The Appraisal

by Anna Porter

  Helena waited on the stone bench in the arcade, reading her Aeneid. She found mystery within it every time she read it — it was the perfect companion for her during a journey that required patience. Her father always carried a well-thumbed copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. He’d hoped that by the time he died he would finally understand what the book was about. He didn’t, of course. He lacked the patience. When she was small, he used to try being the patient parent. There was a tone he used when he spoke to her, one of infinite care, and he chose short words, suitable for a child. When he took her to galleries, he made her stand in front of each painting he considered important and asked her to tell him what she liked about it. He called them “teaching moments.” She was ten when she told him that he no longer had to use just short words. She realized then that he hadn’t understood this himself because he hadn’t ever really listened to her.

  It was not a long wait.

  The woman arrived wearing a long black overcoat, although it was too warm for coats. She was carrying a furled purple umbrella, although there were barely any clouds. She walked with some difficulty, dragging her heels along the gravel. Her shoes were dusty and cracked with wear. Géza had said she would be in her eighties and would carry a purple umbrella. She had been the assistant curator of Italian art at the National Gallery. She had assembled the information for Géza’s father shortly before she was fired in 1950 and took it with her to Hódmezövásárhely, where she had been sent for re-education. Presumably, it was a piece of a larger trove of papers that she had taken as a form of insurance should circumstances get worse than banishment to a provincial town.

  Géza had been concerned about the woman’s safety. It had puzzled Helena at the time but she now understood. Krestin would not want anyone else to have these papers and whoever else was after the painting might even kill for them.

  The woman circled several of the bigger graves and looked up and down the wide walkway before she approached Lujza Blaha’s mausoleum, rather tentatively, as if she had just happened upon it. Considering that, according to Géza, she was neither an actor nor a trained spy, she was doing an excellent job of impersonating a tourist. She stopped next to the statue of the reclining actress and took a closer look at her face. As she straightened up, she slipped something under the great lady’s stone wrist.

  Helena watched her turn the corner near the end of the arcade before she stood up. She didn’t want to endanger the old woman by showing herself. If someone questioned her about Helena, she could truthfully claim never to have met or even seen her.

  The papers were carefully folded in four. Yellow with age, but still flexible enough that they hadn’t cracked, they fitted comfortably into the arm of her cardigan. She didn’t look at them until she was back in her room at the Gresham. They did not disappoint.

  Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem was painted between 1554 and 1556 for Philip II, King of Spain. It was first described by Pietro Aretino in an ingratiating letter to Philip, a copy of which was attached. There was further mention of it in one of Titian’s own fawning letters to the king, dated 1556. The originals of these letters were in the archive of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. The painting was inherited by Philip V; acquired by Philippe, the second Duke of Orléans, in 1708; and so on through various European royals to Lord Gower in 1803. He sold it to the Viennese dealer Gregor Sabransky in 1850. Sabransky sold it to Max Meisel, also in Vienna. Károly Márton purchased the painting from Meisel for a mere 50,000 osztrák-magyar korona. There was no history after 1900, no sales, no exhibitions, but Károly Márton was Géza’s great-grandfather, a man with considerable wealth and assets throughout the decrepit empire. He also had land holdings in Austria, Croatia, and Romania. He had been involved in banking for the Habsburgs and very likely helped finance the First World War. All this she had already heard from Géza, but the proof, should she need it, was now in her hands.

  As far as Géza knew, Károly had not been an art collector. The Titian was the only valuable painting he owned, and he had bequeathed it to his son, Ferenc.

  She had to find out how it had ended up in Krestin’s possession. In their first conversation, Géza had suggested that the painting had been stolen by the State Security Police under Krestin’s direction. That would not have been unusual after the war and in the early 1950s. But why had Géza waited until now to claim it and why was he willing to pay the punishing price Krestin was demanding?

  It was unlikely that Krestin was the Bika whom Gábor Nagy remembered from Vorkuta. If Krestin was telling the truth and had bought the painting, what pressure could this man have exerted on Géza or his father to hand over the family’s one valuable possession?

  She knew now that Géza had failed to tell her the whole story. He had not mentioned meeting Gábor, who would have been wearing the yellow star, somewhere in Pest before the siege. And she had not wondered, then, about the truth behind Géza’s story. There had been something arresting about the man and his memories. He had told her his story while standing at the back of his house, looking out of those big bay windows at his early April garden, just beginning to flow into spring.

  The family had survived a hundred days in the cellar, eating dried meat and rotten potatoes. Had Géza’s older brother, Ferenc, not been killed, he would have been the one to go in search of food. As it was, Géza had had no choice. He’d had to volunteer. With some feelings of guilt, he had realized that this was the first time that he had actually missed his brother. As he left that day, his mother was blackening her face with soot and letting his father cut off her long light brown hair to make her look like a boy. Before the war, she had brushed her hair every evening, one hundred strokes so it would keep its lustre. Ironic, she had said, that she had worried about becoming too fat on black-market butter and chocolates and now she was as thin as she had been when she married his father twenty-two years ago.

  Once outside, Géza had searched for food, anything at all that he could buy. He offered a man his father’s family ring for a chunk of bloody meat he was carrying half-hidden in his jacket, but the man scurried off without a word. Someone near their home said that there was a farmer’s wagon on the embankment with black bread for sale, but the wagon was long gone by the time Géza found the place. A man there told him that the Irányi Street bakery near Váci Street was open for business.

  Near the Buda end of the wrecked Széchenyi Chain Bridge, there was a rowboat already packed with a dozen people on makeshift seats. The man who owned the boat was charging each passenger a thousand pengös for the crossing. They all had to row. The Danube was choppy, and bits of wood, dead pets, furniture, even human bodies bumped against the boat. He remembered seeing a horse’s head float by. A few waves slopped over the sides, soaking his shoes and his loden coat — a present for his seventeenth birthday. Géza was worried about how he would make it back to Buda and his parents. With all the bridges gone and only a few rowboats on the river, he knew he had to start back early and take the chance that another boat would take passengers.

  It was a day he remembered as clearly as if it had been yesterday. In fact, clearer than yesterday. His whole life changed in that hour, and the four lost years that followed could never be recovered. He remembered the young soldier. He was not much older than Géza. He had light-blue eyes, and thin lines of sweat and dirt were caked over his forehead and down his cheeks. His uniform stank of sweat and tobacco. He had shouted at Géza in Russian, but Géza hadn’t understood. He stopped only when he saw the machine gun pointed at his midriff. He offered the soldier his father’s watch. It wasn’t enough.

  She should have known better than to believe the whole story, and under normal circumstances she would have known better. Géza had been a friend of her father’s, and she had learned never to trust Simon’s friends or to take anything he told her at face value. He rarely told the whole truth, and sometimes not even the opposite of what he said was true. She was in her late teens before she fou
nd out how he had made the money to send her to the elite boarding school in Montreal, and why he had been eager to finance her apprenticeships at the Musée des Beaux Arts and, later, at Christie’s.

  ***

  When she checked out of the Gresham, she was wearing the innocuous black pants, the T-shirt, the black wig, rimless glasses, and a shawl that would have suited the real Maria Steinbrunner, had she believed in dressing her age, which she hadn’t. One of Ms. Steinbrunner’s foibles had been her penchant for frilly pink tops and skin-tight, leopard-print leggings. Unlike her current reincarnation, she had dyed her hair a pinkish blond with red highlights and had paid for expensive breast implants and facial improvements that guaranteed her a good living long after she should have thought of changing professions. Not that it was her profession that had got Maria killed. It was her utter ignorance of the need for discretion that led to her body being deposited in a vat of acid near a Bratislava building site. She had been a vain, chatty woman, but her papers had proved to be useful in a pinch. Her passport photo had been taken when she was still mostly her natural self.

  Helena left a personal note with the concièrge for Mr. Grigoriev. She wrote it on the hotel’s stationery, in Russian to make sure he understood and could ponder it while she was travelling.

  You may find it interesting to study the works of Elmyr de Hory while you are visiting Budapest. While he was famous for his Picasso forgeries, he was equally successful with his reproductions of earlier artists, especially Titian.

  Helena Marsh

  She took a hotel limousine to Ferenc Liszt airport, making sure the driver noticed her fine hair and her old-world leather gloves when she paid the bill. She smiled at him and tipped fifteen per cent.

  There were people who wanted to know her whereabouts, including the Hungarian police and the brawny man who had been tailing her since she arrived. But they would never recognize her as Maria.

  CHAPTER 17

  Alexander called at midnight. Attila had been watching an improbable American movie, with Bruce Willis taking on an entire army of nasties with bad accents and worse haircuts and dispatching them one by one and sometimes in groups. It was wonderful. American exceptionalism at its finest.

  “I’ll meet you at Diablo, and if it’s closed, we can go to the ruin bar near the cathedral,” Alexander said. “Try to come alone,” he added — unnecessarily.

  “Alone?” Attila asked but the phone was dead. It was only then he realized Alexander’s name had not come up on his screen, just “unknown.”

  It took Attila less than fifteen minutes on foot to get to the Diablo wine bar. It was not a bar he enjoyed, and he hadn’t been there since he was following an American securities trader with shady habits involving local hookers who sometimes ended up dead. It was a low-lit, wood-panelled room with vintage mirrors, bobbing purple lights, plush side-booths, and a long bar. Alexander was lounging in one of the booths, his legs stretched out, one hand cradling his cigarette package. He wore a dark grey jacket that he hadn’t removed although it was hot inside.

  “Are you carrying?” Attila asked when he slid into the narrow gap left for the seat facing Alexander. Once again he resolved to lose a few pounds. Less sausage, more steam baths.

  Alexander waved to the barman, indicating that he wanted a refill as well as a drink for his guest. “I am supposed to carry at least one regulation sidearm at all times,” Alexander said. “Didn’t you know?” He sounded officious.

  “Do you think you are in danger?”

  “Not necessarily,” Alexander said, “but it’s best to be cautious.”

  “I take it you talked to your oligarch.”

  “It’s not Piotr Denisovich I have to worry about, it’s the other guys.”

  “Other Russians?”

  Alexander looked at the ceiling and drank his vodka, bottoms up, Russian style. “Maybe. But he is the one who told me there are some very heavy types looking at the painting. One of them killed his boy yesterday. No idea who, but he thought it was the Italians.”

  “Italians. Why?”

  “Makes sense, really,” Alexander said. “Titian was Italian. They want to reclaim his works. Sort of like the Elgin Marbles. Imagine if the Greeks could sell the marbles now to the Brits or the Americans, whoever pays more. It would solve their whole banking problem. Come to think of it, the Germans could buy it and cancel the Greek national debt. We would trade them for gas. We don’t have our own marbles, no ancient temples worth a ton of tourist dollars. Besides,” he grinned at Attila, “they’d look exceptionally pretty on a Sochi estate right now, one that has no marble temple to its ruling god.”

  “So, the Bulgarian was Grigoriev’s?” Attila asked, getting back to a subject that interested him more than Putin’s private castle. Wherever it was.

  “He didn’t say anything about a Bulgarian. He told me someone attacked one of his boys, unprovoked. Murdered him. He thought I should look into it. He said your police were also beginning to ask questions, but he really didn’t want to get involved with the local police. It wouldn’t do for his image. Plus he thinks your guys are utterly incompetent. Always have been.”

  “I thought we did an okay job while I was there,” Attila said defensively.

  “Nothing personal, Attila, just stating the obvious. We’re in a city where uniformed neo-Nazis march up and down carrying their old flags and scaring the hell out of law-abiding citizens, and your vigilant police seem not to notice. Not even when you were in the force.”

  “What the fuck could I do when half of the boys belong to the Jobbik — I assume you are referring to their militant wing? Otherwise, they are a legitimate political party.”

  “Exactly,” Alexander said. “They have another little demonstration going on today over by the Danube, near the shoes of the departed Jews, celebrating that old reprobate, Horthy.”

  Attila decided to change the subject, in case he found himself agreeing with Alexander. “So what does Grigoriev expect you to do?”

  “Make the whole nasty business go away.” Alexander lifted his hand again and pointed at the two empty glasses. “Spasibo,” he said to the waiter. “You’ve got to be careful,” he said to Attila, “there are Russians everywhere, including our waiter. He got stuck here after you sent us all packing in ’90. I pay him a little extra now and then.”

  “Why?”

  “He is in the right place to hear useful stuff, and I need to know whose side he’s on.”

  “In the Diablo?”

  Alexander shrugged. “Even here.”

  “So, you expect me to divert attention from your oligarch to some imaginary Italian guys who may or may not even be here. Why would I want to do that?”

  Alexander smiled. “You mean what’s in it for you? Simple. You want to know about the woman who wants the Titian for her client. Right? Even if you don’t want to know about her, you should.”

  “The woman?” Attila asked cautiously. “Why?”

  “Because she has also come for the painting. Same as Piotr Denisovich, same as the Ukrainian. And the agents for the Italian investors. Did you know that buying art is an excellent way to launder money? The Ukrainian has been here for a week now and may be ahead of the game.”

  “Which Ukrainian?”

  “Vladimir Azarov, one of the guys who helped fund the Maidan revolution, almost as much as the Americans and the Europeans. Why anybody would take Ukraine for a European country is a mystery. All you need is one visit to Kiev, better still, Donetsk, and you’d know they are all Asians, just like us. This one is tall, good-looking, not overweight, and he even has hair. Our guy is suffering from early onset hair loss and too much good food. You’ve seen him in the papers, right?”

  “Often. He offered to build another shopping mall in Miskolc and a massive shipyard in Crimea. His yacht is too big for Mediterranean ports. What about the woman?”

  Alexander
grinned. “The one who was staying at the Gellért?”

  Attila waited, arms crossed over his belly where the table was cutting into him just above his belt. He knew his friend would tell him, no matter what. He was fairly bursting with the desire to show, once more, his prowess as an FSB major worth his considerable value in whatever currency he earned it.

  “The Gellért where the Bulgarian was found dead?” Alexander continued.

  “Did I tell you where he was killed?”

  “You didn’t have to. Piotr Denisovich did.”

  “She isn’t the killer,” Attila said, although he was no longer quite so sure.

  “Who knows? They come in all shapes and sizes, and the Helena Marsh I remember did well with mixed martial arts, excelled at target practice, and was a mistress of disguises. Better yet, she is the only one of that effete lot of art experts who worked in the basement of Christie’s when women weren’t allowed below stairs. She has written monographs about Raphael and Giorgione, and she’s published a slim book about Veronese. She is a Titian expert. She identified stolen Italian paintings in the Göring collection, and she knows dead collectors well enough she could tell from whom the fat murdering bastard stole them. She was one of the experts the Americans used to reclaim Jewish art.”

  “You can find all this through Google, except for the martial arts.”

  “She is very good with a gun and quick with a knife.”