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another five hundred. “No,” I whispered, shaking my head, and an old woman with a yellow hat and veil took my place to do battle with my expressionless father.
    Father stood with his arms folded. The hands that flashed in and out of the crook of his jacket were so pale he could have been wearing white gloves. At forty thousand francs, he was victorious.
    “Forty thousand,” the auctioneer announced, “to MonsieurBerenzon in the back.” A Drouot worker with brass buttons on his jacket parted the crowds and delivered a bid slip to my father. Father turned on his heel and, for a moment, the black lapels of his coat lifted off his chest and floated. He must relish, I imagined, how the bottoms of his fine shoes spun on the carpet. Then he left and did not look my way.
    In turn, Rose, Auguste, and Ludovic all also bid on Sisleys and—whereas my father had won the most beautiful one—his three employees paid only a fraction of my father's grand sum. Each paid in crisp bills, so their funds were not recognizably the Berenzon Gallery's. My father wanted the whole lot of Sisleys—a sale of so many must have been unusual—but did not buy them all himself because the auctioneer knew him, sped the bidding along, and swelled the price. My throat tightened as I thought, Look, Father, I have learned just by watching you. You needn't have even explained to me these gears and their timing. It would have been enough just to have let me stand by while you played. But did you have to call upon Auguste and Ludovic for this favor? Why not your son?
    I reached into the pocket of my second-best suit and crushed the smug blank check into a ball. Father had already purchased anything he could have wanted from this auction.
    I understood then that this boon—the auction, the ten thousand francs—had not been my father's idea at all. It would have been my mother's, extracted from behind the bedroom door.
    “Sorry you didn't win that Sisley,” the Greek said to me and patted my arm. “You won't go home empty-handed today, young man. I have a good intuition for you.”
    “We will pause here at Lot Fifty-seven for an exceptional occasion,” the auctioneer trilled.
    “Such a peacock,” the Greek said. “Nothing but professionals here,” he complained again.
    “A remarkable masterpiece, ladies and gentleman: the Ham , by Edouard Manet, a work from 1875, nearing the end of the artist's life, heretofore in a private collection.” The room rustled to life like the sound of a cloud of bees sweeping in.
    “Somewhere a rich man is burning his furniture to heat the mansion,” the Greek said with a laugh. I slid him a sideways glance because my mind was racing in the other direction: Surely the Manet was a last-minute addition. Father would not have left if he had known it was for sale. This happens once in a lifetime, I thought. Rose and Auguste and Ludovic had spent my father's bills, but with my blank check I could buy it. For Father. Or for myself—I could build a collection around a Manet.
    “We'll begin bidding at seven thousand francs,” the auctioneer sang. As I raised my hand, René Huyghe's haggard face leaned into my field of vision. No , he mouthed at me. Fake. I shook my head; I didn't believe him. He would have a proxy there. He wanted this painting for his museum.
    Father had allotted me ten thousand francs and bidding quickly raced past this mark. The colors in the room grew brilliant and bright, and I felt as if I were hovering half a meter above the floor. What luck fate had brought me, just to be there! I hardly heard the amounts I agreed to, I only nodded, raised five fingers, and felt the auctioneer hook his eyes into mine.
    Manet's Ham hulked in the center of the canvas and was humble in its scale; if it was a life-size portrait of a ham, then it was a ham for an old man without a wife. The knife in the foreground had a worn handle and a dull bent blade. It was not the great quivering pink meat I had seen on the