The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber

theanswer! “But of course it’s not in the show. It disappeared in 1990—it was part of the big Gardner theft—so I wasn’t thinking about it just then.
Was
might be right. Who knows if we’ll ever see that painting again. I guess no one really knows what that was about.”
    Mickey tsked and murmured, “Someone must.” He was leafing through the book, turning pages, squinting at the plates. I think he needs glasses.
    “Well, sure, you hear strange rumors from time to time. There’s a corrupt art dealer from Newburyport who claims to know something, but he’s in jail now for fraud and wants a pardon before he’ll talk. And there’s another guy trying to save himself with a deal with the feds, too, an antiques dealer who says he knows something. There’s a lot of buzz about those pictures from time to time, but who knows if anything will ever come of it? I filed a fascinating Interpol bulletin in the library about those paintings just last week. You know the reward is up to five million dollars now? Those were some terrific Rembrandts stolen along with the Vermeer. The last time I was there, it seemed so sad to me, the way the Gardner leaves the spaces on the walls blank, as if to exhibit the absence of the paintings.”
    “Wait. Stop.” Mickey inhaled so sharply, I thought he was in some kind of pain, or had developed a cramp. But he was simply keyed up by something he had seen in the text on the page facing
The Music Lesson
.
    “It says here that
The Music Lesson
is the smallestknown Vermeer, and it’s on a wooden panel, not canvas. Does any of that affect value?”
    “In what sense? These aren’t yard goods, Mix. Vermeer was generally at his best with the intimacy of a room. Other than one of the early pictures,
View of Delft
is his biggest painting, inch for inch, okay? And it’s extraordinary, and it’s considered one of the world’s most beautiful paintings—I’ve always thought that Swann’s Vermeer obsession began with this painting.”
    Mickey didn’t necessarily know anything about Proust, but I didn’t stop to footnote. He was intently focused, his head cocked slightly to one side as if he was listening for some distant signal.
    “But it’s not the best of Vermeer, even though it’s magnificent,” I persisted, this being something about which I am unrelentingly passionate.
“The Little Street
is the only other painting that’s not an interior, unless you count some of the early religious or allegorical pictures, which show some sky, but I’m not even considering those because they interest me the least. I think Vermeer lost control of the light when he left his rooms.
The Little Street
has some of the intimacy of pictures like
The Music Lesson
, but if you’re asking me to pick a winner, your
Lady Writing a Letter
comes in second to
The Music Lesson
by a good length.”
    The language of horses is metaphorical for most people, but it happens to be one I know because Paddy usedto take me to the races a lot when I was a kid and talk to me about handicapping.
    What looks promising, sweetheart? he would ask. I picked them based on the names, usually, just names I liked. Paddy played wild hunches based on numbers. There were six birds on the fence, which had six strands of wire—so, the number six horse in the sixth. He won, sometimes.
    Paddy would walk me to the window, teach me how to place a two-dollar bet, to which he would stake me. Nosey Mike to show at ten to one. Miss Berry Time to win at six to one. My first savings account was started with my winnings when I was about eight. I still sometimes like to take a peek at the
Racing Form
, just for the names.
    I studied
The Music Lesson
awhile, absentmindedly taking in the odd tone of Mickey’s questions, and rambled on.
    “Of course, even if we wanted to hop on a plane, we couldn’t see this particular painting for a while. There’s no way in hell we could get tickets for the last days in The Hague—people at work were telling