...October

I put pen to paper, unaware of how long it will take to find my body.

After every grand house I visited, bar two, I wrote a letter afterwards, thanking my hosts for their hospitality. The Girls appreciated it: Babe, Slim, Gloria, C.Z.

Although I'm paying for my accommodation here, I feel I ought to supply some notification of intent: and apologies in advance for the trouble I'm bound to cause.

"Mea Culpa." But the real blame belongs to the bastards, the contemptible low-life little shits, the ones I wasn't going to mention.

I wish I could live to read my obituaries.

WORLD-FAMOUS AUTHORITY ON ... whichever school of Renaissance art they choose to think I most excelled at. In truth there were so many.

They'll use that photograph of me on Peggy Guggenheim's terrace, with my new beard trimmed to a point and Venice a riot of life behind me, apparently two gondolas held in my two raised hands as I engage with the camera as Dali taught me to. Or at Zeffirelli's, in my kaftan and fez, smoking a cigar and with the shameless look of an old roue on my face.

There'll be something about my obscure origins, before they parade my glories. He worked at this and that gallery before he went freelance, consulted regularly by the Metropolitan, Uffizi, Louvre, National Gallery. My books. My performance on Apostrophes, when a quarter of France went out and bought my latest title the next day. And then, a paragraph or two about the controversies in the 80s. The Nazi plunder, and questions about how I went about establishing their provenance. Something else about the private patrons of vast fortune who approached me, wishing to have some work of art in their fabulous collections authenticated. And nothing, I hope, about the c**ts who decided, come the new century, let's discredit some of the giants of the old.

My philosophy? Oh, very simple. I always had to be better informed and more cunning than those around me. Sound supremely confident, and the world will trust you, believe in you.

I became my own greatest creation.

Will the obituaries mention--I doubt...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from The Antioch Review
Notes on pacifism., January 01, 2007
Lovers of hurricanes.(Short story), January 01, 2007
Cracking the Thucydides code.(Critical essay), January 01, 2007

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