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Oriental carpets. I could not locate Room Six, where the auction of nineteenth-and twentieth-century European painting would be held. I finally found it upstairs, next to Room Twelve, where a sale of fur coats attended solely by women already wearing fur coats was under way.
    Room Six was the largest at Drouot's, with red velvet walls and carpeting and its white number six dangling loosely above the door. At the front of the long room was a platform, not unlike the ones I saw photographed at the Olympic ceremonies in Berlin, with two level tiers divided by a raised third plank; the auctioneer stood on this center plank, tapping a gavel into his palm. He resembled a painting of a cherub, with wide-spaced eyes and a pink mouth. He took a breath, touched his blond hair, and began the auction.
    The auctioneer sold five paintings in less than five minutes. Five times he had cried, “C'est vous? Adjugé!” and yet, as much as I craned my neck and twisted in my seat, I could not fathom who had bought the painting. There was almost no detectable movement in the sea of overcoats. Everyone's nose was buried in the Sajan Auction Company catalog with a Sisley winter scene on its cover. I leaned over a few shoulders and saw that the auction goers marked down the starting price over the final bid for each painting like a fraction.
    “Psst.” A man leaning against the wall hissed at me and beckoned with a fat finger. He had a leonine head and a sailor's complexion. “You're in the wrong section, young man,” he said, in a rolling Greek accent. “Sit up front only if you can remember Waterloo. Any man who can still chew his own food stands in the back or on the sides. That way you see who else is bidding. Understood?”
    “No one seems to be bidding at all,” I whispered.
    “Yes, they are. Stand here with me.” He yawned. “Not that you should buy anything. It's strictly professionals today. They have their own tricks.” I craned my neck but recognized only my father's friend René Huyghe, paintings and sculpture curator at the Louvre, looking mole-eyed and funereal in his gray suit.
    Lots 31 through 42 sped by in a blur of Dufy watercolors asDrouot's employees in bellboy jackets barely had time to lift the paintings to the podium before they were whisked away
    By Lot 45, I had begun to recognize familiar faces. There were four young curators who had once come to our gallery to authenticate a Tiepolo; there was Madame Bernheim in the back, reading Proust; Alain de Leonardis had one arm in a sling and the other round the shoulders of a blond American model; the Wildensteins’ oldest son was present, in need of a shave. To my surprise, I saw Rose, who nodded but did not smile before turning back to her catalog. Auguste winked at me from his seat at the end of the row. Ludovic Delanoë, my father's former secretary, was there also, back from his two-year tour of South America and biting his nails.
    The auctioneer described Lot 50 in fantastic words that did not match his flat voice: “A classic example of Sisley's finest winter scenes, almost a symphony in white, ladies and gentlemen. Similar examples are in the Jeu de Paume. Bidding will begin at five thousand. Do I hear five thousand three, Monsieur Berenzon?” Upon hearing my name, I looked up with a start, but no, the auctioneer addressed my father, who now stood in the doorway, barely in the room at all. Father's eyes skimmed over me and his mustache twitched. A lily pinned to his breast had dusted his lapel with gold pollen, which shimmered in the light as if Father himself were gilt.
    After ten thousand francs, my father indicated he would raise the bidding by five hundred, holding up five fingers. The gesture was so cool and knowing that my hand automatically tried it. “Eleven thousand from the young man to my left,” the auctioneer crowed. Father did not glance my way, and raised to eleven thousand five. The auctioneer fixed me with his electric stare and asked for