Fugitive Colors, page 35
“I know everything,” Olivia said finally, breaking the silence.
“Everything?” Felix laughed scornfully. “Are you still on drugs?”
“No, I’m clean.” Olivia paused, resenting his condescending tone. “But perhaps you’re not.”
Felix’s face darkened. “Who the hell do you think you are, walking in here and speaking to me like that?”
“I just want to talk.”
“There is nothing to talk about.” Felix turned away from her and continued painting.
“For once, don’t shut me out.” Olivia stood behind him, watching him paint with those broad brushstrokes. Slapped on, sloppy.
Felix stopped painting mid-stroke and turned to face her. His eyes were burning with anger as he stared at the notebook. “Who the hell have you been talking to, Olivia?”
She tried to conceal the tremor in her voice, but after all these years his temper still terrified her. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to hear the truth from you about your past.”
“The truth?” he mocked. “What makes you think there are lies?”
Olivia said nothing. She noticed the beads of perspiration collecting at Felix’s temples. His eyes were wide open and his breath was heavy. “Do you know who I am, Olivia?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Then you would know better than to waste my time with this frivolous inquisition when I have an important exhibition coming up.”
“I know you,” she said slowly, mustering courage, “but I could never comprehend why you tormented me all these years.” She took a deep breath. “Until I learned about René Levi.”
Her confidence grew as she watched her father shrink before her. The palette in his hand began to shake. “Did you resent me because I am really his daughter?” Her voice rose boldly. “Was it because I became a painter? Or, because my mother never stopped loving him?”
“You bitch!” Felix shouted, hurling down the palette and grabbing Olivia by the shoulders. “You were half of him. You were all of him. The way you look, the way you paint. In my face every goddamn day to remind me.”
“Get your hands off me!”
“Who the hell have you been talking to?” he demanded again, shaking her.
Olivia pushed him away. “You once told me that the Broussards owed everything to art,” she said accusingly. “Now, we owe the truth to art. I have to know: Did you steal René Levi’s artwork and claim his paintings as your own?”
Felix laughed, and Olivia hugged her body as if to protect herself from his patronizing sound. “You want the truth, Olivia. You used my artwork, my name, to get where you are,” he told her. “You think they would exhibit your pathetic paintings at the Guggenheim? Without me, you would be nothing. Don’t forget that.”
“Without René Levi, you would be nothing.” Olivia’s voice hardened. She knew her father had always hated her, but she had never understood why, until now.
“Nothing? You see that painting in the corner?” Felix stormed over to a large unfinished canvas. “Even if I never complete that painting, there are hoards of people willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for my signature alone.”
He made a panoramic sweep of the studio with his palette. “Take a good look around you. Next month, the first lady, the governor, and every important modern artist living in the United States will be honoring my life’s work at the Museum of Modern Art—you call that nothing!”
Felix’s T-shirt was drenched, plastered to his chest. She had never seen him like this. She realized, suddenly, that he was afraid. She recalled the contents of Julian’s suitcase filled with incriminating documents. “Felix Von Bredow,” she began, but he cut her off.
“Von Bredow is dead!” He kicked a fold-up chair next to him, and it went flying. “You cannot change the past.”
“But you can change the future. Start over. Do it right,” she pleaded. “Before it is done for you.”
He lunged toward Olivia, and his eyes were blazing. “And who is going to do it for me? You? Is my own daughter going to betray me?”
She lowered her gaze.
“So, this is what I get after everything I have given you, done for you?”
The sheer force of his voice seemed to be filling every crevice of the room. She eyed the staircase, thinking she should run now, but her feet felt heavy, rooted to the floor.
“Your mother and I sent you to the best schools, you know all the right people. You have closets full of designer clothes and a monthly allowance that could feed a Third World nation.” His face was now inches from hers, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Doesn’t family loyalty mean anything to you?”
Olivia felt dizzy. It was true. She had been given the best of everything from her parents, yet nothing of substance. They had never seemed concerned about the things that had mattered to her friends’ parents: whether or not she did her homework, with whom she was hanging out, and if she was experimenting with sex and drugs. Felix had ignored all of it, and so had her mother, who was too preoccupied with her society friends to notice that Olivia’s grades had been well below average, that she had slept around, and that she had done more than her fair share of drugs.
Her father cared about only one thing: her artwork. His interest was obsessive—a constant interrogation from the time she was a teenager: What was she painting? How long did it take her? What size was the canvas? Where was she buying her supplies? Who had seen her paintings? Nothing else about her life had ever interested him. Even now.
“I’m leaving,” she said finally, turning toward the staircase.
“Wait, don’t go just yet,” he called out almost too calmly, as he pointed to his unfinished canvas. “You have to understand that I am under enormous pressure to finish that painting. I have not slept in three days. I am not thinking straight.” He mopped his face with his bandanna. “What do you really want, Olivia?”
She recognized the controlled complacent tone of voice, and it set off an internal alarm. It was a ploy, a fake. He would use that tone with her mother, with his art dealers, with her whenever he wanted something. She despised that false sound, despised him, but he was still the man who had raised her. She had to give him the chance to own up to his past. She whispered, “All I want is for you to tell the truth.”
He bowed his head and gazed deeply into her eyes. “Yes, but first you must tell me where you got your information, so I will know how to handle this problem properly.”
Olivia swallowed hard, wanting desperately to believe him, but she knew better. “I can’t,” she whispered, and then said firmly, “I won’t.”
Felix dropped the bandanna. Instantly, the simulated calm gave way to a familiar recklessness. He stomped across the floor. His hands became meaty fists pounding at his sides, his jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared. It was a hideous look that had frightened Olivia since she was a child; a look that would cause her to run into her bedroom and lock the door.
“Damn you, Olivia. I have had enough!” He slapped her hard across the face. “You will tell me.”
She touched her bruised cheek. “I hate you!” she cried out, then ran toward the stairs.
“No, you hate yourself,” he shouted after her. “Now, get out of my studio!”
Olivia clutched the notebook tightly against her like a shield and bolted to her car.
Breathless, she got into the vehicle and locked the doors. She gripped the steering wheel tightly and began to sob. Neither of her parents seemed to feel remorse for lying to her about their past.
She glanced down at her slim lovely hands, a gift from her real father. He was murdered because of his talent, because of his hands. Trembling, she turned on the ignition and quickly drove away from her parents’ home and back to the city, where Julian Klein was now staying. He was in danger. She had to warn him before Felix somehow got there first.
Chapter Forty-Four
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, MANHATTAN
Julian glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven-thirty in the evening. Olivia had been inside the museum for just over an hour, as they had planned. He walked through the lobby wearing an expensive suit she had bought him that he would never wear again. He looked almost as though he belonged. Julian laughed to himself as he proceeded to the gallery. He would never belong.
He wondered how she was doing. He had neither seen nor spoken to Olivia in the past two weeks since they had made their plan and he had gone into hiding, staying with a friend of hers in SoHo. He thought back to the night when she had banged on his hotel room door. She had just confronted Charlotte and Felix, and her face was tear-streaked with thick lines of black mascara. She fell into his arms, crying, and he consoled her. They had spent the entire night talking. She told him about her childhood, her fears, and her art. And much later, she reached for his hands and asked him about his past. This time, he did not hold back.
He told her about his parents, about the pickle jar filled with money that he had never paid back, about his cousin Sammy, and about Adrienne, René, Engel, Kruger, and Françoise. He told her about Sachsenhausen and Dachau, but not the guesthouse, not the scars on his body, just the ones on his heart. Instead, he spoke of the old Felix, the young man he once knew and loved in Paris. He described Charlotte’s great beauty, her bravery, and her instinct for survival, even her love for René. He had wiped the tears from Olivia’s eyes and said that despite everything René had endured, he had never stopped loving her mother. Julian sensed that Olivia needed to hear that her parents had a good side. Her confrontation with them had broken her. It had been too much.
When she finally fell asleep, Julian sat in a chair next to the bed and watched over her. When she awoke several hours later, her eyes were clear and her voice unwavering. “In two weeks my father is going to be honored for his work. Everyone important will be there, and so should you,” she said, reaching again for his hands. “It is time, Julian, for you to come out and present all of the evidence you spent your life gathering. No more hiding.”
Exhaling deeply now, Julian smoothed his dinner jacket and clutched his suitcase tightly. After two decades of living in the shadows, tonight would be his debut, his reunion with Felix.
Julian quickly cut through short empty corridors until he saw the sleepy eyed usher waiting at the entrance of the main gallery. Julian flashed his invitation and avoided direct eye contact. The man gave Julian a quick once-over.
“You are late,” the man said, scratching the back of his neck, sounding bored. “Cocktails started nearly an hour ago.”
“Traffic,” Julian answered curtly, and he pointed to his suitcase. “I have to catch a plane late tonight. Where can I store this?”
The usher gestured toward the coat check in the corner of the room, then handed Julian a complimentary book of Felix’s paintings. Julian stared at the thick glossy book with Felix’s photo on the cover. He was scowling and craggy-faced, wearing his signature black bandanna and splotched overalls. He held a paint-crusted palette and was applying paint to an almost finished canvas of a woman with an anguished expression. The thickly applied brushstrokes were horizontal blotchy reds, with slashes of black and triangles of white. The edges of the painting were rendered in a pale flesh color, as though the woman were self destructing into fragments. The image was both dramatic and deeply disturbing. Julian had read somewhere that that particular painting had sold for more than six million dollars.
“Keep it.” Julian declined the book, checked his suitcase, then walked quickly toward the ballroom. He stepped inside just as Felix was taking the microphone on stage. Behind Felix stood a large covered canvas. Julian waited near the door as Felix cleared his throat. Seeing an empty chair against the wall, Julian quickly sat down, scanning the room for Olivia. There must be more than five hundred people here paying homage to Felix, Julian thought angrily.
Felix put on his glasses and began to read a list of those who had supported the evening’s festivities, including the first lady and the governor of New York. Over his tuxedo shirt, he wore not a jacket but a black silk cape, which shimmered under the spotlight. Charlotte was seated to his right, watching the adoring crowd with a fixed smile. Her gold sequined dress sparkled beneath the lights, momentarily blinding Julian. She was still beautiful, if not even more so, Julian thought. Her cheekbones were more pronounced, accentuating her full lips and eyes. She posed on the stage like a queen, assuming the role she had prepared for her entire life.
“My friends and colleagues, I welcome you.” Felix raised a glass, his voice resounding through the gallery. “Tonight, we celebrate Abstract Expressionism, the New York School, a movement of artists who set out to create an environment where art is freedom and freedom is art—and who succeeded. I am deeply honored to be here representing my colleagues, whose brilliant works have made New York City the center of the art world.”
He nodded at the head table, where a dozen prominent artists were seated. “Our movement is divided into two groups: those of us whose works are exemplified by action, images that are physical in context; and those of us whose primary focus is to explore the effects of pure color on canvas.” He gestured toward the still-covered painting behind him. “Tonight, I am donating my latest painting to the Museum of Modern Art. I consider it one of my most important works because it fits into both categories of Expressionism—movement and color. I call it Man on Fire because it explores the concept of rage, which I believe to be the most powerful of all human emotions.”
He stepped to the side of the podium and signaled a slim young woman to come forward. She quickly walked toward the painting and dramatically unveiled the artwork.
The audience gasped, and Julian thought he was dreaming. It was his painting—his masterpiece—from the last night he had painted in Engel’s studio.
My painting. My name. My rage. Not yours, Felix. Not yours.
Julian yearned to scream out the truth but his breath, his body, everything seemed to fail him at once.
Felix stood on the stage, smiling with closed lips as the audience gave him a standing ovation. My ovation, Julian thought. He felt a tug on his shoulder, but he could barely turn around. From the corner of his eye, he saw the familiar long dark hair and ebony eyes.
“It’s mine,” he whispered without looking at Olivia.
“Julian, look at me,” she said firmly, pulling him around to face her. “What are you talking about?”
“That is my painting, Olivia.” He pointed to the stage. “My only canvas to survive Germany.”
Olivia looked shocked. “Stand up and say something now.”
“No, it’s over. Don’t you see?” Julian felt he was withering and blooming simultaneously. “What matters is that Felix knows the truth. They are clapping for him, but deep down, he knows that the applause is for me.”
Julian recalled the night of René’s exhibition at Johann Finch’s gallery, when Felix and his thugs had stolen René’s and Engel’s paintings from Engel’s studio but ignored Julian’s work, as though his paintings were not worthy of being stolen or defaced. Yet here, tonight, Felix had saved the best for last—displaying Julian’s painting as his most important piece, representative of an entire movement of art.
“Listen to me, Julian.” Olivia shook him out of his trance. “He can’t get away with this. Stand up for yourself. Do it now.”
But Julian was frozen, staring at the painting. He barely noticed that Olivia had remained standing as the ovation died down and the guests resumed their seats.
Felix returned to the podium and saw Olivia standing alone, staring at him, arms crossed. He and Charlotte exchanged worried glances, but he kept his focus on the other side of the room, as he continued to speak. “My friends, this is truly an honor. Lastly, I would like to thank—”
“René Levi.” Olivia’s voice rang clearly through the ballroom. “You would like to thank René Levi, who is dead, and Julian Klein, who is here right now, very much alive.”
“No, Olivia,” Julian pleaded. “Not like this.”
At first there was a stunned collective silence, then the room flooded with whispers, as Olivia pointed to Julian. She gestured him forward.
When he finally stood, he met Felix’s shocked gaze as Olivia continued speaking: “This man standing next to me, Julian Klein, is an important artist and should be on that stage tonight.” She pointed at Felix. “That painting—that work of genius that Felix Broussard calls Man on Fire was painted by Mr. Klein in Germany years ago and stolen by the man I call my father.” Her voice began to crack. “You must understand, this is extremely difficult for me. Felix Broussard stands before you tonight being honored as a leader and founder of the Abstract Expressionist movement when he, in fact, spent the early years of the war in Germany destroying artists—young Expressionists like Mr. Klein.” She pulled Julian close to her; their arms were now linked. “There are more than fifty paintings in this exhibition that were not painted by my father. The evidence, I’m afraid, is tragically overwhelming.”
Tears began to roll down Olivia’s face, and Julian held her hand tightly. He felt a renewed sense of strength and purpose.
Suddenly Felix’s larger-than-life presence began to diminish in front of all those who had celebrated him. His face, his skin, his clothes were all converted into fugitive colors, rapidly losing pigment under the sharp illumination. He stood, bent over the microphone, silenced and exposed.
“Finally,” Julian whispered, the tiny sound of justice echoing throughout his body.
But then Felix’s thundering voice belied his shrunken stance. “Security!” he shouted, pointing at Julian. “That man is a criminal!”
Felix turned to the man seated next to him at the podium, who looked too shocked to move. “What are you waiting for? You are in charge. I said get him out of here!” Felix faced the audience. “That man wants money. He is blackmailing my daughter to get to me.”
A young reporter ran over to Julian and shoved a tape recorder under his nose. “Is that really your painting?”
