The Forger (24 page)

There were rumors, which turned out to be true, that the fortress of Mont Valérien on the outskirts of the city had been turned into a political prison. Other rumors spoke of the work of the German secret police and the collaborating French militia, the Milice. But none of this was evident to people like me, at least not at first.

*   *   *

P
ANKRATOV AND
I
RETURNED
to the Rue Descalzi atelier in order to keep alive the idea that his workshops were still running. We had no idea if anyone would be watching us, but thought we’d play it safe.

First, we lounged ostentatiously at the Dimitri, which had also received its share of German soldiers. I brought my portfolio of old sketches. Pankratov pulled them out, shook them, blew off the old charcoal dust and made loud comments, tracing his stubby finger down the line of a thigh, or across the shadow of a jaw. Most of my sketches were of Valya. It made Pankratov miserable to look at them. There had been no word from her.

As part of our act, Pankratov called over to Ivan, who obediently left the shiny copper altar of his bar. He stood by our table, nodding thoughtfully while Pankratov showed him the sketches.

The German soldiers were our real audience. They had arrived just after us, stepping cautiously into the room, as if afraid of slipping on the tiled floors in their hobnailed boots. They removed their forage caps and dragged a couple of tables together. They brought along their own coffee,
real
coffee. They had boiling water brought to the table along with the plunger-type coffeepots called
cafetières,
and made the coffee themselves. Their voices slowly grew in volume as they began to feel at ease. They set their army ration cigarettes, which came in yellow and red paper packets, on the table. On top of these they laid their army lighters, aluminum cylinders about as big as a man’s thumb. They were not officers, these men—just three privates and a corporal, who wore a silver chevron on his upper sleeve. I had learned a little of their rank insignia from an article in the paper, which had with it a list of helpful German phrases.

IST HIER DAS VERTRETEN VERBOTEN?—

Is it forbidden to go here?

WO BEFINDET SICH DIE POLIZEIPRÄSIDIUM?—

Where is the police station?

MEINE PAPIERE SIND IN ORDNUNG—

My papers are in order.

Now and then, the soldiers looked over in our direction. They made an effort not to stare. They broke out a pack of cards and three of them played while the fourth just sat and smoked and stared up at the ceiling.

After a while, I packed the sketches back into my portfolio. “Enough,” I said quietly.

Pankratov seemed relieved.

The Germans watched as our chairs grumbled back across the floor. Soon they turned their backs to us again.

Pankratov and I didn’t speak as we crossed the road and it was only after several flights of stairs that Pankratov found his voice again.

“All this fake politeness,” he puffed out. “All this bogus tolerance. I’ll feel better when we go back to being enemies with them again.”

“Maybe it will stay this way,” I said.

“I doubt that very much,” he replied. “Mind the step.”

I dodged his booby trap.

He stopped at the studio door and fished out his knot of keys. He bounced them in his hand until he found the one he wanted.

It was stuffy in the atelier and strange to think of the old days with Balard and Marie-Claire.

We mixed up some paints, setting the powder in small heaps on the wooden mixing boards and then stirring in turpentine with little sticks like chopsticks. I was always careful not to breathe the powder. Even the thought of the brilliant greens and reds sticking to my lungs was enough to make me wheeze.

“I suppose we’d better get started,” said Pankratov. He had moved his chair out to the warehouse and now looked around for a place to plant himself.

There was a sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.

We both froze, just as we had the time before.

I held the chopstick in my hand, poised in a puddle of cobalt blue. I heard the footsteps reach the third-floor landing and begin to climb the fourth. I kept waiting for them to stop and go into one of the rooms lower down. By the time they got to the fourth, I knew they were coming for us. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.

Pankratov’s trap came to life with a splintering crunch. A man cried out in pain and then a woman shrieked. There was a heavy thump as someone fell down to the fourth-floor landing. This was followed by the man swearing, loud and embarrassed, in German, and the woman running down the steps to help him, asking in a mixture of French and German if he was all right.

When she spoke, I knew it was Valya.

Pankratov stood with wide eyes fixed on the door.

Quick footsteps were followed by a shape appearing behind the blurred glass pane. Then the door flew open.

It was Valya all right. She stamped in, furious. She was dressed in a short brown moleskin jacket. She wore a dark blue skirt which came halfway down her calves and white socks and black shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had a suntan, which contrasted with the paleness of her artist’s model days. She looked prettier than I recalled. “You!” she shouted at Pankratov. “You idiot! You could have killed him!” She offered no explanation of where she had been or why she had left without telling Pankratov.

“I’m all right,” said the man at the bottom of the stairs. He spoke French with a German accent. There was the sound of him getting to his feet and cautious treading as he made his way up the steps.

Valya rested her fists against her hips. She turned to glare at me. “You still here?” she shouted. “I told you the war was coming. You should have listened to me.”

I gave her the go-to-hell smile.

The man appeared behind her. It was him—the man I’d seen at the Polidor bar. He wore a gray double-breasted suit, with a red, black and white Nazi Party pin in his lapel.

Valya stepped aside to let him pass.

He nodded hello to us.

Pankratov ignored him. “Not one word,” he said to Valya. He started walking toward her. “Not one lousy word did I get from you while you were gone! I’ve been so goddamned worried I couldn’t think straight.” Pankratov wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her so tightly that I heard her back cracking. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips tightly together.

Slowly, her arms reached up to his back. She patted him uncertainly, as if she lacked the strength for any more.

Suddenly, I glimpsed her as a young girl, dodging the uneven moods of this man who might have led a more contented life if he’d been born without the genius he possessed. I understood better now how difficult it must have been to live in the shadow of a man like Pankratov. He was built for always moving on, leaving no attachments to tear up his heart with regret. I wondered how many people he had left behind in his life. Even his own artwork, when he felt himself become attached to that, was fed to the flames rather than become a weakness.

The German and I glanced at each other awkwardly. He sidestepped the embracing couple and walked over to me with a confident stride. “Thomas Dietrich,” he said.

“David Halifax,” I told him.

He jerked his head over toward Pankratov. “His student?”

“That’s right,” I replied.

“Ah.” He looked around again. “Only you?”

“There were others, but they went away when the war started.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. Then, having reached the limits of his patience for small talk, he changed the subject. “I am with the East European Commission,” he said. “Perhaps you have heard of us.”

I played dumb and told him no.

“It’s just as well,” said Thomas Dietrich, “because the commission is now called the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. It’s all military now. In fact, it always was.” He tipped his head to one side and then back straight, as if fixing a crick in his neck. “I have come to speak with Mr. Pankratov. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

Obediently, I went and fetched my coat.

Valya and Pankratov were talking softly, but they stopped as I walked past.

“Where are you going?” Pankratov asked me.

“They want to talk to you,” I said. “I’ll wait at the café.”

Pankratov looked at Valya. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s all right, Daddy,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “It’s just a thing in private.”

It was the first time I had heard her call him by anything other than his last name. I wondered if she was sincere, or if she was in fact the coldest-hearted thing in the world and was saying the one thing she knew he needed to hear and would do anything to hear again.

I clumped slowly down to the street, sidestepping the broken stair.

The soldiers were gone when I got to the Dimitri. They had left behind an ashtray full of cigarette butts, which the other customers were quickly grabbing up. On their table were the stacked plates to show how many drinks they’d had. Each drink came with a little dish, which had a green ring around it and the amount that the drink cost printed on the china. The glasses were taken away, but the dishes were left behind to accumulate for as long as the person stayed at the café. When they were ready to leave, the dishes were counted up to make the bill.

“Are they good customers, Ivan?” I asked, taking a seat at the bar and nodding at the stack of saucers the Germans had left behind.

Ivan puffed. “They don’t tip very well, but considering they could just as easily come in and take whatever they wanted, yes, they are good customers.” He nodded toward the atelier. “I saw Valya,” he said.

“And the German,” I added.

“Him too.” Ivan mopped imaginary blemishes on the bartop. “Is it bad?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I hope Pankratov can keep his temper,” said Ivan. “Usually, he can’t.”

Pankratov didn’t appear for a couple of hours. I read all the papers at the Dimitri and drank too much Café National and switched to steamed milk to settle down my stomach. Just when I was starting to get worried, Pankratov walked into the café.

“You’d better come on,” he told me. “They want to see you, too.”

As we climbed the stairs, Pankratov told me what he knew. “This Rosenberg thing. It’s an organization specifically designed for stealing art. They have a list of the paintings they want, but of course half the stuff has been hidden. Now they’re scratching around trying to find people who know the locations.”

“And they think you know something?”

“Valya seems to have convinced this man Dietrich. She knows I had that part-time job at the Louvre. She doesn’t know any more than that. I think she’s just trying to impress him.”

“But why would she drag you into this?” I spat. “Doesn’t she understand what kind of trouble she could get you into?”

“She wouldn’t do anything to hurt me,” he said quietly. “She’s impressed by what this man has to offer. It’s all champagne and caviar. She has a certain blindness about who he really is.”

I stopped him there. “If you believe that, then you’re the one who’s blind. You’d better see her for who she is or it’s going to cost us more than just our jobs.”

A look came over him that I had never seen before. He rolled his eyes around, as if he was about to faint. He pushed by me and kept walking up the stairs.

I realized, then, that she could make him do anything, and I knew Pankratov would rather die inside the maze of her lies than face the truth.

Dietrich and Valya were standing at the window, looking out over the city. They were holding hands and talking to each other in lowered voices. When Pankratov and I arrived at the door, they stopped holding hands and stepped apart.

“Why don’t you and your father go outside for a while?” Dietrich asked her.

Valya and Pankratov stood out on the hallway.

Dietrich walked across the room and gently closed the door behind them. Then he turned to me and smiled.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“It’s what we can do for each other,” he said. “You and your friend Monsieur Fleury. Valya has told me all about him. You and he are just the kind of people we are looking for.”

I listened to him explain the plan for the art museum in Linz.

“One single European museum to house the best of European artists,” he said, “as a symbol of a united Europe. To create in artistic terms a European community of the arts, instead of this scattering of museums holding on to whatever mishmash of paintings they can scrape together.” He spoke fast and passionately. “The property of French citizens will not be touched. All we ask is that, for safekeeping, dealers and private collectors place their artwork under the protection of the French government. It will be put into storage at the château in Sourches. It will be more secure there than in their own homes.” As he made each point, he bent one finger back to count them off. “What’s happened is that people have panicked. They’ve stashed it away in half a million basements and barns all over the countryside. God knows how much of it is already damaged beyond repair.”

“You’re not going to touch any of it?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“None that doesn’t belong to us,” he said. “We do intend to repatriate the German works of art that were looted from Germany by Napoleon during his campaigns against our country. They were stolen. Simple as that. Not bought or borrowed.” He began naming paintings. “Breughel’s
Hay Harvest.
Stolen by the French. Rembrandt’s
Portrait of a Man.
Stolen by the French. Dürer’s
Portrait of Erasmus.
Stolen. We are simply bringing them home. We have requested eighteen hundred paintings that rightfully belong to us. And do you know how many we have been able to find?” He didn’t wait for my guess. “Three hundred and fifty-nine!” He undid the top button of his shirt, as if it were choking him. “We’ll get them all in the end, of course. It’s just going to be more work than I had thought.”

I imagined the paintings in their stone tomb at Ardennes Abbey, the darkness and the stillness of the air. “What’s this got to do with me?” I asked.