The Night Portrait, page 12
“He’s gone, Bonelli.” Hancock gripped his arm.
Less than an hour before, two other servicemen had sat alongside Dominic in the back of the rumbling truck. Now, the same two men came forward with a tarp. Speechless, Dominic watched the men wrap Paul’s body and carry it inside the cathedral.
25
Cecilia
Milan, Italy
November 1490
FROM THE CORRIDOR LEADING TO THE PALACE KITCHENS, Cecilia caught sight of His Lordship’s illegitimate daughter. It could only be, Cecilia thought. Little Bianca. The girl was about seven or eight years old, with black ringlets framing her round, fair cheeks. She sat at a large, rustic table in the kitchen, rolling dough with her hands. Cecilia had never seen the girl before; only heard about her. She presumed that she spent her days in the palace nursery with her tutors. Cecilia pressed her back against the wall in the corridor and watched the girl for a few long moments.
The smell of stewing veal shanks wafted through the corridor. Cecilia’s mouth watered. It was hours until the next meal, but she was starving all the time now, it seemed. The life growing inside her demanded to be fed. She thought she might be able to ask the cook for something small, or perhaps snitch something herself from the palace pantries.
She had to find a way to tell Ludovico that she carried his child, she thought, before he figured it out for himself. But now, with the new knowledge that His Lordship had been long betrothed to Beatrice d’Este of Ferrara, Cecilia hardly knew what to say to him at all. She’d spent the last few days feigning sickness, sticking to her bedchamber and hoping that Ludovico would leave her alone long enough for her to find the right words, the right questions to ask. What could she do or say that would make him back out of his agreement with the Duke of Ferrara and take Cecilia for his wife instead? And what would happen to her when her pregnancy became known? She feared that Ludovico might immediately toss her out with the kitchen refuse, or even that someone might slit her throat in the middle of the night. She had not told anyone about her condition. Would Ludovico keep her child here under his roof, but banish Cecilia to some unknown fate? Where was this little girl’s mother, anyway?
But one thing frightened Cecilia even more than being banished from the palace, even more than being stripped away from her child: she feared that she might not survive the birth at all. She had seen two of her own aunts go to the World to Come just as their newborns emerged into this one. She had seen the blood, had heard the last cries of the mother along with the first cries of the baby. It happened every day that women sacrificed their own lives as they gave it to others. As much as she wished she could unburden herself to someone, she could hardly face the truth herself. And the truth was that she was terrified.
At last, her hunger got the best of her and Cecilia stepped into the kitchen. The girl sensed Cecilia’s presence and she looked up from her messy project. Cecilia scanned the kitchen—its dark, cavernous space cluttered with metal pots, dishes, rags, and old wooden furniture. It was empty. The girl only blinked at Cecilia, her pale blue eyes wide and fringed with black lashes.
“You are His Lordship’s daughter.”
The girl nodded, then returned to her work.
Cecilia approached the table and pulled out a chair. “I’m Cecilia.”
“I know,” said the girl.
“What are you making?”
“It’s bread with raisins and orange.” The girl was wearing an apron three times too big for her, perhaps given to her lovingly by one of the cooks.
“I would like to taste it. It looks good.” Cecilia smiled.
“It is. It will be. After Cook bakes it for me.”
“Can I try?”
Bianca said nothing but pushed a ball of dough across the table to Cecilia.
Silence stretched between them. Cecilia pressed the warm dough between her fingers and struggled to ask the one thing she wanted to know more than anything. No one else was in the room and Cecilia had to take advantage of the opportunity, she thought, because it might not come again.
“Your mother . . .” Cecilia hesitated. The girl looked up now, setting her pale blue eyes on Cecilia. “Where is she?”
26
Dominic
Aachen, Germany
December 1944
DOMINIC SAT ON A ROCK OUTSIDE A TENT FLAP AND TRIED to draw the mother of his babies. For a long while, he stared at the blank piece of paper in the waning evening light. A nice piece of paper. A real one. A lined sheet that Josie had torn from her little steno book and had handed to Dominic before she left Aachen to join some journalists following another unit at the front.
A few strokes of the pencil, but the image wouldn’t come. Dominic didn’t want to consider the worst, that he had already forgotten what Sally looked like. How could that be? But her face seemed fuzzy and out of focus in his mind. His heart ached.
Dominic tapped the pencil on his knee and tried to think of what else to capture, what might help him warm up to a drawing of Sally, but his mind was a jumble of images. The tip of little Cecilia’s upturned nose. Exploding sand at Omaha Beach. The cold, overwhelming darkness of a Pennsylvania coal mine. Paul Blakely splayed out before the doors of Aachen Cathedral, his chest soaked in red. Dominic set the pencil and paper down on the rock then stood up, clasped his hands behind his head, and paced back and forth in the dirt.
Behind him, snippets of German conversation filled the air. The tent was just one of hundreds housing German refugees who were doing their best to survive amid the unimaginable devastation. For three months, Dominic’s unit had picked their way across the region to refugee camps and nearly ruined museums, seeking out any remaining art professionals who might be able to help them locate and protect priceless works of art. But many of these artists and museum staff proved to be mostly silent—perhaps afraid of what might happen to them if they said anything at all. Others were already long gone—fled to the still-enemy territory east of the Rhine.
Vicar Stephany had traveled along with the unit, doing his best to rally his fellow German refugees into helping find the art he cherished. But those efforts had had little effect. They’d found nothing; the blank expressions on the refugees’ faces told Dominic that they were beginning to despair of finding value in life itself anymore. Far from the cheering crowds of overjoyed citizens welcoming their American saviors that the propaganda promised, the Germans remained wary. Who could blame them? Half starved and fearful, they had little reason to trust the Americans. Dominic understood that liberation was going to be more complicated than he’d expected.
“Bonelli! Load up!” Dominic saw several of the men of his unit loading a truck near the drive into the camp. He saw Hancock helping an older man, a German museum worker, up into the truck. They’d found the old man half dead in a tent with walls so thin that Dominic could see daylight filtering through them; but the man had been alive enough to tell them that he was a retired art specialist, and he wanted to help. That had been good enough for Hancock. At least their foray into this camp had been more fruitful than the last.
Dominic slung his bag over his shoulder and ambled toward the truck. He left his fresh piece of paper and pencil sitting on the rock.
27
Edith
Western Poland
October 1939
EDITH STUDIED KAJETAN MÜHLMANN AS HE DOZED FITFULLY in the plush, upholstered seat of the swiftly moving train.
Even in the vulnerable state of sleep, he was difficult to read. Edith watched patches of filtered light skirt across the wide planes of Kai’s face, illuminating coarse stubble in need of a razor. With his broad forehead and shoulders, and juglike jaw, Edith imagined him at home in a boxing ring. If she had passed him on the street, she would have never identified him as an art historian. But Mühlmann had risen high enough in the profession to be entrusted with personal transportation of priceless works of art. And clearly, he was a Party sympathizer. No one who wasn’t would have been put in the role of SS Oberführer.
What was she doing here?
For a moment, Edith felt as if she had been pushed onto the stage of a surreal play, as if she was living inside of a dream. The smooth chug of the train pulled them forward, the lulling calm of the engine drawing them ever nearer to Kraków. In other circumstances, it might have been easy to nod off, but Edith’s nerves were too frayed to sleep.
It was a far cry from the train ride that Edith had taken from Munich to Kraków, rattling along in a bare sleeping car, little more than barracks. Now, Edith and Kai occupied the first-class cabin of an elegant Pullman that they had all to themselves. The two dozen paintings that they had selected were carefully wrapped and secured, stacked carefully among the velvet-upholstered seats, tasseled draperies, and cherry tables of the luxury train car. In the glass-front cabinets, heavy silver serving pieces made a pleasant jangle as the wheels of the train clacked along at a steady pace.
At either end of the train car, a Feldgendarm was stationed, each with a machine pistol holstered at his waist. Edith watched the men’s lean silhouettes darken the glass as they paced the narrow strip between the smoothly purring train cars. She supposed that they were positioned there to keep the Pullman and its contents secure, but Edith felt anything but safe in this strange, altered reality.
Kai’s eyelids fluttered open and he fell into a fit of deep coughing. Edith quickly looked away, studying a grove of maple trees whose leaves were beginning to turn golden. Had he seen her watching him?
“After we unload the pictures in Berlin, you could return to Munich,” he said, clearing his throat. His voice was low and thick, drawing the vowels out in his distinctive Austrian manner. Edith’s heart quickened, and she wondered if he had really been asleep, or whether he had sensed her watching him all along.
She nodded but said nothing, watching the deserted Polish landscape tick by outside the window. In the distance, Edith could make out curls of smoke rising into the air, a smoldering pile. A farm? A town?
Her brow must have been visibly knotted because Kai pressed her. “Won’t you be happy to go home?”
Edith nodded and met his gaze. “Oh yes. It’s just . . . There is a chance that my fiancé Heinrich may pass through on his way to eastern Poland. I expect that he will be here within a few days. Or perhaps he is here already. I thought I might have a chance to see him, if only for a moment.” She shrugged. “Silly of me to think . . .”
Dr. Mühlmann nodded, then rubbed his palms together as if warming them. “Difficult.” A shadow crossed his face, and his mouth pulled into a grim line.
“It was just a hope, that’s all.”
“Nothing wrong with hope,” he said. “But things will not be the same when he returns. Your fiancé will be a changed man. You must prepare yourself that things will be different. That he will be different. I saw it happen to my friends who served in the Great War.”
Edith didn’t want to think about that. She wanted her Heinrich back. Could Kai sympathize with wanting to resume their lives the way they were before?
Dr. Mühlmann pressed his lips together. “You have your family in Munich?” he asked.
“Just my father, and some distant cousins,” she said. “My papa is an old man now, frail and weak. He was once a well-known professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, but he no longer remembers even the smallest things. I worry about him every minute that I am away. It has been challenging to find a reliable nurse . . .” She forced herself to stop. Had she shared too much?
“Well,” he said, and his mouth turned into a thin line again. “I hope you get home soon to see your father.”
“So do I,” said Edith, meeting his eyes. “This is no place for art historians.”
Kai chuckled, which brought on another fit of coughing. He recovered, saying, “Yes. I wrote my dissertation on Baroque fountains in Salzburg. I never set out to be the Special Representative for the Protection and Securing of Artworks in the Occupied Eastern Territories.” A tight grin spread across his face.
“But there must be something we can do to stop it?” Edith felt her voice waver. “Surely there is a better way to ensure the safety of these works.” She gestured to the crates secured among the plush, upholstered seats.
Kai ran his broad hand across the stubble of his chin, considering. “I assure you that these works are much safer in our possession—and within the confines of Germany—than they will ever be out there.” He gestured to the bleak landscape outside the train window. “Poland will soon be reduced to rubble; that should be obvious to you. Also, fräulein, although I do not dispute that you have already made an important contribution, you must realize that this initiative is much bigger than you and me. We play but a small role.”
“But . . .” Edith interrupted. “We could have intervened before . . . before the prince and his wife . . . before these pictures were stripped from their owners in such a brutal manner! Did they have to leave Poland in the hands of the Gestapo?”
A shadow seemed to pass over Kai’s face, just like a storm cloud suddenly blocking the sun. Edith paused and regretted sharing her assessment. Could Kai have her arrested? Killed, even?
He seemed to read her mind. “Governor Frank,” he said, “will not hear anything of the sort and I strongly advise you, fräulein, to keep such assessments to yourself. Very little of what happens in Poland escapes Governor Frank’s eyes and ears. There may be . . . unintended consequences. Consider yourself warned.”
A long pause stretched out between them and Edith wondered if anything at all was in her power to change.
“May I ask you something?” Edith said, leaning forward in her seat. “Do you believe in what you—in what we—are doing?”
Kai hesitated. Edith watched his eyes flicker toward the silhouette of one of the guards at the end of the train car. Then he leaned forward, too, met her gaze, and lowered his voice. “We are at war, fräulein. We are charged with confiscating and sequestering enemy property; that is our job. And as I have already pointed out, we are ensuring that these works survive for future generations. Apart from that, our own personal views matter very little.”
Edith watched another shadow pass over Kai’s face, aging him years in just a few seconds. The train whistle let out a shrill cry. They passed into a tunnel, and the interior of the train car fell into blackness.
28
Dominic
Aachen, Germany
January 1945
NOT LONG AGO, THE SEURMONDT MUSEUM MUST HAVE been splendid. Dominic observed the grand staircase running through the center of the building, the colonnades of the atrium, the vaulted ceilings painted to resemble the sky with mythical creatures floating above his head. Now, just like the many other old buildings he’d seen in the past months, the museum stood in ruin. Even inside, frigid gusts of wintry air blew through the weave of Dominic’s fatigues, chilling him to the bone.
Judging by the unhappy expression on Captain Hancock’s face, this latest walk through another art collection was a disappointment. Dominic kept one eye on his surroundings for possible threats as he watched his commander pull open the drawers of a hulking, dirt-covered desk in one of the museum offices, looking for any clues as to the whereabouts of the Seurmondt’s masterpieces. Dominic stepped over broken bricks and powdered plaster from the gaping hole in the wall to reach the other side of the room, where two men were exploring the contents of a file cabinet.
A thick spread of dust was settling on everything, and not just from the battle. Fall had slipped into winter; Dominic knew that, outside the museum, the landscape around them was reduced to rubble covered with a sparkle of ice. A few sheets of paper fluttered out into the breeze, mingling with the snowflakes that blew in through the hole.
Across the room, Captain Hancock spun into the nearest dust-covered office chair. He pulled open a drawer and yanked out a stack of notebooks; he grabbed the nearest one and began to flip through it. Dominic’s legs felt leaden; he wondered where Hancock found all his energy.
“They have to have taken them somewhere, maybe even somewhere close by,” Hancock said.
Instead of responding, Lieutenant Commander Stout slammed the cabinet drawer shut. It shuddered, and a scattering of shell casings and snow slid off the top. The three men looked up simultaneously at the gaping hole in the ceiling of the office. It had punched through the floors of the building, leaving a tattered array of splintered wood and crumbled stone all the way up to a circle of gray sky.
A knock on the doorjamb heralded the arrival of another MP to relieve Dominic so that he could slink off to wolf down his tin of C-rations. As he wandered into an adjacent gallery, Dominic saw evidence of the hot battle that had taken place between the Allied forces and the Germans. Whole galleries and corridors were filled with debris. Many darkened pictures, pieces of ceramic, and small sculptures were still standing here and there, but for all their combing through the wreckage, they’d found no evidence of the major masterpieces this museum was supposed to house. Abandoned bits of equipment were scattered in the elegant passages where the upper class of Aachen had spent many a peaceful evening enjoying the centuries-old art that had disappeared. Gaping spaces and bare hooks on the walls counted the missing pictures.
The gallery’s floor had once been polished to a mirror finish. Now, it was cracked by war and scratched by the heavy boots of the soldiers who had dumped themselves and their belongings around the floor. The cold gnawed at Dominic’s gut; when he pushed the door open and stepped inside the gallery, he was greeted with the smell of cooking soup. Despite himself, he took a deep breath and smiled. Somehow, Vicar Stephany could make even their meager and tasteless rations smell like a real meal.
“Dominic!” The vicar was bent over a pot on the little campfire he’d cobbled together out of bits of wreckage. “Come! Sit. Eat. You look frozen.”
While Stephany concocted an unlikely meal in an unlikely place, two servicemen and the German art professional whom they had located in one of the refugee camps were examining the few pictures still hanging on the gallery’s walls. One of the men scribbled furiously while the German called out details for a hastily documented catalog.
