Priceless

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “Different, in what way?” asked Karol gently at last.

  “As if there were a perpetual-motion machine in his heart. He didn’t need fuel, he spurred himself into action. He went to bed late, like a child who sees sleep as a waste of time. He was always up bright and early. Never weary or disheartened, he always had a purpose, a new summit to conquer. That’s why he did so well in business.”

  And that was all she said about the painting.

  “Why did you call him Hein?” asked Zofia. “It’s the German nickname for Heinrich, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But . . . until it all happened, he adored German culture. He spoke German like a native and was so good at copying accents that he could pretend to be a Bavarian, a Tyrolean, or a Swiss, and they always bought it. The Germans loved it.”

  “The Germans?” asked Karol.

  “Yes, he worked for . . . I can’t remember, I think it was a chemical firm. There was a time when I hardly saw him and only received postcards. He always sent postcards from each place with little poems. Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Zurich. He went to Frankfurt so often that he had his own apartment there.”

  “A nice one?”

  “I don’t know.” Suddenly the old woman turned sad. “They never showed it to me. But why on earth show someone a dead child? It’s enough for the mother to have to give birth to it. That’s enough punishment. Why show her what it looks like too? It’s dead, and that’s that.”

  Her sudden reference to this personal trauma made them feel awkward.

  “Perhaps you’d like some cheesecake?” said Natalia. “It’s the best in Lviv; I make it according to Granny’s recipe.”

  Granny’s face brightened, and they all helped themselves to a slice of cake.

  “And what happened to those paintings during the war?” asked Zofia. Karol was surprised to find how good she was at being dogged yet polite with her questions.

  “Hein was a wise man. He took them down and hid them long before the war and left out some gold for the Soviets so they’d leave him in peace. He hid them well; he had special ways of storing things. I remember the canvases were impregnated with . . . I can’t remember, paraffin, I think, or kerosene . . . He explained it to me once, but I told him I’d prefer him to impregnate me.” The old lady giggled in a lewd way, which had a ghastly effect. “And then something strange happened.”

  And she went silent again. A faraway look. Afraid to break the silence, they each ate two slices of cheesecake, which really was delicious. But they couldn’t wait forever.

  “What strange thing happened?” Zofia asked.

  “People panicked, they left their houses, and sought refuge from the aliens. But it was just a radio play. The modern television doesn’t have the power that radio had in those days.”

  Karol quickly realized she was talking about The War of the Worlds broadcast.

  “What strange thing happened to Henryk’s paintings? What about them?” Zofia had stopped trying to make her questioning sound purely social.

  Surprisingly, this method worked.

  “The strange thing was that they had been well hidden. He couldn’t tell me where, but he boasted they could stay hidden for two hundred years and nobody would find them. And then he suddenly started coming and going without a word, until one day he came back looking awful. He had the look of death in his eyes. We made love, and I knew it would be the last time. I was hysterical. But he told me to calm down, that he loved me very much but he had to go. And then he left. It was the penultimate time we ever saw each other.”

  Zofia and Karol exchanged looks.

  “And what happened the last time you ever saw him?”

  Granny Olga had floated off into her own world. They waited patiently.

  “What happened the last time you saw Henryk?” Zofia insisted.

  The old lady turned her violet eyes on her. “My dear, it’s true that I’m old. But I’m not entirely deaf or stupid, so please have some respect. Sometimes I’m silent because I have to relieve myself. Other times it’s because I don’t wish to return to the past. Surely you have memories you don’t wish to revisit?”

  “You’re right,” replied Zofia quietly.

  “So you know what I’m talking about. I’ll tell you, and then you must leave, all right? I’ll be left here with the demons you’ve conjured.”

  They politely nodded.

  “The last time I saw Hein was several months after he’d left without a word that night in June, just before Saint John’s Day. A few days later all hell broke loose, nobody knew what was going on. The Russkies had left, but then the Germans appeared. In Lwów terrible things were happening; I stayed put in the country—the local villagers liked us—so I felt relatively safe. But a few months later, the Germans came to the countryside. Late at night two cars and a truck stopped outside the house, men in black SS uniforms. I panicked and hid behind a drape in the sitting room.”

  Granny Olga fell silent again.

  “They came inside. I’ve never been so afraid. I decided that if they found me, I’d pretend to be a Jew. I knew some Yiddish. I told myself that then they’d be too disgusted to touch me; they’d kill me on the spot. And then I heard the officer. He was giving them commands, as if training unruly dogs, in a quiet but very firm tone. The perfectly familiar voice of Henryk Aszkenazy. I couldn’t think what was going on. The voice that so many times in this very room had told me jokes and whispered sweet nothings was giving orders to a gang of Nazis. I thought it was a coincidence, but I couldn’t see and was afraid to move.”

  “You’ve never told me this. We’ve been living together for thirty years and you’ve never told me this.” There was deep hurt in her granddaughter’s voice.

  “They went off somewhere, the officer and the rest. I wondered whether or not I should flee, but I was afraid I’d run into them. I figured I might be safe where I was. So I waited. A few minutes later they came back in, panting—probably from carrying something heavy.”

  “The paintings,” said Zofia.

  “That’s right. When they left again, I peeped out from behind the drape. There were rolled-up paintings in the sitting room, leaning against the wall by the fireplace. My first thought was that it wasn’t possible, because Hein had hidden them as best he could. There was no way the Krauts could have found them so quickly. Then they came back with the next bunch, and I saw him. In a black uniform with the death’s head insignia, a small mustache, and a pair of idiotic round glasses. It was dreadful and somehow comical.”

  Mrs. Bortnik sank into her thoughts again.

  “All right,” she said after a heavy sigh. “That was when they found me. I must have moved, and a Kraut dragged me out from behind the drape, wriggling and kicking while they laughed. I was sure this was the end, but Hein silenced them, and then . . . it was awful . . . he picked me up and slapped me. He screamed in German, what was I doing here, where was the owner. I had no idea what was going on, I was crying, repeating over and over in Polish that he was a traitor. He dragged me outside, and I was sure he was going to shoot me. But he went on screaming in German. And then he spoke to me in Polish, in a whisper. He told me to run away, that he loved me, and that one day he’d come and find me.

  “That was the last time I ever saw Henryk Aszkenazy.”

  13

  Only when they went up to the wall could they see that the hall of mirrors wasn’t a product of the Yugoslav leisure industry after all. The mirrors were old; here and there the silver layer beneath the glass surface had lost its sheen or flaked off, creating a bizarre effect.

  Wendy put a hand on the doorknob.

  “It was going to be a surprise for this evening,” said Željko glumly.

  Wendy turned the knob and they went into a large space in semidarkness; a small bit of sunlight was coming in from the hall of mirrors and through narrow gaps in the curtains.

  The room was large and circular, with a high ceiling. It stank of dust.

  Small feet pattered across th
e wooden floor.

  “Wheredego?” they heard Charlie’s happy question from the other end of the room.

  Then Željko opened the curtains.

  Now Anatol could see how this mansion could have been built by Ignacy, Count Korwin-Milewski.

  The theater was like a miniature Roman pantheon—perfectly round, topped with a flattened dome, made of numerous square panels. But instead of a skylight it had a ceiling, with a hideous chandelier hanging from a long cable, a Chinese artifact composed of lots of small light bulbs sticking out in all directions.

  The main axis of the room was marked by a small stage on one side, and huge windows on the other. This side of the mansion was on the edge of the hill, above a sheer drop, and through the windows they could see nothing but sky and the sea shimmering in the rays of the sun. The view was incredible, as if they weren’t inside the house, but were soaring over the surface of the Adriatic in a fantastical nineteenth-century vehicle.

  Around the sides of the room were some recesses, which must have once been theater boxes.

  In the middle stood Željko’s surprise: a huge Christmas tree, decorated with pages filled with type, folded to make origami animals. For a while Wendy stared at it in astonishment, then threw her arms around her husband’s neck.

  Although neglected, the hall hadn’t lost its former beauty; not even the small turquoise plastic chairs lined in several rows could take that away.

  “Wheredego?” Charlie was clearly getting impatient.

  Wendy and Željko broke free of each other and called out for the child, shuffling the chairs around, pretending to have lost him. The boy stamped his feet in excitement. Then he stuck his curly head out from behind the curtain, convinced he was invisible.

  “Well, I never,” said Anatol to Lisa. “It looks as if our Count was a real connoisseur of culture. Paintings, now a theater, his library was probably quite something too.”

  “Here he is!” bawled the giant, making them both jump.

  Željko drew the curtain, revealing Charlie, who jumped up and down, shouting for joy. The stage behind the curtain was strange, flat, with no wings, more like a movie screen.

  Lisa wandered the hall, mumbling to herself in Swedish. She stopped by the windows, stared at the sea, and then turned around.

  “This isn’t a theater,” she said. “It’s a showroom. Look, the stage is too shallow, so are the boxes. And why would a theater have such large windows? This is a gallery. The Count must have kept his collection in here. Or at least the most important pieces.”

  “The self-portraits.”

  “Exactly. Do you remember what Zofia said? Large canvases, three feet by five, all the same size.”

  Anatol examined the recesses. He estimated their size. “They’re a perfect fit.”

  “That’s nothing. Take a close look, at the top.”

  He looked up. Each of the recesses was crowned with a semicircular arch, and at the highest point there was something that looked like a heraldic cartouche with a relief; at first it was hard to discern what was hidden beneath the layers of paint. But with a little effort he noticed that there were no heraldic symbols in the cartouches. There were letters.

  “Here’s AG,” he read.

  “And I’ve got CM.”

  “Any idea what it means?”

  Lisa shrugged.

  “Perhaps CM is ninety in Roman numerals?”

  He waved dismissively. The other symbols couldn’t be explained that way. His military mind was already drifting toward codes and secret messages. What he needed to do was look for the simplest solutions. In his mansion the Count had a special hall for his finest collection, most likely the self-portraits, which he commissioned from various painters. He wouldn’t have marked them with a code—that made no sense.

  He glanced at the cartouche again.

  “Aleksander Gierymski,” he said.

  Lisa turned around. “Claude Monet.”

  They moved along the walls, swapping names. They couldn’t decipher every name from the nineteen recesses in the enormous hall, probably for lack of knowledge of Polish art history, but there was a truly stellar lineup of French painters: as well as Monet, there was Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, and Édouard Manet. Finally they stopped by the “stage” or the main nook, several times bigger than the others.

  Charlie and Željko were doing a Croatian folk dance, shaking the whole floor.

  On the cartouche above the frame surrounding the main nook, there were three letters: “TLM.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?” asked Anatol.

  Lisa shrugged. “Toulouse-Lautrec was really called Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa. The dates would fit, he was in Paris in the 1890s, painting like mad when he wasn’t screwing prostitutes or swilling absinthe. He liked large canvases, so it would fit. But why would he be marked differently? It should say HTL, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.”

  Anatol took out his phone to snap photographs of the illuminated hall.

  What did you keep in here, dear Count? You brought people in through the mirror door, drew back the drapes, and allowed them to delight in your treasures. Then finally you raised the curtain, to show them the treasure of all treasures, your most valuable conquest.

  But what was it?

  14

  They put on their coats and went back to say goodbye to Granny Bortnik, who had dozed off in her chair. They were about to sneak out when the old lady awoke, graciously accepted their effusive thanks, and offered Karol her hand.

  He stroked Falkor too, which earned him a look of disgust from Zofia.

  “When did you receive the last card from Henryk?” she suddenly asked.

  “That’s not what we agreed,” said Mrs. Bortnik, glaring at her.

  “I’m sorry, but we need to know the truth about what happened to those paintings. It’s very important. I know how it sounds, but this really is a matter of life and death.”

  “I’ve already told you everything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Silence.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Zofia . . . ,” said Karol.

  “Leave me alone,” said Zofia. “Being old is not an excuse for pushing others around.”

  Natalia nodded to say that she agreed. Zofia went up to the wheelchair, grabbed hold of the armrests, and squatted in front of Olga Bortnik so their faces were level.

  “Mrs. Bortnik, we don’t have time for games and being offended.”

  “I’m tired . . .”

  “Well, I refuse to leave without an answer on this!”

  “What did you say your name is, dear?”

  “Zofia Lorentz.”

  The two women glared at each other.

  “Natalia, hand me the Swedish cookie tin next to his tail,” said the old woman.

  Natalia went up to the tip of Falkor’s tail. She opened a small closet underneath it and soon came back with a blue tin that had once contained Swedish gingerbread.

  Mrs. Bortnik rummaged through the contents, then handed them two postcards. The first was typical of Poland—it showed the Royal Castle in Kraków with a German caption: Krakau. Burg von der Weichsel aus gesehen. (Kraków. Castle seen from the Vistula.) Zofia turned the card over; it was addressed to Olga Bortnik, Lemberg (the German wartime name for the city), the same address where they were now. On the postage stamp was a Nazi emblem and the words General Government, as occupied wartime Poland was called. Price: sixty somethings.

  Instead of a message there was a love poem:

  When on her eyes of silver and sapphire blue

  She lowers her lids and falls onto her back

  And lies there softly, so sleepy and relaxed,

  Letting her head to her shoulder gently droop—

  And the flame of gas that’s burning over us

  Decks her half naked in light and shade as well,

  Barely can I see her white breast rise and fall,

  Brighter in the veil of sheer tr
ansparent lace:

  Such is her allure no god can surpass her,

  Beauties so wondrous, enchantment so peerless,

  As if she had been painted by an artist,

  Soul full of angels, an Italian master.

  There was no signature, but at the bottom he’d added, P. S. Be sure to give my best to Robert!

  Zofia glanced at Karol. They were both thinking the same thing. About the Italian master. And his work, the Young Man, who had spent the entire war with Hans Frank in the building featured on the postcard—the Royal Castle in Kraków. And then he’d vanished.

  “When was this sent?” asked Karol.

  Zofia examined the faded postmark. “Kraków, November 1944.”

  The second card was addressed to Olga Bortnik too. The postmark was completely smudged; neither the name of the post office or the date was legible.

  Instead of a message, once again there was a poem:

  Evviva l’arte! In our breasts the fires burn,

  lighted by the Lord, set by Him alone:

  in the mountain gorge we look with head upturned,

  we shan’t give laurels for a golden crown,

  even if our life is worthless from the start,

  evviva l’arte!

  And a note: P. S. Please be sure to give Robert my best!

  She turned the postcard over. A typical mountain scene. In the foreground there was a cable car, in the background a large mountain hostel, and the German caption said Tatra. Berghaus Krakau.

  Suddenly she understood.

  “Did you ever manage to give Robert his best?” she asked quietly.

  Instead of answering, the old woman asked, “Who is he to you . . . ?”

  “My grandfather,” replied Zofia even more quietly.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Robert Lorentz was killed in 1946, long before his granddaughter was born, and before his son was born too—two months after his mysterious death.

  “Extremely well for his age. He lives with my parents in Przemyśl.”

  “Please give him my best. From the snow leopard—he’ll know what it means.”

  She nodded.

  A violent shiver ran down Zofia’s spine, and she felt even more strongly that she didn’t want to go back to Poland. Because now she knew with total certainty that the reason why the mysterious hitman was after her was not because of her work and her intimate knowledge of the art world.