by Anna Porter
“Besides,” Annelise said, “we have both benefitted from turning a blind eye.”
There was some truth in that, although Annelise had benefitted more and would continue to enjoy the house in Toronto and the airy New York apartment on the Upper East Side, as well as the pleasure of travelling first class, the welcome she had come to expect in both cities’ best restaurants, and invitations to gala fundraisers. Helena, on the other hand, had rejected all the comforts her father had offered. Still, she knew that without his loot, she could not have had the privileged education and training she now relied upon. Could not have become a Titian expert or have curated the much-admired 1998 Titian retrospective at Vienna’s Alte Pinakothek. Nor would she have been as aware of the fakes and forgeries that had invaded galleries and museums worldwide. Being Simon’s daughter offered her a unique view of how easy it was to fool everyone.
Her father may have been serving his own purposes when he made sure she had the right credentials in the art world, but once she discovered what had funded her education, she stopped taking his money. The question she asked herself sometimes was whether she had severed her relations with Simon as soon as she realized what he did or had she waited until she was ready to make it on her own. When her mother insisted she continue the self-defence classes and learn to fire a handgun, was that training only for her stint in Moscow? Or was her mother already thinking about where the career she had chosen might lead?
She now knew how dangerous it could be to obtain certain paintings for galleries and wealthy collectors. Her work for the Commission for Looted Art in Europe had offered fine tests of her martial-arts training. She had been followed and attacked in Vienna right after the 2013 profiles of the Commission’s work appeared in Harper’s and Tagesspiegel. Even in Paris, she was always checking whether someone was following her and always careful when entering a building, even a café.
Louise was delighted with the bouquet. She was a plain woman in her fifties and, judging from her reaction, she rarely received flowers. Helena knew that in her previous job at the Orangerie she had rarely been praised for her work. Today was the fifth anniversary of her working for Helena, and she deserved both the praise and the flowers. She was efficient, always unruffled, usually pleasant to callers, and never late for work.
Louise had the map of the arrondissement of Saint-Denis spread out on Helena’s architect’s desk. She had marked the route Helena should take to where the Corot was awaiting her judgement, but at the last moment, she decided to go along on the journey. It’s a perilous part of the city, she said, easy to get lost and even easier to be robbed at knifepoint.
Helena grinned at the idea of this rather prim woman discouraging a robber or a pickpocket, but Louise hadn’t been out of the office for the past two weeks and deserved a break.
As for the Corot, it was so close to the genuine article that Helena thought it could pass at the next auction and make the house a tidy sum, but wisdom prevailed. She would not risk either her own reputation or Christie’s on a well-executed fake.
What she would do, instead, was buy it for the newest Mrs. Grigoriev, if he didn’t like Gertrude’s garish painting, after Helena had taken possession of the Titian.
She called Attila on the way to the airport and listened to his tale about Bratislava and Bika.
“Your client, Márton,” Attila asked, “has he ever mentioned that Gertrude’s son may not be Krestin’s?”
“No. But I am sure he has travelled to Hungary and Slovakia more often than he told me. And it doesn’t take much to make a child.”
“Was he there in 1977?”
“He and his wife visited Budapest then.”
“Any idea what time of year?”
“Since he lit candles and put flowers on his father’s grave, I would guess around All Saints, November 1 or 2.”
“Jenci was born in July 1978.”
Neither of them mentioned the extraordinary talent of the woman who had thrown a knife into Bika’s thigh.
CHAPTER 33
Since Helena Marsh had to stay ensconced at the Four Seasons in Budapest, the woman who flew to Toronto was Eva Bergman. She had already walked the length of the aircraft cabin several times to identify her tail, but none of the other passengers paid her much attention. The only person who aroused her suspicion was an elderly man who seemed to read the same page in his Lee Child book for most of an hour. No one needed that long to read a page of Lee Child.
It was a long, boring flight, and most passengers slept, or appeared to sleep (even the Lee Child reader). She read her brand-new copy of Homer’s Iliad, the 2010 Ian Johnston translation. It made a nice change from the Aeneid, which she had left in her holdall in her Budapest hotel room.
After the airplane landed, she managed to lose the elderly man on the long walk to the immigration area.
Once she was through customs, she went straight to a washroom and divested herself of Eva’s scratchy wig, pocketed the glasses, changed out of the brown suit into her pant suit. She passed through immigration with her own passport and identified herself as Helena Marsh to the uniformed driver holding her name aloft. In under an hour, the limousine reached the Mártons’ Rosedale mansion, and Helena walked up the path and the steps to the white-pillared front porch.
The Mártons’ house was about ten winding blocks from where Helena had grown up. In Rosedale, all the streets wound around, as if the neighbourhood was still the village it had once been. The tall Japanese-holly hedge was sprouting new shoots, and rhododendrons were glowing pink in their stone vases on either side of the pillared entrance. The grass had been close-cut. She took a long, deep breath of the garden scents before she knocked. Such a difference since her first visit. After some hesitation, spring had arrived in Toronto.
The brass knocker made a booming sound outside and set off a bell inside.
A maid, as neat as the garden, opened the door and ushered her into a spacious living room with double chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling and picture windows overlooking the back garden and the valley below.
Klara Márton arrived just seconds later and told her that Géza would be along in a few minutes. She offered her a glass of wine or spirits from the sideboard, and said that, except on very dark days, when he was under the spell of his memories, Géza drank only red wine that he imported personally from France, Spain, and, of course, Hungary. Helena asked for a glass of burgundy, and Klara left to get a bottle.
Helena wandered around the room, looking at the Persian carpets, the flower arrangements, the shelves of books arranged by colour, the photographs, and the paintings, many of which seemed eerily familiar. She found Géza in the next room, sitting in a bay window and looking out at the garden and the busy bird feeders under the trees. Still with his back to her, he said he was glad she could come. A glass goblet of scotch sat on a small paw-foot table by the window, next to a half-empty bottle. Clearly, it was one of his dark days.
He rose and shook her hand. He was taller than Helena, straight-backed, with sparse grey hair. His eyebrows were almost white, faded by the sun of whatever vacation he had recently enjoyed. He gestured her to sit in a matching chair and lowered himself back into his own.
He asked her again about how Krestin had been killed and what she knew about the police investigation.
She didn’t mention that she suspected Gábor Nagy may have tried to blackmail Krestin once he realized that Helena knew that Krestin had been in Vorkuta, and that that secret was out, at least. She was sure Nagy was not interested in money. So what would have been the point in his contacting Krestin?
She told him she knew now that Bika was Gyula Németh. And not Krestin.
“He attacked a guy working for the Hungarian police,” she said. “I doubt you’ll be hearing from Németh for a while.” She watched him closely when she talked about Bika. He seemed impatient when she described how he looked, confirming
that Géza already knew this and even that Németh lived in Bratislava.
Instead, he wanted to hear more about Gábor Nagy — whether he had seemed to be in need of money, and how he lived.
“He told me you had pretended not to recognize him once in 1944.”
“I did him a favour,” Géza said. “There were some young men walking with me who would have thrown him into the river.”
“Arrow Cross?”
“Could have been, I don’t remember.”
Géza said he thought it odd that Nagy had denied knowing about the Titian. “Of course, he knew about my painting. We thought we would die there, and I used to talk about it when we were at the edge of that abyss. Gábor was down to less than forty kilos. I was a skeleton. That painting . . . that was real. It kept me alive. Not the religious thing; Vorkuta was hard on God. It was the hope that I would see the painting again. It represented to me our old life: civilization, beds, sofas, antiques, gold frames on pictures. Windows with sunlight.
“Klara has heard so much about that painting, she is looking forward to seeing it here at last. Of course, I never told her the whole story. You’ve seen the others,” he waved his hand, loose-wristed, elegant, dismissive, around the walls. “They are no match for the Titian.”
Helena followed his gesture with her eyes. “They are very attractive,” she said cautiously.
“Of course. They are some of your father’s best, don’t you think?”
“My father?”
“Simon Montreuil, of course.”
Son-of-a-bitch, she thought.
“I don’t know my father. I’ve never met anyone who claimed to be my father,” she said. Could Simon have told Géza? Why would he?
“He was not here much, but he was your father, wasn’t he?”
“My mother brought me up alone.”
“Annelise,” Géza said with a smile. “A beautiful woman. I think all beautiful women should be entitled to their secrets. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“You knew my mother?”
“Of course, we knew your mother,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to join me for an early dinner today.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We have so much to talk about.”
Had Géza not claimed to have been a friend as well as a customer of her father’s, she might have chosen a different moment to give him Giorgio’s letter certifying the Titian was a fake. He read it over twice, folded it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his dove-grey jacket. Then he rubbed his palms together as if they had been dirtied by touching it. He said nothing.
She told him that the other bidders had copies of the same letter and would likely withdraw from the auction. The wife, she said, would still want to sell the painting. Krestin, Attila had told her, had left unpaid debts.
“There is a chance,” she said, “that Sylvie Hoffman’s customer will still bid on the painting, but it will not be a high bid. Some people prefer inexpensive fakes to the real thing. In other words, you could beat his price. It will still be much lower than what you authorized me to spend.”
“Do you know her client?”
“I met him once. He has made too much money too fast and has developed a belief in his own infallibility.” A tendency he had in common with Géza Márton, she thought.
Géza laughed. “You mentioned Italians?”
“I am not sure they are real. The admirable Mr. Kis may have suggested Italians, in a generic way, to up the ante on the price, but he hasn’t mentioned them recently. I did check on Krestin’s former partner, a Mr. Tihanyi. Perhaps you know him?”
“I know very little about the movie business. One thing, though: he doesn’t sound Italian.”
“I am told you made an investment in Krestin’s business.”
“Now, why would I do that?”
“Maybe because you saw a chance to ruin him?”
Géza examined the bird-feeder for a full minute before he answered. “If I had a chance to ruin the son-of-a-bitch, I would take it. How long was this Tihanyi partners with Krestin?”
“Four or five years.”
“Long enough to have seen my painting.”
Géza rose from his chair and asked if she would accompany him for a walk through the garden. “The air from the valley will refresh you. I find walking helps me think. Don’t you? About Gertrude . . .” He opened a French door and followed her onto a terrace overlooking the forested ravine.
“You didn’t tell me that you had visited her after her divorce.”
“I don’t see how my seeing her is any of your business,” he said.
“You also visited her before her divorce,” she said. “Perhaps in 1977.”
“In 1977? I was there with Klara, my wife. Putting flowers on my parents’ graves.”
“In Dunajská Streda?”
He stopped suddenly and stared at her. “Why? Did she say something about that?”
“No, she was very discreet, but I presume you went there as well as Budapest. And you’ve sent her money.”
He neither confirmed nor denied.
“This is the garden I had always imagined I’d have,” Géza said.
“I know. You told me.”
“It reminds me of my childhood.” He looked Helena in the eyes. “I imagine it does not remind you of yours. Otherwise you wouldn’t have become proficient in martial arts. Or was that just a hobby?”
Helena, who was not used to answering personal questions, gazed into the distance. “Jenci remembers your visits,” she said. “I assume you know he is your son?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way, my dear,” Géza said. “I entrusted you with a very important mission. I would not have done that if I’d had doubts. I assume you checked my bona fides when I proposed to send you to Hungary?”
“I didn’t need to. I knew enough about you long before we met. What I cannot understand is why you decided to buy back your painting. Why you went to all that trouble for me to see the provenance, assuming it is the real provenance. Many of those have also been faked. There have been some master provenance fakers, as we both know.”
“The documents I had delivered to you at the Kerepesi Cemetery can all be checked elsewhere,” he said. “The archives of the Kunsthistorisches Museum will confirm provenance. And restoring works of art to their rightful owners is one of your specialties, isn’t it? That’s why I picked you for this job.”
“Really?” She didn’t believe him. He had picked her because of her father. He had assumed that once she had seen all the fakes on his walls, she would be worried that her own reputation could be tarnished. He had said when she first came here and sampled his fine wines, “Your reputation precedes you.” She had taken that, not as a compliment but as a threat.
“Really,” he said, his hands thrust into his pants pockets as he surveyed his domain. His suit alone would have cost more than any one of her father’s paintings, she thought. He could have afforded a few genuine articles, had he chosen to do so.
“If you sold that painting for a crust of bread, or even several crusts of bread, you could have taken Krestin to court after 1989,” she said. “No court would have recognized his right to own something he had obtained for bread in a Soviet labour camp. Surely, in post-Communist Hungary, you would have won the suit. Or you could have taken him to court in another country. You could have had your painting back years ago, and for less than what you will likely have to pay now.”
He didn’t respond.
“Yet you chose not to,” she said. “And you paid Kis, and maybe some others, an annual retainer to find a painting you knew was in Krestin’s possession. Why?”
“I thought he no longer had it. Once the Communists bailed out, I assumed he would have sold the painting. As for the courts, you know remarkably little about how Eastern Europe works. The notion tha
t laws are there to protect citizens is Western. The idea of an independent judiciary is Western. Krestin had nothing to fear from me while he curried favour with both the post-Communists and their opponents. From time to time, he had to make sure he greased a palm, or invited someone to sample his largess. The trial, assuming that my suit against him ever reached a courtroom, would have been endlessly postponed, and both of us would have died before the judgement.”
“As it is, only one of you is dead,” Helena said, sipping her lukewarm wine. “And I assume if you were going to buy the painting, you could have offered to buy it years ago. Why didn’t you?”
“Perhaps I didn’t have enough money . . .”
“Or you, too, have something to hide.”
He spread his palms in a gesture of perfect openness.
“And before you get around to asking, no, I really don’t care whether it is a fake,” Géza said, facing her. “You have to understand that. If you do not, you haven’t been listening.”
He turned abruptly and left her alone on the terrace.
Klara, who must have been waiting somewhere in the garden, appeared by Helena’s elbow, with a silver tray of long-stemmed glasses and the open bottle of burgundy. She put it down on the stone railing.
“It’s been very hard for Géza these past few weeks,” she said. “He has managed to keep those memories at bay most of his life. It’s easier to do that in a new country; easier when he was busy. His work, you know, used to be very demanding. But he has mostly retired. Now, he can afford to think about the past.”
She took one of the glasses, poured herself a generous amount of wine, and drank it in large gulps, as if it were water and she had been thirsty for a long time. “Since he found out that his family’s painting did survive, he has spent more time living in the past than in the present. Some days he imagines he sees the slope of Sas Hill, the black poplars, the lindens, the yews, and in the distance the spires of Saint Michael’s. Today was one of those days.”
