“Were you there?” Amedeo asked.
“No. I was not, but Mother was.”
“After her death, during one of my brief attempts to sort through and organize Mother’s papers, I found the program from the gala reopening of the Vienna State Opera House. It had an elaborate, tasseled, deep blue velour cover, and inside was a list of the invited guests. Mother’s name was there and so was Mr. Zender’s.”
Then suddenly, as if a puppet master had pulled an arm string, Mrs. Zender held up the envelope and asked Mrs. Vanderwaal, “What will I find in this envelope?”
“Papers. A photo. A handwritten memoir.”
Mrs. Zender smiled knowingly and laid the envelope back down. Then, as if she were addressing a class and was asking for a show of hands, she asked, “Do any of you know about the Stockholm Syndrome?”
Only Mrs. Wilcox nodded yes—almost imperceptibly.
Without attempting to disguise the sarcasm in her voice, Mrs. Vanderwaal asked, “Is that another term you suggest we remember?”
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Zender replied. “Mother died on August 23, 1973, the very day there was a botched bank robbery in Sweden. The robbers took four people and held them hostage for six days. The hostages—three women and a man—resisted the government’s efforts to help them. Even after their rescue, one of the women remained friends with the criminals. That is the incident that gave birth to the term Stockholm Syndrome. It has come to mean a hostage bonding with his captors.” Mrs. Zender paused dramatically before continuing. “The Stockholm Syndrome has been used to explain Patty Hearst, members of religious cults, and battered spouses.” To Mrs. Zender’s credit, she did not look at Mrs. Wilcox when she said that.
“There are many ways a person can become a hostage. A captor can be a parent, a husband”—again she did not look at Mrs. Wilcox—“or it can be a social scene.
“Within two years after Mother died, Mr. Zender lost Father’s business, and a hurricane named Eloise peeled back the roof over Mr. Zender’s annex, took down the dock, the boathouse, and the top floor of the three-car garage, and the parties stopped. The older generation— Mother’s friends—soon found other venues, and the younger generation, the backyard barbequers/summers-in-Provence generation, never missed us. We were the Great Gatsby, after all, except that there was no green light blinking at the end of the dock. Hurricane Eloise took care of that, too.
“Mr. Zender and I continued to live here on Mandarin Road even after the money ran out. Mr. Zender adjusted his lifestyle from that of the landed gentry to that of the retired foreign diplomat. He found a silver-tipped cane somewhere in the house and started walking with a heroic limp. I think Mr. Zender made medical history as the first case on record where a cane caused a limp.”
Mrs. Zender unfastened the little wing clip on the manila envelope and turned up the flap. She looked inside briefly, teasingly, but made no effort to take anything out. She laid the envelope back on her lap and folded her hands over it.
Amedeo asked, “Aren’t you going to look inside? Don’t you want to know—”
Mrs. Zender said, “Everyone knows that it’s not over until the fat lady sings.” She picked the envelope back up and pulled out the photo. She hesitated, looked at it briefly, and said, “I need my loupe. William, my loupe.” While William went to look for her magnifying glass, Mrs. Zender put on her eyeglasses and studied the picture.
Her audience was silent.
When William returned with the magnifying glass, to everyone’s surprise, Mrs. Vanderwaal took it from him. Her impatience was corporeal, like a sixth person in the room. She walked—almost strutted—behind the circle of chairs until she was standing behind Mrs. Zender. Holding the loupe in her hand, she reached over Mrs. Zender’s shoulder and focused on the figure on the left. “That young man,” she said, jabbing at the glass, “that young man, the one on the left, is my late husband. Do you see him?” she asked. Mrs. Zender nodded. Mrs. Vanderwaal moved the magnifier ever so slightly until it was focused on the calendar on the wall. “And that is The Moon Lady, your wedding gift from Mr. Zender. Do you see it?”Mrs. Zender nodded again. Mrs. Vanderwaal withdrew the loupe and said, “And that, Mrs. Zender, is the fat lady we want to hear.”
Mrs. Zender countered with an equal impatience, “I told you, Mrs. Vanderwaal, this isn’t opera. I have to tell things one at a time.”
Not even Mrs. Wilcox could discharge the current in the room, but William did. He pulled the pages of Johannes’s memoir from the envelope and calmly started to read. William read fluently, allowing the pain to arrive softly from the poetry within the awkward prose. He read beyond the page where Mrs. Vanderwaal had stopped.
To me at fifteen years, that Pieter wore the Rosa Winkel was for me both a surprise and not a surprise.
Pieter was a homosexual, but he was much more than that. He was my brother, my parent, my guardian, my friend. As was also Klaus. My thoughts had been always the self-centered thoughts of a boy. All my thoughts were with me at the center. Everything was in relation to me. There was Pieter and me. Klaus and me. Jacob and me. Gerard and me. There were my teachers, my school, my friends and me, me, me . . . . Nothing could exist that did not have me, Johannes van der Waal, at its beginning. I never once thought about what might be between Klaus and Pieter. My brother was the shop owner and Klaus was his manager. Klaus was also my brother’s roommate. I, Johannes, got along with both of them, and they got along with each other. Like everything else, there was always me in relation to them. Not them in relation to each other.
It was the Nazis who made a label for Pieter. The Nazis made a label for everyone. Besides the Yellow Stars, they had triangles of brown for Gypsies and purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Nazis believed that if they know how you were born as a Jew or a Gypsy or a homosexual, they know everything about you and can make a label for it. But what did these labels tell you about the person who wore them? The Nazis did not have labels for kind and generous and brave and smart and a good friend and a good son and a good, good, good brother.
I had known my brother, Pieter, all of my life—all fifteen years of my life—and yet I did not know him. I knew only the parts that I could see through my eyes and feel in my heart. That was a lot, but the rest was like listening in the back-back room, where from behind the wall, you must guess at what you are seeing from what you are hearing, and the sounds, they are muffled.
The Nazis could never make a label for Pieter van der Waal. The Nazis knew as much about Pieter van der Waal as the amount of him that the Rosa Winkel covered: a small, flat Pink Triangle.
Gerard now handed to me the photograph he had taken of me and my brother, Pieter, inside the gallery on the night of the retirement party.
I did not cry.
I could not cry.
I think now that I did not cry because for a long time I had been waiting for it to come—without knowing what it was. Without knowing, I knew that the call-up would come. I did not know that Pieter would be a Rosa Winkel, but I knew that the Nazi occupiers would find some reason to break up our family. Within me for a long time had been that fear. Maybe I did not suspect the Rosa Winkel. Maybe I thought they will take Pieter because he was helping to hide the paintings of the Rijksmuseum. Maybe I had the fear with me because since the day of the Occupation, every day, everything from eating to opening a door is marked by caution, caution, haste, haste, wait, wait. But the name of it all—caution, haste, wait—the name of it all is fear.
To Gerard, I did not speak. I could not.
I think now that I could not speak anything because there was nothing to say. To speak of my sadness was like reciting a passage that had been long ago memorized, so I did not recite the end because already I knew what it was.
All those unsaid words I could not say rose up into my throat to keep down the tears.
I looked at the photograph for a very long time. I knew that this was what I will ever see of my brother, Pieter, again.
When William laid down
the pages, a swollen silence filled the room, and only then did Johannes’s pain become audible.
Everyone cried.
They cried all the tears that Johannes had not.
They cried for Johannes himself, and they cried for the Dutch brother he once was and for John, the American husband and father he became. And they cried for Pieter, the Rosa Winkel hero they would never know.
Mrs. Zender’s eye makeup streaked down her face, making punch marks like a clown.
Mrs. Wilcox found a roll of paper towels, which she passed around for everyone to use as Kleenex, and in one tender moment, Mrs. Vanderwaal reached over to Mrs. Zender, removed her glasses, and gently dabbed away the black streaks of mascara. Mrs. Zender caught Mrs. Vanderwaal’s hand as she was about to remove it. “Thanks,” she whispered. Mrs. Vanderwaal didn’t answer.
In the hot, hushed quiet that followed, Mrs. Zender removed the two yellowed slips of paper from the envelope: the bill of sale and the exit visa. She looked at them for a long, long time.
Mrs. Vanderwaal asked—gently now—“Do you recognize that signature, Mrs. Zender?”
In a whisper, Mrs. Zender answered, “No, but I recognize the name. Karl Eisenhuth.”
“What is the connection between you and Karl Eisenhuth?”
“My sound system and Mr. Zender,” she replied. She straightened her back and in a subdued voice resumed her story.
“On the very day I found the souvenir program, I read in the Vindicator an article about the world famous acoustician, Karl Eisenhuth, having been engaged to engineer the acoustics for a new concert hall in Houston, Texas. Among Eisenhuth’s credentials, the paper listed his having been on the staff of the rebuilding of the Vienna State Opera.
“Mother had tucked a clipping from the newspaper into the fold of the program saying that she had been among the glitterati as the guest of Messrs. Walter Zender and Karl Eisenhuth, the engineer who had been responsible for the resplendent qualities of the acoustics. That is when I half-teasingly suggested to Mr. Zender that he ask Eisenhuth to stop in St. Malo en route to Houston and install a sound system in our house here on Mandarin Road.
“Mr. Zender denied knowing Eisenhuth. His denial was very much like the one that had come from a real retired diplomat who was very much in the news those days.
“The retired diplomat was Kurt Waldheim, and he was in the news because he was a candidate for the presidency of Austria.
“Kurt Waldheim was a good-looking man in the gaunt, pinched way that Austrians regard as aristocratic. He was a talented linguist—spoke several languages fluently—and had elegant manners. His lightweight intelligence and his social skills made him the perfect diplomat. However, beneath the patrician social graces beat the heart of a politician and a liar. Waldheim had capped a diplomatic career by twice being elected secretary-general of the United Nations, but when he failed to be reelected for a third term, he decided to return to his native Austria and run for its presidency.
“It was at the height of his campaign for president that reports of Waldheim’s Nazi past came out. At first Waldheim claimed to have spent the last years of the war in Vienna studying law. Mr. Zender also happened to be a lawyer, and his denial of knowing Eisenhuth had strong echoes of Waldheim.
“When Waldheim was confronted with records that showed that he had not only been a Nazi officer but had participated in atrocities in the Balkans, he claimed that he could not remember something that happened so long ago. When I confronted Mr. Zender with the souvenir program and the clipping, his response was, ‘I can’t remember details of something as unimportant as a party.’
“Selective forgetting is the first symptom of Austrian amnesia. Remember that term?
“Then Mr. Zender turned his back to me and walked out of the room, leaning on the silver-tipped cane, his prop for his adopted role of retired foreign diplomat.
“I followed Mr. Zender. He was in the upstairs sitting room. His cane was resting across the Bibendum chair. I picked it up and sat down. I rested both hands on the cane, leaned forward like an interrogation officer, and said, ‘It’s time you told me what kind of a thief you really are.’
“And that is when Mr. Zender told me in all seriousness, as if it had never been said before, that he had been a young officer, and he did not have the authority to steal. He just followed orders.”
Mrs. Zender sighed. “Echoes,” she said. “I was hearing echoes of Waldheim, for when it was revealed that Waldheim had taken an active role in deporting forty thousand Jews to Auschwitz, he said that he was just a young officer following orders.”
It took a minute before Mrs. Vanderwaal said, “I am grateful that my dear husband is not around to hear this.”
“I can understand that, Mrs. Vanderwaal. But do you want to hear it?”
Amedeo piped up, “I do,” and received a volley of cold stares in return.
Mrs. Zender smiled at Amedeo. “Of course you do. I think everyone does, and oddly enough, I want to tell it, for there is an inevitability to the rest of the story. In its way it all leads to today.”
Pointing to the receipt, Mrs. Zender said, “You can see that one of the things taken from the gallery was a drawing by Gustav Klimt. The rest of the story begins with that drawing.”
Amsterdam. 1942.
Karl Eisenhuth was a senior officer of an Einsatzgruppen, one of four special squads of the German Army whose responsibility it was to loot cultural treasures from the Nazi-conquered countries. Responsibility! It was the responsibility of the Einsatzgruppen to steal. There was an unofficial competition among these special squads to steal things that would please Hitler or Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. Goering was notorious for his extravagant tastes. A vain, greedy man, he loved jewelry. He often wore several diamond rings on each hand and kept a pot of diamonds on his desk to play with.
Like all good Germans, Karl Eisenhuth took his looting very seriously, but stationed in Amsterdam as he was, the biggest thieves had been there before him, even before the Occupation, and the old masters that were the favorites of Hitler and Goering had already been taken.
But here and there Eisenhuth found a few objets d’art that he knew would please some of the generals, and in one small shop on Prinsengracht he found some Modern art.
Eisenhuth knew that Modern art was not allowed inside Nazi territory. If it was found, it was to be destroyed, but men like him—he certainly was not the only one—stole it anyway. They hid it to use as barter after the war if Germany lost.
The Nazis had denounced Klimt and his work as too sensual for the refined Aryans. But by 1955 Austria was independent at last, and Gustav Klimt was back in high favor. Several of his paintings were hanging in the Belevedere Palace. Modigliani was back in favor, too, but the Austrians loved Klimt more, for he was Austrian, one of their own, and he was not a Jew.
Eisenhuth was a good engineer, but at that time he certainly did not qualify by experience or reputation for a position on the acoustical staff that was rebuilding the State Opera House. But Herr Eisenhuth was ambitious, and he was clever. He took out of hiding the things he had stolen from the little shop on Prinsengracht, and persuaded one of the nouveau bureaucrats to overlook his Nazi past in exchange for one of his treasures.
The Klimt bought him a position on the technical staff. The pair of candelabra bought him a promotion. He now had a corner office, and one day his secretary announced that a Mr. Walter Zender was there to see him. Walter Zender had been one of his lieutenants when he was in the Einsatzgruppen. Eisenhuth’s other lieutenant had died. Poor fellow. Cause unknown.
Zender and Eisenhuth reminisced about the time they were billeted together in Amsterdam. Charming city, Amsterdam. Mr. Zender looked around Eisenhuth’s office approvingly. He suggested to his former commander that with the prestige of his current position, he should be well on his way to an international clientele. Eisenhuth agreed mildly, wary of what was coming. And then, almost offhandedly, Mr. Zender said that he could never forget the t
ime they had gone shopping at that charming gallery in Amsterdam. It was on Prinsengracht, wasn’t it?
Eisenhuth knew what Zender wanted, but he stalled. He said that surely Walter Zender’s postwar career had also been fortunate: He was after all an educated man—a lawyer—handsome, suave, charming, and spoke English with a Viennese tongue, which—Eisenhuth reminded him—was a compliment.
Herr Zender readily admitted his accomplishments, but what he didn’t tell Eisenhuth was that although he was diligent, his colleagues did not regard him as an intellectual. Everyone recognized that his manners were beautiful—princely even—and he had learned well the art of doing favors for the right people, but he was often passed over. Success seemed always to elude him. To live the life he deserved, he needed something more. With a knowing wink, Mr. Zender told Eisenhuth that he had his eye on a wealthy American widow. A certain Mrs. Tull. Vittoria de Capua Tull was, of course, older than Mr. Zender, but a young man with an older woman was very, shall we say, “continental.”
Eisenhuth told Zender that he had a drawing, a Modigliani, that he would like to give to him as a wedding gift for the widow. Zender told Eisenhuth that he accepted the drawing with thanks, but it was a little too soon to talk about weddings. He had yet to woo the woman, and the way to this widow’s heart was entrée into the inner circles of European society. For that he needed two tickets to the grand opening of the rebuilt State Opera.
Eisenhuth protested. There were no tickets as such. Admission was by invitation only, and the guest list was closed. It was an international group of the rich and famous: the crowned heads of Europe, heads of state, world-famous musicians. The glitterati of the time.
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World Page 14