The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  ‘It must be cold out there. I have made some tea,’ Danica called through the open window.

  Reluctantly Rebecca stepped back inside, wiping the last tears away.

  ‘You are very pale. Would you like a sip of brandy? I keep some for emergencies,’ Danica said.

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘Tell me move about the Winkleman family?’

  ‘Generous, kind – their door was always open and even though they had no money, they would always share what they had.’

  ‘I thought the father was a successful lawyer?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘He represented the poor and oppressed – he never made money. He was a truly kind-hearted man who put the welfare of others before himself and his family. She was an art teacher.’

  ‘My father said that they helped Jews escape in the 1930s by buying their pictures from them,’ Rebecca said, even though she already guessed that this piece of folklore was unlikely to be true.

  Danica shook her head, ‘They had a loft – so people hid things up there – the odd painting, pieces of jewellery but mostly family mementos. You never knew when the Nazis were going to come.’

  ‘Did the Winklemans have any art?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘Your brother asked the same questions,’ Danica said thoughtfully. ‘They had one painting. She was so proud of it. It hung above the mantelpiece in their parlour and sometimes she would tell us the story behind the work. I can still remember it today; it was of a beautiful young woman with her lover watched over by a clown. It wasn’t harsh like so many contemporary works; it was a painting you could get lost in.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be in any of these photographs would it?’ Rebecca asked.

  The old lady flicked through her book. ‘Here we are.’ She pointed to a small black-and-white photograph of the Winkleman family standing in front of a fireplace. Behind them on the wall was a painting about eighteen inches by twenty-four. Although it was a tiny image and hard to make out any detail, Rebecca saw that it matched the description of the painting Memling was so anxious to recover.

  ‘There were more than one hundred families living in this block,’ Danica said. ‘Many had beautiful paintings. The lower floors were owned by the richer families – those had high ceilings and larger works of art. I remember one family, the Steinbergs, who had works by Veronese, Rembrandt and I forget who else. Mrs Winkleman used to take us on a tour sometimes and try and teach us about art.’

  Turning the pages of her photograph album, Danica was silent. ‘The Nazis didn’t just take paintings, they took everything: sheets, towels, furniture, pots and pans, you name it. They stole the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor.’

  ‘What did they do with it all?’

  ‘The very best was offered to Hitler. Then Göring. There was a pecking order.’

  Rebecca nodded.

  ‘The regional leaders got the next lot, followed by the officers, and anything that wasn’t wanted was sold in weekly auctions. Sometimes, before we got interned, we would go down to the sales to see who had bought our things. Once my mother tried to buy a coffee pot that had belonged to her grandmother. It was chipped and worn – it couldn’t have been worth more than a few Marks. The auctioneer saw the yellow star on her coat and refused to sell it to her. He picked up the pot, which was made of china, and dropped it on to the floor where it broke into a thousand pieces. I wouldn’t have minded losing a valuable painting if I could have kept a book or two. Do you know that I don’t even have a record of my mother or my father’s handwriting? All I want is to have a glimpse of an old book, to see once more, “To Danica, Happy Birthday with love from Mama and Papa.” Is that so much to ask? I am ninety-six years old but I have not given up hope.’

  Rebecca shook her head, fighting back sorrow and shame – was Memling an accomplice, was he a robber of memories? Had she and her family lived off the proceeds of these people’s grief ?

  ‘Heinrich had a job working for the Führer’s personal art squad,’ Danica said, as if reading Rebecca’s mind. ‘One day he and some colleagues, all fancy in their black shirts and polished boots, came here and helped themselves to some paintings. You could see he was uncomfortable doing it – but it didn’t stop him. We stood and watched them. Esther Winkleman wept with shame; she had taught little Heinrich what was good. She had never told him the meaning of evil.’

  ‘Did he take her picture?’

  ‘Not during her lifetime,’ Danica said. ‘But I often wondered what happened to it after they were taken away.’

  Rebecca opened and closed her mouth and, unable to formulate any words, she just shrugged and hung her head.

  Danica patted her hand reassuringly. ‘It’s in the past.’

  Her compassion stung like a barb.

  ‘How can you be so forgiving?’ Rebecca whispered.

  ‘I will never forgive them but I couldn’t allow their cruelty to take over my entire life; that would have sealed their victory. I had to find a way of living with those memories, but I also don’t want anyone to forget what happened.’ She looked at Rebecca fiercely. ‘By listening to my story you are helping me and others. People must know what occurred so that history does not repeat itself.’

  Turning back to the book, Danica flicked to the next page. This time it was the same apartment with the same belongings and the Watteau still hung above the fireplace, but something was missing.

  ‘Where are the people?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Where is the family?’

  ‘In 1942, many families asked my father to take pictures of their empty apartments. It was as if we knew that this way of life was coming to an end. We were already non-people in the eyes of the state. Our businesses had been confiscated, our freedom severely restricted, our temples burned and looted. Perhaps we knew that soon only our ghosts would haunt these rooms, these buildings.’

  For a long time the two women sat in silence looking at the empty rooms captured in black-and-white images with their edges yellowed by age.

  ‘Would you mind if I took some photographs on my iPad?’

  Danica smiled. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Are you certain there were no other Winkleman survivors?’ she asked.

  ‘I heard that Johanna had a child in the camp. A daughter. How come your father never tried to find her?’ Danica shook her head in wonder. ‘People behaved strangely after the war – but most families wanted to be reunited.’

  ‘He started a new life in England,’ Rebecca fell back into a familiar pattern of protecting Memling. ‘He wanted to put the past right behind him.’

  Danica smiled. ‘At my age, the past is the only thing we have.’

  The two women sat side by side for a few minutes. Rebecca looked at the photographs, while Danica looked at Rebecca.

  ‘You are not a Winkleman, are you?’ the old lady asked in a kindly voice.

  ‘Of course I am – look at my passport,’ Rebecca said sharply.

  Danica leant over and closed the photograph album and, taking Rebecca’s hands in her own gnarled fingers, she asked, ‘Are you a Fuchs?’

  Rebecca looked up into the old lady’s face. She wanted to lie, to jump up and run out, to scream, protest and shout. Different reactions and emotions raced around her head. Forcing herself to stay calm, she heard her own voice, hesitantly, say, ‘I don’t know.’

  Danica looked at Rebecca for a few moments before answering and in her soft voice she said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile – what matters is doing the right thing.’

  *

  Walking away from Friedrichstadt, Rebecca wanted desperately to talk to Marty. She had never imagined it was possible to miss him more. Rebecca stopped by the playground of a large secondary school and watched some students. Some played a game, others sat around and talked – they looked so confident and at ease. Rebecca tried to remember that feeling. Had she ever had it? She thought not. Would she ever feel that way again? That was an easy question to answer.

  Taking out her iPad, she looke
d at the photos of Marty’s notebook. She realised now that Marty had traced certain pictures back to Schwedenstrasse 14 – these same ones that Memling claimed were part of the cache that the Winklemans had bought from their escaping Jewish friends and included a Veronese, a couple of Rembrandts and a Watteau matching the description of the missing picture. Next to this one, Marty had written a few details including the name Antoine Watteau, the date 1703, a catalogue entry and a sale reference from 1929. She knew she had to complete her brother’s quest. Marty had discovered his father’s identity and had been in the process of working out how his father came by those early pictures. Was it fraud, opportunism or something worse?

  Rebecca walked on past some shops but couldn’t focus on their displays. If she found out that Memling was guilty of some awful crime, what would she do with that information? To expose her father was to bring down the whole Winkleman business. There was her daughter and Carlo to think of, as well as their employees, and the clients and museums that had bought work in good faith. Again, Rebecca wondered if her brother’s death had been an accident; perhaps he had been unable to cope with the responsibility of exposing the lie against the impossibility of living with it. The missing painting was tangled up with her family’s history – as a protagonist, a witness, a cypher. Hurrying towards her hotel, Rebecca knew that she had to find it before anyone else, including Memling.

  Chapter 18

  Memling Winkleman hit the tennis ball with every ounce of strength that his ninety-one-year-old body could muster.

  ‘You are on fire today, Mr Winkleman,’ his coach Dilys called out over the net, struggling to return his smash. She hit the ball too kindly to Memling’s forehand and he hit it back at her stomach with such ferocity that Dilys only just managed to jump aside.

  ‘I might be old and decrepit but don’t hit condescending shots,’ Memling barked.

  He treated his coach as he treated everyone: with a sense of overriding imperiousness. The combination of wealth, age and intelligence convinced him that he was better than other people and his sense of self-belief was so absolute that it was contagious.

  Dilys held up her hands to apologise. She had been playing tennis with Memling three nights a week at 6 p.m. in his private underground court under the Winkleman complex in Curzon Street for nearly ten years. They played for forty-five minutes and at exactly 6.45 p.m. he walked off without saying goodbye. Dilys did not care – it was good money and more challenging than her day job teaching children at a local private school.

  Taking the lift from the basement to the fourth floor, Memling walked through his bedroom, through his closet and, tearing off his clothes, stepped into his shower. The water started automatically, pre-set to do alternate blasts of hot and then icy-cold water. Exactly five minutes later, he stepped out of the shower room and glanced nervously at his mobile telephone, hoping for a message. There was none. At a time when he should have been enjoying his dotage, just when his daughter’s and granddaughter’s futures were secure, he was racked with fear. Everything he had built up, his life’s work, his family’s future, was in peril because of one sentimental mistake. The only solution was to find and destroy the piece of evidence that linked Memling to aspects of a past that he had so successfully buried. His thoughts turned to the farmhouse in Bavaria – he had meant to burn the store to the ground on his last visit but, unable to accept his impending mortality, had baulked at the last minute. He made the decision to do that by the end of the month, latest.

  He dried himself and put on a navy-blue cashmere suit and a pale-blue shirt before getting back into the lift and going down to his private dining room on the first floor. Annie had left his supper, a piece of steamed fish, some spinach and a half-bottle of red Bordeaux on a side table. If he was not going out, Memling liked to eat undisturbed, with just Tiziano for company. This evening he had no appetite and he sat looking at a Tiepolo sketch hanging on the opposite wall, considering his second great mistake: rediscovering the picture in the junk shop and not purchasing it there and then. Spotting the security camera on the wall, Memling had decided to send Ellis, his bodyguard-cum-chauffeur, one of the few people he trusted to buy the work. Finding the picture gone, Ellis attempted to frighten the shopkeeper. Unfortunately, his ‘little lesson’ got out of hand. Now the man was dead, and the picture was still lost.

  Pouring himself a second glass of wine, Memling allowed his thoughts to return to Marianna – she had promised never to sell or give the painting away, that it would remain with her always as the secret reminder of their true love. Her sudden, unexpected death had derailed her good intentions.

  For the sake of his children, Memling had never left his wife Pearl for the love of his life. Not a man given to passion, or indeed many deep feelings, he had loved Marianna from the moment she walked up the aisle to marry his close friend. Turning, like the rest of the congregation, to catch a glimpse of the bride, Memling felt a shock pulsate through his body. As she walked past him, she caught his eye and he knew in that instant that the feeling was mutual.

  Marianna and Memling spent five painful years denying their love, but one afternoon, meeting by chance near Claridge’s hotel, they spent the first of many happy afternoons in a suite on the fourth floor. Seventeen years after her death, Memling still kept the suite on permanent hire and often returned alone to mourn her passing.

  After her death, Memling wrote to her sons asking for his picture. He didn’t add that he had given the priceless object to their mother as a reminder of their love. It was the only sentimental act that Memling had ever committed. Her children (none by Memling) were apologetic but admitted that they had sold all the contents of her house as a job lot to a house clearance firm. Memling had scoured the saleroom and museum catalogues for many years; he made a habit of visiting random galleries and junk shops on the weekend. It was a fluke that he found it in Bernoff ’s that Saturday after sixteen and a half years of searching. Why, Memling thought for the umpteenth time, had he given Marianna that painting? There were so many others and many more valuable. The answer was always the same: that painting said everything he believed but could never articulate about love. For the first sixteen years of his life, it had belonged to the only person who had shown him true, unconditional kindness. This, Memling assumed, was what love was all about. When he met Marianna, his understanding of love changed; he was, simultaneously, the impassioned happy man lying at the feet of his beloved and also the morose clown standing in the background of the picture. Being in love pitched him, moment by moment, between waves of ecstasy and misery. Like every other person, he believed his predicament was unique.

  Being with Marianna was the only time Memling was granted a respite from self-disgust and shame. For those brief moments, he forgot about the naked, cold child standing outside the Berlin block of flats and about being a disgrace to his parents. Or the shame he felt creeping around the apartment block, ransacking the homes of his former friends, denuding those few survivors of their possessions. Or the indignity that came from stealing another man’s identity, an indignity he deserved. There were times when Memling justified his actions to himself. Cutting the paintings from their frames in the storerooms, rolling up the canvases and hiding them in his kit bag was a way of saving great art, but he knew deep down that he was just a lucky thief.

  Marianna’s love ennobled Memling, made him a better person, cleansed of his crimes, while his love for her confirmed that far from being a bad person, there was goodness in that steely heart. Twenty years younger than Memling, she was supposed to outlive him and had promised to burn the painting on news of his death. Damn fate for taking her too early. Damn his stupidity for giving the painting to her in the first place.

  Memling looked at his watch. It was already 7 p.m. He did not want to go to the Royal Academy opening but knew that he should be seen out and about, acting as if nothing untoward was happening. Pressing a discreet red buzzer on the wall, he gave the signal for his car and driver to pull up outsid
e his house.

  For the entire journey from Chester Square to the Royal Academy, Barty, whose trousers were far too tight, stood on the back seat of Vlad’s car with his upper body poking out of the sunroof. To capture the spirit of the exhibition, ‘Music, Madness and Mayhem in Eighteenth-Century France’, Barty had dressed as one of Louis XIV’s courtiers in skin-hugging electric-yellow breeches, white silk tights and black patent shoes with shiny buckles. A frock coat made of pink damask fell to his mid-thigh and a shirt made of hundreds of tiny ruffles cascaded from his neck to his waist. Made for a child in a BBC period drama from the 1970s, the costume was several sizes too small, even though Barty wore control knickers, a corset and had refused solid food for three days. However the pièce de résistance was a huge wig, two foot tall topped with a golden galleon nestling in clouds of white pomaded hair. ‘Borrowed it from Elton, darling,’ Barty would tell anyone who asked, and most who did not.

  Vlad pulled the lapels of his leather coat up over his cheeks and, sinking low into the soft white leather seat, hoped that no one he knew would spot them. He felt exhausted by the thought of an evening with Barty.

  Bad news had just come in that afternoon from the factory in Eshbijan. A pipe had exploded on the factory floor, spraying 213 workers with molten metal. There were two fatalities, and sixty-four workers were in hospital with fourth-degree burns. Their families’ silence could be bought, suitable reparations made, but if news of the accident got out, Vlad’s hope of launching his company on the London Stock Exchange would be jeopardised. Almost as worrying was that news of the accident reached the Leader two hours and forty-five minutes before Vlad was informed. Clearly the powers were embedded deep in his organisation. Vlad knew there was no one he could trust.

  ‘Oh, do cheer up,’ Barty said, catching a glimpse of the Russian’s morose face. ‘We are going to a party. If we don’t like it we can go on. That’s the lovely thing about the art world – there’s such a gamut of choice. We can be serious in Spitalfields, grungy in Golders Green or chic in Chelsea. Mind you, though the venue changes, the people don’t. Funny how insular cultural life is: same old, same old.’