The Forger (30 page)

We covered the paintings under a tarpaulin and went downstairs. As the two of us walked into the Dimitri, Ivan strode up to us and blocked our way. He looked very troubled. The tips of his fingers were shaking.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pankratov.

Ivan answered him in Russian.

Pankratov grew very pale. He faltered out a reply, then turned to me. “Let’s go,” he said.

I followed him out into the street.

Pankratov struggled to light a cigarette.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Ivan says we can’t go there anymore.”

“Why not?”

“People have noticed that we’re friendly with the Germans,” explained Pankratov. “Some of Ivan’s customers saw that limousine outside my atelier. They think we must be collaborating. Ivan says he can’t force us to leave and that he’ll serve us if we go in, but he wants us to know that we’ve been labeled as sympathizers.”

“This was bound to happen,” I said. “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

Pankratov puffed viciously at his cigarette. Then suddenly he shouted, “God damn it!” He threw the cigarette down onto the sidewalk and stormed back into the Dimitri.

A few minutes later, Pankratov emerged with Ivan. Ivan was protesting, still in the process of removing his apron. Pankratov drowned out his complaints in a flurry of Russian.

Ivan looked at me. “Can you tell this madman that I have a café to run?”

“You have waiters,” said Pankratov.

“But they don’t know how to make a proper cup of coffee!”

“These days,” Pankratov told him, “neither do you.” He ushered Ivan across the road and into the atelier. “Upstairs!” he commanded. “Go on!”

Now I understood. “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

“Positive,” said Pankratov.

“What are you going to do?” asked Ivan.

“Just keep moving,” said Pankratov.

Inside the atelier, we sat Ivan down on the stage where Valya used to pose. Then we locked the door.

“Blindfold him,” ordered Pankratov.

“Sorry about this,” I told Ivan, as I tied a painter’s apron across his eyes.

“You’re all completely crazy,” he said. “And I’m crazy for sitting here and letting you do this to me. Are you collaborating or aren’t you? It’s a simple question. Why can’t you give me a simple answer?”

Pankratov brought out the paintings from under the tarpaulin and set them up along the wall.

Ivan sat patiently, hands resting on his knees.

“Ivan!” said Pankratov.

“Yes?”

“Welcome to your first art show.”

*   *   *

P
ANKRATOV EXPLAINED EVERYTHING.

Ivan looked at each of us in turn, his eyes fix-focused with surprise. “Tcha,” he kept saying and shaking his head. “Tcha.”

I wasn’t worried about Ivan. I understood why Pankratov had to tell him. They came from a world that no longer existed and all they had of their past and the codes by which they had lived was each other. It was more than Pankratov could bear to think that Ivan considered him a traitor.

Pankratov told Ivan the story of each painting and talked about the lives of the artists who had made them.

“I have never seen such…” said Ivan. Then, a moment later, “I have often wondered…” He began several sentences and did not finish them, his thoughts extinguished by new ideas that jumped into his mind.

After the tour, Pankratov told Ivan that we would steer clear of the Dimitri from now on. Fleury, too. “We don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Ivan told us. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t want you to do anything,” said Pankratov. “I only wanted you to know the truth.”

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
, I bumped into Fleury on my way into the apartment building. He had spent the day at his gallery and I was out at the warehouse.

We stopped in the doorway of Madame La Roche’s building and looked across the street at the Dimitri. Its awning shone brightly in the sun. Out on the pavement, three German soldiers sat at the table, counting out little zinc coins from their change purses while Ivan stood by with a long-suffering face.

Fleury and I exchanged gloomy looks.

When Ivan saw us, he began to wave. “Hello, David! Hello, Guillaume!” He gathered the Germans’ change and emptied it into the pocket of his apron. Then he plodded toward us with the slow gait of someone who could never run fast. The money jangled in his apron.

“What is it, Ivan?” asked Fleury.

“Come to the café,” he said, smiling and wheezing.

“Ivan,” I said softly, “you don’t want us in there.”

“Yes. I do. I’ve been thinking it over. I’m either going to close down or I’m just going to serve whoever wants to be served. It’s got to be one or the other. So come to the café. Come now.”

I glanced at Fleury.

“Don’t look at him,” said Ivan. “Look at me! And what do you see?”

“A sweaty Imperial Russian.”

“Yes, well, besides that. Do I look afraid? Do I look like I’m in any doubt?” He set his hands against our backs and shoved us toward the Dimitri.

I tried not to meet anyone’s stare as we walked in. The place was full. It was past quitting time and this was the first wave of café people, both French and German, settling their bones after the working day.

Ivan gave us a table near to the bar. If somebody wanted to give us grief, they would have to do it with Ivan standing there.

I felt sick with worry.

Fleury fumbled with his chair, smiling nervously as he glanced around the room.

While Ivan went to fetch us drinks, I sat with my hands on the cold tabletop, while sweat ran from my armpits and down over my ribs.

Fleury pulled out his Craven A tin. His hand began to shake. He dropped the tin on the floor. It clattered open and three hand-rolled cigarettes fell out. Fleury scrambled to gather them up, while people glanced over to see what the fuss was about. By the time he had sat up again, his cheeks were red and his glasses hung lopsided on his face.

Ivan set two heavy white cups down in front of us. They were filled with an oily black liquid, which rocked against their sides. Bubbles of fat showed pearly at the surface. “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “It’s bouillon. All we have today. I promise, you do get used to it.”

I was just raising the cup to my lips when I caught the eye of a man sitting diagonally across from us.

He was one of the old Legion types, red-faced and square-headed and tough. He looked out of place in his brown civilian clothes. They were all mud brown, all different shades, as if he had tried to make a uniform of his street clothes, even though he was no longer a soldier. He sat with his hands under the table, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, watching us with narrowed eyes.

“Here we go,” I muttered.

“What?” asked Fleury. “What is it?” He turned sharply in his chair to see who was staring at us.

The man did not avert his gaze. He seemed to be staring straight through us. Then suddenly he shouted, “Konovalchik!” summoning Ivan. The cigarette wagged in his mouth.

“What is it, Monsieur Le Goff?” Ivan did not raise his head. He was drying glasses with a white towel behind the bar.

“I thought you weren’t going to allow collaborators into the bar!”

That got everyone’s attention. The conversation ebbed, rose hesitantly and then stopped altogether.

I heard Ivan sigh and then swallow. He raised his head, to meet the mudman’s gaze. “Collaborators?” he asked.

Le Goff jerked his head in our direction. “Those two. Those friends of the Boches.”

I stopped looking at Le Goff and started looking at the Germans. They said nothing. Only watched. They seemed to have drawn closer together, as if waiting for some sign of agreement between them, before they threw the old man through the window.

“We’re all collaborators,” said Ivan. He said it so that everyone could hear.

“I’m no goddamned collaborator!” boomed Le Goff.

“You drink my coffee,” said Ivan.

“So?”

“Where do you think I get it? From a company that has a permit to sell coffee from the German authorities in Paris.”

“Well, no more coffee for me!” Le Goff looked around, the cigarette burning close to his lips, although he didn’t seem to notice.

“And bread? And milk? And the hot water in your house and the food you buy at the market? Everything you do and buy and the cigarette in that grubby mouth of yours is with the permission of the German government. France is a defeated nation. We are
occupied.
And you sitting there ranting about two people who are just getting on with their lives is”—he seemed to stumble with his words—“is not”—in his frustration, Ivan banged his fist down on the copper counter so hard it left a dent—“is not welcome here!”

Nobody moved or spoke. The silence lasted forever.

Slowly, Le Goff raised his arms from under the table, but where his hands should have been were shiny metal clips, with which he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it in the ashtray.
“Mot de Cambronne,”
he croaked out.

The whole room seemed to sigh.

Just then, no one had much to say about Ivan’s speech, but over the next couple of weeks, the Dimitri became the most popular bar in the neighborhood. Soldiers and people who hated the soldiers and women with babies and more Legion men than before came. Le Goff still showed up and minded his own business, never looking our way, as if we were a moving blind spot in his eye. Even a few German officers, Knight’s crosses at their throats and the badges of close combat on their chests, poked their heads in to see what was so special about this place.

I became what I had once taken for granted, but never would again—a regular at the Café Dimitri.

*   *   *

I
HADN’T SEEN
F
LEURY
for three days. I assumed he was busy at the gallery. I was just starting to wonder what had happened to him when Madame La Roche appeared at my door, telling me he had been home these last two nights. Then I knew something was wrong.

I went straight over to his gallery. It was a Saturday morning. As I rounded the corner of the Rue des Archives, I saw immediately that the place was closed. The windows had steel curtains pulled down in front of them. The accordion gate was drawn across the door and padlocked.

I wondered if he had run away. I didn’t know whether to feel bad for thinking it, or foolish for not having thought of it sooner. I walked up to the gate and took hold of the padlock. It was heavy bronze with a metal slide that covered the keyhole. I turned the lock over and saw, hammered deep into the orangy-green bronze, a circle in which were the letters RZM. Next to it, more deeply impressed, were SS lightning bolts.

The mug of tea I’d had before I left home now spilled into the back of my throat. I turned around and stared into the street. It was empty. Sunlight reflected off closed windows as if they were blinking at me.

I ran to the German Embassy. I didn’t think I was in any danger from them. If they had wanted to pick me up, they would have done it by now. I ran down the concrete steps to Behr’s office and found him sitting at his typewriter, pecking the keys with his index fingers. “I just stopped by Fleury’s gallery,” I gasped out. “It was all closed up.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I thought you’d know about that by now.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“He’s been taken away.”

“Taken where?”

“Off to Drancy,” said Behr.

“What’s Drancy?” I asked.

“It’s a railway junction on the outskirts of Paris. Where they take all the Jews before shipping them out of the country.” Behr eyed me. “I thought you’d be pleased about this.”

“Why the hell would I be pleased? And what makes you think he’s Jewish?”

“I thought you wanted Fleury out of the way, so we could deal directly with you. When I mentioned it to Abetz, he said he thought it might be a good idea. He was pleased with the Cranach you brought him. He wanted to find a way to get rid of Fleury. So he asked me if the name ‘Fleury’ had something to do with flowers. I mean, I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. But then Abetz said that the German for flower is
Blume
and that Blum is a Jewish name, and
fleur
is French for flower, so Fleury was probably Jewish. Then he asked me if I thought that was correct. I had no idea, so I didn’t say anything either way. The next thing I know, I get a call from Abetz to have the SS pick up Fleury at his gallery. I have no idea whether Fleury is Jewish or not, but if it’s Abetz’s word against Fleury’s, the SS aren’t going to care what Fleury has to say for himself.”

“Get him back,” I blurted out. “I said some of the paintings, not
all
of them! If you want to see any more stuff, get him back now!”

“But Abetz was doing you a favor—” he began.

I grabbed the phone receiver off its cradle and stuck it in Behr’s face. “Call Drancy,” I said. “Get him off the train.”

Behr seemed frozen at first, as if the request was so strange that he could not comprehend it. Then slowly he took hold of the receiver. “I want you to know I’m only doing this because Abetz says I have to keep you happy.”

“Hallo?”
someone was saying at the other end.
“Hallo?”

“Drancy,” said Behr. He rolled the “r” in his throat and pronounced it “Drantsy.”
“Bahnhof Drantsy,”
he said. He spoke for a while in German, sitting back in his chair, the receiver tucked under his chin. He wrote something on his blotter with a freshly sharpened pencil.
“Dreitzehn Uhr. Verstanden. Danke.”
Then he hung up. He looked at his watch. “The transport leaves in one hour.”

I lunged for the door.

“Wait!” Behr called after me. “You can’t just walk up and take him off the train. He’s a prisoner, for God’s sake. The SS have him now. You can’t get anywhere with them.”

“Well, what can I do?” I asked. “Please, you’ve got to do something to help.”

“I suppose I could type something up,” said Behr hesitantly. “But look, you’ve only got an hour. Less than that now. You can’t get out to Drancy in an hour.”