Paul Watkins: The Forger

Faber and Faber

$19.95

Review: Tina Shaw*

This is my first Paul Watkins (there are six previous novels). The blurb announced, "a taut thriller that brilliantly captures the atmosphere of wartime Paris." Goody. I like a taut thriller.

Disappointingly, I didn't find The Forger to be much of a thriller, though it did brilliantly capture Paris - both pre-war and during the debacle of the German invasion.

The story follows young American David Halifax, who, in 1939, has won a scholarship to study painting in Paris at the atelier of an eccentric Russian genius, Pankratov, along with two other students, Marie-Claire and Artemis Balard.

There are small mysteries. Who are the Levasseur committee? Where are the paintings that Pankratov, the supposed genius, did in the 1920s?

There is the untrustworthy art dealer, Fleury. The nude model, Valya - distant, beautiful and angry - turns out to be Pankratov's adopted daughter. She disappears, only to reappear later on the arm of Dietrich, a Nazi official.

Pankratov is an interesting character with his elusive history as a White Russian. His philosophy: "There is only one real sacrifice an artist can make, and that is to accept the possibility of being forgotten. Once you've done that, it is possible no longer to care."

It's a lesson that Halifax comes to learn intimately.

Watkins excels at lovely little vignettes and details.

Here is fellow student Balard: "Over the course of the day, he would get charcoal smudges halfway up his arms and all over his face, so that he looked like a man who had been in a fire."

There is a marvellous description of Pankratov's routine with coffee and cigarette in the Dimitri - a cafe popular with Arabs and legionnaires, who greet each other with the words, "Leh bess," Moroccan for "I mean you no harm."

The winter of 1940 is very cold: "I saw people being towed around on skis behind cars whose tyres were wrapped with chains. The river froze on either side of the Isle Notre Dame."

Halifax's landlady, Madame LaRoche, burns the family crest.

Watkins brings Paris to life. His style has a painterly quality which fits nicely with this art-world tale.

Meanwhile, rationing has come in. Coffee is replaced by Cafe National, made of roasted acorns and chickpeas. The studio closes down.

Halifax's grant runs out, but he manages to stay in Paris by selling drawings to Fleury, who passes them off as sketches by Gauguin. Then Halifax is arrested for forgery.

War creeps closer and closer to Paris. Paintings are removed from all the major Parisian galleries and salted away in secret locations. Watkins has a little fun, giving Halifax a scene where he happens to see a German plane land in the Place de la Concorde.

The story heats up with the arrival of the Germans, and the forgery plans that come to occupy Halifax, Fleury and Pankratov. Halifax becomes Pankratov's student in another kind of art.

Fleury calls them a pair of sorcerers. "Maybe it was true. Pankratov and I were dabbling with spells, drawing across from a dimension just beyond our own phantoms whose help we required."

Not exactly a thriller, but Watkins develops an elegant mysteriousness that keeps the pages turning.

The art stuff is pretty interesting, too.

* Tina Shaw is an Auckland writer.