Botticelli's Bastard

by Stephen Maitland-Lewis

  Giovanni pounded again on the door to apartment 4C. He shouted, “Clara Meyerstein. Are you there? Clara?”

  Still there was no response, so he pounded and shouted again. Then from beyond the door came the voice of a woman who spoke with a heavy French accent, meek though she sounded annoyed.

  “Who is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “Clara.” Giovanni cleared his throat and tried to sound warm and caring despite the fact he had been shouting. “I’m an old friend of your family. My name is Giovanni Fabrizzi.”

  The door remained shut.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Giovanni Fabrizzi. I knew your uncle and aunt in Paris. On Avenue Foch. Your Aunt Carmella and I are both from Florence. May I come in?”

  “How did you find me?”

  He had reached his first hurdle. He couldn’t tell her the truth, not until he was inside. But he could tell her a portion of it.

  “I found you through the International Tracing Service in Germany.”

  There was no sound of movement from inside the apartment. Giovanni was not going to accept being turned away after getting this close. So he resorted to guilt.

  “Please, Clara. I brought you some flowers. And I’m worn out from climbing your stairs. I’m not a young man.”

  A deadbolt turned, then another lock, and the door opened enough to catch on the security chain. Her face appeared in the gap as she peered out to look at Giovanni.

  He held out the bundle of flowers. “For you.”

  She studied the flowers and Giovanni carefully watched for her reaction, slight as it was, the tiniest smile for only a second, and her eyes brightened. The door closed and she unlatched the chain, then she pulled the door open.

  She was short and had a head of snow-white hair, in contrast to her loose, colorful dress patterned with flowery designs that was decades out of fashion.

  Giovanni handed her the flowers and then stepped into the small apartment, sparsely furnished and decorated. She carried the flowers to her tiny kitchen, large enough for just one person, and placed the bundle in a discarded milk carton that she then filled with water from the sink.

  Giovanni sat on the sofa, its cushions sagging from age, and watched her put the bouquet and milk carton on a small dining table, only room for two.

  “How did you know my family?” she asked, moving away from the table slowly, but without the aid of a walker or even a cane. She sat down in a straight back wooden chair that appeared uncomfortable. “You don’t look any older than I do.”

  Giovanni didn’t want to lie to this poor old woman, but without something to convince her, she might ask him to leave.

  “My father was an art restorer,” he said. “Henri and Carmella used his services for some of the art in their home. My father brought me along a time or two, when I was young.”

  Clara didn’t smile or say anything. He was a little surprised that she hadn’t at least offered him something to drink.

  He took a chance. “It’s so nice to see you again,” he said, trying to win her over.

  “I don’t remember you,” she said.

  “It was a long time ago.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a photograph of the Count’s portrait. “I have a photograph of a painting your aunt and uncle owned. My father worked on it. I wondered if you might remember it.”

  He scooted across the sofa, closer to her, and passed the photo to her.

  In her first show of aged vulnerability, her liver-spotted hand trembled as she reached out and took the photograph of the painting. She studied it intently, looking down at the photograph only inches from her face. Her arm dropped to her lap, the photo with it, and she looked up at Giovanni. The expression on her face had changed. She was disturbed, perhaps even angry.

  “You know where this painting is?” Her tone was accusatory.

  Giovanni smiled. “Clara, I have much to tell you about the painting. I am an art restorer, as my father was. I’ve researched this painting extensively. I know it was taken from your family in 1940 when you lived in Paris.” He didn’t want to expose his own family’s dirty secrets, so he opted to smooth over the part about Max taking it from their home. “My uncle was an art dealer in Paris at the time, who came into possession of the painting. He later gave it to my father.”

  “You have it?” She was surprised but also seemed almost horrified, which puzzled Giovanni.

  “I do,” he replied. “But there is more. I’ve had it authenticated as a work of Botticelli. You are familiar with the artist, I assume.”

  She nodded slowly, confirming that she knew of the artist, but she didn’t appear pleased by this news. Not pleased at all.

  “You realize, of course,” Giovanni continued, “as the work of Botticelli, the painting is of considerable value.” From his jacket he pulled out the copy of the New York Times that he had brought along, folded to the article about him and the painting. He handed it to her.

  She took a moment to study it. As her gaze moved down the page, her eyes began to widen. “Seventy-five million dollars?” She looked up at Giovanni.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “You have done nicely for yourself, Mr.…”

  “Fabrizzi. Please, call me Gio, but I’m afraid you don’t understand, Clara. I have no desire to profit from the painting. It belonged to your family, and now, as you are the only survivor, it belongs to you. I’ve come here to give it back.”

  The newspaper fell on her lap and her gaze dropped. She brought the back of her hand to her forehand, and her round shoulders quivered as she began to weep.

  Giovanni gave her a moment, then scooted across the sofa, closer to her. “You won’t have to struggle anymore,” he said. “You’re a rich woman now, Clara.”

  She looked up with fire in her eyes. “I want nothing to do with that painting.”

  “What?” Giovanni shifted back. “I don’t understand.”

  She looked away. “I think you should leave now.”

  “What?” Giovanni tried to catch her gaze. “What have I said, Clara? I didn’t mean to upset you, please, but I don’t understand. This should be great news to you, but…”

  “You don’t know what happened to me,” she said.

  Giovanni realized that he had opened a deep wound. He gave her some space and thought carefully of how to proceed. “I learned a lot during my research,” he said. “I know about Drancy and Auschwitz. I’m truly sorry about you and your family, really. I can’t imagine the horror you must have all faced, and I won’t try to pretend.”

  Her hollow stare focused on him. “You know nothing.”

  “Then please,” he said, hoping to comfort her rather than be a source of pain. “Tell me, Clara. I care. Really, I do.”

  “I don’t want that painting,” she said. “Daniel and Elise should have it, not me. I’m not worthy of it.”

  “But they’re gone,” Giovanni said, then he regretted using words so unfeeling. He didn’t know how to talk with her about it—talk with anyone about a subject so delicate—and he had never imagined in his life that he would be put in the position of making any person relive such tremendous pain. “Nothing would please me greater, Clara, than to return the painting to Daniel and Elise. I would if I could, believe me, and I’m here to do the best I can and give it to you instead, the one member of your family to survive.”

  “No!” she screamed, then rose from her chair and went to the window, her back to Giovanni as she gazed out at the traffic and noise of Ninth Avenue. In a distant voice, she said, “It doesn’t matter how much money the painting is worth. I don’t deserve it. You may think because I survived, I should have it, but you’re wrong. You don’t know how I survived.”

  “I want to know,” he said softly. “Would you tell me?”

  She turned from the window and looked about the room, seeming to stare through the walls and into a dark past.

  “It was frightening,” she said, “when they took us away. But we had
no idea then. I was so naïve. Yes it was terrible, but we thought they would hold us in a camp until the war ended, we would suffer of course, but then someday we’d get our lives back. We would try to bear it, and make it through. That hopeful thinking died when we got to Auschwitz. We were separated and very quickly I realized it was the end. No one was leaving that camp alive. Think about that, Mr. Fabrizzi. You wake up one day and you know, with absolutely certainty, that it could be your last. Maybe not that day, but the next, or another very soon.”

  “I am sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  “There was an awful sense of apathy,” she said. “My family was gone, elsewhere in the camp or already dead, I never knew. The strangers with me became my only family. We all knew our fate. We would cry and hold one another, saying good-bye for as long as we could, as each day another was taken away, sometimes one or two or other days a whole group, herded like animals by the evil guards. But when I was taken, it was not to join the others. Despite my shaved head, sunken cheeks, and the number tattooed on my arm, a Nazi officer found me attractive. How he could find a girl of sixteen attractive in that condition, I have no idea, but he did. He took me to his office. He told me that if I did certain things, he would keep me alive, give me more food, give me medicine. If I didn’t fight him, if I pleased him, if I performed the acts he desired, if I did everything right, I wouldn’t die. At that time, the urge to survive was so strong, I would do anything, and I did. He was happy with me, and there were other Nazi officers as well, taking turns as I was passed around from one to another. I traded my virginity and self-respect for the chance to live.”

  She paused, hanging her head. Giovanni remained silent. There was nothing he could say that could possibly comfort her.

  She turned back to the window and gazed out at the street below. “It was the wrong choice. Even though I survived, I have lived every day since then—and it’s been a long life—thinking that I had no right to do what I did. A Jewish aid organization provides me money to live and yet I turned my back on my own people. I don’t want that painting. It only reminds me of the terrible thing I did.”

  Giovanni rose from the sofa. “Clara.”

  She did not look at him.

  “Please, can we sit down?” he asked. “I need to tell you more. It will be easier if we’re both sitting.”

  She returned to the straight back chair, and he lowered to the sofa.

  “First,” he said, “I have to say that nothing in my experience can parallel the horror of what you’ve been through. But I too feel guilty about my past. Well, my family’s past, and it relates to this painting. I wasn’t completely honest earlier, what I told you about my uncle. It is true he was an art dealer, but I didn’t tell you the rest. He had helped the Nazis appraise the collections of many Jewish families, but he did something even worse. He took some of the art for himself. The painting of the Count is one case I know of, but I’m guessing there were many more. Then he resold the stolen art, claiming it was the only way he could survive the troubled times. That was his excuse anyway, but it turns out that he became very rich as a result. Apparently, he never managed to sell the Count’s portrait, and instead he gave it to my father.”

  “The Count?” Clara asked.

  Giovanni realized his mistake of referring to the painting in such a personal manner, likely to be perceived as too casual for an inanimate object. He considered telling her of his ability to communicate with the Count, but decided against it, as it would only confuse matters.

  “The subject of the painting,” he explained. “Your family’s painting, that is. I have taken a liking to the Italian nobleman, you could say.”

  She nodded. “That particular portrait was dear to Uncle Henri as well.”

  Giovanni nearly agreed, vocally, as the Count had told him about Henri’s love for the painting. But Giovanni quickly realized how odd that might appear—for him to know such details about Mr. Meyerstein, a man he had never met.

  “The painting does move some of us,” Giovanni said, then he used the opportunity to steer the conversation to where it belonged. “And now it is capturing the attention of many others, which has been troubling for me. You see, many of my friends and colleagues are advising me to the sell the painting because it is worth so much. But I couldn’t while knowing you had survived, and that I possessed something that belongs to you. Especially knowing how the painting had come into my family. It’s shameful.”

  “Did your father know what your uncle had done?” she asked.

  “I’m pretty sure he did, but he never told me, though I suspect he wanted to. Otherwise he would have sent the painting back. My father is gone now, so I’ll never know for sure.” He thought about what the Count had said. “A friend suggested that my father wanted me to know so that I might forgive my uncle, because my father couldn’t.”

  “Can you forgive him?” she asked.

  Again his thoughts turned to the Count. “Someone else asked that recently. As I told him, it won’t be easy. One day maybe, but not now.”

  “Then you should understand my feelings,” Clara said. “Your uncle can say he sold stolen art because he had no other way of surviving. And I can say that I gave my body to Nazi officers because I had no other way of surviving. Those things are true. But that does not make them right. You have every right never to forgive your uncle. And me, I have every right never to forgive myself.”

  “But I want to forgive.”

  “So do I,” she said. “That does not mean it will ever happen.”

  There must be something else he could say, he thought, to convince her to stop berating herself for something that happened so many years ago. He could think of nothing, so he ended where he had begun. “Clara, the painting is legally yours. I’ll arrange to have it sent it to you, then we’ll see how you feel. All right?”

  “No. You can send me papers and I will sign them, to state the painting is yours. You’re a good man, Mr. Fabrizzi. I trust that you will do what is best. But please, once I have signed the papers, I do not want to see you or that painting ever again.”

  Chapter 19

  The intense Tuscany sun warmed Giovanni’s face as he drove their rental car into Pisa. Arabella and Maurizio enjoyed the scenery, admiring the Leaning Tower and the Piazza del Duomo. Giovanni wanted to drive past the Medici Palace as well, considering the Count was a relative of that renowned clan. There was no smirking from Maurizio, no eye rolling. The drive through the city was filled with contemplation and reverence for their surroundings.

  Arabella and Maurizio were relieved, as was Giovanni, with how everything had worked out. More than relieved, his wife and son were bubbling with hopeful expectations for the future, knowing the happiness they would all share despite the family wrangling they had endured.

  A few days earlier, Giovanni had arrived in Florence to supervise the hanging of the Count in the Botticelli Room at the Uffizi. The portrait would be in the gallery well beyond Giovanni’s lifetime, and he wanted to ensure that it was displayed in a manner that served the work best. Fortunately, his friend Pino Vitarelli, in charge of the museum, agreed with Giovanni’s opinions on the placement and lighting of the work. By donating a painting of such incredible value to the Uffizi, Giovanni had mended all differences he and Vitarelli may have developed during the time leading up to the work’s authentication.

  Giovanni had promised that after he accompanied the painting to the Uffizi, he would join his wife and son for a few days of relaxation, touring the Italian countryside. Their trip along the coast ended at Pisa, from where they would complete their journey and return to Florence in time for the Count’s unveiling. Then Giovanni would return to his studio and resume the work that he and his father, and his father before him, had mastered. Once the Count was displayed in the Uffizi, there would be no more distractions to further delay Giovanni’s restoration of the Brueghel.

  As he guided their rental car through the streets of Pisa, Giovanni asked, “Do yo
u mind if we go to the Campo Santo? Many Medicis are buried there. I feel like I should visit, considering how important the Count has been to me.”

  “You’re the boss, Papa,” Maurizio said. “Wherever you want to take us.”

  “Grazie, Mau,” Giovanni replied.

  After a short drive, they parked near the walled cemetery and got out. The expanse of blind arches of the Camposanto Monumentale towered above them as they walked around the exterior, and then they went inside.

  As a conservator, it was heartbreaking for Giovanni to walk the interior of the Compo Santo. During the war, a bombing raid had led to a fire, and much of the artwork was destroyed. The restoration of the many frescoes had begun after the war and still continued, the damage had been so devastating. If only Giovanni were born earlier, he could have enjoyed the works of art that were now gone forever.

  His thoughts turned to his time in Bad Arolsen, where during his research he had learned of other treasures being lost forever. However, not as the result of an errant bomb, rather the errant thinking of men who had sought to force their beliefs on others, though only those they deemed worthy of living. Adding to the eradication of millions of lives, the Nazis had destroyed countless works of art that they similarly deemed unsuitable to exist within their flawed vision of a perfect world. Thousands of paintings were torched in raging bonfires supervised by the Berlin Fire Department. And there were other bonfires in Paris and elsewhere throughout German-occupied Europe. Paintings by Picasso, Leger, Braque, and Masson went up in flames. It just goes beyond all understanding, he thought.

  As they wandered the interior of the Campo Santo, Giovanni said, “Thank you both for being so good about my decision.”

  “It was only right,” Arabella said. “Yes, the painting is worth an amazing amount of money, but we’re certainly not hurting for cash. Most important is that you’re happy.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “You’re not having second thoughts about what you’ve done, I hope.”

  Maurizio said, “You did the right thing, Papa.”

  “You really think so?” Giovanni asked.