The Last Weynfeldt Read Free Page B

after a while, there were tears in her eyes again. He pulled three tissues out of the box and passed them to her.
    When she had blown her nose, she said, “Stories like that are no comfort at all. Stories like that are the last straw.” She got up, walked into the bathroom and stayed there a long time. He heard the toilet and the shower. When she emerged, she was wearing one of his dressing gowns, with the monogram A.S.W. It reached the floor, and she had rolled the sleeves up. “I have to go now.”
    â€œI’ll come downstairs with you.” He went into the bathroom, from there to his dressing room. When he returned to the bedroom, fifteen minutes later, she had gone and the bed was made. She was waiting in the vestibule, sitting in a tubular steel chair, her coat already on. She looked at him quizzically. “You put a tie on just to take the elevator?”
    They said nothing on the way down. He opened the double security doors for her, then the heavy front door to the street. They stood for a moment on the sidewalk, slightly embarrassed. Weynfeldt took out his wallet and gave her his card. “In case.”
    â€œIn case of what?”
    â€œIn case of whatever.”
    She looked at the card. “Aha, You have a PhD I see,” she said, and put it in her handbag. “I’m afraid I don’t have a card myself.”
    Weynfeldt wanted to ask for her telephone number, but he let it go.
    She looked up at the gray sky. “The weather certainly wasn’t worth staying alive for.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œWhat else then?”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “There’s always something worth staying alive for.”
    She stared at him intently. “Can you guarantee me that?”
    â€œGuaranteed.”
    She hugged him with her free arm and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then she smiled at him. “One day I’ll do it.”
    â€œNo,” he said, “don’t do it.” Now he had managed to say the words.
    â€œLorena. You forgot my name: Don’t do it, Lorena .”
    She walked down the street. He watched, but she didn’t look back.

2
    A DRIAN W EYNFELDT COULD SEE THE QUAY FROM HIS office window, the jetties and the white passenger boats, the streetcars, most of them bedecked with flags for some reason, the backed up columns of traffic, and the continual stream of hurried pedestrians.
    It was shortly before five; the rush hour had begun, but the insulated windows kept the street sounds out; the lively scene was like a TV image on mute. He had often wished he could work with the window open, but Murphy’s was equipped with an air conditioning system which maintained room temperature and humidity at constant levels all year round to safeguard the valuable paintings and works of art held there.
    On a day like today, however, Weynfeldt was more than happy to keep the window closed. It was neither warm nor cold, damp nor dry, clear nor cloudy: a depressingly average day. He wished something unusual would happen to make it memorable.
    He had worked all day on the fall auction catalogue, Swiss Art , writing descriptions of the pieces, listing their provenance and exhibition history, researching the secondary literature and valuing the works. There was still time till the copy deadline, but he needed this time. He wasn’t satisfied. The selection was too homogenous. He needed just one lot which would attract attention and perhaps fetch a record price. The best piece was a Hodler, a landscape, oil on canvas, showing a country road with telegraph poles. He had valued it at one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand francs, and hoped for a hammer price of around three hundred thousand. Then he had the sleeping shepherdess by Segantini, a watercolor valued at sixty-eighty thousand. In this price range there was also the mountain landscape by Calame, a village idyll by Benjamin Vautier and some roses by Augusto Giacometti. After that