Into the Lion's Den Read Online Free PDF Page A

far is Guntram.”

“So boy, do you like it here?” Oblomov asked after carefully inspecting the boy.
    “Mr. Repin has a wonderful collection; worthy of a museum. I've never seen anything like that before.”
    “Wait till the guy from today comes. Two banks and a big building company are in real financial troubles.
    They want to get some cash and offer to sell their collections. Over fifty pieces at a closed price. Thirteen million dollars for the whole lot. It's a reduction of forty percent. They wanted to sell them to the local museums but they had no money at all and going to an auctioneer was out of the question as everybody would have found out that they're in real trouble. So they come here with several experts, but boss decides if he likes it or not. All Argentinean painters, XIX and XX century and from your good ones.”
    “Is he planning to take the works out of the country?” Guntram asked sadly as the pieces would be definitively lost for the people.
    “I don't know, perhaps. I think first he wants to distribute around the estates he bought here what he like less and take what he truly likes to Europe. It's not a safe place to have an art collection here. You can't tell how stable the country is.”
    “Military coups are finished since a long time ago, Mr. Ivan Ivanovich.”
    “If you're going to be formal and use my patronymic, it's only Ivan Ivanovich or Mr. Oblomov. If Mr. Repin allows you to call him by his Christian name, then you can call me Ivan.”
    “Are you Mr. Oblomov? I thought, Mr. Repin was your secretary…” Guntram asked totally lost and dumbfounded.
    “No, I'm his right hand. Secretary sounds too gay for my taste. I represent him and lead many of his businesses but he's the boss, believe me. We know each other for more than twenty years. Since we were in the Moscow University. We both graduated in Civil Engineering and I specialized myself in pipelines while he studied Chemistry. I married one of his cousins, Tatiana Gregorievna Arseniev. You certainly look very young, how old are you?”
    “I'll be nineteen next October,” Guntram answered.
    “You do understand that boss is after you, do you?”
    “He likes my drawings and wants to have them. He's going to let me see this collection as a payment.”
    “Not really, you can look at the collection and I wouldn't be surprised if he lets you chose something from there. He likes your art and you for yourself also. Do you understand me now, Guntram?”
    “You mean he's… he's after me?”
    “Took you some time to realise but it's for the best. You truly are a green one, aren't you?
    “I'm not gay!”
    “Have you tried it?”
    “Of course not! It's wrong to do that! It's forbidden too!”
    “Boss is going to have a lot of fun with you,” Oblomov smirked. “You look like a decent kid, not the plaything type. Might be a good change for once.”
    “Tell Mr. Repin that I thank him for his invitation, but I'm going home.”
    “Hey, kid, no need to run. It's not as if he's going to rape you under the Botero!” Oblomov laughed at Guntram's shocked expression. “It's only lunch and a show. If he makes any advance toward you, just tell him you're not interested. You won't be the first one who sends him to Hell!” He chuckled. “He likes you a lot as I have never seen him chasing a boy so intently, but he also likes a lot your work and perhaps only wants to remain friends with you, if the other is not possible. I only want that you understand the whole situation. You look like a good kid, my own son's age, nothing like the crazy and uptight artists believing they're the hottest, cleverest and most cultivated things on Earth, he normally hangs with. Those have neither talent nor the wit to realise they don't have it.”
    “I don't want this. Let me pass.”
    “All right, but consider at least a grant from him. You could be something good. If you already, well not you, that Dollenberg woman, got three-thousand dollars out of me for