The Last Weynfeldt Read Online Free PDF Page B

it would cost around a hundred thousand francs a year. That meant that he had enough money for a year at most. He was under no illusions about his life expectancy—high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, prostate problems, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and a taste for unhealthy living—but he gave himself more than a year. Around ten, in fact.
    His twilight years in the Residenza Crepuscolo between now and his eighty-eighth birthday would cost between 1.5 and 2 million francs, allowing for a little travel, some unhealthy living, and the resulting rise in the costs of care. Pretty much the figure he hoped to make from the Vallotton after tax.
    A short coughing fit forced Baier to remove the Havana from his mouth to the ashtray. He suppressed the coughs with the practiced ease of someone who had smoked for most of his life and coughed for at least half of it. Then he took a large sip of port. Not his favorite drink, simply his favorite compromise between something advisable and something stronger.
    Count Basie played “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” Baier heaved himself up with the help of the chair’s arms and grasped the ivory-topped walking stick leaning against the next chair. He hobbled over to the easel, swapped the long-distance glasses for the short-distance ones and studied the work close up.
    There were few things more familiar to him than this painting. The woman’s hair, which his father had called “chestnut brown,” pinned up and parted down the middle into two coifs. The curve of her right cheek, noticeably redder than the rest of her skin, suggesting a young, oval face. Her right arm, pressed tightly to her body, suggesting that, despite the fire, she was in fact chilly and had folded her arms against her chest. The lilac petticoat, which on closer inspection appeared to have been painted afterward to avoid dealing with certain questions of anatomy and perspective. Where were her calves? Her heels? If she was sitting on them, why couldn’t you see that from the shape of her buttocks? The unexplained reflection on the shiny wooden mantelpiece just at the point where the reddish brown of the hair needed to stand out from the brown of the wood. The contrast between the upper half of a three-paneled screen reflected in the mirror, painted in broad strokes, and the more realistically painted silver cachepot on the mantelpiece. The piles of vaguely defined objects which could be discerned in the shadows of the open cupboard. Table linen? Sketchbooks? Boxes of painting utensils?
    Baier touched the picture with his fingertips. He knew every patch of paint, every brushstroke, he knew how its surface felt and he would have been able to identify the painting by its smell. Which, given the speed at which his eyesight was deteriorating, he might soon be forced to do.
    His Neuchâtel clock struck seven. In precisely five minutes he would hear the doorbell ring, followed by Frau Almeida’s voice as she greeted Adrian Weynfeldt. Weynfeldt was a punctual man, as his father had been before him. Weynfeldt senior had called this “kingly courtesy” and had instilled it in his son, raising him along with his wife to believe that, if not a king, he was very much a Weynfeldt. Which was nearly the same thing.
    At home Baier’s father had often joked about the snobbish standards the Weynfeldts upheld. The awareness of being something special had been passed down to poor Adrian so forcefully it was part of his flesh and bones, making him use excessive politeness to dispel any suspicion of superciliousness.
    For a long time it had looked like Weynfeldt senior would be the last Weynfeldt. Till his wife, approaching forty-four, bore the late arrival Adrian, a triumph of gynecology and genealogy.
    Baier remembered Adrian as a little boy. The Weynfeldts were great hosts, always giving lavish dinners and receptions, and at every event he was paraded around like a trophy. A shy