The Girl from Berlin--A Novel

by Ronald H. Balson

  “Nothing. Enjoying this fabulous city.” He pointed to the right, to a long three-story white-and-gray building with hundreds of recessed, sculpted windows. “I was planning on visiting the Uffizi Gallery. Do you want to come with me?”

  To some, it might have seemed odd that a uniformed Wehrmacht sergeant would be strolling through the world-famous art museum studying the paintings, but then Kurt had always been interested in art. And music. My Renaissance boyfriend. Maybe that’s what attracted me to him, other than his dashing good looks. He was gentle, kind and cultured. Not exactly what you’d expect in a career Wehrmacht officer. I wished we were on a romantic getaway, just the two of us. I wished we weren’t on opposite sides. I wished there was no damned war.

  We strolled through the halls of the Uffizi, making small talk. He told me again how sorry he was about my father, but he thought Papa had made the right decision. “I doubt that Furtwängler could have saved him,” he said. “Your papa was right. I admired him.”

  I shook my head. “It haunts me, Kurt. Every day. I could have stopped him. At that point in time, I was the strong one. I should have taken it into my hands. I was the one who should have made the decision. He was beaten down, he was weak.”

  “Don’t say that, Ada. Don’t even think that. Your father was brave, he was strong. That was the most noble act I’ve ever seen. He knew what he was doing. If your father had transferred his money to the Gestapo, they wouldn’t have honored their promise. They’d have put him right back into Buchenwald. He knew that. He stood up to them and sacrificed himself for his family. He made sure you and your mother were secure. Please don’t ever let me hear you call him weak.”

  I started sobbing. Kurt took me in his arms and we walked into an alcove. “He was proud right up to the end,” Kurt said to me in a whisper. “Proud of you and proud of what he was doing. All the way back to Buchenwald he raved about you. He loved his family and made a hard decision. He died with his honor and his legacy intact. I hope that if the time ever comes, I will have that kind of courage.”

  It took me a few minutes to regain my composure. Kurt stood by me. I took a deep breath and we continued with our walk. I asked him about his father. He shrugged. “He’s deployed somewhere, maybe in Poland,” he said. “We haven’t had much to say to each other over the past few years.”

  It was so comfortable being with him. I didn’t see the uniform, I saw only Kurt. It had been exactly two years since I’d last seen him, and given the circumstances, two years was a lifetime. We had each taken such different paths; we were such different people. But when he touched me, when he held me, we were the same. No time had passed.

  Out of the blue, I asked him if he had a girlfriend. It just popped out of my mouth. I wanted to know. He wasn’t expecting it. He was a little flustered.

  “A girlfriend?” he said, bashfully. He thought for a minute. “A girlfriend? Nope, not since Junior. After Ada Baumgarten, they all seem very shallow.” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  “Aww.”

  “Seriously, the girls I’ve met, the ones I’ve gone out with, they’re fascinated by things that do not interest me at all. But then, I don’t have much time for socializing. How about you, Ada?”

  I smiled. “Same. Nobody since Junior. Nobody but Kurt.”

  Our walk had taken us up to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Kurt stopped. “Not to be missed,” he said. We stood before the painting, and once again Kurt amazed me with his knowledge of the humanities. “Botticelli painted this masterpiece four hundred and fifty years ago,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see it in person.”

  I had to admit, it was a lovely painting. It was a picture of Venus with long blond hair, standing naked on a seashell. There were figures to her left and right. I was pretty sure Kurt knew all about it. “Tell me what it means,” I said.

  Kurt smiled. “The figures on the left, the ones in the air, they are Zephyr, god of the winds, and in his arms, Aura, goddess of the breeze. They have blown Venus from the sea where she was conceived. That’s why Venus is standing on a seashell. Do you see how her hair is moved by the breeze? To her right is Hora, goddess of spring, who stands holding a cloak with May flowers, offering to cover Venus’ nudity.”

  “It is magnificent,” I said, “and Botticelli’s Venus is simply gorgeous.”

  Kurt nodded. “She is the goddess of beauty. She is the inspiration for human love. Botticelli painted an alluring but shy Venus, which, it is said, he modeled after Simonetta Vespucci, mistress to the Medicis.”

  We stood for a few minutes. Kurt was entranced. The painting exuded pure sensuality, and the effect was not lost on either of us. I was totally entranced, not only with the painting but also with my boyfriend. All I wanted was to be alone with him. To my delight, he had the same feelings. Kurt took my hand and led me from the gallery. We walked straight to a small hotel and booked a room for the night. I had to pay for the room: they didn’t take reichsmarks. I didn’t mind.

  Kurt was nervous and so was I. It took so long to get his complicated uniform off; it sent us both into laughter. I wanted it all to be perfect. And it was. It was a magical night and the morning broke much too soon. “Do we have to leave?” I said, lying in the crook of his arm. “Let’s stay. We could live here in Florence. I’ll play my violin in the restaurants. The money is surprisingly good. You could be an art professor.”

  He chuckled.

  “Seriously, Kurt. I’m very happy right now. I don’t have to go anywhere else. Ever.”

  “I wish we could.”

  “Then we can. No one has a right to tell us that we can’t be together. Damn Hitler. Damn Germany. Let’s run off together.”

  “Ada, I’m in the army. They shoot deserters. But I want you to hold that dream. This war won’t last forever, and afterward we will make that dream come true. I promise.”

  I begged him to stay in touch, but he was nervous about sending mail to me. The discovery of our correspondence could condemn us both. We finally agreed that he could send a letter every once in a while, addressed to the Bologna State Opera ticket office, attn: Francesca. Franny would know what to do with it.

  We parted at the train station without knowing how or when we’d see each other again. It was one of those scenes from a movie. I cried like a baby.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Pienza, September 2017

  CATHERINE WAS PACKING TO go home for a long weekend. “My poor Ben, he won’t even recognize me. I’ve been gone so long.”

  “You’ve talked to him, FaceTime’d him, Skype’d him, whatever. How many times can Carol plant him in front of a computer?”

  “It’s not the same. I want to hold him.”

  “You went back two weeks ago. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go, but you should quit feeling so guilty. He’s doing fine with Sarah and his aunt and his cousins.”

  “Don’t you miss him?”

  “Of course, I miss him. But I have confidence that my two-year-old will still recognize me when I finish this assignment. We still have work to do if we’re going to save Gabi’s farm.”

  “I can still hear the judge’s words in my head,” Catherine said. “‘Missing evidence is not the same as admissible evidence. Evidence! Not theory, not supposition, not conclusions to be drawn from mysteriously missing books. Evidence!’ And as of this date, we don’t have it, Liam.”

  “I think the judge is sympathetic,” Giulia said. “Who wouldn’t be? A big corporation picking on an elderly woman. But you’re right, Catherine. We need physical evidence. If we only had something tangible in our hands to back up the testimony from Berto and Hernandez. It would supplement the inferences from the missing documents. That registry book must be somewhere.”

  “I think we need to face facts,” Liam said. “We’re not going to find the book. If it ever existed outside the registrar’s office, it has long ago been incinerated. Fabio saw the page, Fabio was bribed to hide the book and Fabio is dead. Vanucci is dead and any nominee
agreement that existed in Hernandez’s files has long ago been shredded. Let’s face it: Lenzini has covered his tracks.”

  Catherine crossed her arms on her chest. “So, you want to give up?”

  “You know me better than that. We need to find evidence, and it’s not where we’ve been looking. We need to expand our search parameters. Look elsewhere. I think we need to start with the Quercia Company. How does some German woman come to own an Italian wine company? How did Quercia come to be listed in the registry book for land once owned by Friede Baumgarten? What the hell is the Quercia Company?”

  “When you involved me in this case, I did a quick check on Quercia,” Giulia said. “It was organized some seventy-five years ago. It had one shareholder.”

  “Gerda Fruman?”

  “Actually, the shareholder was a German trust. The German court held that Gerda Fruman was the sole beneficiary of the trust. So, in essence, Fruman was the sole owner of Quercia.”

  “That’s a lot of effort to disguise the real owner,” Catherine said.

  Liam pursed his lips and nodded. “You’re right. It’s damn confusing. On purpose. It’s bigger than a person named Gerda Fruman. According to Franco, she never set foot on the property. Maybe we need to start in Germany. Giulia, do you know an attorney in Berlin?”

  She shook her head.

  “I bet Walter does,” Catherine said. “He has a network of law firms he works with all over the world.”

  “Who is Walter?” Giulia asked.

  Liam and Catherine laughed simultaneously. “The eminent Walter Jenkins, senior partner in the Chicago firm of Jenkins and Fairchild, Catherine’s first boss,” Liam said. “Jenkins fired Catherine eight years ago over the representation of a Holocaust survivor named Ben Solomon. He gave Cat an ultimatum: ‘Withdraw from Solomon’s case or you’re fired.’ Since my baby doesn’t take crap from anybody, she walked right out the door.”

  Catherine shook her head. “We had a difference of opinion on whether we should continue to represent someone who offended Jenkins and Fairchild’s elite clients. Walter felt that continuing to represent Ben was harmful to our practice. That’s all it was. I chose to leave the firm.”

  “Good for you,” Giulia said. “But why would Walter help us?”

  “Bygones are bygones,” Liam said. “A few years later, Cat and I bailed his firm out of a jam when one of his lawyers was involved in wire transfer fraud. A year after that, Jenkins personally represented Catherine in a contempt hearing when my hard-nosed wife wouldn’t divulge a confidential conversation with her client and a judge was going to throw her into jail.”

  “And you think that Walter Jenkins might know an attorney in Berlin?”

  “I’m sure that Jenkins and Fairchild has done business with German industries,” Catherine said. “He would know someone.”

  * * *

  “OF COURSE I KNOW a lawyer in Berlin,” Walter said. “Gunther Strauss. He offices in that huge Sony building in the Potsdamer Platz. Why do you need him?”

  “Liam and I are involved in a case in Italy. It’s a dispute over a vineyard in Tuscany.”

  “A vineyard in Tuscany? How do you get cases like that? Do you need co-counsel? I’m available.”

  “Thanks, but what we really need is to research our opponent, a corporation that appears as owner of record. We’re challenging the ownership. It’s an Italian corporation owned by a German trust.”

  “Sounds like somebody’s hiding something. Well, Gunther’s very well connected. He can get things done in Berlin, if you know what I mean. He’ll help you out. He’s a good guy. Tell him I said hello.”

  * * *

  “MR. STRAUSS, THIS IS Catherine Lockhart. I used to be an associate at Jenkins and Fairchild.”

  “My sympathies, I’ve played golf with Walter.”

  “He said to send his regards. I’m working on a matter in Pienza, Italy, and I need your help.”

  “In Italy? Do you need me there personally?”

  “No, I’m sorry. We need work done in Berlin.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. What kind of work do you need?”

  “We represent a woman in a dispute over who owns a farm in the province of Siena. The registry book lists an Italian company as the owner. We believe the book is in error. We’re challenging the corporation’s claim to title. The company’s name is the Quercia Company. The sole shareholder is supposedly a German family trust. We’d like to know as much about that trust as possible. We’d also like to research the sole beneficiary, Gerda Fruman, who died sometime in 2015.”

  “We can do that. Would you like me to bring the report to you personally?”

  “That’s not at all necessary.”

  “Maybe not for you, but Siena in September would do me a world of good.”

  “Ha. We’d love to have you, but the report is all we need.”

  * * *

  THE REPORT WAS DELIVERED to Giulia’s office two days later. It read:

  Dear Attorney Lockhart:

  We are pleased to present the results of our research into the Quercia Company S.p.A. and its shareholders. Our research led us to a 2015 file in the Berlin probate court. When Gerda Fruman died, a decedent’s estate was opened by petition of VinCo S.p.A., an Italian corporation, alleged to be a creditor of Quercia Company. The information for this report is extracted from details we found in the probate file.

  Quercia Company. Formed May 18, 1944, in Italy. The corporation was organized by Hermann Rugel, attorney-at-law, who practiced on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. The single shareholder was a trust. Neither the trust agreement nor its records were found in the probate file. Apparently, Mr. Rugel knew how to hide ownership. According to the probate court records, the sole beneficiary of the trust was Elsa Fruman, Gerda’s mother, an unmarried woman. We cannot determine whether or not the Quercia Company ever did business. No income tax return has ever been filed here or in Italy. However, annual corporate filings identify a parcel of farmland owned by the corporation in Siena Province. It doesn’t appear from any records we can find that the company had an ongoing business. It is our opinion that the company was formed for the sole purpose of holding the land, perhaps as an investment for future sale. There are no other corporate records that we have been able to locate. Neither the probate file, nor any corporate filings disclose how Quercia Company acquired ownership of the farmland. The location of Mr. Rugel’s office was a building on Friedrichstrasse that was destroyed during the Allied bombing in 1945. Mr. Rugel’s death is recorded in 1947. If there were successors to his practice, it would have been in East Germany and there are no records that we can find.

  Gerda Fruman. Born April 4, 1944, in Munich, Germany; died January 16, 2015, in Berlin. Her mother was Elsa Fruman, the original beneficiary of the trust. There is no father identified on the birth certificate, but it was not legally necessary to name the father. As far as we can tell, Gerda Fruman was never married and did not have any children. She lived in East Berlin until German unification in 1990. Tax records for the years 1992 through 2001 reflect she was a clerk in a medical office, earning a modest clerk’s salary. As sole heir to Elsa Fruman, she would have inherited her mother’s interest in Quercia Company upon Elsa’s death in 1956, although there were no probate proceedings ever instituted for Elsa. The tax records do not reflect that Gerda received any money from farming operations. We think it is likely that Gerda never knew that her mother owned Quercia. Within two weeks after Gerda’s death, a probate proceeding was opened by VinCo, which claimed to be a creditor of Quercia, in that VinCo allegedly provided maintenance for Quercia’s vineyard during Gerda’s life. VinCo offered to buy the property for the value of the maintenance it had provided. The court ruled that Elsa’s interest was inherited by Gerda and thus could be sold to VinCo. There were no other parties in the probate proceeding and no one was there to object. Having conveyed the property to VinCo, the probate case was closed.

  We are pleased to be of service to you in this matter
. Please allow us to provide any further services you deem necessary.

  Yours truly,

  Gunther Strauss

  “Well, that’s a whole lot of nothing,” Giulia said to Catherine on speakerphone. “We don’t know any more now than we knew before.”

  Liam held his finger up. “Not true. We know that the Quercia Company was formed by a German lawyer at the very same time that it first appeared in the registry book—1944. We also know that great pains were taken to keep Elsa Fruman’s identity hidden, first by a corporation and then by a trust agreement. If you were to check the corporation, you would only see that it was owned by a trust. We know that Elsa was a single mother with one child. Maybe she or her child didn’t know anything about the vineyard. It makes me think that Elsa was a placeholder. The same with Gerda. Someone else was pulling the strings. Then suddenly, immediately after Gerda dies, VinCo petitions the court to buy her interest. Two weeks! How did VinCo know she died? How did VinCo, this large Italian company, know anything about Elsa or Gerda? The trust kept their identities hidden.”

  “And what is this nonsense about maintaining Gabi’s property?” Catherine said. “From what I’ve read, Friede was taking care of the property. She was going to viticulture school. Franco and his family have been taking care of the property for the last fifty years. I bet if we asked Franco if VinCo ever maintained the property he’d say no.”

  “There’s something else,” Liam said. “In Ada’s story, she wrote that Matteo had a new camera and took pictures when Friede bought the property, right?”

  Catherine groaned. “I’m not that caught up, remember? I’m a few chapters behind you.”

  “Here’s what she wrote: Matteo took pictures of the group holding glasses of prosecco to celebrate when Friede bought the property. Friede, Ada, Signor Partini, Hernandez and a real estate agent named Sylvia were all in the picture. What if the deed is visible?”

  Catherine chuckled. “I love the way you think, but that is what you call a real long shot. What’s the chance that a deed is readable in a photo taken in 1939? Matteo was Natalia’s older brother. He would not be alive today, nor would Natalia. The purchase was eighty-eight years ago and both of them were in their twenties at the time.”