closets.

Only after returning from Frankfurt one day, I had the time to sit down with my lawyer and consider our possibilities. Her name was Greta. She must have been in the upper half of her forties and showed all the outward signs of the cliché butch lesbian – short blond hair, a square face and a strong, stocky body. She also had the handshake of a construction worker.

"Mr. Lundgren, Carl," she started, after pouring me some coffee. "It seems your wife has changed her mind about granting the divorce. It will be hard to find her if she doesn't want to be found." A smile lifted her fleshy lips. "Are you sure you did not misunderstand her?"

I shrugged. "She was the first one even to use the word divorce. The last thing she told me before leaving was that she'd be okay with a divorce and would go along with anything I proposed. She left a note about her solicitor calling me, and her ring. She never came back to explain, or to get her things, not even to get the rest of her clothes or her jewelry."

The woman – Greta – just looked at me.

"Odd," she said. "Could it be that someone else changed her mind for her – her lover, maybe? What do you know about her affair?"

"I don't know of an affair or affairs. The dates seemed one-time happenings. The men in the pictures were never the same, as far as they were even recognizable. The PI-reports didn't give much detail about them."

"Which is odd in itself," Greta mumbled. She looked up and said: "You thought the man on the first picture might be your brother?"

I shrugged again. "That was because of the birthmark on his cheek, but his face wasn't clear at all. My brother was very adamant when he denied it. I haven't seen him since."

Greta shifted through the pictures. "Odd," she said again, obviously fond of the word. "Are you sure she isn't with your brother?" I shrugged.

"I could call him," I said.

She started going through the photo's. I can't say I appreciated her doing that yet again. Then she said "odd" once more and put away the pictures. She folded her meaty hands on the shining desk.

"Carl," she said, "I'm afraid we can't do anything if we don't find her. She could be anywhere – with her family. You say she likes Paris. She might be with one of the anonymous lovers or maybe back at her old apartment. Did you check?" I'd checked with her family and a few friends of course, but not Paris. I promised I would.

Greta said our only chance for a quick divorce was to track Mia down. She knew people who'd be able to do that, maybe. I hated what she implied – because of the time and the money it would take, and the emotional burden. I wanted it all to just go away. I wanted to drown in my work until the hurt and the sadness wore off and a new start would be possible.

"Do I need a divorce at all?" I asked.

"Only if you want to remarry," Greta said. "Or if you need it in order to move on – to feel free, you know?"

I considered what she said. Remarriage wasn't even remotely in the charts. But yes, I needed to be free from the bitch, to move on. I felt like walking in a pool of slush. It pulled me away from where I wanted to go. And the slush was my connection to Mia. Romantics might point out I was still in love with the slut. Maybe, but what was the point? She never loved me, did she?

"Yes," I said. "I need to be free. I need a divorce. But I don't need months of fruitless investigation, and the ruinous bills that go with it. In the end I may loose half of my money anyway."

Greta smiled a very tight smile.

"There is maybe a way to flush her out," she said while reshuffling the pictures in front of her. I wondered what she meant. She cleared her throat.

"It isn't advice a lawyer should give," she said, smiling again, waiting.

"Blackmail, you mean?" I picked up the photo where Mia swallowed cock. "Showing them to family, friends, colleagues, bosses?"

Greta's bland face was non-committal. "We can't reach her," she then said, shifting the pictures. "But we could send some of the least explicit ones to family et cetera, just to see what happens."

I once more studied the pictures, wondering who the men were. Knowing at least one or two names might give leverage. They could be married or otherwise vulnerable. But finding them would be as costly as finding Mia. And getting at Mia by blackmail? I never found that she was overly concerned with protecting her image, even in sensitive circles. Her rather prudish family was another matter.

"It might help if we knew at least one or two of the men," I commented.

Greta looked again.

"We do have the phone-calls, the different appointments," she said. "For our purpose it might work. Let me contact my investigator. We'll stop if it gets too expensive." I agreed – reluctantly.

I checked with my brother and Mia's family. John was pissed off and her family seemed worried as they hadn't heard from Mia as well. The Paris apartment proved to have been rented out to several inhabitants since Mia went to the States and got married. Wherever I checked, I poked into a big nothing.

Greta was as unsuccessful as I. The investigator found out that one of the men was from an escort agency. Not exactly blackmail material. Another one was a single fashion model. Then there was a stripper and a porn actor.

I reconsidered needing the divorce. I drank a lot while reconsidering.

Mia.

Looking back, it is hard to imagine who I was before I became me. Before her change Mia was a spoilt, selfish and very arrogant girl, but she also was intelligent. She was full of energy and proud of her independent place in the world. Of course that soon proved to be nothing more than a thin layer, easily removed. But there are still moments I crave to be that girl again. Those moments are few, and they taste of treason. They are also useless. 'Water under the bridge,' as they say – although the liquids involved were more like sweat, blood and tears, mucus, too, and several fluids of a more private origin.

So they changed her, pretty Mia – or did they? Sometimes I think she let them. Sure, she was would be infuriated by the insinuation. "It was rape," she'd scream. And admittedly, at the start assorted chemicals were used to break her will, but it would be cowardly to just put the blame there. She might as well blame it on the incessant physical punishments – the repeated floggings, the painful bondage and the robbing of sleep. Then there were the never-ending public rapes, the forced orgies, the threats with permanent harm and other causes of exhaustion. But what broke young Mia most efficiently was of her own doing – although you wouldn't think so, considering the night she escaped her lover and ran off into the darkness.

Her heart was pumping like crazy; the adrenalin kept her going. She tried flagging down cabs, but as her purse and money were still in Jean-Luc's car, they wouldn't take her ­– especially in the torn-up dress she wore. When the third cabdriver started hinting about other possible kinds of payment, she slammed the door of his car closed and started running again.

Her bare feet got bruised and the chill of the night made her shiver. She shied away from people she stumbled into. They were mostly men and she was well aware of her appearance. She stopped in front of a police station, hesitating to go in and report what she considered rape. Seeing the dreary population of the waiting room and the fat, greasy gendarme at the reception, she turned and ran again.

The sky already showed the pale light of dawn when she arrived at her Montparnasse apartment building. Thank God, the old lady concierge was already up and about, opening her flat for her.

The next days were an exercise in sleepwalking. She spent hours in bed, under her shower or just sitting in front of her mirror, staring, and whispering a name. She called in sick, not daring to go outside.

The second morning, as she lay in bed, there was a knock on her door. It caused her to cry out. She hugged her racing heart as she sat up, listening. Then she heard the voice of the concierge through her door, asking if all was well with mamselle. The relief brought tears to her eyes. She grabbed her robe and shuffled to the door, opening it on its chain.

The woman had a big French-style bowl of milky morning coffee and a buttered croissant. She also had a few questions. Mia suddenly felt famished. She took the coffee and the bread, smiling. But she ignored the questions, assuring the woman she was fine.

She knew her appearance belied her words.

Three days later she called home, telling her mother she would pack and come back; she didn't give a reason. It was her first home-call in weeks. Her family and America had been totally erased from her mind – engulfed as she was by the perfumed clouds of infatuation. But now, her wings singed by a perfidious sun and her poor heart in tatters, Smalltown, USA seemed the only bright place in a world of darkness.

***

Of course her return was a disaster. Her parents were intolerably sweet and understanding. They had no clue what had happened, but especially her father had his opinions about anything French – and he aired them with a mistaken sense of loyalty. Mia resented it. She was shaken by the betrayal of her love, but it was her love and her betrayal, wasn't it? People she'd always considered dull, frightened and unimaginative now smirked at her premature return. Without a doubt they'd say behind her back how they'd seen it coming. Where did these provincial midgets find the right to ridicule her? What did they know and what risk did they ever take anyway?

There was no way she could tell the truth of what happened. Her free and intoxicating time in Paris felt too precious to let it be sullied and ridiculed by chicken-livered told-you-so's. Never mind how it ended.

Soon she got into ugly fights with her self-righteous father and her homely sister, defending Paris and the life she'd led there. Former friends and schoolmates looked glassy-eyed whenever she tried to make them see the many things she loved about France and Europe – the people, the food, the culture. And as so often happens, she started overdoing her defense. She considered herself under siege of barbarians.

How could she not justify the choices she'd made? She hated being the one coming home with the tail between her legs. So she did what so many did before her; she edited the memories of what had happened. She downplayed the treason and remembered the exalting moments. Hadn't it been Mia, there at the front row of the famous catwalks? Wasn't that her, toasting with Steve McQueen, the scandalous couturier? Or with Sophie Marceau, the actress?

Maybe she had judged things wrong. Maybe it had been her inability to react properly to what happened? Maybe she had been the silly provincial?

She distanced herself from her kinsmen and peers. She started to compare the crude American boys she met with her idealized French lover. Her few girlfriends were no match for the witty, fashionable girls she knew in Paris – the true-blood Parisiennes who had accepted her as one of them. She dismissed the gauche compliments, the clumsy advances and halting conversations riddled with teenage cliché's. Within weeks she was back on top of her ivory tower, not allowing the boys even a peep up her skirts.

And God, was she unhappy.

So, inevitably, stupid little Red Riding Hood returned to the forest of the big bad wolf. Not at once, of course. As these things go, she needed time to find sufficient excuses. She had to convince herself that she really only would return because she loved Paris – the town, the metropolitan freedom, the language, her new copains, the excitement and the bustling busyness of it all? She just had to escape the boring self-sufficient know-it-alls; the doldrums of Backwaterville, America. She had to, even knowing it might be stupid. She was well aware of the risk she took. Maybe even then she already knew her real, deep-down reasons.

So, after two months in limbo she went back to Paris, the place she still didn't know whether to call heaven or hell – or both. She found an apartment close to the one she had and even got her fake job back. It took her at least another three weeks to pick up her course at the Sorbonne again – just for her French, mind you.

Had she been honest, she'd have known better. But she wasn't. In her highly edited version of what happened she succeeded in allowing Jean-Luc to almost become an innocent bystander – maybe as much a victim as she had been. Yes, I think we may blame Mia for most of what happened afterward – even if she couldn't help it.

Jean-Luc had been her first and only true love. During the weeks with him she'd floated in bliss, immersed in a blood-warm ocean of attention – not to disregard the mind-shattering orgasms.

When he'd suddenly betrayed that love, she wasn't ready for the ice-cold awakening. Who'd want to wake up after a dream like that anyway? So, giving in to him again after the inevitable 'accidental' reunion in their after-course café shouldn't have surprised anybody – least of all herself..

Of course she had been tentative at first. But when he'd offered to take her home she'd nodded. And when he held the door to the elevator for her, she didn't protest when he slipped in beside her. Of course they kissed in the lift and stripped in her hallway and fucked in her ancient, metal-framed bed. And of course she insisted it was Love they made.

Tasting his mouth, caressing his skin and feeling his wonderful cock slide into her tight furnace again was enough to chase away the last remaining demons that might have lingered. When she arched and cried through instant orgasm, her silly little brain waved good-bye to any doubts that still might protect her common sense.

"Je t'aime," she sighed. Were sweeter words ever used in a suicide-note?

Carl.

So I decided to forget the divorce. It was Mia who'd left me and I understood that if she'd stay away long enough, the divorce would be automatic and painless. Two years, they said. Two summers, two autumns, two winters and springs – it sounded like a lifetime to me. Painless? My ass.

That summer I adopted the lifestyle of a traveling hermit. I spent more time in planes and hotels, galleries and museums than I did at home. Home meant mostly my desk anyway, and me hunching over it. There was the occasional date, mostly abroad and work-related. There even were one-night-stands and I did indeed end up in bed with pretty Natalia from St. Petersburg's Hermitage (which by the way means a hermit's place.) She was great, sweet, lovely, but by then my fucking was as mechanical as everything else I did. After three months I was virtually a dead man walking.

It was in the third week of August that I got a phone call from Julien Lagrange, who is one of the directors of Sotheby's in Paris, a branch of the big British auction house. I knew him well; we'd worked together, even as recently as last year. I wondered why he would be at his office in August, France's most sacred holiday month. It must be important, and indeed he sounded grave, hardly responding to my joking hellos. Even before he broached the subject of his call, a cold finger traced my spine. I had no idea why.

"We'll be having a big auction at the end of September," he said. "Part of the collection of the late Duchess Romanova will be sold."

I had heard of the grande dame's demise. She was distantly related to the last czar of Russia and heir to the fortune of Russian refugees who left their country after the 1917 revolution to live in Paris. Her collection was famous; she had been adding to it even while she was on her terminal sickbed.

"I am calling you because of the Alma-Tadema," Lagrange went on.

"What Alma-Tadema?" I asked, wondering why he would call me for that. The last time I did anything with the famous British society painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was at least ten years ago, and in London. I remember turning down the job. I never much liked his posh faux oriental paintings, which so much enthralled the upper crust of Victorian England. I guess I was rather alone in my judgment, as a piece of his called The Finding of Moses did almost 36 million dollars in New York, last year. It had been estimated between 3 and 5 million.

"I mean the painting you evaluated and approved," Lagrange said, intruding on my musing.

"Me?" I asked. "That seems unlikely. You know well enough that I love to avoid the knighted bugger. Last time I even came near him was ten years ago. What painting are you talking about?" There was a silence on his side of the line. I heard papers rustling.

"It is The Marriage of Nefertiti," he then said. "And your name is under the report."

"Well," I said. "If you say so. But I never put it there. Never even saw the damn painting! Never knew the thing existed. Nefertiti? Never heard of it." Another silence fell.

"The painting is false, Carl," he then said, his voice very low. "Madame bought it last year for 14 million Euro. Yesterday I got two counter-reports and laboratory tests that prove the thing is a fluke. As it is it might bring her heirs a few hundred bucks as a curiosity. They won't be happy and neither will you, I guess."

"You're damn right about that," I answered, getting anxious. "But my signature must be as false as the bloody painting."

"Might very well be," he said, dry as a bone. "The counter expertise is from the National Gallery in London and from Lavallier, you know him. The laboratory is Strickner's, only the best."

"Ffffuck," I said, stretching the f's. "But the report isn't mine!"

"I hear you," he said. "What are you going to do about it?" Which was a good question.

I made an appointment with Julien to come to Paris and look at the painting and the report. I was on the plane the next day, carrying all information I could find on the Marriage of Nefertiti. It wasn't much as, curiously, the damn thing was never even mentioned before two years ago. There had been drawings of the subject and there were even written records of the painter talking about his plans to do a big piece about the legendary Egyptian queen. But that was it, until the Duchess bought the painting at a small vending house in Bordeaux. The turmoil about this new and unknown masterpiece could be traced in some papers, but as I never counted the painter-knight as one of my favorites, I had only picked it up in passing.

Sotheby's is in a place called Galerie Charpentier in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. It is a lovely building from the Second Empire, not far from the Elysée palace. It also is France's largest auction house, specializing in the selling of collections.

Of course I wasn't really interested in the touristy aspects. I sat with Lagrange in his opulent office, staring with amazement at the documents he showed me. My supposed report was printed on my stationary, showing my watermark all right, and it had my signature under a very detailed report supporting the authenticity of a painting I had never seen. The report had my style and lay out; I recognized the build-up of my argumentation. And yet, I knew with certainty that I hadn't written one word of it.

The counter reports leaned heavily on the lack of history of the painting, just as I would have done. The British even had found proof of Sir Lawrence dismissing his plans to do the piece. The laboratory doubted the probability of Alma-Tadema's choice of canvas and especially the frame it had been mounted on. All in all there were too many uncertainties to support the painting's authenticity. For crying out loud, I was sure I would have come to the same conclusions. But my signature said otherwise.