by Rose Edmunds
It would be pointless trying to enlighten him. Besides, after the pre-champagne, a large gin and tonic, and a copious amount of wine, it wouldn’t take much to provoke me into another attack. But on the other hand, it would be unkind to kick a man when he was down. So I merely said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, please.’
Mel’s mood was also strange and she seemed almost belligerent in her attitude towards Beresford, not that he noticed. Perhaps last night she’d seen the obnoxious side to him and had cooled towards him. She picked at her Salade Niçoise and took a “pro Brexit” stance, calculated to wind Beresford up, in the inevitable discussion about the referendum.
‘I would have thought,’ I ventured, ‘that what happened to George’s, Stanislav’s and Rudi’s families might give you pause for thought about the advantages of a united Europe. Don’t you agree, Maurice?’
‘Why yes, but it’s always so refreshing to hear Mel’s views. I’ve never met anyone who’s so anti-Europe as Mel.’
‘But don’t you see?’ said Mel. ‘That’s the whole sodding point. The country has been taken over by liberal elites like you who assume you know what’s best for everyone.’
I perked up at this fighting talk from Mel. Her vote to leave the EU would be an act of defiance against discredited experts who didn’t have her interests at heart. I imagined many people shared her views, yet they were routinely ignored or derided by Beresford and his ilk, or even people like me.
‘You’re absolutely right, my dear,’ said Beresford, putting his hand on hers. ‘Academics live in a rarefied atmosphere, but you being me back down to earth.’
It was too much to hope that Beresford would criticise Mel, but wasn’t it typical of a liberal elitist to admit to his own inadequacies? And how infuriating it must be for Mel, unable to evoke a hostile response from Beresford no matter how hard she tried. Back in the UK, Beresford might grasp that the intellectual chasm between him and Mel was unbridgeable, but for the moment he was besotted.
I imagined this would be the last time our unlikely foursome all dined together. We’d been thrown together by fate and soon our paths would diverge again. But as events turned out, they didn’t diverge quite as soon as we expected, and the last supper marked a new beginning…
19
The next day, my black eye showed a marginal improvement and the other bruises felt appreciably less sore. In a more positive frame of mind than for a while, I took myself to a department store at the top of Wenceslas Square and bought a cream Armani goose down puffer jacket. I’d grown tired of having to justify the fur to everyone, and my sunglasses were conspicuous enough without such a distinctive coat.
Today I would visit Stanislav Novak for the last time. I’d relay the disappointing news and explore the possible genetic link between him and George. I predicted that Novak would resist any suggestion of a blood relationship and wouldn’t be too heartbroken over the loss of the self-portrait. My mother was fond of saying that you don’t miss what you never had—on the face of it an ironic statement for a compulsive hoarder. Yet there was a warped logic to it, because it implies that you miss what you do have when you lose it, and hoarders hate to part with any of their possessions. So in a bizarre way, Novak would be happier with the status quo.
On my way to Stanislav, I telephoned Rudi and asked him to establish if Brabec had spoken to anyone about the paintings. I still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure about Rudi’s motivations, but preferred to ignore my niggling doubts.
‘I’ll ask him,’ Rudi promised. ‘But I doubt I’ll get a straight story out of him.’
I also asked him to check if there were any earlier references to Novak’s wife in Maxmilián’s journal.
‘You expect me to wade through all those spidery banalities to satisfy your curiosity?’
‘If it’s not too onerous.’
‘I’m sorry, Amy, but I’m a busy man. You’re welcome to come and examine them yourself if you want.’
‘OK—I get what you’re saying. Forget it—it’s not important.’
Except it might be, depending on what Stanislav Novak had to say.
***
I arrived five minutes early and the owner of the wine bar greeted me as a long lost friend. My sunglasses seemed to supply him and the other customers with an additional source of amusement today. I forced a rictal smile and sat down at the table with a bottle of wine before Novak arrived, bang on time.
‘There’s no easy way to say this,’ I began, after pouring out a large glass for both of us.
‘Spit it out then, woman.’
‘We’ve lost track of the painting.’
‘Ha,’ he said, snorting with disgust, or derision—hard to tell which. ‘I told you you’d never find it. What happened—did the thieving Prince Rudolf fuck you and then lie to you?’
I blushed.
‘He definitely didn’t fuck me and I’d be surprised if he lied.’
I brought Novak up to date, including the reason for the sunglasses—not that he’d asked or cared. He looked shifty to me, almost as though he had an inkling about who might be responsible for my misfortune, but perhaps I was being paranoid.
‘So all you’ve achieved is to lead someone else to the picture,’ he said with depressing accuracy.
‘That’s a little unfair and anyway, you can’t have it both ways. If a task is impossible, you can hardly criticise me for failing.’
This one sentence brought Ed, a past master at blaming his subordinates for failing to achieve unattainable targets, to mind. Which prompted me to move on to the second item on the agenda—the link between Stanislav and Ed. I began with a little experiment.
‘Take a peek at this photo.’
I whipped out my phone and scrolled to a picture of Ed Smithies, taken at a conference a couple of years before.
Novak snatched it from me and peered closely at the image, like a cockatoo staring at its reflection in a mirror and believing it was another bird.
‘Who’s that man?’
‘My client’s son…’
‘He could be my brother…’
‘George Smithies may be your brother, which would make this man your nephew.’
‘Impossible.’
‘George has proof that your father was in business with his father, Josef Dušek. I reckon he may have had an affair with George’s mother, Eva.’
‘Aha—now I see where this is going. We had a deal and you blew it. Now your client sees a way to grab all my collection. Well it won’t work—if he sues me, I’ll have it thrown out of court.’
Stanislav’s bully-boy tactics reminded me of Ed’s distinctive negotiating techniques, but I’d played this game before and triumphed.
‘No,’ I said, sticking to my guns. ‘He only wants the Fernande Olivier painting, though if you’re related he would have more general rights over the estate. If you force him to sue you, he will, and he’ll win. Do you want to take the risk?’
‘There is no risk. You expect me to give up a valuable work of art on the strength of a photograph. Do you honestly think I’m stupid enough to agree?’
‘No—don’t be silly. A DNA test can easily prove whether you’re related.’
‘A brother,’ said Novak, warming to the idea. ‘If I have a brother, and a nephew, I’d like to meet them.’
‘Your nephew is dead but I’m sure George will be keen to talk to you, and it might help him, because he’s endured a great deal of loss and sadness in his life.’
‘Me too,’ said Novak in mournful tones. ‘I thought I had no blood relatives left. All my life, I’ve been alone. My mother died when I was three, and my father was cold and unfeeling…’
A weary déjà vu hit me as he launched into his life story. His monologue was redolent of the litany of woes my mother trotted out to gain sympathy and justify her flaws. And yet, while recognising and despising the ruse, I pitied Novak. My mother had begun hoarding in earnest after my father died, and Novak’s collection was a substitute for his father’s love. Both
collected stuff to compensate for emotional loss, and underneath all Novak’s bluster, he understood what motivated his hoarding. In that moment, I could almost, but not quite, empathise with my mother.
‘Call me Stan,’ he said, signalling a breakthrough.
To prevent him retreating into his defensive, uncooperative mode, I quit pressing for any new deal on the art. For the moment, the excitement at having blood relatives seemed to trump everything else, although I questioned whether this would last. We clinked glasses and he expanded, willingly now, on his father’s history.
‘You’re correct—Josef Dušek was a partner in my father’s business before the war. The Gestapo killed him, but my father collaborated with the Nazis in exchange for his life.’
I wanted to ask why Eva thought Jan Novak had died too, and why Jan hadn’t contacted her later, but I was loath to interrupt the flow of narrative.
‘Collaborate doing what?’
‘The Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art appointed him to market confiscated pieces. They instructed him to sell these works abroad via his network of contacts, which was how he built his collection.’
There was a long silence. We both knew without saying so that his father’s collection had been amassed by dubious means.
‘He only told me this on his deathbed. Before then he never spoke of the war, although it was obvious his experiences haunted him. From the odd comment, I wonder if he may have been a womaniser in his younger days, but I know nothing of any affair.’
‘Have you any pictures of your father?’ I asked him.
‘How will that help?’
‘I expect George would like to see what his birth father looks like.’
‘You can’t take them,’ he said, horror-stricken.
‘Relax, I can capture them with my phone.’
‘Stay here—I’ll fetch them.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I came with you?’ I asked, very much aware it would not.
The press accounts had made me curious about the interior of Stan’s apartment. Although I’d seen pictures of hoarded homes posted in the Children of Hoarders support group, my mother’s was the only one I’d seen in real life. It would be interesting to compare it with another.
‘I’m a bit behind with things,’ he said, uttering one of my mother’s favourite phrases, a wholly inadequate description of the squalor, but enough to deter casual visitors.
‘That’s OK,’ I lied. ‘I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper myself.’
A malicious pleasure at horrifying me may have tipped the balance, or maybe he somehow surmised that I wasn’t a person to be freaked out by filth. Whatever his reasoning, five minutes later I followed him into his apartment.
The smell hit me first, vile and evocative of my mother’s house. I hadn’t seen my mother in more than a decade, but the previous year, I’d arranged for the house to be cleared while she was in hospital. It was a futile act since hoarders abhor a vacuum and space exists only to be filled with stuff. I guessed the house would now have degenerated back into squalor, but was in no hurry to have my fears confirmed.
My mother’s problem was one of excessive acquisition, as well as a failure to discard. Stan didn’t strike me as much of a shopper, so I expected the composition of the hoard to be different—not so many clothes with their tags still on, or boxes of book club bulk purchases.
The apartment was in darkness, with the shades drawn to hide the filth and confusion from passers-by. Once I’d removed the sunglasses, my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and I saw that the hoards were not so different as I’d imagined. There were newspapers spread higgledy-piggledy over every available surface, rotting bananas in the fruit bowl and carrier bags full of perishable food shopping never unpacked, let alone refrigerated. These were all key components of my mother’s hoard. The main difference was the empty wine bottles, stacked up to the ceiling, which took the place of clothes. Much of the furniture was hidden beneath the rubbish, but what was visible appeared to be a curious combination of soulless modern chain store items and an eclectic mix of antique pieces. Only one chair, ingrained with dirt on the arms and headrest, was available to sit on. I shrank from it.
‘Home sweet home,’ said Stan, in ironic tones. ‘Have I shocked you?’
‘No,’ I replied, without elaborating. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
He made for a piano stool, although I saw no piano in the apartment. My mother had also owned a piano stool, but no piano, and stored her jewellery in it. The similarities were spooky, though Stan was more careful in preserving photographs. He kept then all together in a semi-logical and safe place whereas, by way of example, my mother had ruined my graduation photo by using it as a teapot stand.
‘Here.’
Stan produced a black-and-white photo of a fiftyish man in a pinstripe suit and trilby hat, holding a cigarette. He may once have been handsome, but the ups and downs of a difficult life were now etched on his face. I didn’t see any physical resemblance to Stan or Ed, or even George.
But he sure as hell reminded me of Josef, George’s father.
20
I refused Stan’s offer of wine, as I doubted whether he could provide a clean glass. Instead, I hurried back to the hotel, contemplating what on earth to tell George. It was possible I’d been mistaken about Stan’s father’s resemblance to Josef Dušek, but generally I’m good at recognising faces. Still, at least with Stan’s photo on my phone I could compare it side by side with George’s snapshot.
Inexplicable as it seemed, could Josef and Jan somehow be the same person? I recalled that Maxmilián’s journal referred only to his visitor as J, and we’d all assumed he meant Jan. But suppose the initial stood for Josef instead?
It was a radical idea, and hard to reconcile with the known facts. The Nazis were nothing if not meticulous record keepers, and we’d seen Josef’s death certificate, supposedly from a heart attack while in custody. Why, there’d even been one for Eva, faithfully recording her death from typhus in Terezín.
Then inspiration struck. Suppose Jan had died in custody, rather than Josef, and their identities had been switched. And either the Germans didn’t realise, or they’d been complicit in the swap. I would have to give this theory some more thought.
As I hurried to the Metro station, my phone rang.
Rudi.
‘There’s been a development,’ he said. ‘Živsa’s wife, Hana, has been in touch. She rang from a public phone booth and sounded terrified—says she was being followed but she shook them off.’
‘And why would she contact you?’
I still mistrusted him, even though I couldn’t put my finger on why.
‘When I spoke to her last I gave her my name, she checked and guessed why I might be calling. Thing is, she knows where the Picasso is and she’s keen to talk—she reckons I’m more trustworthy than the police.’
My suspicions evaporated in a heartbeat. I’d never seriously doubted Rudi, but this confirmed he’d been on the level all along. Mel always disparaged my emotional intelligence, and undeniably I’d made mistakes in the past, but now my faith in my instincts had been restored.
We arranged to meet at Můstek Metro Station.
‘Don’t tell anyone, not even George,’ he advised. ‘And make sure no one follows you.’
‘How?’
‘Use your eyes—judge the situation.’
‘But why would they be following me if Živsa gave them all the information they need?’
‘That’s just it,’ said Rudi. ‘He didn’t. I’ll explain shortly, but you’re back in the game—even better, you’re ahead of the game.’
***
I scrutinised every person on the Metro with paranoid attention to detail, but saw no evidence of anyone on my tail. But then I supposed if they were competent professionals, I wouldn’t.
Rudi was waiting at Můstek, accompanied by a thin, nervy woman with dark circles under her eyes almost as prominent as my shiner. She w
ore a calf-length denim skirt and a tired faux fur jacket, with at least three centimetres of grey visible at the roots of her red, shapeless hair. I formed the impression that her misery pre-dated by far the tragic death of her husband. She held out her hand and forced a smile, revealing toothless gaps. Certainly, she did not look like the owner of a $100 million artwork.
‘Dobrý večer,’ (good evening) I said, after Rudi had made the introductions—proud to have expanded my pathetic Czech vocabulary to a second phrase.
‘Your accent is terrible, Amy,’ he said, deflating my sense of achievement. ‘You must stick to English in future. Shall we have coffee?’ He indicated a nearby café.
Once we’d ordered our drinks, Rudi disclosed that the painting was in a bank deposit box in Zurich.
‘Isn’t it too large to fit in a box?’
‘No—some of them are as big as closets.’
‘Are you sure Živsa didn’t tell them where to find it?’
‘Positive,’ said Rudi. ‘Because Živsa didn’t know. His father thought Viktor was too stupid to be entrusted with the information, so told Hana instead.’
‘So it’s still there?’
‘Apparently, yes.’
Incredibly, we were back in business. But boring bean-counter Amy had spotted an anomaly. It must cost money to rent a box, requiring an account with the bank and a minimum cash balance. How had Živsa senior financed it?’
I put this to Rudi, who relayed the query to Hana in rapid Czech, and then translated her answer.
‘He sold the Chagall painting, opened a numbered account and deposited the money to pay the fees.’
Which would have been doable in 1974, before the days of anti-money laundering procedures.
‘Will access be a problem?’ I asked. ‘Swiss banks have tightened up their procedures massively recently.’
‘Not for deposit boxes. If you’re an authorised person, like Hana, you just show up with ID.’
His evident familiarity with the system momentarily stirred my mistrust again, but I brushed it off. If he’d been after the painting himself, he wouldn’t have contacted me, yet he had.