Black Swan Rising Read online

  “I’m sorry,” I said, afraid of agitating the man further. “I don’t understand. I don’t really have anything to trade—”

  “A trade for your services.” He clasped his hands together and forced his lips into a polite smile.

  “What services?” I was suddenly aware of how isolated we were, alone in this little shop on a deserted street, the front door locked, the heavy rain like a curtain of silver chain mail separating us from the rest of the world. Was the man crazy? A hectic gleam was in his eyes and he was wringing his hands as if he were afraid they would fly away of their own volition.

  “Your soldering services. I’ve seen what fine work you do with Cygnet Designs . . . and you do metal sculpture as well, don’t you? I believe you had a show last year in Chelsea. . . . I’ve been looking for someone just like you for this job. It’s quite delicate, you see . . .” He released his hands and gestured toward the seam of the box. I noticed two things. He didn’t touch the box and his fingernails were the same shade of yellow as his eyes. “The box has been sealed all the way around.”

  I looked down at the box and saw what he meant. Along the seam between the lid and the base was a thin line of metal, which, unlike the silver of the box, was untarnished. It gleamed like molten mercury. Someone had welded the box shut, then stamped the seal on it as if the box were a letter that should only be opened by the intended recipient. And I was the one with the matching seal.

  “That’s strange.”

  “Yes, and rather inconvenient. I can’t very well sell a box that’s been sealed. If you open the box, I’ll let you have the seal and pay you a thousand dollars.”

  “That seems an awful lot . . .”

  “Not for such a delicate job. It’s worth it to me to have someone with your skill do the job . . . and besides, I believe it was fate that brought you in here today, and who are we to disregard the chances fate puts in our way?”

  Who, indeed? After the dire financial revelations of the morning why not accept the one gift fate seemed willing to give me today? A thousand dollars wasn’t going to solve my financial problems, but could I really afford to turn down any extra income at all?

  “Okay,” I said, holding out my hands for the box. “You’ve got a deal. I’ll open the box this evening and return it to you tomorrow morning.”

  The jeweler picked up the box cradled in the blue velvet cloth, which I saw now was a jewelry sack. As he held it out to me, I heard something move inside, a rustling sound like leaves in autumn stirred by the wind.

  “Oh, and I’d like to have the papers that are inside it, as well,” he said as I took the box. It was heavier than I expected. I looked down at it and saw the lines move once again. It must be a trick of the design—a trompe l’oeil. But instead of spreading outward, this time the lines coiled, crested and rolled like the waves of the ocean pulled by the force of the moon. For a moment the room was full of the brackish breath of low tide. I shook myself to shed the illusion and then, before he could change his mind about giving me the commission—or I could change my mind about taking it—I slipped the box into the velvet sack and then into my capacious messenger bag—my Mary Poppins bag, my friend Becky always called it—thanked the jeweler, and went out into the rain.

  The moment my foot hit the sidewalk a taxi appeared, its vacancy light gleaming through the mist and rain like a lighthouse beacon. Forgetting my vows to economize, I hailed the cab and sank gratefully into the backseat. I gave the driver my home address and closed my eyes to ward off any more of the ocular phenomena that came with my migraines. It was only when the taxi pulled up in front of the town house that I realized I hadn’t gotten the name or address of the jeweler—or even noticed what street the shop was on. I had no idea how I would return the box after I opened it.

  A Snowy Field in France

  Although the gallery was closed Maia, the receptionist, was still there. Oddly, she seemed to be working longer and more energetic hours now that we could only afford to directly pay her three days a week. The “consultant” status she’d been offered—with a small percentage of each sale in lieu of two days’ salary—seemed to be much more to her liking even though we’d made no secret of the recession’s risk to the gallery’s survival.

  “I wanted you to know that the Pissarros came back from Sotheby’s,” she said as she slipped into a dove-gray brocade coat that looked as though it could have been worn by a Restoration courtier—only presumably not with a paisley velvet miniskirt and UGG boots. “Mr. James took them into the back office, but I’m not sure he’s had a chance to put them into the safe . . . Mr. Reese came by around the same time.”

  “With a bottle of Stolichnaya, no doubt,” I replied. Zach Reese was one of my father’s oldest and best friends, an abstract artist whose paintings had sold well in the early eighties. They still sold well, only Zach didn’t actually get around to painting any these days. He preferred to sit in the back room of his friend’s gallery and relive the glory days of Basquiat and David Hockney. “What was the occasion this time?” I asked.

  “A welcome-home party for the Pissarros,” Maia said, rolling her eyes. “It’s too bad they didn’t sell,” she added. “But you know what they say about snow scenes . . .”

  “They don’t sell in a recession. Speaking of which, any traffic?”

  “Just a couple of Long Island matrons killing time after the Marc Jacobs sale. They spent the whole time comparing their new economies: bribing their colorist to come to their house at a fraction of the salon cost and limiting their daughters to one Marc Jacobs bag apiece.”

  “Wow, things really are tough all over!” I forced myself to laugh even though the idea of Long Island matrons cutting back made me slightly ill. I did a brisk business in monogrammed pendants during the holidays and for sweet sixteens, confirmations, and bat mitzvahs yearlong. “I’ll make sure the Pissarros get locked up. Thanks for waiting for me.”

  “No problem. I’m going to a show at the Knitting Factory anyway and I had some time to kill. Have a good weekend.”

  I followed Maia to the front door and double-locked it behind her. Next I dimmed the lights and set the security system on “Night,” activating the motion detectors. Then I let myself into the narrow corridor that opened onto the town-house stairwell and led to the back office. As I locked the door to the gallery behind me, I could hear Zach Reese’s raucous laughter.

  “. . . and then he said, ‘You pissed on it, you bought it,’ and handed him the bill.” It was an old story from Zach’s early days at the Warhol Factory and one Zach pulled out to entertain Roman in particularly bad times. Usually it made my father roar, but this evening the only sound coming from the back office was Zach Reese’s broad Midwestern guffaw.

  My father looked up as I entered the office and I saw from the strain in his eyes that he’d been waiting for me. He hasn’t been eating well, I thought, noting the sunken caverns under his cheekbones and the hectic gleam in his dark eyes, or sleeping well. I’d never minded having older parents—Roman was fifty-eight when I was born; my mother was forty-five—because Roman was so vital and my mother . . . well, she hadn’t looked a day over thirty until her death at sixty-one. The town house had always been filled with artists and writers whom my mother had nurtured and entertained. But since my mother had died ten years ago in a car accident, I had become more aware of my father’s health. Most of Roman’s own family had died in Poland in the war, and my mother had been estranged from her relatives in France since the war as well. Roman was all the family I had in the world. I was sorry now for making him wait all afternoon. I should have come back from the meeting right away instead of wandering aimlessly around the city—browsing in antiques shops and talking to eccentric jewelers while Roman waited to hear how bad the news was.

  “Hail the returning hero!” Zach Reese lifted a shot glass brimming with clear liquid that shivered in his trembling hands. “We were afraid you’d been swallowed up by the gods of mammon. Sacrificed on an altar in Trin
ity Church to the Succubus of Greed and Subprime Mortgages.”

  “You were gone so long,” Roman said with a tense smile. He passed a gnarled hand over his bald scalp, a gesture I’d come to recognize as a sign of stress. “We thought the bank might be holding you as collateral on the loan.”

  “If only I were that valuable,” I said, waving away Zach’s offer of a drink and moving to the stove to put the kettle on. The back office—as opposed to the front office where we saw clients—was the old kitchen of the town house. Its cabinets held files and office supplies instead of dishes and plates now, and the pantry had been converted into a fireproof, steel-lined safe with a state-of-the-art lock and alarm system. I noticed that the safe door was open and the Pissarro snow scenes, unpacked from their crates, were propped up on two kitchen chairs. They were positioned so that they blocked the windows and French doors that let out onto the back garden, replacing the view of rainy twilight Manhattan with crystalline expanses of snow-covered fields. Why didn’t snow scenes sell in a recession? I’d buy the Pissarros for myself if I had the money. I’d step into that serene expanse of mauve-tinted snow right now if I could.

  The whistle of the teakettle snapped me out of an oft-cherished childhood fantasy of being able to step into a favorite painting. I’d spent a large part of my childhood daydreaming myself into fields of van Gogh sunflowers and tidy Dutch street scenes. I spooned black Russian tea into a teapot and poured in the hot water. I brought the pot to the table, folding a striped-blue-and-white tea cloth under it, and two cups.

  “So, how bad is it?” Roman asked as I poured his tea and handed him a cup.

  “We’ll talk later,” I said, sliding my eyes toward Zach.

  “Uh-oh, I can see I’m in the way of a family confab. I’d better get going. One of my students has an opening I thought I’d check out.” Zach lurched unsteadily to his feet, six feet two inches of rangy Swedish farm stock teetering in paint-stained Doc Martens. Even though he hasn’t finished a painting in twenty years his clothes are always covered in paint, I thought as I positioned myself in between him and the Pissarros. I wasn’t sure he could even hold a paintbrush steady with the tremor that was always in his hands.

  “Leave those college girls alone, Zach,” I said, tilting my head to receive an avuncular kiss on the cheek. “It’s not fair to the college boys.”

  “Later, Jashemski,” he called to my father, using the name my father had changed when he moved to this country. I led Zach down the corridor to the front door and locked it behind him. When I got back to the kitchen, my father was sipping his tea. The Pissarros were gone and the safe door was closed but he was still staring at the spot where they had been.

  “Last year they would have sold for six million each,” he said. “Even after the ’87 crash we still moved inventory.”

  “I have a feeling things may be different from ’87, Dad.” I sat down and wrapped my hands around my tea mug, but I might as well have been in that snowy field in France for how little the warmth penetrated the chill I felt deep down in my bones.

  Two hours later I went upstairs, exhausted from keeping up a false front of optimism. I’d outlined the plan of restructuring the loan that Chuck Chennery had offered as our last resort. My father had seemed to accept it, but even he must have seen that if the economy continued to worsen we didn’t have a chance in hell of ever getting out of debt. Still he’d preserved the optimism of an inveterate gambler throughout our talk.

  “Something will turn up!” he’d shouted after me as I left him at the door to his apartment on the second floor.

  By the time I reached my third-floor studio I felt as if my whole body had been cast in metal. I slipped the strap of the messenger bag over my head, dropped it gratefully onto the hardwood floor . . . and heard a heavy clunk.

  The silver box. I’d forgotten all about it. I’d meant to show it to my father, but there’d been too many monetary details to go over. He had traded in decorative objects a little after World War II and could possibly have dated it. I certainly couldn’t.

  I lifted the box, still in its velvet sack, out of my bag and carried it over to my worktable, which stood at the far end of the room near the floor-to-ceiling windows under the slanted skylight that faced the garden. In the daytime the light poured in through the south-facing windows, making it the ideal workspace. An old secretary desk fit into a small alcove to the right of the table; on the left a tall metal bookcase held my jewelry-making supplies and the scrap metal I collected for my metal sculptures. One of those sculptures, a six-foot-long dragon crafted of junk metal and chain links, hung from a hook in the ceiling. In the daytime his red headlight eyes caught the sun and gleamed mischievously, but tonight he cast a looming shadow against the rain-spackled windows that made me feel vaguely uneasy.

  I switched on the high-intensity work lamps on either side of the table. The strong light immediately picked up what I’d missed in the shop—a pattern of silver and gold shapes stitched into the blue velvet—circles, triangles, and crescent moons embellished with curves and squiggles. The shapes looked vaguely familiar.

  I turned to my desk, flipped open my laptop, and hit the power key. While waiting for the screen to come to life I slid the box out of the velvet sack and brushed my fingers over the finely etched pattern of concentric ovals. The high-intensity studio lamps picked up a bluish cast in the lines—a delicate inlay of enamel, perhaps. I’d have to be careful not to damage it while opening the box.

  I turned from the box to the laptop, placed my fingers on the touch pad . . . and recoiled as sparks flew off my fingertips. The screen flickered and the laptop let out a low shriek that sounded like a Siamese cat in heat.

  Damn! I shook my hand in the air and watched the computer screen reset to my home page. I approached the machine again warily, gingerly touching the keyboard. There was no shock this time. I typed in Symbols.com and entered the parameters for the signs on the cloth—single-axis, symmetric, open, both straight and soft shapes, crossing lines—then hit SEARCH SIGNS. An array of symbols appeared. I clicked on one that matched one of the signs on the cloth—an upside-down half circle topped with a vertical straight line that was crossed by two horizontal lines—and got this description: “One of the signs for amalgam used in alchemy and early chemistry. Amalgams are alloys made by combining mercury with other metals, preferably silver.”

  Of course. I’d seen the symbol in one of my metallurgy classes. I typed in alchemy on Google and then clicked on the Wikipedia page. There I read that alchemy was derived from an Arabic word meaning the “art of transformation,” that the word chemist came from it, and that historically it was best known as the pursuit of transforming metals into gold. I scrolled through a list of famous alchemists, then clicked on a link to a list of alchemical symbols. Looking back and forth between the screen and the cloth, I identified the symbols for silver, gold, copper, and lead, several of the planets, seasons, and the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

  Was the white-haired jeweler a closet alchemist then? I wouldn’t be too surprised. The jewelry business was full of eccentrics and romantics. I’d met more than a few in my classes at FIT—professors and students—who were intrigued by the ancient mystic study of natural elements. Its devotees were fond of pointing out that some of its processes were still used in modern metallurgy. And who in these times wouldn’t find appealing a system that professed to know the secret of turning lead into gold?

  But unless I developed that skill soon, I’d need every penny I could bring in. I’d promised the jeweler to deliver the opened box tomorrow. Hopefully he’d get in touch when he realized he hadn’t given me his contact information. And if not, I’d just have to comb the West Village and Tribeca until I found the store. In the meantime, I might as well get the job done.

  I went into my bedroom—a tiny room tucked under the sharply sloping roof—and quickly changed out of the skirt and blouse I’d worn to the lawyer’s office into old jeans, a sweatshirt, and thi
ck leather boots. I’d learned early on in my jewelry and welding classes that a stray spark could ruin a favorite shirt and burn through delicate fabrics to the skin. My soldering clothes were dotted with burn holes and smelled like gas and metal and ash. I felt instantly more like myself in them.

  I scraped my hair back into a ponytail, went into the studio, and switched on the radio, which was always set to WROX, the alternative-rock station I liked to listen to when I worked. The night DJ’s silky voice—her show was called The Night Flight with Ariel Earhart—always relaxed me. I smiled as a song by London Dispersion Force came on. My two best friends were in the band and I was happy they were getting the airtime. This was a new song, called “Troubadour”: “The troubadours wrote songs to salve heartbreak,” the lead singer Fiona sang, “to let their loves know all their endless pain.” I set up my soldering torch while swaying to the tune, feeling a calm settle over me that I hadn’t felt all day. Thank God for work, I thought, pulling on heavy gloves and drawing the box toward me. Now how the hell am I going to open this thing without damaging it?

  I reexamined the seam of metal that sealed the box. Since the edges of the box were unharmed, I had to assume that the metal of the seam was softer than the silver of the box—otherwise, the silver would have melted when the box was sealed. The same went for the seal that had been placed over the clasp. So if I could heat the sealant up, I should be able to slide a blade along the seam and under the seal. I picked out a steel blade and the finest nozzle for the soldering torch and adjusted the levels of acetylene and oxygen. When I had everything in place, I lowered a visor over my eyes and aimed the torch at the metal seam. At first there was no discernible change. If the box seal were composed of lead, it should have begun to melt already. It must be some other compound. I adjusted the level of the flame.