“Truly, All The Way Down” by Clancy Martin
--page 3

        He showed me more of these clippings, from all over the world. The biggest frauds were all European: London, Berlin, Paris. He had clippings from as early as the turn of the century right up to the present day, the nineteen-eighties. It was a fascinating catalogue.
        “Look at this, look at this one here. This is from the British National Archives. Calendar of State Papers, from the time of King James the First. Sixteen hundred and six. Let me read it to you.”
        He traced the lines of text with his slender, elfin fingers as he read. Not with one finger but with two or three, like a priest or a magician.
        “‘Query on the equity of a Chancery decision on fraud committed by Robert Davis, at the instigation of Richard Glanville, in selling counterfeit jewels to Francis Courtney.’ That’s beautiful, isn’t it? ‘At the instigation of.’ That is the proper usage of the English language. Like poetry. Listen to that.” He laughed and took another swallow of scotch. I took a sip too.
        “Billy, the truth is, around here we’re amateurs. We’re still just learning the finer side. These old boys were selling paste to the crowned heads of Europe while our forefathers were still scratching their asses in the potato fields. Goes back to the alchemists plating lead as gold. The first blue diamonds, sold by Tavernier back in the seventeenth century, were London Blue topazes with fancy faceting. Hell he made the market for the damn things. Until he told ’em they was blue diamonds nobody had even heard of a damn blue diamond before! Beat that! He was selling the damn things before they were even discovered! You got to be extra careful when you’re dealing with the Belgians and the Dutch. I avoid those fellas, they got too much expertise in contrivance for the likes of us Texans. That’s not false modesty, it’s just the simple truth. Hell, the crown jewels of England are just plain old everyday garnets. Sylvia and me have been to the Tower of London to take a gander at them. I wouldn’t pay ten bucks a carat for those stones. And today, with the Thais and the Indians, even I can’t tell half the time what’s real and what’s fake. Of course that’s my point. It don’t really matter, so long as she’s done right. I know a boy who got out of the museum business because he claimed he’d never sold a real painting. Nothing but counterfeits and copies. One of the leading experts on German Expressionism in the world. You know what he does now? Sells us antique pieces. He’s a jeweler. ‘It’s a much cleaner business, Ronnie,’ he told me. ‘I have to be able to look myself in the eye.’”
        “I suspect the problem, Billy, if you want to know the plain honest truth of the matter, is people getting hung up on this notion of intrinsic value. It’s the silliest damn thing. There ain’t no intrinsic value to a diamond except in a drill bit. And even that’s an instrument. Outside of religion you simply aren’t gonna find nothing that will stand up to the scrutiny of intrinsic value, Billy. Least of all the truth. The truth is about the most instrumental value we got. Or instrumental vice, more often than not. I expect what I’m getting at, Billy, in this somewhat roundabout way of mine, is you may notice, over time, as you study and learn, a certain amount of chicanery in this business of ours. But don’t let that dismay you or distract you from our larger purpose, what you might well call the greater good. It’s just part of the business we’re in, and part of the good old capitalist system that’s gonna make us both rich men before we die.”

-----
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7