by Elaine Young
* * *
In the privacy of Bragadin’s office Ari told him the whole story. He ended by saying lamely, ‘I was afraid, and I didn’t know who I could trust, then I thought of you. Whoever this is, they seem to know I have something valuable. In fact this incident confirms that I am not wasting my time in making these enquiries.’
With raised eyebrows and a lifted shoulder, Bragadin sat back and lit his pipe, saying thoughtfully between puffs, ‘The spectre of Nazism is rising again I fear. In 1938 my father saw the writing on the wall before the infamous passing of the Law forbidding Jewish children to attend Italian schools. My mother was Jewish but my father was Catholic, and I had been baptised as a Catholic. We would have been allowed to stay in Italy because of that. My father didn’t want me, his only child, to grow up in a climate of such hatred, so we went to Scotland because my father had studied there and his friend, Samuel Goldstein, invited us to stay with them for a while.
‘As you know, that is when I met Sarah. She was very young of course, twelve years old, and I was sixteen. I realised I should have stayed there in safety, but four years later I was persuaded to go back to Italy as a spy. It was very exciting, but dangerous at the same time. And I was captured . . . but of course you know all this!’ Ari remembered how Bragadin had been caught by the Nazis, and his subsequent torture at their hands. He had eventually escaped back to Britain and had taken up Law at Edinburgh University. ‘What is it now, thirty-five years ago? Memories are long and vengeance doesn’t sleep. However, my old friend, as you know, I have not been well since my Sarah died and I have passed on most of my clients to Michel Gaillard.’
Ari’s eyes widened as Bragadin explained, ‘His father was a Frenchman who married my cousin Adelina,’ he stopped as Ari was nodding his head vigorously,
‘I know this man, Ettore! During the war my father used to take us into the country to find fresh food and the Gaillard family helped us. Their son was called Michel. But of course, it must be the same person. His mother was Adelina. Well I never . . . I tried to contact him some years ago, in fact I went to the farm. He wasn’t there and I intended to follow that up, but you know how it is . . . so you are related to Adelina Gaillard! She was a wonderful woman. She was very kind to me and I adored her. I used to follow her around like a puppy!’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘She made me think so much of my own mother.’
‘Fancy what a small world it is, my friend. Well, Michel has been helping me. He’s a good lawyer and has specialised in criminal law as well as international law. He has an apartment in Dorsoduro.’ He picked up the phone that was at his elbow. ‘I will brief him. Don’t worry; these papers will be safe in his hands.’ The phone was answered at the other end and Ari waited as Bragadin spoke. ‘He will come over right away.’
They sat in a companionable silence over a glass of prosecco. Within a short time they heard the doorbell and the old servant shuffled to the front door. A cheerful voice echoed through the apartment and in a moment Michel Gaillard came through the door.
‘It’s wonderful to meet you again, Ari! In fact, Charlotte told me you had come to visit. I was very sorry not to have been there. Your family’s visits meant a great deal to us all those years ago. We were quite isolated of course, with my father in hiding, and I remember what fun we had . . .’ For a little while they reminisced about the old days and how they had played around the farm, but as Michel had been a small boy at the time his memories were vague. The subject was soon exhausted and they turned to business.
Ari told him something of his life since the war, his return to Paris in 1967 and how he had recognised Dubois as the man who had been present at his father’s arrest. As Ari began explaining his theories about Dubois and his fear that his interest was being monitored by some unknown person or persons, Michel suddenly stopped him, his face alight with interest.
‘Wait. You said you believe that Dubois is someone who went by the name of Jacques Marteau during the war? You cannot know what this all means to me! I’ve also had big questions in my mind about Victor Dubois. I have always believed that he is Jacques Marteau, the man who murdered my father, according to Grandmère. He was responsible for my mother’s death too . . . I also cannot prove it because I was too young to remember details. All I had to go on was what Grandmère told me.’
‘Charlotte didn’t go into any details when we spoke, but she told me that your wonderful mother died unjustly at the hands of the locals because they believed her to be Nazi sympathiser.’ He couldn’t find a way to voice the rest of the revelations he had been told by the housekeeper. Michel nodded ruefully as Ari went on,
‘I also have a letter I found amongst my father’s papers which your grandmother gave him the last time we came to the farm. She wrote that she believed that one of the maquis, possibly the one called Jacques, had killed your father. You will find it in the leather bag included in my box of papers. Please take it.’
‘Thank you. I would appreciate that,’ Michel said, ‘the jackal had taken my mother as his woman and made her pregnant. Just before the D-Day landings he went missing. It was believed by some that he was a Nazi sympathiser, so towards the end of the war they came and killed my mother. Found guilty by association.’ He was silent for a bit. Then, ‘When the man left, he took a necklace that had been in the family since Marie Antoinette’s time.’ At Ari’s look of surprise he explained,
‘One of my ancestors was a dresser to a lady–in-waiting of Marie Antoinette’s, so the story goes, and just before the Revolution she was given this necklace which is probably priceless, by virtue of its history as much as the diamonds and rubies that it was made of. It could have been stolen in all the confusion at the start of the revolution for all I know! I never saw it. I only heard the story from Grandmère. When Marteau left, the car he usually drove was caught in an ambush and we supposed that he’d died in the explosion. And of course, the necklace was destroyed, or so we thought. But it seems he tricked everyone into believing he had died that day.
‘To me, the existence of the necklace seemed more like a family legend than anything else, but it is one more reason why I want to see this man in jail, I can tell you. When I was about twenty two, a couple of years before I went to Oxford for my post-grad studies, I foolishly went to tackle Victor Dubois with the allegation that he was Jacques. It was really my grandmother who thought she had recognised him, although she said he had changed so much since the war years. She insisted that I, as the head of the family, go and confront him. Dubois denied it, of course, and he had me dragged from the building. After that rather embarrassing episode I shelved the whole idea!’
‘Then we are after the right man, Michel. Of that I am positive. When I saw Dubois at a reception at the Sorbonne back in 1972 or thereabouts, I recognised him as Jacques Marteau who had helped to arrest my father.
‘You know,’ Ari went on, ‘my father used to tell me the story of David and Goliath. He would encourage me to be like David, not to be afraid, but run towards the giant with very little in my hands and trust Heaven to help me bring him down. Sometimes my heart trembles at the course I have set myself to bring this man to justice, and I am terrified of what he could do to me. But I can’t give up. I only have to remember my father lying on the street outside our apartment, being kicked by police boots and it gives me courage to go on.’
‘I know. I can scarcely remember my father; I was so young when he died. But I saw how my mother wilted after that and when I look back, I can imagine that in her heart she died then too. Anything else that happened to her she faced as though she was dead already. I wasn’t home mercifully, when they came to . . . came to . . .’ he stopped and took a deep breath. ‘There has to be an end to hate, Ari. There has been too much of that already! I have seen the harvest it reaped amongst the people close to me. I don’t hate Dubois or the people who killed my mother. But I do believe that he has to pay the penalty for what he did.’
After several hours of reminiscing and going th
rough Ari’s files with him, Michel stood up. ‘I’ll take all of this back to my place to study it further, if you don’t mind.’ At Ari’s nod, he continued, ‘To tell the truth, we don’t really have enough for a sound case against him, but this is a start. We’ll keep our ears open for anything else. Call me if you find out anything more. I spend a lot of my time here in Venice but twice a month I am at this address in Paris,’ he gave Ari his card. ‘Till then.’ He embraced the two older men affectionately, ‘It is going to be fine, you’ll see.’ He declined an invitation to supper and left. His confidence had lifted Ari’s spirits and he felt more relaxed than he had for a long time.
Ari stayed the night with Bragadin talking about his adored Sarah over a simple meal of braised veal with a cream sauce and fresh pasta prepared by Bragadin’s ancient manservant. After dinner, as they lit cigars and settled back with a glass of whisky, Ari looked around and was dismayed at how Bragadin’s apartment had deteriorated since Sarah died. He was sure it hadn’t been dusted since then. I suppose I need order in my life, he thought. Poor Bragadin looks as if he has stopped caring about anything. The cats seem to have multiplied since Sarah’s death too. They gave him the hay fever so Ari wouldn’t stay longer, even though Bragadin urged him to, and he returned to Paris the next day.
