Timeless

by Lucinda Franks

  “It’s not my decision; it’s the law. We did extensive research, we obtained affidavits, including one from the world’s leading Schiele expert, before we moved against you.”

  A disgruntled Lauder left the office, but at home a landslide of vitriol began to bury us. The phone rang incessantly, and we were inundated with irate letters from board chairmen of the New York Public Library and every museum in New York, including the Jewish Museum. The first epistle came from Bob’s friend Arthur O. Sulzberger, the mighty chairman of both the New York Times Company and the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

  Dear Bob:

  The Metropolitan Museum, its Board, staff, donors, and lenders are all … deeply disturbed that your office would issue a subpoena to The Museum of Modern Art involving it in a criminal investigation and forcing it to violate contractual obligations to return works on loan to the lender.

  … During the past year, the Metropolitan hosted 24 loan exhibitions helping to attract 5.4 million visitors. The Glory of Byzantium brought together 268 works of art from 23 countries … An economic development survey found that these visitors spent $184 million, generating tax revenue of $18 million for New York City and New York State. In the course of the year, the Metropolitan borrowed approximately 1,642 works of art …

  … The action which your office has initiated has put at risk the ability of the Metropolitan and other New York Museums to obtain loans essential to their exhibition programs. We urge you to resolve this matter as expeditiously as possible.

  Sincerely,

  Punch

  I was spellbound on January 7, 1998, as Bob told me what he had accomplished in a matter of hours. It began with that call from Lea’s niece, who said Bob was the Bondi family’s last chance. She said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the State Department in Washington had brushed them off, and with time running out, she decided to try this man Morgenthau, who was known to be a maverick who sought justice whether he had jurisdiction or not.

  Then, predictably, hearing of Morgenthau’s interest, the feds jumped back in. “You can’t do it,” Bob quoted an assistant at the U.S. Attorney’s Office as saying. “That’s our territory, and we’re investigating the claim. You can’t touch it, Bob.”

  “You know there’s nothing that gets my blood up more than being told I can’t do something,” my husband recounted to me over the phone. “But I have to do it fast, and there’s the small problem of New York law. There’s a statute that says cultural properties on loan in New York are indemnified from seizure and must be returned to the lending institution.”

  “Why don’t you get hold of Judah Gribetz”—he was an expert on Nazi looting and former counsel to Governor Carey—“and tell him to drop everything and try to find a little hole in the law that you can crawl through.”

  So that is what he did. The clock was ticking—they only had twenty-four hours—but Bob’s friend Judah found a loophole. Although it was open to interpretation, the statute protecting art-lending institutions seemed to be confined to civil actions, not criminal.

  But would the courts rule for the DA? Bob always hedged his bets. “I called Ray Kelly, and he urged me to act and told me if the courts ruled against me, Customs would take over and stop the painting from going anywhere,” Bob told me. “He accused me of being a hound with a ham bone. But I had to be. I knew the feds wouldn’t act against MoMA.”

  “You are amazing!” I cheered. I thought of how hard Bob was working to raise money for the museum, how steeped he was in the plight of the Holocaust survivors. Now he had been presented with an opportunity to seek retribution for one family of victims.

  “If your husband wins this,” Judah said, “he will have set a precedent. A huge amount of stolen art has been wandering around Europe since the war. Most Holocaust survivors have been resigned to having lost everything. They just didn’t think they could ever get it back. I don’t think there’s been another case like this anywhere in the world.”

  Meanwhile, a variety of art mavens, especially friends of MoMA, began attacking Bob for his motivations in the case. One widely copied story, in The Boston Globe, hit a raw nerve. In a piece titled “The Haunted Memories of Robert Morgenthau,” the paper accused the DA of trying to avenge his father, who had called the State Department “satanic” for suppressing news of the Holocaust and blocking a congressional mandate to rescue Jewish children in Europe. Henry junior went on to set up the War Refugee Board, but by then he was only able to save 200,000 Jews.

  “That’s a bunch of bull,” Bob said, slapping down the article. “I received evidence that art had been stolen, so I abided by the law. I’ve prosecuted stolen art cases before: there was a drawing stolen from the Louvre, artifacts from Italy. Schiele was a routine case.”

  Routine? Watching Bob’s paradoxical, even illusory nature in action was fascinating. Deep empathy for Holocaust victims was ingrained. It wasn’t just his father who saved victims; his grandfather Henry Morgenthau had sponsored and paid for dozens of Jewish families to seek refuge in America.

  Indeed, when the Austrian government finally agreed to let go of Portrait of Wally, the ceremonial return of the painting to the Bondis would take place at the Holocaust museum that Bob had been commissioned to build.

  Other newspapers wrote editorials speculating that Morgenthau might be responsible for shutting down smaller museums and galleries that depended on borrowed art. The Austrian press was the worst, with their anti-Semitic ramblings. One accused him of making “heists,” typical of his race, and of forcing “the art world into a banana republic.”

  I was worried about the effect the attacks would have on Bob. One day I asked him how he was feeling about them. He thought a minute, said “fuck ’em all,” and resumed opening a bottle of my favorite port. Other times, however, he got somber. With many of the city’s powerful figures, newspapers, and museums arrayed against him, he felt as though he were fighting behind the Alamo. “It’s upsetting,” he admitted.

  “They’ll respect you in the end,” I said. “Why don’t you have a press conference discussing the morality as well as the legal standing in the case? That way everyone will know what’s really happening.” So Bob did. After that, public opinion ceased to be unanimous against the seizure.

  The case languished in the federal courts for nine years until finally the Leopold Museum settled with the Bondis by buying the painting for a wildly inflated price of nineteen million dollars. The agreement stipulated that Portrait of Wally be displayed at Bob’s Museum of Jewish Heritage for three weeks before being returned and be hung with the story of the painting’s deceptive, peripatetic provenance on the wall.

  “Justice requires patience,” said Bob in a speech to members of the Bondi family and the guests who attended the museum’s unveiling of the 1912 portrait of Schiele’s red-haired mistress, which had been in storage for eleven years. Andre Bondi, Lea Bondi Jaray’s grandnephew, spoke of his gratitude to the DA, wiping tears away.

  Bob’s actions as a prosecutor caused a revolution in the international art world and had as far-ranging permanent effects as anything he had ever done.

  “Everybody’s thinking more about provenance today than they were yesterday,” said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan. Representatives Charles E. Schumer and Nita M. Lowey of New York drafted a bill requiring art purchasers to do background checks to see if the art was stolen or face losing the work in court. It also provided fifteen million dollars for organizations that helped locate looted art. Museums began to willingly return artworks to their rightful owners. Panels were created to help families trace their losses, wartime archives were opened, conferences arranged, books and documentaries produced. Even the Austrian government joined the rush. It gave 250 works of art worth a hundred million U.S. dollars to the Rothschild family, which had been stripped of its treasures after Hitler annexed Austria.

  Within a year, the United States had signed the groundbreaking Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Con
fiscated Art; governments and museums in forty-four nations pledged to repair the damage Nazi looters had done to Jewish art owners.

  * * *

  If you asked our children, Bob was the perfect parent. To him, the basic requirement of one was to put on a happy face. Calm, steady, and consistent, he taught Amy and Josh by example. Though I had been very close to our two and taken a much larger share in raising them, Bob had always been nearby, solving issues, reassuring me.

  As teens, both kids began to come to their dad with their confessions and their problems. It amused me to see Bob, who had little respect for psychiatry, treat them as though he were a Freudian analyst. He didn’t judge and rarely betrayed his reactions. To them, he was accessible and easygoing. The few times he got angry, he had only to scowl and level his smoky-blue eyes at them to make an impact. Me, I could shout all night and they would pay no attention.

  When things got hot, however, Bob stepped out of the line of fire completely. He was experienced enough to know that it is always the mother who gets it. All the child-raising books say never contradict a spouse while he or she is disciplining a child. Therefore, this was exactly what Bob did.

  Take the case of the brass doorknob. I was blasé when Josh had girls in his room and shut the door. I would smile indulgently when I found they had spent the night, ending up fully clothed, in a pile on Josh’s bed. But when I heard about seventh graders in some schools having sex in the bathrooms, I began to have thoughts about sending Josh to a seminary.

  The libertarian philosophy of parents who came of age in the 1970s had created rather entitled children. Josh and his friends, for instance, locked their doors, as though their parents were trespassers in their own home. Moreover, Josh began entertaining so often that his bedroom had become party central.

  We decided to finally set down a few rules: his door could not be locked, especially when he had girls over, and we were to have free access. Josh protested mightily. Then, two days later, we found the heavy, tightly fitted doorknob to his room had vanished. Screwdrivers, a wrench, a ruler, a can opener, and other “tools” were scattered on the hall floor. But no doorknob. Josh had removed and hidden it so only he could get into his room; in essence, he had found the loophole: he didn’t need to lock the door if there was no doorknob.

  Bob knelt down and examined the plate, tried to figure out how he had engineered this, and finally gave up. “He’s really done a job,” he said with the hint of a smile.

  “I don’t believe this, I just don’t believe it,” I said. I was particularly irritated at the admiration on Bob’s face. Did he identify with Josh the mischief maker, having been one himself?

  When the little villain appeared, clearly proud of himself, I was fuming.

  “You ruined that precious antique doorknob I searched the city for!” I yelled, my vow to be a sunny, insouciant mother having vanished.

  “How did you do it?” asked Bob curiously.

  “It’s why he did it that matters!” I barked. My son had made me do what I vowed I’d never do: act and sound like my mother. This made me angrier, and I picked up the hammer and absurdly waved it in the air, having no intention of using it on anyone.

  “Lucinda, calm down,” Bob said, alarmed. “Let it go.”

  “This is a joke to you, Bob? Lawbreakers, criminals, they start just like this. Practicing at home, vandalizing property, disrespecting their parents. Do you know what juvenile detention is like, Josh?”

  “Sure. I’d rather be there than live with the inmates in this asylum.”

  “If you don’t produce that doorknob now, you’re grounded for a month.”

  “For God’s sake, Mom,” Josh laughed.

  “Lucinda, leave him alone.”

  “We’re padlocking your door. You won’t have the last word on this.” Josh was taking my house apart, and Bob thought it was cute. I felt as if I were at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, where wrong was right and right was left.

  Josh retreated behind his door. We heard him put on the doorknob. “You’re insane, Mom,” he called.

  “Did you hear what he said to me?” I asked, looking at Bob.

  “Josh, you shouldn’t talk to your mother like that,” he crooned, in the same tone he had used when asking his erstwhile dog Rennie not to pee on the rug.

  “Oh Lord, the two of you are revolting!” I said, turning on my heel.

  * * *

  The next evening, Bob and I walked around the reservoir, watching the sun turn gold on the water.

  I confronted him about his reinforcement of Josh’s behavior: “Never mind me, think how Josh is getting mixed messages from his two parents—he’ll never be able to figure out what is right and what is wrong unless we act as a united team.”

  “I think he already knows the difference,” Bob said. “He’s just acting his age.”

  “But do you think it’s right for me to be scolding him and you then to start scolding me?”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “Yes you do! You do it all the damn time. You don’t know how infuriating it is for you to leave the discipline to me and then, when I do it, you pull the rug out from under me.”

  “I made you soup yesterday, cut articles out of the paper for you.”

  “What?”

  “And now you’re complaining about me.”

  “What does that have to do with this argument?”

  “Last weekend I took the kids to the farm so you could stay home and finish that New Yorker article.”

  “Bob, you’re talking about apples in the middle of a conversation about oranges.”

  “Look at the birds flying around the water,” he said, pointing. “I wonder what kind they are?”

  I didn’t speak for the rest of the walk, which I knew drove him crazy. He hated any member of his family to be mad at him.

  * * *

  Two days later, Jill Comins, my psychologist friend, and I were having lunch at Sarabeth’s, a sunny restaurant with a Scottish bakery. We ordered big healthy salads, since we were both trying to take off a few pounds. I told her about my argument with Bob, which still upset me.

  She laughed. “Men generally don’t know how to defend themselves in a woman’s style of arguing. They get flustered. Bob, he just landed in the soup, so to speak.”

  I giggled, then waved away the waiter with the bread, which was the last thing we needed. “You know, there’s no one like you who I can laugh with and learn from, both at the same time,” I said.

  “Maybe what he was trying to tell you is that he feels like he’s being taken for granted. He’s answering your complaint with one of his own. He doesn’t want to be overlooked. He may be saying, ‘I need you to recognize what it meant for me to get you soup, babysit the kids, all that…’ Or maybe he has been harboring hurt feelings—that you don’t appreciate the things he does for you.”

  “Hmm, while dismissing me and the critical issue I brought up. Very convenient.

  “You know,” I said, “the blueprint for our dynamic was set the first day we met. That rainy afternoon when I tried to get a story out of him about Nixon’s crooked cronies, it was like pulling grass out by the roots. He ducked and diverted. But still, I suspected then that he hadn’t given away anything he didn’t want to. Shall we splurge, get dessert?”

  “Oh, why not,” Jill said merrily. “I think you should remember that it’s often hard for men to say they’re wrong. I imagine Bob is no different.”

  “Like a little boy.”

  “Men are boys, haven’t you heard?”

  We giggled some more, and I moaned with exaggerated pleasure as a creamy bite of crème caramel rolled down my tongue. “You know,” I said slowly, “you’re making me think. I’m realizing that my hubby is very skilled at nuance. He says what he wants to say in very few words, words that are…”

  “Cryptic,” Jill said, dreamily eating her slice of moist dark-chocolate cake.

  “So maybe, in his weird Middle-earth world or whatever dimension h
e lives in, nuance is everything. What do you think of all that? You’re leaning back with this Freudian look on your face.”

  She smiled. “What I’m thinking is how did you, who’re such an extrovert, end up marrying the introvert of all introverts?”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “I’m teasing,” she said, grinning. “Opposites attract all the time.”

  22

  One day in early March 1999, I got a letter on beautifully bonded stationery. Hillary Clinton’s people were inviting me to accompany her on a trip to North Africa, implying that she might give me an exclusive interview. I nearly dropped the letter. Half the reporters in the nation had been trying to get to the First Lady. The president had just been acquitted of congressional impeachment charges, but the Monica Lewinsky scandal hung on—and Hillary seemed to be getting the brunt of it.

  I couldn’t imagine the humiliation she must feel. Or what it would be like asking her about it. I showed Bob the letter.

  “Exciting,” he exclaimed.

  “I’m not so sure,” I replied, through my own excitement. “Why would she even discuss Monica Lewinsky? The woman who publicly cuckolded her.”

  “Cuckqueaned. Only a man can be cuckolded.”

  “How’d you get to be so smart?”

  “You’re stealing my line.”

  “Can you be serious for once?”

  “Look, don’t worry, you can get anybody to talk,” Bob said dryly. “I should know.”

  I had been writing for The New Yorker, whose editor was the formidable Tina Brown, and now I was joining her as she left to start her own magazine, Talk, designed to be a glossier version of The New Yorker with photographs.

  Why had the First Lady chosen me? Did she think I would have a sympathetic ear, write something favorable? Or did she remember my solicitous treatment of her the night Princess Diana had died?

  A few weeks later, on March 20, I boarded the shuttle for Washington, giving Bob a long hug; the trip with Hillary would be some three weeks, and we’d never been apart that long.