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Authors: Matilde Asensi
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hand.’
‘Very well then,’ she snapped back. ‘If you don’t need me, so much the better for the both of us. Here is the key. Don’t even think about leaving without returning it to me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of walking off with it. I know you’d throw a fit if I did,’ I said and planted a loving kiss on each cheek. Juana was so surprised by this that she just stared at me in confusion for a couple of seconds, not knowing quite how to respond. Then, with supreme dignity, she turned sharply round and strode off towards the church.
On my way, I greeted various Sisters as they rushed past me, already late for their Liturgy of Lauds. I really did enjoy walking around the monastery on my own, so fresh and so clean, and reeking of history. I wondered how many nuns like these had hurried through these cloisters late for prayers at exactly this time of day - century after century after century. What an extraordinary way of life. But the monastery’s sheer beauty still wasn’t enough to make me understand why someone would choose to lock herself up there and forever turn her back on everything that was great (and awful) outside its walls.
My hands trembled as I opened up the door of the dungeon, and I had to take a few deep breaths to bring down my heart rate. Crazy, when you think about it. On genuinely dangerous jobs, even at their riskiest moments, my heartbeat stayed absolutely calm and constant, reflecting and reinforcing the sheer cool I needed to make sure that I made the right decisions from start to finish. But here I was, just about to pull one simple bit of fabric off another, and I was as excited and nervous as a kitten.
On the sixteenth-century Italian walnut table with its pad feet, I spread out a roll of baking paper and the length of muslin, and carefully placed the Krylov canvas face down on top of them. Then, with some Q-Tips dipped in water and a small palette knife, and as quickly as the resinous paste sticking them together allowed me, I began to separate the two fabrics. Even before I finished the job, which took me about ten minutes, it was already obvious that the lining which had cost me a night’s sleep was actually another painting. When I finally finished separating the two and lifted up what had been disguised as just a straightforward repair job, what I saw was a completely different artwork with nothing at all in common with Krylov’s
Muzhiks
. The light in the dungeon being far too dim for me to take a good look at it, I hurried out into the cloisters looking for daylight, so distracted and focused on the task in hand that I didn’t even think to check whether or not there might an absent-minded nun on the loose. I would have made a strange sight, quick-stepping my way out of the cell, my arms stretched out wide as if crucified, holding the painting open before me.
An old man with a long beard and a hateful expression on his face, waste-deep in sludge at the bottom of what looked like a well, had his head raised and was staring up in fury, as he was being hauled up by the thick roping tied around his chest. It was a sinister and gloomy scene, crudely composed and pretty badly executed - the work of a clumsy amateur. At the top of the picture, inside an oval-shaped scrolled cartouche, there was an inscription in Hebrew which I couldn’t decipher, and at the bottom right the artist’s name, Erich Koch, and the date, 1949. How strange that somebody had bothered to stick this monstrosity on the back of a work like Krylov’s
Muzhiks
. Luckily, I had brought my camera with me, and I took a few shots from different angles to send on to Roi.
I put the Krylov back in the carry tube and placed my strange find in another one that was lying around in the dungeon. I was keen to get home right away so that I could tell the Group about my exploits. ‘Mystery solved,’ I congratulated myself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As soon as I got back to my place, I emailed Roi the photos. At ten in the evening,
‘Very well then,’ she snapped back. ‘If you don’t need me, so much the better for the both of us. Here is the key. Don’t even think about leaving without returning it to me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of walking off with it. I know you’d throw a fit if I did,’ I said and planted a loving kiss on each cheek. Juana was so surprised by this that she just stared at me in confusion for a couple of seconds, not knowing quite how to respond. Then, with supreme dignity, she turned sharply round and strode off towards the church.
On my way, I greeted various Sisters as they rushed past me, already late for their Liturgy of Lauds. I really did enjoy walking around the monastery on my own, so fresh and so clean, and reeking of history. I wondered how many nuns like these had hurried through these cloisters late for prayers at exactly this time of day - century after century after century. What an extraordinary way of life. But the monastery’s sheer beauty still wasn’t enough to make me understand why someone would choose to lock herself up there and forever turn her back on everything that was great (and awful) outside its walls.
My hands trembled as I opened up the door of the dungeon, and I had to take a few deep breaths to bring down my heart rate. Crazy, when you think about it. On genuinely dangerous jobs, even at their riskiest moments, my heartbeat stayed absolutely calm and constant, reflecting and reinforcing the sheer cool I needed to make sure that I made the right decisions from start to finish. But here I was, just about to pull one simple bit of fabric off another, and I was as excited and nervous as a kitten.
On the sixteenth-century Italian walnut table with its pad feet, I spread out a roll of baking paper and the length of muslin, and carefully placed the Krylov canvas face down on top of them. Then, with some Q-Tips dipped in water and a small palette knife, and as quickly as the resinous paste sticking them together allowed me, I began to separate the two fabrics. Even before I finished the job, which took me about ten minutes, it was already obvious that the lining which had cost me a night’s sleep was actually another painting. When I finally finished separating the two and lifted up what had been disguised as just a straightforward repair job, what I saw was a completely different artwork with nothing at all in common with Krylov’s
Muzhiks
. The light in the dungeon being far too dim for me to take a good look at it, I hurried out into the cloisters looking for daylight, so distracted and focused on the task in hand that I didn’t even think to check whether or not there might an absent-minded nun on the loose. I would have made a strange sight, quick-stepping my way out of the cell, my arms stretched out wide as if crucified, holding the painting open before me.
An old man with a long beard and a hateful expression on his face, waste-deep in sludge at the bottom of what looked like a well, had his head raised and was staring up in fury, as he was being hauled up by the thick roping tied around his chest. It was a sinister and gloomy scene, crudely composed and pretty badly executed - the work of a clumsy amateur. At the top of the picture, inside an oval-shaped scrolled cartouche, there was an inscription in Hebrew which I couldn’t decipher, and at the bottom right the artist’s name, Erich Koch, and the date, 1949. How strange that somebody had bothered to stick this monstrosity on the back of a work like Krylov’s
Muzhiks
. Luckily, I had brought my camera with me, and I took a few shots from different angles to send on to Roi.
I put the Krylov back in the carry tube and placed my strange find in another one that was lying around in the dungeon. I was keen to get home right away so that I could tell the Group about my exploits. ‘Mystery solved,’ I congratulated myself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As soon as I got back to my place, I emailed Roi the photos. At ten in the evening,
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