Picture of Defeat

by John Harris

  ‘Why are they all here?’

  ‘My cousin is dead,’ Tassinari explained. ‘He was buried yesterday. They came for the funeral. Also I think,’ he added, ‘to see what they might pick up in the form of legacies. This is a very Italian habit. But I think they will be disappointed. There is no money. There is no money anywhere in Italy.’

  ‘I see.’ Klemper nodded. ‘We shall require the main part of the house. You will be allowed to use the hall and the basement rooms.’

  ‘And my cousin’s studio?’

  Klemper’s head jerked round. ‘That will be out of bounds to everyone,’ he rapped. ‘There must be paintings in there of great value. They need to be assessed by experts.’

  Tassinari’s frail frame moved in a gigantic shrug. ‘Alas, Signor Capitano, I regret there is nothing. We have already looked, of course.’

  Klemper frowned. ‘There must be paintings. Boccaccio Detto Banti was a prolific painter.’

  ‘Not in his old age, Signor Capitano. He painted nothing for years and, like most Italians, he had to sell off what he possessed to raise money to buy food.’

  Klemper clearly didn’t believe him and Pugh wondered if he had inside knowledge of what the house contained.

  ‘There must be sketches,’ he said. ‘There must be something.’

  Tassinari shrugged again. ‘I understood,’ he said, ‘that everything was deposited in the Palazzo Municipale, the town hall.’

  ‘Where is the town hall?’

  Tassinari gave another of his huge shrugs, opened the door and pointed. ‘There, Signor Capitano. Across the square. You have just destroyed it. Che desolazione!’

  Klemper strode to the door and stared over the assembled vehicles, before turning to the young lieutenant who accompanied him. ‘Hoggeimer. We shall need bulldozers.’ He swung back to Tassinari. ‘Where would they have been placed?’

  ‘In the cellars, I imagine, Signor Capitano.’

  ‘Who would know?’

  ‘The sindaco. Signor Capitano. These are men who have been put in charge by the Anglo-Americans, to take the place of the Fascist podestas. I think many of them are gangsters ruled by the reigning gangsters in Naples.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Sansovino, Vicenzo.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I saw him bolting south as the shells started failing.’

  ‘Himmelherrgott!’ Klemper turned to Hoggeimer. ‘Find someone who was employed across there! Anyone! I must know what happened to the paintings.’

  ‘It will be difficult for the Signore Capitano,’ Tassinari said gently. ‘As I have said, the sindaco was a crook. Most of the sindacos are crooks. He was not the sort of man who would be likely to tell his staff what he was going to do with anything valuable. I have no doubt he was expecting a substantial reward. Perhaps he even had plans to keep a painting or two for himself. Perhaps even he had plans to keep all the paintings.’

  Klemper was looking angry and alarmed at the same time. ‘Get on with it, Hoggeimer! Find out!’

  Pugh could hardly repress a smile. It was a brilliant piece of improvisation. With the town hall now only a pile of rubble it was going to take Klemper some time to discover that the paintings he was looking for weren’t there.

  ‘I understood there were paintings,’ Klemper said. ‘I heard there were paintings.’

  ‘Who from, Signore?’ Tassinari’s manner was polite but his eyes glinted suddenly.

  Klemper took a turn up and down the room before swinging round to face Tassinari. ‘Word was passed to us. It was reported from the Kunstschutz, the official organisation safeguarding art treasures, that there were pictures. They should have been investigated when our troops were here before, but the Sonderauftrag Linz was busy in the north. There are many treasures in Florence which have to be assessed and safeguarded. We had better hurry.’

  ‘There is no hurry, Signore, surely.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ Klemper eyed Tassinari doubtfully. ‘I think there is, because there will not be another summer after this. In the meantime,’ he went on, ‘we have other things to occupy our time. The Church of San Isidro at Avizano has an altarpiece by Simonetta, and it will need to be removed to a safe place where it can’t be damaged. That will keep us busy until Hoggeimer has learned the whereabouts of the Detto Bantis. For the moment we will look at the accommodation.’

  They led him into the basement. The cold room where the paintings were hidden was obscured by the cupboard they had dragged into place and Klemper didn’t investigate further.

  ‘Three rooms,’ he said. ‘A kitchen, a bedroom and a store room.’ He studied the room where old Enrichetta had slept and the big double bed where she had spread her ample body, then peered next door into the store room, which now, with its stores long gone, was empty apart from a single iron bedstead. ‘There is room here for three of you,’ he pointed out. He gestured at Tassinari. ‘You can have the bed, old man. The other two will sleep on the floor.’

  ‘Why are we not to be allowed home?’

  ‘Where are your homes?’

  ‘Naples.’

  Klemper smiled. ‘You are now in the German zone. It will be difficult.’ He looked at Pugh. ‘Signor Cavalcassella and his wife can have the double bed,’ he said. ‘No one can say that we are not trying to be helpful.’

  Tamara was staring horrified at Pugh as Klemper continued. ‘We shall need meals, of course. You will be given rations. Our orderlies will serve the food but you will cook for us. I expect you can do that. I expect also that you will help yourself to what’s left, but I suppose we mustn’t complain. It’s something we’ve learned to expect from Italians.’

  By late afternoon, a bulldozer was scrabbling about in the ruins of the town hall, Klemper had set up an office in the big salon off the hall and men were examining the Church of San Isidro in Avizano with a view to removing the altarpiece. Among the workmen they had recruited and driven there by lorry were several from Vicinamontane, among them Pugh and Foscari. When they arrived, they found Della Croce, the student-butcher boy, also there, his job a clandestine one to find out exactly where it was intended to take the altarpiece.

  ‘We Italians,’ he told Pugh quietly, ‘have shown little heart for becoming cannon-fodder in a futile war, but there is no lack of courage in our attempts to retain our national treasures. There is more sense in fighting for a Titian or a Tintoretto than for a stretch of dusty ground in North Africa. We shall have difficulty after it is all over, of course, claiming everything back, because we are ex-enemies and there will be too many vultures among the Anglo-Americans. But we shall manage it, because there are also a few honest men.’ He pointed at the altarpiece. ‘They might not even get very far with it, because I’ve been informed that partisans are gathering.’

  Lieutenant Hoggeimer had been able to find out nothing about Sansovino, beyond that by this time he was well on his way to Naples and that if he had placed the Detto Bantis in the vaults of the town hall he had taken great care not to inform anyone.

  ‘He was a crook, Herr Kapitän,’ he informed Klemper. ‘Thanks to the gullibility of the Anglo-Americans, he got himself appointed here and was living on the place like a bloodsucker.’

  ‘We Germans do things more thoroughly,’ Klemper said placidly. ‘I don’t think we would have appointed him.’

  Hoggeimer smiled. ‘There would be no point,’ he said. ‘We have gauleiters.’

  Klemper frowned but Hoggeimer showed no sign of perturbation. He was a clever young man who had been an art student until his call-up, and he had long since decided that while he was safeguarding treasures for Hitler he might also safeguard a few things for himself because it was clear that, despite what the Führer said, the war was going to be lost and it would be difficult when peace came.

  As the truck deposited the Italians back in Vicina-montane, Pugh noticed the student-butcher boy deep in conversation with Marco Detto Banti. As he left, Pugh drew Marco to one side. ‘What does he
want?’ he demanded.

  ‘Money,’ Marco said. ‘I said we haven’t got any.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘He thinks the place is full of paintings which can be sold to the Germans. He said he should sell them and use the money to buy guns for the partisans.’

  ‘Does he know about the paintings in the cellar?’

  ‘Not a thing. He’s guessing.’

  Sitting round the remains of a meal at the table in the basement kitchen, all of them wearing coats against the chill in the cellars, Pugh faced the others. They had eaten well. German rations weren’t as good as American rations, but they were more substantial than the rations the Italians had had to endure.

  The Germans had not worried them and Klemper had even gone out of his way to be polite, but the place had changed. Instead of the free and easy air of a family house, even a family house divided by disagreement, it had become stiff and formal. With the cigars the Germans smoked, it had even acquired a different smell.

  He looked at Foscari. While it wasn’t important for Tamara and the other two, it was certainly important that he and Foscari disappeared before the Germans discovered who they were. Failure would mean a prison camp for Pugh and probably death for Foscari. Foscari was well aware of what the consequences might be and, since the arrival of the Germans, he had hardly left Pugh’s side, as if he regarded him as some sort of lucky charm that would save him.

  ‘It’s time we left,’ Pugh said. ‘How do we get away?’

  Tassinari smiled. ‘There’s only one sure way of getting anything in Italy,’ he said. ‘Bribery. Perhaps we could use one of Bocco’s paintings to get us out of the town.’

  ‘We’ve still got to get through the German lines.’

  Tassinari smiled. ‘Allora, let us take two then.’

  ‘Why not take the lot?’ Tamara said. ‘We might save some of them.’

  ‘We’d need a lorry for that.’

  ‘There aren’t any lorries.’

  ‘Then we must find a car.’

  ‘You can’t get them in a car. They’re too big. You’d have to take them out of the frames.’

  ‘Then why not take them out of the frames?’

  They stared at each other. Now that the idea of taking the paintings with them had been put forward everybody seemed to be accepting it without question.

  ‘In that case,’ Pugh said, ‘we’d better start straight away.’

  ‘It’ll take most of the night, sir,’ Foscari pointed out.

  ‘And we can’t leave tomorrow in daylight,’ Marco said. ‘It would have to be during tomorrow night. They’ll not have dug down to the vaults under the town hall by then.’

  ‘Where are we going to find transport? We can’t walk to Naples.’

  That floored them. There weren’t any cars. Everybody knew that. There were only old vehicles pulled by skeletal horses – carts, carriages and–

  ‘Hearses,’ Pugh said, sitting bolt upright.

  They all stared at him. ‘We’ve got transport,’ he said. ‘In the garden. Even the horse to pull it.’

  ‘The hearse?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve just had one funeral. Let’s have another!’

  ‘Whose? The Germans will want to know.’

  ‘Enrichetta’s. She’s disappeared. Who’s to know she didn’t die. We drive away with the hearse containing a coffin, but what’s inside the coffin won’t be the remains of Enrichetta. The paintings will be inside.’

  Tassinari nodded gravely. ‘Funerals are always good. Italians love death. They never put aside their black because families are large and there’s always someone they can mourn.’

  ‘Where do we get a coffin?’

  ‘I can make one, sir,’ Foscari said.

  ‘What from?’

  Foscari indicated Enrichetta’s big kitchen cupboard. ‘Pine,’ he said. ‘Cheap. Soft wood. Let us take it to pieces.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘We have tools, sir. A hammer. Nails. Screws. A saw.’

  ‘It’s not coffin wood.’

  ‘Nobody in Italy will argue, sir. These days coffins are made of all kinds of wood.’

  Pugh grinned. ‘Make it big, Enzio,’ he said. ‘Enrichetta was a fat woman.’

  They were all involved. Marco disappeared outside, found the horse – still miraculously unstolen – and locked it in what was left of the stables. It was already looking considerably better for the grazing in the orchard and even seemed to resent the move. Nobody had claimed the hearse, so they moved that into the carriage house.

  ‘Go and find Ciasca, Marco,’ Pugh said. ‘Offer him money. Hire his hearse. Anything you like.’

  ‘We’ll need flowers,’ Tamara said. ‘You can’t have a funeral without flowers.’

  ‘Go and find some.’

  Marco came back half an hour later with the information that Ciasca had disappeared into the hills. ‘His neighbours said he didn’t like handling bodies,’ he announced. ‘He inherited the business when his brother died six months ago. But he was superstitious and never liked it. The hearse and the horse are ours.’

  Soon afterwards, Tamara returned with her arms full of blooms. She looked pink-faced and ashamed.

  ‘I took them off the grave of the man they buried this morning,’ she said. ‘I think they came originally from my father’s. If I hadn’t taken them I suppose someone else would have.’

  Taking the cupboard to pieces was a problem, especially as they had to be as quiet as possible. But Foscari knew how cupboards were put together and they were able to do it with a minimum of noise. Old Tassinari acted as carpenter’s mate. They worked hard, absorbed in the task, until Foscari forgot where he was.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Pugh said. ‘This is no bloody time to start singing!’

  ‘Mi scusi.’ Foscari looked abashed. ‘I forget. It is Rodolfo singing to the very cold Mimi. It is very Italian to sing opera. In Italy we are in constant intimacy with death, and this is why consumptive heroines like Violetta and Mimi are so real to us.’

  Most of the nails came out of the crates from the back of the cellar, laboriously straightened by Pugh or Tamara, and the screws came from old Enrichetta’s cupboard. In the bottom of the cupboard were deep wide drawers with brass handles, which Foscari removed to decorate the coffin. They were only held on by screws and would never have been enough to lift a body, so he drilled holes and attached ropes that lay inside the handles so that the lifting could be done with those. Nobody in Italy would ever query it. Since the war people had been laid to rest in far worse coffins than the one Foscari had made.

  ‘We’ll have to weight it, sir,’ he said realistically. ‘If anybody sees us lifting it, it must look as though it’s got something inside it.’

  They found several large stones outside which they supplemented with heavy kitchen equipment.

  ‘We’ve also got to pad it, sir,’ Foscari pointed out. ‘If the stones slide about it will sound a hard and bony body, I think.’

  Searching among the rubbish in the cellar, in a big oak trunk they found a set of blue velvet curtains with gold fringes, together with the gold-tasselled ropes which had held their folds in place. By a miracle, neither the mice nor the moths had been at them and, though the colours had faded a little on the edges, they were in excellent condition.

  ‘They came from the studio,’ Marco explained. ‘It was originally a bedroom.’

  As they lifted them out, a small treasure trove fell to the floor – brooches, miniatures, bracelets, and three small oil paintings about thirty-six centimetres square.

  ‘As we thought,’ Pugh said. ‘Enrichetta was helping herself.’

  As Marco reached for one of the oils, Pugh pushed his hand away.

  ‘Leave it,’ he rapped. He glanced at Tamara and, picking up the painting, stood for a moment, staring at it. Taking it across to the light, he examined it more closely. ‘Whatever the others might be,’ he said slowly, ‘this is Bocco Detto Banti at his best. This is the first divis
ion period, before he grew old and got arthritis and started drinking too much. This is a first division painting.’

  Tamara appeared alongside him. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m certain. These are valuable, twice as valuable as the others, in fact. And these are a size we can get away easily without removing the frames. Whatever we do with the others, we’ve got to well and truly hide these.’

  There was plenty of straw among the crates, which they used to pad the stones. When Foscari had finished, they laid the canvasses in the coffin and were about to put the lid on when Tassinari stopped them.

  ‘We must keep one,’ he said. ‘For the bribe. For the one thing that can always get you favours in Italy.’

  They argued around the subject for a while but they all knew that Tassinari was right.

  ‘We have nothing else,’ Tassinari explained. ‘And fourteen paintings and freedom are better than fifteen paintings and no freedom. A Detto Banti – even a poor one – is a splendid ransom.’

  They studied the pictures for a while, trying to choose what they considered the least valuable.

  ‘This one,’ Tassinari suggested. ‘What he calls A Farmer Selling a Cow.’

  It was an uninspired painting, with two bored-looking men standing alongside an even more bored-looking cow.

  ‘Not one of his best,’ Tassinari admitted. ‘A poor painting from a poor period.’ He stared at the three new ones they had found with a warm expression. ‘Not like those. But, of course, nobody need know that but us.’

  It was almost morning when they finally sat back. Loaded with stones and packed with the paintings in straw secured by one of the velvet curtains, the coffin stood in the cellar. All they had to do was wait through the day and leave after dark the next night. It meant sneaking the coffin out to the stables, but they felt they could do it, and that no one would stop a hearse. With air raids, funerals in Italy were being held at strange times, especially near the front, where shelling might be expected. People buried their dead late at night or in the early morning, to avoid being spotted from some lookout post in the hills and receiving a few explosives to speed the corpse on its way. As they finished, Marco produced a bottle of brandy from the back of the cellar.