The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

‘Can’t we waggle Vlad’s chequebook at the odd curator? We know that most museums have thousands of works languishing in storage – surely they would not miss a few canvases?’

  ‘It doesn’t really work like that – not in this country, anyway.’

  ‘So let’s go shopping in Europe – the poor dears are so broke they’d sell their grannies.’

  ‘I wonder if that’s why Rebecca is so keen to get hold of the Watteau.’

  ‘What Watteau?’ Barty asked.

  ‘Some family heirloom has gone missing; she wants it back at any price.’

  ‘Any price? We like the sound of that.’

  Delores nodded. When Rebecca had called at 7 a.m., Delores assumed that the dealer was calling to apologise for failing to show up. She had not expected a rambling monologue about a missing painting. Rebecca explained that the Watteau had been stolen from Memling but they couldn’t go to the police or publicise the theft in case the thieves got spooked and destroyed the work. The picture, Rebecca said, was Memling’s last link with his family and of a sentimental value hard to quantify.

  Rebecca described the work in great detail. It was about eighteen by twenty-four inches, an oil painting showing a girl on a swing with her lover lying at her feet watched by a clown. The painting’s title was The Improbability of Love and it was an early work, perhaps Watteau’s first great painting, and certainly the one that launched both his career and the Rococo movement.

  As Rebecca described the picture, Delores felt her breath shorten and the back of her neck and armpits prickle with sweat. Could this be the same work that she had dismissed as a fake?

  ‘Are you listening?’ Rebecca asked crossly.

  ‘Yes, yes, I am thinking,’ Delores said, sitting down heavily on a chair.

  ‘Have you heard anything about it? Has anyone mentioned it to you?’ Rebecca said, trying to keep her tone casual.

  ‘No! I have not!’ Delores said a little too quickly. No one must know or suspect that she, one of the greatest living experts in French eighteenth-century art, had ever seen it. ‘Of course, if I do, I will tell you immediately.’

  Delores repeated what Rebecca had said about the missing painting, omitting any reference to Annie’s visit.

  ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’ Barty asked as he listened to his friend.

  ‘I am so thinking that,’ Delores said, clapping her hands together.

  ‘We have found the centrepiece for our museum; let’s call it the “Museum of Love”.’

  ‘How disgustingly sentimental.’

  ‘What if the Winklemans don’t want to sell?’

  ‘Everything has a price.’

  ‘If this one is the exception?’

  ‘They are dealers – their raison d’être is dealing.’

  ‘Can you strike a deal?’ Barty jumped up and clapped his hands together.

  ‘I have to find it first,’ Delores said.

  Barty sat down heavily. ‘If they can’t find it how will you? They employ stringers and fixers the world over.’

  ‘I have a lead,’ Delores said mysteriously. She was not going to admit that she had held the painting in her hands.

  Sitting on the edge of her hotel bed, Rebecca pressed her hands into the mattress and her feet hard into the floor to try and calm her shaking limbs. Too late, too late, too late, the voices in her head taunted. Too late, too late, too late. Why hadn’t she taken the photograph three weeks ago when she first met Danica? It would have been so simple. Today she hadn’t hesitated; the moment the old lady’s back was turned, Rebecca had slipped the razor from her pocket and, nipping off the edges of the photo, had detached it from the album and placed it in her pocket. Closing the album, she had put it back on the shelf and a few minutes later, invented an urgent reason to leave the apartment. Outside, she had taken the picture, torn it into tiny pieces and, standing next to the busy main road, released each fragment into the wind and slipstream of passing cars and buses

  But she was too late: the old lady hadn’t been able to recall or pronounce her visitor’s name but she described him perfectly: tall, pale-skinned, exquisitely dressed in a three-piece tweed suit with an extravagant knotted silk cravat held in place by gold tie pin shaped like a bugle. He had a dome of grey shoulder-length hair, beautifully brushed; his nails were buffed to a shiny finish; his glasses lived in a crocodile-skin case tucked in an inside pocket.

  ‘How odd that I have not had any visitors for years since your brother, and in the space of a few hours I receive you for the second time and that man,’ Danica told Rebecca, ‘and that you all are so interested in my funny old photographs. They were just snaps.’ She noticed that Rebecca was looking terribly pale. Could she make her a cup of sweet tea? It had been so kind to bring the flowers and chocolates.

  Rebecca thought it was stupid of her father to try and destroy Trichcombe’s career and stymie the connoisseur’s attempts to gain acceptance in the academic world. Rebecca remembered the old adage, ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer still.’ Her father should have retained Trichcombe on a stipend and drip-fed him two occasional commission. She never knew the full details of the crime he had supposedly committed; now she didn’t need to ask. Trichcombe must have stumbled on an aspect of Memling’s past.

  Getting up off the bed, Rebecca went to the window and looked down on to the street below. Her hotel was at the intersection of the former East and West Berlin overlooking the Holocaust Memorial: a grid of monumental grey uneven tombstones, arranged in labyrinthine narrowing pathways set on a slope. Only a few weeks ago she had been a proud Jew, from a family of survivors, one of those who had made it through. What was she now? Looking down at the monument below, she imagined getting lost in the long alleyways of the memorial and, the headstones closing in and crushing her to death.

  She drew the curtain and threw herself face down on the bed, waiting for the panic attack to take hold. But as she lay there with her face pressed against the velvet eiderdown, something unusual happened. Instead of her heart beating faster, it seemed to steady and instead of a whirl of confusion, her thoughts seemed to abate and she was left with one single idea. Why was she giving up so easily? Where was her grit, her determination? Why roll over and let fate and others pick over her life like an old carcass?

  Rebecca got up, walked over to the window, threw open the curtain and looked down at the people criss-crossing the square beneath her. She imagined her father nearly seventy years earlier. He could have held up his hands and surrendered to the Allies. As a young SS officer who had purloined and confiscated works of art belonging to Jews, he was certainly guilty, on many counts. Instead he had made the decision to embrace life, to create a future, albeit dishonestly, rather than face a trial and disgrace. Would she, at the age of twenty, have had the courage and mendacity? What could she do now to salvage her family from disgrace? Were there options?

  Rebecca stood quietly for a few moments thinking about Memling. Whatever her father had done, she loved him and could not imagine or countenance his certain public disgrace. The thought of his face splashed across the papers, his age-mottled hands bound into cuffs, his silver head bent in a courtroom dock, was far worse than the prospect of keeping his dreadful secret. He was a monster, but he was her monster, an inextricable part of her past, present and future. She could expose him, but that would never erase him or his deeds; he was part of her DNA, her conscience, and whether she liked it or not, she had enjoyed the fruits of his deception.

  Rebecca’s thoughts turned to Marty and she knew with certainty that, confronted by this discovery, he had decided suicide was easier than facing the wreckage. For the first time, she was angry with her brother: why hadn’t he destroyed the notebook? Did he mean her to find it, to face all this alone?

  She stopped shaking and suddenly felt strong and full of purpose. All that stood between her and disaster was an art historian and a small painting. Remove them both and the status quo remained intact. What did she mean by ‘r
emove’? How far would she go to protect her family? Would she kill? To Rebecca’s surprise, the thought didn’t repulse her. She wouldn’t have to get her own hands dirty – there were other people for that kind of thing. Rebecca looked at her clock – it was now 10.15 a.m. and if she hurried, she could make the midday aeroplane back to London. Placing the last few things in her overnight bag, she left her room and ran down the stairs to the lobby. There was a taxi waiting at the entrance and, pushing past two waiting guests with an apologetic grimace, Rebecca took it.

  ‘Tegel Airport, bitte,’ she told the driver.

  In the coming months Rebecca would remember the moment when she crossed some invisible line and took the decision to help Memling eradicate his past along with his years of subterfuge and dishonest dealings. She felt no guilt or remorse; simply a wave of clarity and determination.

  She placed a call to her father. Dispensing with the usual pleasantries, Rebecca told Memling to meet her at 4 p.m. by the fountains in Hyde Park. Leaning back in the seat of the taxi, Rebecca smiled at her father’s surprise; he was unused to his daughter issuing instructions. From now on, Rebecca realised, she was in control.

  Chapter 30

  Rebecca arrived at the Italian gardens twenty minutes early and, walking slowly around the fountains, remembered visits as a child. Her mother, a Jewess from Verona, had loved this unlikely area of Hyde Park; it reminded her of home and Rome and the Villa d’Este, places from her past. Pearl Winkleman had liked to sit in the pump house and watch her children fish for imaginary catches with rods made from string dangling from sticks. Once they tired of that, she sent them to find different animals carved in marble and Portland stone on the fountains and urns. Each time the children pretended to discover anew the ram’s heads, dolphins and swans: praise was hard to come by in the Winkleman family. Rebecca wondered how much her mother had known about her husband’s origins, how much she had suspected.

  Rebecca’s relationship with her father had changed with one phone call; now she saw her father in a different light, through opened eyes. A few days earlier, she would have seen a tall, elderly but fit man in a navy-blue cashmere overcoat, white silk scarf and highly polished shoes, carrying a silver-topped cane. She would automatically have checked her make-up in a compact mirror and smoothed her hair, worrying that even the tiniest sign of imperfection would annoy her exacting parent and invite unwanted criticism. A few days earlier she would never have dared call Memling to a meeting, let alone to one in a place so loved by her mother.

  The man walking towards her was still immaculately dressed, purposeful and instantly recognisable with his shock of white hair and his large white husky padding beside him. But now, for the first time, he needed her more than she needed him; the balance of power had shifted; she held the keys to their future, his posterity. Without her complicity, his entire life’s work, those years of subterfuge and deceit, would have been in vain. For seventy of his ninety-one years Memling had worked to lift his family out of penury and make them players on an international stage; the last thing he would want was for that good name and great business to be washed away in a tide of shame and scandal.

  Memling was now only a hundred feet away. I could still change my mind, Rebecca thought, let everything return to normal and devolve all responsibility and ultimate decision-making to Memling. But although this idea brought a momentary flood of relief, it was too late: the house of cards on which his authority rested had come tumbling down.

  ‘My daughter,’ Memling said holding out his hands and smiling. ‘Your phone call made me anxious – has something happened?’

  Rebecca smiled back automatically, unable to control the reflex, those years of being taught to be polite and courteous. ‘Shall we sit?’ She bent down to pat the dog on its head; Tiziano responded grandly with a slow blink of his eyes.

  ‘Why here?’ Memling looked around in astonishment. ‘We have so many nicer places to choose.’

  Without answering, Rebecca turned and walked up the steps and into the pump house. It stank of piss and stale beer, but a breeze wafted the worst of the smells away. At one end, a tramp lay encased in an overcoat, half covered by a cardboard box. Rebecca chose the other end of the bench, way out of earshot, and sat down. Memling carefully swept an area beside her before pulling his coat around him and sitting down.

  ‘I know everything,’ Rebecca said. ‘You are Heinrich Fuchs and you don’t have a drop of Jewish blood. You are just a petty thief.’ Rebecca spoke quietly but clearly. To her surprise, she didn’t feel like crying or shouting. She found a cool sense of purpose and calm.

  Memling did not answer immediately but when he did, his voice was equally measured and clear. ‘Harsh words from my little princess, harsh and bitter and naïve. Is this what a devoted father deserves?’

  ‘I have been to Schwedenstrasse 14 in Berlin and met your neighbour and childhood friend Danica Goldberg. She has photographs of you as a boy, a lovely blond Aryan child in the midst of a family called Winkleman. At what point did you decide to steal their identity, their past, their possessions and lives? Did you kill them or leave that to camp commandants?’ Rebecca’s words came tumbling out and she had the strangest feeling of watching each syllable float through the air and into her father’s ears.

  Memling sat in silence, his eyes fixed on the middle distance.

  ‘I looked through the ledgers in the safe. You were thorough – too thorough, perhaps,’ Rebecca continued. ‘That must be your Nazi training – make clear, concise, exhaustive notes about everything.’ She stole a look at her father and although his face was an inscrutable mask, she noticed that the knuckles of his right hand were clenched and white. ‘Every picture that has come through our company was written up. Those early works appeared as if by magic, didn’t they? Spiriting their way into your hands after the war. But you weren’t a magician were you? Nor were you very good at getting deals or spotting masterpieces. You were a fence, handling stolen property and passing it on. Who were you working for? Your old Nazi colleague, Karl Haberstock? Or the ones who had been put in prison but needed someone on the outside to carry on their good works? Or the ones that escaped, who were holed up in Bavaria or South America and needed a middleman?’ Rebecca’s voice had risen slightly in pitch and volume; she forced herself to lower it back to a whisper. ‘Or were you cleverer than that? Did you steal from your masters during the war, squirrel away the odd Titian, Watteau and Guardi, knowing that one day the war would end and the dead could not, would not, come back for their rightful property?’

  For a long minute, Memling said nothing. Then, clearing his throat, he spoke in a quiet, measured tone. ‘I wanted to tell someone about all this. Your mother, your brother or you. I only built the business for our family and did not want to give any of you the responsibility of knowing how it began.’

  ‘This started long before we were born, before you met Mama, so don’t try that line,’ Rebecca hissed at her father.

  ‘There is so much you don’t know,’ Memling said angrily.

  ‘I have all day.’ Rebecca crossed her arms.

  ‘I would like to have this conversation elsewhere. I would like you to do me the courtesy of allowing an old man to collect his thoughts.’

  ‘The days of you dictating terms are over. Here and now is as good a place and time as any.’

  Memling moved slightly as if to get up but thought better of it. Tiziano, sensing his master’s discomfort, put his head on Memling’s knee and was rewarded with a gentle stroke.

  ‘My father, his father and many generations before were soldiers, always on the winning side. From 1701, we served the Kings of Prussia and were thus part of the greatest fighting force that history has seen. My forebears never had a home or possessions – they and their families lived a soldier’s life, moving from one campaign to another, from one barrack to another. The pay was not spectacular, but the pride – oh the pride in their achievements made up for everything. To be a Prussian captain, as my father
and his father and those before, was to have respect and circumstance. In their society, they were more important than any merchant or businessman; they sat at tables with princes and aristocrats.’

  ‘I am not here for a history lesson,’ Rebecca interrupted.

  ‘In years to come you will wish you had asked these questions; ignorance is a curse lying in wait for the younger generation, for those who forgot to ask.’

  Rebecca looked out across the fountains, at a child playing with a small dog.

  ‘Did you tell this story to Marty?’

  Memling winced. ‘I will come to Marty – let me at least tell the story in a way that makes sense to me. Give me that, will you?’ Again, Tiziano, sensing his master’s distress, put his head back on the old man’s knee and looked from Rebecca to Memling.

  Rebecca nodded.

  ‘When the First World War was declared, there was rejoicing in my family. Years had passed since the last war and my father was bored with civilian life. He met and married my mother in 1913 and they were trying for a child, but she told me that once war was declared, all my father did was polish his spurs, his helmet, and his sword. Another man had entered their house and she was not sure that she liked this version of her husband. Of course, that war was a catastrophe for proud German soldiers, and the Treaty of Versailles cemented their humiliation. My father’s foot was blown off by a landmine – he was sacked, decommissioned. Those who once cheered for his bravery and prowess now held him responsible for the downfall of the old order. His sword and helmet, his uniform and medals became symbols of shame.’ Memling spoke with his eyes fixed on his dog’s face, slowly and gently scratching the animal under his chin. Rebecca used to think that the dog represented power, the great white husky; now she realised the animal was a kind of canine security blanket.

  ‘The country lurched from one crisis to another, businesses closing, hyperinflation, unemployment, everything my parents had, even the small army pension, was eroded to nothing,’ Memling said, pulling Tiziano closer and stroking his white flank. ‘My parents, like many other Germans, were broke and destitute. The only job my father could find was as janitor for a block of flats inhabited by Jews. You have to understand, Rebecca, that this was the most ignominious and humiliating end for a proud soldier.’