“You must be tired,” she said.
She led him into the den and turned on a lamp. “Make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring in the coffee.”
“Black,” he said and sat down heavily on the L-shaped sofa.
She was carrying the cups into the den when she stopped in her tracks: he was fast asleep on one L of the sofa, lying with his knees up toward his chest, hand under his head. He had taken off his shoes. The gun lay nearby on a coffee table. His face had softened, the eyebrows dark and finely formed against the skin. There was something touching about the shape he had taken. Something vulnerable and young that was hidden while he was awake. It was probably self-defence after all he had been through. Suddenly she saw him ten years old, thin and dirty, spinning through the indifferent Polish woods, eyes filled with terror and grief, too preoccupied trying to stay alive to mourn for his family. She had the inexplicable urge to take that boy in her arms and stroke his hair, tell him everything would be all right. Only she knew it wouldn’t be. It would never be all right again.
She covered him with an afghan that lay nearby and turned the lamp off in the den. In the kitchen she poured the coffee back into the pot. She was dead tired herself but something was nagging at her. She knew what she had to do, but dreaded doing it. It was her own fault for putting the art books in the basement.
She opened the door that led downstairs and turned on the light. Her heart shrank as she stepped down the carpeted stairs. Without looking at David’s paintings stored upright in the unfinished part of the basement, she approached the bookcase. She pulled out a thick volume on the Renaissance and plopped down on the nearby sofa with it. The old tweedy couch had been in their first apartment when they got married and Rebecca felt a twinge in her chest.
Checking the index references on Raphael she began to look up page numbers. She pushed past Madonnas and the St. George and the Dragon motifs that Raphael had been so enamoured of. She flipped pages impatiently and finally lost hope. Too many Renaissance artists to include more than a token of each. Then all of a sudden, there it was.
The nobleman with averted eyes beneath a perfect brow and the sensuous mouth of a girl. Below: Portrait of a Young Man, formerly in Krakow, Czartoryski Collection. She searched for elaboration in the text but the author was more interested in playing the profound art critic than imparting any practical knowledge:
There has been a tendency to recognize Francesco Maria della Rovere, up to 1516 the Duke of Urbino, in the Czartoryski portrait of a young man of a beauty that is almost feminine, but cruel. But even if the identification is rejected today it is still the typical image of a lord of the cinquecento, refined and ethically insensible, in this face that looks at us contemptuously from the chromatic glory of the rich vestments....
Krakow, Rebecca thought. Her mother-in-law had grown up in Krakow. And hadn’t been back since the war. Understandably, since most of her family had been killed in the vicinity. But Sarah was a resilient person, well-read and cultured, and it was just a little question she had for her. As long as they didn’t talk about David.
Rebecca checked her watch. Just ten-thirty. She wouldn’t tell Sarah she had a stranger sleeping on her den sofa. She picked up the old phone extension they kept downstairs and dialed Sarah’s number.
“Hello dear, is anything wrong?” Sarah asked in her dramatic, scrupulous accent when she heard Rebecca’s voice. Rebecca usually called her weekly on Sundays.
“No, no. Everything’s fine.” Yeah, sure. Rebecca pictured Sarah’s slightly waved auburn hair, chin length and perky for a woman of sixty-one. “I just had a question I thought you might be able to answer.”
“Yes?”
“Have you heard of the Czartoryski Collection in Krakow?”
“Oh, Czartoryski.” She pronounced the cz like cb. “ Yes, of course. They were an old aristocratic family in Poland. They collected art. All kinds of art. So what can you do when you have a mansion full of paintings and tapestries and beautiful furniture? You graciously open your doors and show everyone. So that’s the museum.”
Sarah had a lively critical mind and had picked up an impeccable English during her years in Canada. She was always studying something. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to find out about one particular painting. My source says that a Raphael painting, a portrait of a young man, used to be there.”
“Ah, one of the big three. Everyone knew there were three important paintings at the Czartoryski. The most famous one is Lady with an Ermine, by Leonardo da Vinci. They came from everywhere to see that. And a so-so Rembrandt landscape. Those two were recovered after the war. Not the Raphael.”
“What happened to it?”
“Oh, that is the big question. First you have to know that the Germans were fond of art. They saw it as their rightful booty in war. Wherever they went they stole the best pieces. So when they invaded Poland, Hans Frank — he was the Nazi governor of Poland — confiscated those three famous paintings and hung them in his apartment in the castle. You know about the castle in Krakow? Wawel?” She pronounced it Vavel.
“Uh... no.”
“Doesn’t matter. When the Nazis realized they had lost the war, they ran with whatever they could carry that was valuable. I heard Frank grabbed those three paintings when he fled to Bavaria at the end of the war. When the Americans caught him he had the da Vinci and the Rembrandt with him. But not the Raphael.”
“And it was never found?”
“You have to keep in mind the chaos at the end of the war. Everybody was on the move. The people who were lucky enough to survive roamed around in shock. Suddenly their Nazi captors had fled. As for the Germans, if they knew where to look and they kept their heads, they could pick up stolen pieces their comrades had left behind. There were many, many stolen pieces.” A slight pause. “What’s your interest in this, dear?”
“It’s a long, involved story. Maybe I’ll be able to unravel it by the time you come over on Passover.”
Rebecca slowly climbed the stairs from the basement. She was not only exhausted, but bewildered. Could Vogel actually have in his possession the genuine Raphael? And if so, what about the other pieces in Feldberg’s catalogue? She couldn’t think anymore.
Leaving only a night-light on in the kitchen, she crept into the den where Nesha still slept on the sectional sofa. He had barely moved, his breathing rhythmic. She lay down on the adjoining L of the sofa. David’s watercolour of her reclining by the river hung mutely above her like a remnant of another life. A street lamp sent a blue shaft of light through the window onto the floor. The triangle of light floated toward the ceiling and grew into a blinding horizon that loomed before her. The sun glanced off the river into her eyes. She squinted as she jogged along the shore. When she got closer, the line of the horizon wiggled and took on a familiar shape. It settled into the outline of David painting at an easel. David. She could feel the fuzzy flannel of his shirt, the orange hair between her fingers though he was fifty feet distant, his back turned to her. She also knew, without seeing the canvas, that he was painting a self-portrait. Which struck her as odd, since he’d never expressed any interest in doing one. She quickened her pace, prodded by the urgency of reaching him before he disappeared. She called out to him but he was intent on his work and didn’t turn. He must be alive, she thought, or he wouldn’t be so casual about seeing her again. The whole thing in the hospital was a nightmare and he’s alive. Her chest expanded with such relief — when she reached him she flung her arms around him, weeping in her throat. He lost no time directing her to the painting on the easel. She tore herself away to stare into the dark melancholy eyes of Nesha reproduced on the canvas, the deft brush strokes rendering his sculpted mouth open in an expression of surprise.
“Rebecca...”
Her eyes shot open. Nesha crouched before her, one knee resting on the floor.