by Neil Olson
An Internet search revealed nothing on so obscure a subject. There was nothing dependable from Byzantine sources, either, no way to trace the icon back to its place and moment of creation. The only clues were to be found in the image itself. The bottom of the work was so damaged that he hadn’t been able to tell for certain whether there might once have been a depiction of the Christ child there, to whom Mary’s badly chipped hands should be directing the viewer. This would place the image squarely in the hodegetria style, “She who shows the way,” one of the most favored and oldest iconic traditions, based on an original painted by Saint Luke himself, according to popular myth. But the placement of the hands and the half turn to the right of the entire figure—more likely to direct the viewer’s attention outside the frame—seemed to place the image more in the hagiasoritissa tradition. This series was associated with the relic of Mary’s hood or sash, brought back from the Holy Land by Saint Helena in the fourth century and placed in a reliquary, above which the prototype of this image would have hung.
There were some arguments against this identification. The Katarini icon looked the viewer dead in the eye, instead of following the hand gestures to the right, where an icon of Jesus would generally accompany it. However, Matthew knew other images in the tradition which also broke that rule. A bigger stumbling block was that the style hadn’t really become popular until the mid-tenth century, and the Katarini icon was certainly older than that, maybe much older. Yet who was to say the style hadn’t existed earlier? Perhaps previous versions had all been destroyed in the iconoclasm of the eighth century. Indeed, Matthew thought, allowing the long-suppressed conjecture which had been building within him all morning to come forward, who was to say this image was not the long-lost prototype itself? The first of its kind, the inspiration for all that followed?
A shiver passed through his arms as the notion seized him. He fought this sudden agitation, assuring himself that the religious significance of such a find meant little to him. It would, though, mean a great deal to others, like the church officials who had contacted Fotis. Even as an art historical identification it would be impressive indeed—career-making, perhaps. Alas, unless further evidence came to light from some hidden source, it would remain forever a theory. Meantime, if he would never know for certain from where the Holy Mother had sprung, or how it made its eventual way to Epiros, at least he could review the traces of evidence regarding its time there.
The catalogs of the great art critics of centuries past had little room for Eastern Orthodox, and when it was included, it was always the same handful of icons: the sixth-century Peter, Mary, and Christ Pantokrator at Saint Catherine’s in Sinai; some later pieces of Theophanes and Rublev in Russia; the Vladimir Virgin; a few others. Considering its placement in the rugged hills of Greece, not to mention the vast number of works in that country claiming special spiritual status, the Katarini Holy Mother’s becoming known at all had to count as nearly miraculous. The first mention Matthew could discover was from the English adventurer Thomas Hall, who traveled all over Greece and Turkey in the 1780s. Hall’s highly fanciful travelogues included, among many unlikely reports, one of the “Holy Mother of Epiros” (as if there were only one Holy Mother icon in the whole region), described as “more scratched wood than paint, except for the very lovely face of the Virgin” and as “curing blindness in true-hearted souls at a touch of its worn wood, but striking blind those of an evil or avaricious nature.” This followed the story of the levitating monks of Metéora and directly preceded that of the miraculous vision of Christ in the peasant wife’s washcloth. Matthew always had a good laugh reading Hall.
Lord Byron, on his first, nonfatal sojourn in Greece in 1809, made mention of a miraculous Holy Mother icon possessed by the Muslim tyrant Ali Pasha, who was already old but vigorous in mind and body, and would remain so until his death at the hands his Turkish overlords in 1822. Again, the description was very close to the Katarini icon, and Byron reported a strange golden aura about the work. Matthew shook his head. If I drank as much as you, Georgie boy, he thought, I’d see auras around paintings too.
The last volume on the table, however, was the one that troubled him most. Johann Mayer-Goff was a traveler of the late nineteenth century and a self-trained specialist on Orthodox art. The German was a sober, stolid, even somewhat boring writer, at least in translation, not given to hyperbole or floating monks. He was the first to name the village of Katarini as the residence of the icon, and he had attended the feast of the Annunciation in that same old church which Fotis’ man burned down sixty years later. The day was rainy, Mayer-Goff wrote, and only candlelight illuminated the dank stone sanctuary:
The icon was brought forth from its place of hiding and positioned near the altar. The peasant women wept in their seats, until they fell into the aisle and approached the Mother of God upon their knees, caressing the wood with their gnarled hands. One among them, who had not walked unaided in many years, stood suddenly upon shaking feet and praised Heaven. At the last, a blind old shepherd with an angry face was led forward by a young man and a girl, who seemed to pull him against his will. When his hand was placed against the forehead of the All-Holy, he cried out once and fixed his eyes upon the nearest candle flame, then upon all of us in the congregation. It was made clear from his movements that he could see us, and with another cry he fell upon the stone floor and wept like child. I saw this with my own eyes.
Matthew began to see dark spots on the page and realized that he had not taken a breath in many moments. Inhaling deeply, he then exhaled an embarrassed laugh. Get a grip on yourself, buddy.
“There you are.”
He looked up to see his older colleague Carol Voss standing before the table, and slapped shut the volume of Mayer-Goff as if he’d been caught by his mother reading Penthouse.
“Here I am, indeed.”
“Not answering your e-mails,” she scolded gently, her green eyes behind large glasses looking him over carefully. Carol was a mentor of sorts, his only close friend at the museum, and there was little he could keep from her.
“It’s not just yours I’m ignoring, if that makes you feel better.”
“This about the Kessler icon?” she waved at the books on the table.
“Yes.”
“Checking provenance?”
“More or less. It’s sketchy.”
“Are we serious about this?” she asked skeptically.
“Are you pretending that I would know that better than you, Ms. Finger-on-the-Director’s-pulse?”
She laughed. “I haven’t a clue. Nevins seems excited.”
“Yeah, but he’s up at the Cloisters every day. I don’t even know if he’s spoken to Fearless Leader.”
“Speak to him yourself.”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“You seem worried,” she said, out of nowhere. “Are there ownership issues?”
“Maybe,” he conceded, in a barely audible tone.
“Have we filed with the Art Loss Register?”
“Not yet. We need to be a little more certain we want it, right? Besides, if there’s a theft involved, it isn’t going to show up there. It would be older.”
The phrase “wartime loot” hung in the air between them, unspoken. Carol clearly thought of saying more, and Matthew found himself wishing she would, wishing for someone upon whom to unburden himself. She squeezed his shoulder instead.
“Good luck, kiddo. Tell me if you want help. And Matthew, I know this is a fantastic piece and all, but it’s just one piece. It’s not your whole life.”
Calling Benny Ezraki was a long shot. The card with the message service number was years old, and Andreas did not know if Benny was alive, much less still in the business of finding people, but he was unquestionably the right man for the job if he would take it. There was no recorded voice, just a tone. Andreas left his name and the hotel number, and ten minutes later his old Israeli contact called back. Andreas could stop by his new office,
if he liked, but he might not approve of it. The old man knew he was being baited but agreed to go there anyway.
The name on the door was for a travel agency, and indeed the posters of Turkey and Egypt on the walls and the efficient young women with their headsets seemed to confer legitimacy. But that was only the first floor. The second, reached by a long stairway, consisted of narrow corridors and closed doors, and the barely dressed, boldly casual women smoking in the small lounge completed the picture. They all smiled at Andreas and pointed to the office in back.
Benny met him with a bear hug, which seamlessly segued into a frisk. Habit, he apologized. The wily Greek Jew still looked younger than his age, which must be late fifties, though he seemed a little beaten down and tired. The beard was graying faster then the hair, the huge shoulders were more hunched, the pouches beneath the gentle brown eyes were more pronounced. The office had a view of the alley, a large computer monitor on the table, and a Pissarro calendar on the wall. The light was poor, and the cramped space was shrouded in blue cigarette smoke.
“Did you really expect me to be shocked by this place?”
“I was hoping so; you Athenians are all prudes. But I forget you are a man of the world.”
“This is your new business?”
The big man sucked on a cigarette as if his life depended upon it, blew smoke just to the left of Andreas’ face. He seldom smiled, even when he was kidding around.
“Always the same business. Travel, marketing, whores, it’s all about information. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things these girls find out.”
Andreas, a connoisseur of human nature, found it very easy to believe.
“Are they safe?”
“A doctor checks them every month. You want to try one?”
“That is not what I’m asking.”
“I don’t give them sensitive stuff. Mostly names. Send them around to the hotels whose databases we can’t hack. But they always come back with stories. You know, blackmail is not my thing, but if it were I could make a fortune.”
“You’re too casual for that kind of work; you would get yourself killed.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Can we speak freely? Is the Israeli ambassador in the next room?”
“We get very little traffic in here,” Benny replied, the battered ergonomic chair groaning beneath his shifting weight. “Mostly we send out. Like Chinese food. This isn’t a bordello.”
“No?”
“No, we’re an escort service. These aren’t even the prime girls.”
“Not so loud.”
“The prime girls wait at home for the phone to ring. We screen it, make sure it’s safe, get the credit card number, send them out.”
“All in the name of information.”
“That’s my business.”
“Excellent. I’m looking for someone.”
Benny twisted awkwardly to reach the ashtray on his cluttered desk, mashed out one Gauloises, and immediately lit another.
“Aren’t you retired?”
“For years.”
“But never completely, right?”
“I kept my hand in for a while. Until the idiots brought Papandreou back. That was the end.”
“Papandreou, Mitsotakis, not much to choose from there. This new one seems like a decent fellow. Now our Israeli politicians—”
“We’re not discussing politicians, Benny.” Andreas sensed a brush-off in the other man’s tone. “This is unofficial business. A favor. I’m reduced to asking favors these days. You can refuse after you hear what it is, but please let us not talk politics. That’s for old men in cafés.”
“Why would I refuse you?”
“Because there is nothing in it for you. Except my gratitude.”
“And gratitude is such a small thing these days? I think I can judge best what is in my own interests.”
Andreas pursed his lips and nodded. He’d hit the correct spot, but he must not push it.
“Years ago you helped me with something.”
“God defend us, are you chasing Nazis again?”
“The same one.”
“He’s dead.”
“No, he’s here.”
Benny looked at him hard. “You are certain?”
“Yes.”
This was risky. He had only Fotis’ word about Müller, which he would never normally trust uncorroborated. Yet his instinct told him it must be so, had been telling him since before he left Greece. If he was wrong, it was a cruel trick. Benny’s parents had been taken in the Salonika deportation in 1943 and died at Auschwitz. Müller may or may not have been involved, but he was a German officer in Salonika at the time, and that had been good enough for Benny thirty years before. He had been the one Mossad analyst to throw Andreas some leads, and the two had played straight with each other since then. They were both, by nature, careful about facts, and Andreas did not say he was certain of a thing unless he was.
“But you don’t know exactly where he is.”
“That’s what I need you to tell me.”
“Then how do you know he’s here?”
“I have been informed.”
“A dependable source, I hope.”
“I’ll pay you. So you’re not wasting your time.”
“Been hoarding your drachmas? Well, when a Greek agrees to pay, he must be pretty certain. But then it’s not a favor.”
“We can dispense with favors. Or you can refuse me, but don’t toy with an old man.”
Benny put up his hands in surrender, leaned over to get another cigarette, then realized he hadn’t finished the one in the ashtray. He was more agitated than he would let on.
“Müller. You know how much trouble you got me into over that business?”
“How could I not, after all the times you told me? But you work for yourself now.”
“Which means I have fewer resources than I used to.”
“But better technology.”
“This,” Benny waved at the monitor, “this won’t help us with Müller. I don’t see him making it easy on us, staying at a big hotel.”
“Why not? No one has looked for him in years. A private citizen, traveling under an alias, where better to hide but in a crowded hotel?”
The other man considered this. “You may be right. In my experience, however, people’s behavior doesn’t change. They may vary a pattern, but the pattern is discernible. Those old Nazis don’t stay at hotels.”
“Where do they stay?”
“Private homes, if they have those connections. In which case we’ll never find him. I haven’t looked for one of these guys for a while, and never in this country, but there used to be two small inns, run by elderly German ladies, very discreet. One in Brooklyn, which may be gone now; and one in the Village. That’s where I would start.”
“And will you?”
“I have some conditions.”
Andreas sighed. He would rather have paid a king’s ransom than have someone else set conditions, but Benny was a peer and couldn’t be treated like some low-clearance freelancer.
“Yes?”
“What are your intentions when you find him?”
“That is a question, not a condition.”
“One flows from the other. I need to know.” Benny sized him up unblinkingly, while Andreas took longer to form a response than was wise. “My friend,” the younger man pressed, leaning forward in his chair, “do you even know what your intentions are?”
“I have questions for him, if he can be made to answer them. It is also important that I monitor his actions.”
“You once had bolder plans than that.”
“I was younger. He is not responsible for your parents, Benny, he was only there to steal. That is all he has ever been about.”
“That may be true, but it doesn’t forgive his actions. I’ve seen his signature on arrest orders. He participated. Then there’s your story, that would be reason enough
.”
“Reason for what? Tell me your damn conditions.”
From the window came the faraway wail of sirens. In a room close by a woman laughed. Andreas felt pinned to his chair by age and fatigue.
“I don’t want your money, first off. We do this together, or I don’t involve myself. I find him, we pay him a visit. He’s bound to be more responsive to your questions with me there.”
“And then?”
Benny shrugged.
“Assuming the circumstances allow it, we get rid if him.”
7
I made fresh coffee this time.”
She was used to conveying calm self-assurance, Matthew could tell, but her fidgeting about the counters bespoke nervousness. Was he the cause? Why should he be? More likely the messy details of her grandfather’s estate, which he had taken another afternoon away from his busy office to help her confront. He’d walked along the reservoir, barely aware of the brisk wind, the waning gold light on the water, the joggers’ dirty looks as they darted around him on the narrow path. His senses blunted by images in his mind: a blind shepherd suddenly beholding a candle’s flame; black-shrouded widows on callused, broken knees, baring their grief to the Mother, walking away cleansed; a dark chamber full of weary, resigned supplicants made one, made whole, if only for a little while, by a touch, a glance. Faces like his grandfather’s, his aunts’ and cousins’, faces like his own. Mayer-Goff’s words echoed in his skull: I saw this with my own eyes. He barely remembered to leave the park at Ninetieth Street, good shoes muddied by the horse trail, his pace and heartbeat quickening in a disquieting fashion the moment the Kessler brownstone came into view.