The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World

by E. L. Konigsburg

  —Which art?

  —The Degenerate. The Nazi told Pieter that for a price he would relieve him of certain forbidden works of art he had in his shop.

  —What price?

  For an answer Gerard handed to me two sheets of paper. One paper was a shop receipt. The other piece of paper was an official document, an Unbedenklichkeitserklärung, what the Nazis called a statement of harmlessness, which in Nazi language was an exit visa.

  Gerard now put his forefinger under my chin for the purpose of lifting my eyes to see him. Gerard smiled sadly.

  —If Pieter had been a Jew, there could not have been such a payment.

  Mrs. Vanderwaal stopped reading. In a voice near to breaking, Mrs. Vanderwaal said, “My son, Peter, is named for his dear dead uncle.”

  Amedeo saw that Mrs. Vanderwaal’s hands were trembling. He reached across the table and took the pages from her, and then he took her hands in his. His voice barely above a whisper, he said, “I think we’re ready to see the picture, Mrs. Vanderwaal.”

  “There’s more to the story, dear.”

  “I can see,” Amedeo said, “but I think it can wait.”

  William solemnly nodded yes in agreement.

  Mrs. Vanderwaal carefully evened the margins of the pages she had read and then laid them off to one side. Then she reached into the gray box and took out a heavy manila envelope. She pulled the photo from it and placed it on the table between Amedeo and William. Amedeo was grateful that it had a protective glass, for he feared his breath was so heavy it would dissolve film. He gasped. “That’s The Moon Lady on the calendar, isn’t it?”

  “I can make out the signature,” William said. “I can make out the capital M and the letters o, d, and i“—and smiling at Amedeo, he added, “And the silent g.”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal reached into her purse and took out a small magnifying glass. Amedeo used it to focus. “Look, look!” he called. “That drawing doesn’t belong to the calendar. It is tacked above the dates. This photo is a message, isn’t it, Mrs. Vanderwaal?”

  She nodded yes. “This was something I had wanted my son, Peter, to investigate when he was preparing for Once Forbidden. After all, Modigliani was a Jew and his work was considered degenerate. No Dutch calendar would dare display the art of a Jewish artist, during the Nazi Occupation. Pieter asked to have this picture taken not only for sentimental reasons, but also for evidence.” She reached again into the gray box. This time she took out a folder. Her hand was shaking again, so Amedeo opened the folder for her. One piece of paper was obviously an official form, full of stamps and signatures, and the other appeared to be an old-fashioned sales slip.

  “Were these papers in the lockbox?”

  “Yes, dear. Look at them. They answer some questions.”

  Amedeo said, “I can’t read German.”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal said, “They’re all in German, dear.”

  Amedeo replied, “A definite inconvenience.”

  William couldn’t contain his impatience. “Deo! Take it down a couple degrees.”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal occupied herself by cleaning the lens of her magnifier. Then she pointed to the smaller of the two papers. “This is a receipt for ‘one pair of candelabra, one small drawing in black crayon on paper, and a study—crayon on paper—of a female, by Klimt.’The name of the artist is deliberately scribbled.”

  In hopes of recovering some of his lost status but not to show off—definitely not to show off—Amedeo explained, “That would be Gustav Klimt, the Austrian artist who painted The Kiss?”

  “Yes, dear, but he was also out of favor with the Nazis. His work was too sensual.”

  William gave Amedeo a slant-eyed look and turned to Mrs. Vanderwaal.

  “Definitely too sensual,” Amedeo added. “You also believe that the small drawing, the one in black crayon on paper, is Mrs. Zender’s The Moon Lady, don’t you?”

  “I’m certain it is.”

  Pointing to the photograph, William said, “The date that is circled on the calendar in the photo is the same as the date on the sales receipt.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Now it was Amedeo who was getting annoyed. William was taking over, and this was his Rosetta stone. Amedeo pulled the sales receipt closer and, working to get the small magnifier in focus, he studied the scribble at the bottom. He turned the paper upside down and every which way. He made out a letter—Z!—a capital Z, and the letters e and n. His heart skipped a beat. “That says Zender,” he said, pointing to the scribble. “It must be Zender. That’s my next-door neighbor. Mrs. Zender said that Mr. Zender gave The Moon Lady to her for a wedding present.” At last, everything was fitting into place. “Mr. Zender must have been the Nazi officer who blackmailed Pieter. Mr. Zender was an Austrian and so was the Nazi officer. We have him, Mrs. Vanderwaal! We just have to—”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal smiled. She tugged at the corner of the paper and gently slid it back across the table. She looked at it for a long time before shaking her head. “I’ve studied that word for more than fifty years, and my dear John did too. But, Deo, as I’m looking at it again, trying so hard to assign it to Zender, I just can’t. I wish I could. But it says ‘Zahlend,’ which in German means ‘Complete’ or ‘Paid.’”

  Entropy! Total entropy! Everything was falling apart. He was not a boy falling into a cave and finding drawings on the walls. He was also not a cryptologist making sense of something someone else had discovered. He was no hero. He was still Amedeo Kaplan, the anonymous.

  In a subconscious effort to hold himself together, Amedeo crossed his arms and hugged his shoulders. He leaned forward, not allowing himself to touch the picture or hardly to breathe on it. His focus fell on the candlesticks. Letting his arms go to pull the photo forward, he asked, “What about those candlesticks, William?” He pushed the picture toward his friend. “Don’t they look like the Meissen ones that Bert and Ray bought?”

  William examined the photo carefully. “Mrs. Zender’s candelabra were double-branched. These are triple.”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal remained quiet as Amedeo noisily swallowed his disappointment. Then she slid the other slip of paper forward. “Why don’t you look at this, Deo? It’s the paper that gave John safe passage out of Holland. It’s an exit visa, what the Nazis called a Unbedenklichkeitserklärung. This one has a signature and many stamps. The Germans love to stamp things. There are two stamps on the exit visa—one red and one black. The black square one has space for the date and place, and some of the stamp has obscured the writing. But you can read the place, Amsterdam, and the date, 04 September 1942. Those are consistent with the calendar and with the bill of sale. The red stamp is round, and it is not too difficult to read the signature.”

  “Does it begin with a Z?” Amedeo asked hopefully. Mrs. Vanderwaal didn’t answer but allowed Amedeo to study the signature. “It’s an initial K followed by a capital E—”

  “Yes, dear. The Germans love capital letters.”

  “E-i-s-e-n-h-u-t-h. That would be Karl Eisenhuth.”

  “Karl Eisenhuth. You know him?”

  “He’s the acoustician who installed Mrs. Zender’s sound system.”

  “Do you think he gave her the Modigliani?”

  After first checking with Amedeo as if waiting for permission to answer, William said, “No. Mr. Zender gave it to her.”

  Amedeo shook his head. “It definitely was from Mr. Zender.”

  William nodded in agreement. “She said it was a wedding gift. They got married sometime in the 1950s.”

  “Where is Mr. Zender now?”

  “As dead as Mr. Eisenhuth.”

  “And Mrs. Zender?”

  “She’s next door.”

  MRS. WILCOX WAS IN THE kitchen working on her lists. Dealers and decorators were already calling. Apparently Bert and Ray also liked to be discoverers, so they had let a few of their colleagues know that they had gotten in first, and Mrs. Wilcox was checking their inquiries against her inventory.

  Mrs. Zender was in f
ull regalia, telling Mrs. Wilcox about a performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome in which she had sung the role of Salome. That was the music playing on her sound system. “I always thought I was perfectly cast in the role of Salome. Salome had a pathologically ambitious mother named Herodias.”

  “Was that your mother’s name?” Mrs. Wilcox asked absently.

  “No, my mother’s name was Vittoria. Mother was very vain about her name. Thought it very regal. I was named Aida, a slave princess.” She looked toward the door. “I see, Amedeo, that you have a guest. In a Winnebago.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “It’s Mrs. Vanderwaal. She’s the mother of my godfather. She’s a widow too. She retired and decided to travel around the country in a Winnebago instead of going into a home.”

  Mrs. Zender said, “You have never told me that you think of the Waldorf as a home.”

  William came to his rescue. “It’s a retirement community.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Zender replied. “A retirement community.”

  “You will have air-conditioning,” Amedeo said.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Zender said. “I shall have that. I’ll also have housekeeping and linen service. And meal service. I shall be living in a world of paid-for incompetence, surrounded by canes, crutches, and aluminum walkers, and I shall be eating—I can hardly call it dining—in the company of people who discuss acid reflux and constipation as freely as they talk about the weather. I myself never talk about the weather. The temperature of any Florida day stays boringly within the age range of the inhabitants of Waldorf Court—sixty-five to ninety-nine. I shall also have complimentary transportation to the doctor and the dentist, so I shall escape the tyranny of pumping my own gas.”

  “Mrs. Vanderwaal pumps her own gas,” Amedeo said.

  A smile crept up Mrs. Zender’s face. “I’m certain that Mrs. Vanderwaal is a very brave woman.”

  Amedeo said, “Mrs. Vanderwaal would like to come over, Mrs. Zender. There’s something she would like to discuss with you.”

  “And is this something it takes a brave woman to do?”

  “Definitely.”

  Mrs. Zender fluttered her hand in a dismissive gesture, and Amedeo left.

  When Amedeo introduced Mrs. Zender to Mrs. Vanderwaal, Mrs. Zender said, “So you’re the lady in the van?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Retired?”

  “Retired, yes, but spreading my wings, so to speak.”

  “So to speak?” Mrs. Zender said.

  “My son, Peter, claims that I no sooner sprouted wings than I spread them.”

  “So you’re fresh out of the nest?”

  “Fresh out of the chrysalis.”

  “So you’re a moth, not a butterfly?”

  “You see me as I am, Mrs. Zender. Dusty wings and all.”

  The meeting was not going well. Mrs. Zender was not finding Lelani Vanderwaal as humble as someone who lived in a van should be. Mrs. Wilcox immediately picked up on the tension between the two women and tried to calm the situation by offering Mrs. Vanderwaal a chair and a drink of iced tea. “Iced tea is the national drink of the South, you know.”

  Mrs. Zender said cuttingly, “Mrs. Wilcox still thinks of the South as a nation.”

  “Many people do,” Mrs. Vanderwaal replied.

  Amedeo looked from Mrs. Zender to Mrs. Vanderwaal and back to Mrs. Zender. Mrs. Zender was being cutting and cold because she sensed a threat. “So you’ve been driving through the South in your Winnebago, have you?”

  Mrs. Vanderwaal took a sip of the tea before answering. “I have. I was not far from St. Malo when my son called and asked me to pay Deo a visit.”

  Pointing to the thick envelope in Mrs. Vanderwaal’s hand, Mrs. Zender asked, “Does that have anything to do with why you stopped by?”

  Amedeo answered, “Definitely.”

  Ever the boss, Mrs. Zender directed Amedeo and William to bring in chairs for everyone. They inadvertently set them into a semicircle as in an informal classroom or a group therapy session. Mrs. Zender pushed her seat slightly outside the orbit, giving herself almost-center stage and committing the others to being an audience. After everyone was seated, she looked briefly at the manila envelope and waited for a cue. Like a conductor ready to raise his baton, Amedeo nodded. Mrs. Zender nodded back, and she began.

  “Too bad storytelling is not like opera, where many different things—singing, dancing, speaking, miming—happen simultaneously. In opera it is possible to have two people sing different parts at the same time. Like a West African griot, I shall have to dig myself out of the present, one shovel full at a time.”

  Obviously simmering at Mrs. Zender’s high-handedness, Mrs. Vanderwaal abandoned her customary tact and corrected Mrs. Zender. “A griot’s stories begin in the past and go forward. An archeologist begins in the present and digs into the past.”

  Ever the peacemaker, Mrs. Wilcox did not abandon her role. “Begin where you must, Mrs. Zender.”

  “Of course I shall, Mrs. Wilcox.” She glanced sideways at Mrs. Vanderwaal, then focused back at center. “I must begin with my talent. I was a mezzo-soprano. I had a fine voice. Very fine. My talent was well above average. How can I explain the difference between my voice and, say, that of Maria Callas? Think of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Both are beautiful, both come and go with tides, and both inspire dreams, but only the ocean has whales. Although mine was hardly a backwater voice, it could not sustain Moby Dick, so Mother decided that the European stage would be the best place to nourish my talent.

  “Mother was right about Europe. Not only does the continent have more venues, but European standards of attractiveness are more flexible than American, and certainly less ‘standard’ than they were in St. Malo. Every creative endeavor must have a second section, and the first row of the second section isn’t a bad place to be. I did very well there, both professionally and personally.

  “I was at peace with it. I received a lot of attention. Besides, I was indulged. Daddy always supplemented my income, so I lived very well. I was happy. Mother was not. Mother was ambitious for me—as I was her product. Mother always insisted on having the immaculate best, and as long as I was in Europe, I was invisible in St. Malo, and Mother could keep the Vindicator informed about her diva daughter’s triumphs on the continent.

  “Onstage, dressed as a boy or draped as a bitch, my voice carried me through many roles. However, there came a day when the director of the opera company I was with decided that the opera Salome was to be done in modern dress. Salome herself was to wear a slinky red dress that he knew I could not fit into. Furthermore, this director had also decided that when Salome was to unwind the seventh veil, she was to be starkers. Well, hardly anyone wanted to see that much of me.”

  Mrs. Zender paused. “I’m waiting,” she said. “That was a laugh line. I’m waiting for my laugh.”

  “Later,” Mrs. Vanderwaal said coldly.

  “Well,” Mrs. Zender said, “she who laughs last . . .”

  Mrs. Wilcox again took a cue. “Please continue, Mrs. Zender.”

  Mrs. Zender threw up her hands and said, “I was dismissed. Daddy was investing a lot of money into his mills to convert them from manufacturing cardboard into manufacturing wallboard for the postwar building boom, so he was not in a financial position to continue my subsidy.

  “Mother knew before I did that my time on the stage was over. Most divas extend their careers by concertizing. But I could not. Being alone on stage, not playing a role, was not something I was suited for, and my name recognition was not great enough to fill a concert hall. Besides, I could not manage all that travel without people. Mother and I both knew that I would have to return to St. Malo. I had made peace with that, but Mother wanted something more. She wanted to find me something to return with—a proper accessory that would make me acceptable to St. Malo society.”

  Mrs. Zender stopped abruptly and stared into the middle distance. Almost intuitively, Mrs. Wilcox responded by clearing her th
roat, a small noise but enough to make Mrs. Zender look in her direction. With the slightest nod of her head, Mrs. Wilcox directed Mrs. Zender’s attention to the large envelope, which Mrs. Vanderwaal continued to hold. She handed it over, and Mrs. Zender laid it across her lap without opening it. She ran her hand over it and looked at it for a long time before starting again. “In 1955 Vienna was in the throes of restoring itself to its former grandeur. The famous Lipizzaner horses had been saved, and the old Spanish Riding School was back in business. The Vienna Boys’ Choir was singing again, and the pride of Vienna, the State Opera House, destroyed by fire during the Second World War, was to rise from its ashes.”

  “And this is important why?” Mrs. Vanderwaal asked.

  “What I have to say about the Vienna Opera House is relevant to The Moon Lady. And that is why you are here, is it not, Mrs. Vanderwaal?”

  “It is.”

  “Then you must be patient.”

  “Would you call waiting fifty years for an answer being patient, Mrs. Zender?”

  “Yes, but I told you that I cannot tell overlapping parts at the same time like an opera. I have to tell things consecutively, because that is the way people tell stories. What I have to say about the Vienna Opera House is relevant.”

  “Then go on.”

  In a childish gesture, Mrs. Zender turned as far away as she could from Mrs. Vanderwaal without actually moving her chair. She straightened her back and continued almost defiantly.

  “Back to 1955,” she said. “Vienna was newly independent, and the government had adopted a policy of not hiring ex-Nazis for high-level positions. But the war had been over for ten years, and the Austrians were finding ways to accommodate men who had special talents but who may have had a questionable past. It is called Austrian amnesia, a term I suggest you remember.

  “The State Opera House was reopened to great fanfare on November 5, 1955. The audience for the gala reopening was a specially invited international crowd. Ordinary people, the uninvited, lined up outside the opera house to watch the lucky ticket holders arrive. Like the funerals of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana, a public address system was set up so that the uninvited could hear what was going on inside. The opera was Beethoven’s Fidelio. The conductor was Karl Böhm, a man who only seventeen years before had publicly welcomed Hitler’s takeover of Austria. Everything about that evening was secondary to the one big question: Would the acoustics in the new house be as superb as they once had been? The answer was yes, they were.”