Trophies of War Page 22

  “Uh, hi,” Lyon said. “Sorry, do you speak English?”

  She took a sip before answering. Lyon couldn’t help looking at her drink.

  Bourbon and Coke?

  “Of course,” she answered, with only the slightest accent. “How can I help you?”

  Lyon was wary of telling her the whole story, so he asked her if she was familiar with the wartime history of Schloss Grasberg.

  “Somewhat,” she replied, taking another sip of her drink. “Some Baron—a Nazi—lived there. Involved in stolen art, I think. I only know a little—I didn’t grow up here. This was my father’s house when he was a boy.”

  Lyon and Beth shared a look at the mention of her father.

  “This was your father’s house?” Beth asked.

  “Yes,” the woman answered. “Now it’s mine. My father died a few months ago and I decided to move in. I’ve been in London for the past twenty years, working in the City. After the last market crash, it was time to leave, so here I am. What’s this about?”

  “We’re hoping you can help us,” Lyon said, and introduced himself and Beth. The woman shook their hands and told them her name was Karin. Her hand was cold from holding the drink.

  Lyon decided he liked Karin and told her everything—he told the story of his mother’s painting, their research into the ERR, the Monuments Men and the Russians, their trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow, Zharova’s diary and the soldier shot in front of her house. He was vague about the details of the shooting.

  Karin folded her arms and gave Lyon a funny look.

  “My father told me that a Russian sniper shot an American soldier in front of this house as the war was ending,” she said. “The Americans were driving by in an open-top car. He said he saw everything.”

  Lyon was about to tell her that Zharova’s diary made it clear the shot came from inside the house. He thought better of it.

  “And it’s odd that you mention that shooting and art,” she added.

  “Why is that?” Lyon asked.

  “That’s what my father did for a living—he was an art teacher,” she replied. “After the war, my father became very interested in art. His family going back several generations were simple farmers, but suddenly after the war my father told my grandmother that he wanted to be a painter. She found a way to get him lessons and buy him brushes, paints and canvases, all without having much money.

  “What’s odd is that he said it all started when that soldier was shot by the Russians. The story is that the car almost flipped in the front garden over there before the driver was able to regain control. When that happened, a few things flew out of the open car into the grass before the car sped away. One of those things was a painting.”

  Lyon felt Beth grab his arm.

  “Did he ever describe that painting to you?” he asked.

  “He didn’t have to,” Karin replied. “It’s been hanging in this house since 1945.”

  Lyon felt like he was stumbling through the house in a daze. He had stood in shocked silence until Beth had asked to see the painting and Karin invited them in. The house looked like it was Karin’s London flat transported to Austria, with all its modern furniture and stainless steel. It didn’t look like an old farmhouse on the inside, but all of this barely registered with Lyon. He was looking at the art.

  Dozens of paintings hung in every room. Some were portraits (a few looked like they might be Karin as a young girl), many were still lifes of flowers and fruit. The entryway was all landscapes.

  Karin led them to the one room in the house she hadn’t changed—her father’s studio.

  “I don’t paint, but I wanted to keep it as he left it,” she explained. “Maybe someday I’ll be inspired.”

  An easel and stool faced a brick fireplace that was flanked by two tall windows. From his easel, Karin’s father could see down into the valley and to the rocky peaks of the Alps beyond. Lyon realized that the landscapes in the entryway were all views from these windows.

  He looked from the windows to the fireplace and it’s rough-hewn mantle.

  That’s when he saw it.

  Above the mantle hung a small painting—Lyon guessed it was 12 inches by maybe 18—in a gilt wooden frame.

  It was a picture of a crystal vase holding a spray of purple orchids. Next to the vase, on a white tablecloth, was a silver plate upon which sat a half-peeled lemon.

  Beth let out a strangled cry. Lyon saw her hand go to her mouth and her eyes well up.

  He walked to the fireplace to get a closer look.

  Lyon thought of the framed magazine page he had found in his mother’s basement—flowers in a vase. It was the best his father could find, but now he understood why his mother had put it away. Apart from not being the right painting, the magazine photo was flat, while this painting was a sea of rough strokes with dabs of paint and tiny dots that all added up to the picture. Lyon was tempted to run his hand across the canvas, but just being close to it was enough to see its three dimensions and that it was crafted by a human hand.

  And the colors! The lemon was a swirl of bright yellow and white and even some gray on the peel.

  Lyon smiled as he remembered that his mother’s nickname was Little Lemon when she was being bad.

  He couldn’t identify all the colors that made up the orchids, but they combined to make a purple that was almost richer than a real flower could ever be. For a little girl to have this painting as her own must have been special indeed, with the added significance that her father had placed on it, calling her Little Flower after these orchids. Then she lost her father, and everyone else. This painting would have been a reminder of them all, and her father in particular, but she lost it, too.

  Megan.

  His mother had lost her father as a young girl, and he had lost his daughter. The symmetry of it hadn’t occurred to him until just now. What if he had had something like this painting that was his way to remember her? What if it had been lost?

  Sarah.

  She’s not dead, but I may have lost her, too.

  The vase was beyond Lyon’s ability to understand. How could white, green and blue paint make a clear crystal vase filled with water? How could swirls of white make a Chinese dragon design going down the side?

  “This is it. This is my mother’s painting,” Lyon said, turning to the two women. They both had red-rimmed eyes as they watched Lyon examine the painting.

  He felt his own tears welling up and turned his back, clearing his throat.

  Lyon almost forgot to check the signature, but there it was in the lower right corner: ‘Manet.’

  The ‘M’ was three vertical lines and the final stroke of the ‘T’ swooped back under the artist’s name. Lyon didn’t know if it was genuine and didn’t care.

  Beth stepped forward and showed Lyon her phone. She had called up a web search on Manet’s signature and showed him the images. They matched.

  “May I take it down to look at the back?” Beth asked Karin, who nodded.

  Beth reached up and grasped the bottom corners of the frame, carefully lifting it up off its nail.

  “I’m no expert,” she said, “But I do know that the key to figuring out whether a work is genuine is to look at the back, more so than the front.”

  She turned the painting over and examined the frame, the stretchers and the canvas. There was a label affixed to the frame with some numbers on it and a few words in French.

  “Everything seems right,” Beth said. “I’d want an appraiser to look at it, but the age of the canvas and the wood seems right for a painting from the 1860s or 70s.”

  Beth pointed to a stamp on one of the stretchers that read ‘JdP 6549.’

  “Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, where the ERR collected everything,” she reminded Lyon. She re-hung the painting over the mantle.

  “I think this is a real Manet,” she said. “And no one knows it exists.”

  Karin sat down on her father’s stool, looking shaken.

  “I had no id
ea,” Karin said, wiping tears away. “I can’t believe I never looked at the signature. My father didn’t ever call it a Manet. He just called it ‘Vanitas.’ ”

  “Vanitas?” Lyon asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s Latin—from the Bible,” Karin replied. “It’s from a verse about the transience of life and all earthly things. My father said that vanitas was his life’s work. To him, it was the entire purpose of art. He taught his students that art wasn’t just about the artist or the person who owns it, it’s an act for all time and that long after artists and patrons are gone, the works remain.

  “He told me the story about how he came to possess this painting and said that as he learned about it, he grew to understand that the message of the artist was vanitas. The flowers in the vase are cut and will soon die. The lemon is perfectly ripe but will rot. It looks beautiful, but is bitter to the taste.

  “His experience in the war—the death of his father on the Eastern Front, living on the edge of starvation with his mother—made him realize that teaching the message of vanitas through art was his calling. Everything and everyone you know will eventually be gone, he said. It always sounded so terribly morbid, but he taught me that there is beauty in that, if you look at it the right way. Seeing that solider shot had a profound effect on him. He spent the rest of his life thinking about how precious life is and how fleeting.

  “Each one of his paintings that he hung on the walls of this house illustrate vanitas in some way. The still lifes of food and flowers, the landscapes that show autumn leaves that will soon fall to the ground or mountain peaks covered in snow that will soon melt—even the portraits. He said that portraits were the best vanitas paintings of all. They were pictures of children who would grow up, people who would change and age. In time, every person ever painted would be gone.

  “To my father, it gave meaning to his life to capture all of this on a canvas and to teach others to do the same. He said that with just a piece of canvas and a few dollar’s worth of paint, the artist turns them into something that becomes immortal. When I grew old enough to understand, he pointed to this painting and said, ‘See? That picture is of the temporary nature of beauty and life but has itself been around for over a hundred years. We never truly own these things, we just take care of them for a little while so that they may last another hundred years.’ ”

  Karin paused and looked at Lyon, trying to regain her composure.

  “He was right,” she said in a quavering voice. “He was taking care of this painting for a while. Since that day in 1945, he was taking care of it until you could come to bring it back to your mother.”

  Lyon nodded.

  “And a soldier may have given his life for it,” he added.

  They spent the evening drinking wine and eating Karin’s interpretation of British cuisine while Beth and Lyon shared the details of the search that had just ended in the other room.

  Growing up in Linz, Karin had heard all about the planned Führermuseum and the repository at Altaussee, but she had no idea of the scale of Nazi looting during the war. Being from Hitler’s hometown, many aspects of Nazi history were unavoidable; others weren’t discussed.

  “It’s the joke about Austrians,” she said as she filled their glasses. “We try to convince people that Beethoven was Austrian while Hitler wasn’t.”

  There was no discussion of whether Lyon would take the Manet with him. After dinner, Karin took it down off the wall and put it in his hands.

  “I hope your mother feels that we took good care of it,” she said, embracing Lyon at the door.

  Walking to the car, the painting under his arm, he held a hand out to Beth for the car keys.

  “I’ll drive,” Lyon said. “Let’s find the best hotel in Vienna. We can catch a flight home tomorrow.”

  Inside the car, he took another look at the Manet. Even under the dome light, the brushstrokes were visible and the colors looked bright.

  He reached around to put it on the back seat and then felt Beth’s weight on him.

  He tasted the wine on her lips and felt her hair on his face.

  Stunned, he did nothing. She kissed him again—harder—then pulled back.

  Beth folded her arms and gave him a look that said Well?

  Lyon didn’t have an answer.

  “Is it your wife?” she asked.

  “Uh … ”

  “I thought you were separated.”

  Lyon nodded.

  “Look, I can’t imagine what the two of you must have gone through, but if she would kick you out, I think you should forget her. I, on the other hand, am here and I’m full of wine and impaired judgement, so what do you say?”

  Lyon couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Is that a yes?” Beth asked.

  Lyon sighed.

  “She didn’t kick me out,” he said. “I kicked myself out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Megan’s death was my fault,” he replied. “As hard as it was after she died, it got worse because every day that I was around, it was a reminder to Sarah that I did this to her. I was the reason her only child was dead—the worst thing that can happen to someone. I couldn’t bring Megan back, but I could at least remove that pain from the equation. So I left.”

  Beth overcame her stunned silence to ask, “How was it your fault?”

  “It was the car. I bought it used as a seventeenth birthday present for her. Sarah wanted me to have a mechanic look it over, but it was just out of warranty so I said it wasn’t necessary. She kept nagging me about it and we had a fight—I told her she was being ridiculous. I was too busy with work and I just dismissed her concerns. Two days later, Megan was driving home after some friends took her out for a birthday dinner. She was exiting the highway and the brakes failed.

  “She must have panicked and forgotten about the emergency brake, because there weren’t any skid marks or anything—the car just went into the trees, slammed into some exposed granite and flipped down the hill. They said she probably would have survived the impact with the trees and the granite thanks to the seatbelt and airbags, but the car just flipped too many times down the hill.”

  “Oh my God, that’s terrible,” Beth said.

  “Yep.”

  “But, David—it wasn’t your fault,” she continued. “I can understand you blaming yourself. Anyone would. But you couldn’t have known. It wasn’t actually your fault.”

  Lyon shook his head.

  “No. If I had taken it to a mechanic, he would have repaired the brakes and it wouldn’t have happened. It’s as simple as that.”

  “You don’t know that,” Beth replied. “Maybe it was something that no mechanic would have noticed. Does your wife blame you?”

  “No, she said what you just did, but it doesn’t matter.”

  Lyon started the car and pulled away from Karin’s house.

  “Do you still love her? Your wife?” Beth asked a few minutes later as they turned onto the road along Lake Traunsee. Lights from houses on the shore reflected off the alpine waters.

  Lyon took a while to answer.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then you should go home,” Beth replied.

  They drove in silence the rest of the way to Vienna.

  26

  Montreal

  Lyon stood outside his mother’s room at the Résidence Mont Royal. With the Manet under his arm, he knocked on the door, feeling as if a seventy-year old circuit was about to be completed.

  “Who is it?” his mother said from behind the door. He saw the peephole darken.

  He didn’t answer—he just smiled at the fisheye lens.

  “I said who is it?”

  “It’s me, maman,” he sighed, then remembered how frustrated he was with her the last time he was here.

  That could be me someday, he realized.

  “It’s David, maman,” he said in a brighter tone. “I have a surprise for you.”

  For a long moment, the peephole stayed da
rk and she made no sound on the other side of the door. At last he heard the click of the lock.

  The door opened, and he saw his mother—normally well-dressed and made up no matter the occasion—in a robe and slippers, her gray hair tucked behind her ears. It was four in the afternoon.

  “Yes?” Florette asked.

  Her expression was blank and she showed no recognition of her son, but Lyon didn’t dwell on it. Without saying a word, he held up the canvas for her to see.

  She gasped and snatched the painting from his hands.

  “Mes fleurs!” she exclaimed. “How did you find them?”

  “It’s a long story, maman, but someone has been taking good care of it for you all these years.”

  She pulled him inside and shut the door, walking to a window to view the Manet in the afternoon sunlight. She ran her fingertips over the brush marks. Though there were tears on her cheeks, she smiled and looked transported to another place and time.

  “I told you to leave it alone,” she reminded him.

  “You did,” he admitted. “You know, I can put it in your trunk for you if you like. Or I can hang it up. Whatever you want to do with it—it’s up to you. Just don’t sell it. I don’t think you should sell it.”

  Florette turned to him and kissed his cheek.

  “You are a good boy,” she said.

  Lyon smiled.

  “Yeah, well. Your ‘boy’ is feeling like an old man after traveling halfway around the world these last few weeks.”

  Her face darkened and she stroked his hair like she did when he was little.

  “Megan is dead,” she said as if a piece of her memory had slid into place.

  “Yes,” he replied. Part of him had hoped she’d forgotten.

  “And you’ve been missing your Little Flower, too.”

  He bit his cheek to keep his composure.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’ve been missing her.”

  Something shook loose in his memory as well and he had an image of Megan when she was six or so, standing on their sailboat holding her pink fishing rod. Lyon had tied a weight to the end of her line as her ‘hook’ and she was dropping it straight down into the water and reeling it in, over and over, laughing.