Old Scores (Chris Norgren 3)

by Aaron Elkins

  I got a top-floor room again (there is something about me that makes hotel clerks send me straight to the attic), unpacked the next day's clothes, and hung them in the closet. Actually, I like garret rooms. There is something about being under the eaves and looking out from dormer windows over the rooftops and chimney pots of an old city like Paris that puts you back a century or so. The shop windows four or five stories below have changed a lot over the years, and the people on the narrow streets are inescapably twentieth century, but the rooftops are right out of Daumier. I could have been looking from a nineteenth-century window onto a nineteenth-century roofscape. Well, I was, but you know what I mean.

  But today my mind was firmly in the twentieth century; not the 1990s but the darker time of the 1940s. At four o'clock, in a little over half an hour, I was due at the apartment of Julien Mann, the Saint-Denis man who was claiming that the Rembrandt was no Rembrandt, and that René Vachey, Nazi stooge and profiteer, had virtually stolen it from his father fifty years before.

  The efficient Calvin had gotten his telephone number for me, and I'd called him the previous evening after talking to Anne.

  Getting him to speak with me, even on the telephone, hadn't been easy. I'd had to work hard to convince his wife, first that I wasn't a reporter, and second that, museum curator or not, I had no wish to do him out of a painting if it was rightfully his.

  He'd picked up the telephone with undisguised reluctance. I had hoped, of course, that he would come across as an oily shyster who had seen a good thing and jumped at the chance to make a killing. Instead, he had been testy and curt, replying with crabby monosyllables to my long explanation of who I was and what I wanted to talk about. It had been all I could do to get him to agree to see me today, after he got home from his job at the payroll office of the Paris Metro.

  Sad to say, he hadn't seemed remotely like a shyster.

  The taxi took me north from the island over the Pont de Sully, past the blankly modernistic new opera house at the Place de la Bastille—state-of-the-art, they tell me, but about as cozy-looking as the infamous old prison that once stood there—and then up the Boulevard Beaumarchais, one of those lively streets that is everyone's idea of a Paris boulevard. Green-awninged cafes, brasseries, and restaurants follow one after another, most with calendar-scene tables and chairs out on the pavement. There are hordes of people who seem to have nothing more urgent to do than sit with a newspaper and a cup of coffee or an apéritif and watch the world go by. Even on a murky afternoon like this one, it was captivating.

  But a little farther on, the character changes. The awnings thin out. The people do too. The buildings become more stark and functional, and by the time you pass the Gare du Nord and the railroad yards, you are in a crushingly bleak, low-rise zone of light-industry plants—window glass, mattress covers, food processing, electronics—with isolated ten- or twelve-story apartment buildings rising meagerly among them like skeleton fingers. On top of every apartment house is a huge neon advertisement lit in blue or red, even at 4:00 p.m. MINOLTA, the signs say, or MITA, or VOLVO, or SANYO; one towering word per rooftop, creating a weird, sparse forest of twisting neon. They are there to catch the eyes of train passengers coming into Paris. Thus, when you approach from Paris, they're backward: OVLOV, ATIM, ATLONIM. You begin to wonder whether you're in the outskirts of Paris or Smolensk.

  Julien Mann lived in this charmless area, on the fourth floor of the OVLOV building. His wife, a self-effacing, slightly crosseyed woman in a simple, floral-printed dress—what used to be called a housedress in the United States before it went out of fashion forty years ago—let me into a foyer, then took me through an old-fashioned kitchen with a faint, greasy smell of lamb, and into a living room filled with heavy, dark furniture from the fifties. Everything was spotless, dustless, and in its place. I wondered if she had spent the day cleaning on my account.

  Mann was sitting in one of a pair of overstuffed armchairs, waiting for me. According to the newspaper article he had been seven in 1942, so he was now fifty-seven. He looked seventy, and an old seventy at that—a frail, severe, schoolmasterish man in suit and tie, with a pinched nose, a long, narrow mouth, and fierce, squinting eyes behind thick lenses. His gray hair had retreated halfway up his scalp, but what was left stood up in two stiff waves reminiscent of the "horns"—rays, actually—on Michelangelo's Moses.

  He rose halfway and shook hands perfunctorily. "Good day," he said in clipped French. His nose was faintly blue at the tip. He gestured me into the corner of the massive couch opposite him and resumed his seat, inspecting me from under drawn-together brows.

  "So he's dead," he said.

  Mrs. Mann murmured something and left us alone, closing the door behind her and going out—into the kitchen? The foyer? Silence followed. I had thought Mann was waiting for her to leave before continuing, but he just sat there, hunched alertly forward, elbows on the arms of his chair, squeezing the fingertips of one hand with the fingers of the other, scrutinizing me with unsettling directness. "So he's dead," it appeared, was all he meant to say.

  "About the painting," I said.

  His attention was acute but he didn't move, didn't speak. This was going to be up to me.

  "First," I said, "I want you to know that I'm not against you. If the painting is rightfully yours—if Vachey got it the way you say he did—then my museum would never stand in the way of your getting it back."

  He responded the way he had when I'd told him pretty much the same thing the night before, which is to say he didn't.

  "On the other hand," I went on, "you can understand that since his story is so different from yours, I have to do my best to find out as much as I can for myself."

  Silence. His fingers continued to pinch each other.

  "May I ask you a few questions, Monsieur Mann? About René Vachey, to begin with?"

  A dip of the chin, wary and reserved. It was more than I'd gotten till then.

  "According to the Echos Quotidiens article, you said Vachey bought up Jewish art collections at desperation prices, then sold them to the Nazis at a profit."

  Another minuscule nod.

  "Aside from your own case, do you have any evidence for that?" I winced the moment the words were out. It sounded like an interrogation.

  He stiffened. "It was no secret. Everyone knew it was so," he said sharply.

  "But you were only seven," I said, trying to seem less like a cross-examiner. "I'm surprised that a child would be aware of such things."

  I didn't like pressing him, but I had to find out what I could about Vachey's wartime activities. If he had really built his collection on what he'd made as a Nazi middleman and profiteer, then—even if the Rembrandt turned out not to be Mann's Flinck—Christian Vachey was welcome to it.

  "I know," Mann said through clamped jaws, "because my father told me. Later ... in the camp."

  "Did you know Vachey yourself? Were you ever in his gallery?"

  "I saw him when he came for the painting. A cold man, with a cruel smile. He frightened me; I clung to my father's hand." He shook his thin shoulders, like a horse ridding itself of a biting fly. "My father pleaded for a reasonable amount, but Vachey laughed in his face and told him he was lucky to get anything. I recall this with perfect clarity, monsieur."

  Did he? Or was it what Calvin had suggested—that he couldn't distinguish between what he remembered, what his father had told him, and what he had built up in his mind over the years? And what hope was there of my finding out after all this time?

  "Maybe we ought to talk about the painting itself," I suggested. "You haven't actually seen it—that's right, isn't it?"

  This was another important question Calvin had raised. Vachey's reception and showing were invitational affairs, not open to the general public. And no photos had been allowed. So how could Mann know what the picture looked like, let alone that it was the same one that had hung in his father's house?

  "Not since 1942," he said.

  "No, I'm talking sp
ecifically about the picture that's now on display in the Galerie Vachey."

  His mouth set. "Not . . . since . . . 1942."

  Time for another tack. "What I'm trying to find out, monsieur, is what makes you think that the Rembrandt that's now in Dijon is the same one—"

  "Flinck," he said aggressively, "not Rembrandt."

  "Well, either way, how do you know—"

  "How do I know?" he said sharply. "I'll tell you how I know." He pushed himself forward a little more, chin thrust out. Perched on the edge of his seat, with those hunched shoulders and that pointy nose, he was like a belligerent little sparrow hawk.

  "I never forgot that painting, monsieur. How could I? And I didn't forget Vachey either, but I didn't know what had happened to him. A few years ago I learned he was still alive, in Dijon, but what could I do? I assumed the painting was long gone. Then, a few weeks ago, there were stories of a mysterious Rembrandt he was giving away—a picture of an old soldier, it was said. Well, that gave the game away, because my father's painting was of an old soldier, and it was once thought that it might be by Rembrandt. But he had it looked into, you see."

  "He had it appraised?"

  "Yes, by some expert he'd heard of; from the Sorbonne, I think. It's definitely by Flinck. He was Rembrandt's student, you know."

  "Ah. Even so, mightn't—"

  "Let me finish. As it happens, my wife's cousin's son knows an Echos Quotidiens reporter who is familiar with the story. She was invited to the reception on Monday, and called me at once to describe it." His chin was thrust pugnaciously out; the tendons in his neck looked as if they might snap. "It is the same painting in every detail, monsieur!" he said triumphantly. "The old soldier, the hat, the plume!"

  "Still," I said, "if you haven't seen it for yourself, you can't be sure—"

  "And how am I to do that?" he said angrily. "My brother-in-law—ah, that is to say, my attorney—has demanded that I be given an opportunity to view it, and the Vachey people refuse. How then am I supposed to identify it? I ask you, is this just?"

  Actually, yes. The thing was, the burden of proof was on Mann, and Sully had the right to refuse to let him see the picture. In a case like this, so the reasoning ran, it would be too easy for a spurious claimant to look at the object in question and say: "Yes, definitely, that is the very same painting stolen from my family fifty years ago. Now I remember this fly speck, that fleck of glue on the frame, this repair." Who could argue? On the other hand, keeping the painting hidden from view left precious little in the way of ammunition for a legitimate claimant who had no independent proof—no photographs, no insurance records— that it was his.

  It was just, all right. What it wasn't, was fair.

  "My apologies, monsieur," Mann said abruptly. "Would you care for an apéritif?"

  I nodded gratefully. I cared for anything that might loosen things up.

  The side table next to him held a tray with a freshly opened bottle of Chablis, a cut-glass decanter of cassis, the blood-red black-currant syrup the French love so much, and two silver-rimmed, ornately etched glasses that would have been right at home in my Norwegian grandmother's cupboard. He mixed us two Kirs—wine and cassis—and handed one to me. "To your health, monsieur." He swallowed.

  The stuff is a bit sweet for my taste, but I raised my glass to him and took a sip. "Have you gone to the authorities about this, Monsieur Mann?"

  He nodded. "The Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Justice. They gave me a form to fill out. You know what they want to know?" He laughed bitterly. " 'Describe any identifying marks on the back. Describe the type of frame.' Can you believe this? A seven-year-old child is expected to know such things, and then remember fifty years later?"

  I was glad I hadn't gotten started on the list of questions I'd thought up for him: Which way was the subject facing? What color was the plume? Could you see one hand, two hands, no hands? For one thing, Mann would have taken offense and possibly thrown me out on my ear. For another, he was right: you couldn't expect a kid to be accurate about details half a century later. If he got the answers wrong, that didn't prove his story wasn't true. And if he got them right, that wouldn't prove he hadn't been coached.

  "I have no such proof to offer, monsieur; just my own memory of the painting hanging in our living room."

  "No papers at all? What about the attribution? Wasn't it documented?"

  He shrugged. "Gone."

  "Well, do you know anything about its provenance, about who owned it before?"

  "It had been my Aunt Marthe's. She had it a long time. I think it was in her husband's family. They're all dead now." He spread his palms. "That's all I know. I wish I knew more."

  So did I. "There aren't any relatives who could testify that they'd seen the picture in your house?"

  He lifted his glass to his mouth with both hands and drank. His face was hidden. "From those days," he said, "I have no more relatives."

  "What about—what about friends, neighbors? People who'd been in your house in the old days?"

  He smiled. "I'll tell you a little story, monsieur." He stood up and went to the window, looking down on the railroad yards.

  "In those days we lived in a pleasant apartment in the thirteenth arrondisement. Very nice neighbors. My father was a supervisor in the Post Office; a valuable employee, the Nazis let him stay on. But on December 28, 1942—just a few weeks after Vachey came and bought the picture—they came for him. For my mother, too, and my brother, Alfred. And me. We went to Birkenau, you know where that is?"

  "Poland," I said softly. It was one of the camps at Auschwitz.

  "Yes, Poland. Well, three years later I came back, without a family now, and went to live in Strasbourg with the family of an older boy I met in the camp. Then, in 1948, I returned to Paris. I was fourteen. I went back to see our apartment building. It was on the Avenue D'lvry. Some of our old neighbors still lived there, a very kind old couple named Odillard, just below our old apartment. They were happy to see me, and terribly distressed to hear about the deaths of my father and mother and brother, and they made me stay for dinner. They gave me boeuf à la mode, not so easy to find in those days."

  He was leaning on the windowsill, staring into the haze but not seeing it. "They gave it to me on my parents' dinnerware," he said tightly. "The willow-pattern plates my mother had bought when my brother, Alfred, was born, the silver that had been a wedding gift from her sister in Toulouse. In the corner was the buffet that we had kept them in. They didn't even realize it." He turned toward me, as if curious as to what my response would be.

  I didn't know what to say. "They'd stolen them?"

  I think he smiled, but it was hard to tell. "Not stolen, no. These were good, kind-hearted people, not thieves or monsters. Still, after the Nazis took us away, they just walked upstairs and took what they wanted. So did our other neighbors. We were Jews, after all, and what ever they might say now, they didn't expect ever to see us again. And then, somehow, these good, kind-hearted people managed to forget where they'd gotten these fine, new possessions, managed to forget the times my mother had served them coffee and cake on those same cups and plates. And they really did forget, you see."

  He came back and sat wearily down. "And so, Monsieur Norgren," he said, picking up his Kir again, "do you really expect that I could find friends and neighbors who would remember the beautiful portrait that hung in our home, and vouch for my claim?"

  Again, there wasn't much I could say. I sipped some more from my drink.

  Mann had finished his, and the alcohol appeared to have mellowed him. I suspected he didn't often drink; both bottles had been full to start with. "You seem like a nice young man," he said—making that twice in one day that someone had called me "young man." "But I must warn you that I will not rest until this painting is returned. What's right is right."

  Underneath the resolution there was a kind of subdued despair. He was fighting the good fight, I thought, but in his heart he didn't believe he could win it. Not aga
inst the famous René Vachey. Not against a big American museum.

  "I understand," I said. "We're not against you, Monsieur Mann. We want the painting to go where it rightfully belongs. If it's your father's painting, I will do what I can to help you get it back. I mean that sincerely."

  Behind the bottle-bottom glasses Mann's small, fierce eyes reappraised me. He'd begun with the idea that he was receiving an enemy. Now he wondered if I was—maybe not an enemy.

  "Thank you," he said gruffly. "I would like you to know that my motive is not profit. I would never sell it. It's all that's left of my father's. Everything else—everything from my childhood—is gone."

  "I understand," I said again. I was almost starting to wish it would turn out to be his.

  He leaned dreamily against the back of his chair. "It's a wonderful painting, isn't it? As a boy, I—another drink, monsieur?"

  I shook my head. The talk was winding down, and I sensed that I'd be going soon. Chalk up one more conversation that had answered no questions, resolved no ambiguities.

  "As a boy, my older brother and I—Alfred was his name— would play at soldiers. The old man in the picture was our captain; Capitaine Le Nez, we called him. Because of the nose, you see. We would line up before him and salute ..." An unreadable expression rolled over his face. His hand moved up to rest, trembling, on his domed forehead. "My God . . ."

  My interest quickened. "What is it?"

  "It's broken," he said wonderingly. "I forgot completely. We broke it."

  "You broke the painting?"

  "The frame—we broke the frame. I can describe it perfectly." Agitated, he reached out to touch my wrist with dry, spidery fingers. "That would be proof, wouldn't it?"

  He and his brother, he said, had been reporting to Capitaine Le Nez one morning, when the play had gotten a little rough. They had accidentally knocked the picture from the wall and chipped a piece from the lower right corner. Terrified, they had glued it back on and apparently gotten away with it; their father had never noticed the repair.