The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  ‘What has that got to do with you, with us?’

  ‘Listen and you might learn something,’ Memling said.

  For a moment Rebecca returned to her younger self, the timid child cowed by her father.

  ‘I don’t need to listen to you, Father. I don’t need to hear your stories. You may know about your family’s past, but I hold its future in my hands. Be civil or I will walk away. Answer my questions or my ears are closed.’

  Memling nodded. He seemed smaller suddenly and Rebecca noticed that his pale blue eyes were watery – tears or age?

  ‘I am sorry, Daughter. I wanted to explain what happened. Not so you forgive me, but perhaps so that you understand a little better. May I go on?’

  Rebecca shrugged, a tacit assent.

  ‘When I was born in 1924 my father found a childish receptacle for all his disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. Once I could walk, he had me marching up and down our tiny apartment. As soon as I could recognise shapes and colours, we studied battle plans of previous wars. My love of precision and detail comes from an older Germany. Night after night, he and his friends met to talk about their hopes for a Germany restored to her former glory. If Hitler had not come along it’s just possible that Germans like my father would have imploded with the weight of their combined loss of pride. Herr Hitler rode their disappointment like a jockey rides a champion thoroughbred. He gave them hope and purpose.’

  ‘I can’t listen to an apology for Hitler,’ Rebecca said quietly.

  Memling ignored her. ‘Mine was a grim, strict childhood. If my bed wasn’t made properly there were consequences; if I was late, I was shut out, whatever the weather; perceived rudeness was met with a swift beating. Sometimes forcing me to go without a meal was my father’s way of hiding that he did not have enough money to put food on our table.’

  ‘What did your mother say?’

  ‘Mother was so terrified of him that she acquiesced in any plan he suggested. Even if it meant holding me down while he beat me. My mother could have got a job cleaning the Jewish apartments but my father wouldn’t hear of it. Anti-Semitism is as old as the Jews; Hitler didn’t invent it.’

  Memling looked at his daughter. ‘Can we walk a bit? My legs are stiffening up and I can’t stand the smell of this place. It would be nice for the dog too.’

  Rebecca stood up and held out an arm for her father. Leaning on his stick, Memling took her arm and struggled to his feet. While he could run on a tennis court, sitting for any length of time stiffened the joints in his knees and in the small of his back. The pair moved slowly down the steps and headed towards the Serpentine. Tiziano walked close by his master, frequently glancing up at the old man and then around them in case of unexpected danger.

  A smart wind had blown through the early-flowering cherry trees and blossom lay like snow across the ground. The birds, celebrating the coming of spring, sang and raced through the bushes. Clumps of early crocuses were scattered by the path and around trees, splashes of yellow on acid green. A squirrel ran across the path in front of them followed by an unbiddable terrier trying to catch it, the owner shouting in vain. Tiziano looked at the other dog but did not react. Rebecca walked while not really taking in the view. When she looked down, she saw that their three shadows walked in front of them, a man, a woman and a dog, caricatures made by a low-hanging sun. She was pleased to notice that hers looked strong and purposeful while her father’s was hunched and creaky.

  ‘Esther Winkleman was as kind as she was beautiful,’ Memling recalled. ‘She had long dark hair, almost black eyes and a permanent smile. Their apartment was full of music and laughter. When I was left out on the step at night she would come and find me, sneak me up to their place and feed me. There were six of them in a tiny three-room apartment so there was hardly room for another, nor were they rich, but they always made me welcome and shared their food. She was an art teacher at the local school and would show me books of paintings and tell me about the artists in her gentle, lisping voice. No wonder I fell in love with art. I didn’t particularly like the son who was my age, Memling, but I made firm friends with him so I could be near her. There was a small library on the way home from school – we were allowed to take out one book per month. Once my father found a book on Dürer under my bed – Dürer – he was a good German – but you cannot imagine the beating.’

  Rebecca kicked a stone purposefully – she wanted Memling to explain the later stuff and how that happened. Sensing her irritation, Memling moved his story along.

  ‘At first my father denounced Hitler as an uncouth yob but as his power grew, as he played on the hopes and fears of his countrymen, views changed. I was enlisted in the Hitler Youth movement and when war was declared, my father falsified my birth certificate so that I could join up early. I was tall for my age and, thanks to the Winklemans’ food, I was strong. I was just fifteen when I was conscripted. Once again Esther Winkleman saved my life: one of the Führer’s dreams was to build the pre-eminent museum in Linz and fill it with the world’s greatest works of art. Most of his soldiers couldn’t tell a Vermeer from a van Gogh. The word went out that the Führer was looking for experts. I knew little but a lot more than most. I was chosen for the prestigious art squad, the ERR. It had incredible powers – we could stop battalions, order generals away from sites, close down bridges.’

  Rebecca and her father reached a small play area by the Serpentine. In the middle was a statue dedicated to Peter Pan, a tree made from metal with tiny figures crawling up the outside. Rebecca looked at Peter Pan calling to the lost boys to follow him while Wendy looked on disapprovingly. Rebecca rued the loss of her own innocence, aborted a few days earlier in Berlin. How long, she thought, can I protect Grace?

  ‘What happened to the Winklemans?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘For the first few years I was able to get the family food parcels and other necessities. I was, believe me, desperate to help them escape. The Watteau was their only asset and when I showed Hitler an image of the painting he offered a million Marks. I begged them to sell it and buy a safe passage out of Berlin and a new start in England or America. They refused. In 1943 I heard from my mother that the apartment had been sealed and the family had gone on holiday to visit some friends. I was hurt that they did not leave a forwarding address. It wasn’t until 1944 that I found out the truth: they’d been taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.’

  ‘At what point did you decide to strip their apartment?’ Rebecca asked, trying to keep her voice even.

  ‘My first intention was to keep their things safe – not just the Winklemans’ but also all the families’ in our block. I hoped that they would come home and find things as they were. Working through the night on my odd days home, I broke into the apartments and took the pictures off the walls, wrapped them and hid them in a cellar.’

  ‘No one noticed?’

  There was a lot going on at that time.’

  ‘And the Watteau?’

  ‘There was increasing pressure on the art squad to come up with beautiful things.’

  ‘So you sold it?’

  ‘It left my hands for a short time. Since I had showed him the image, the Führer had nagged and nagged me to bring it to him. I gave it to him in 1944; he looked at it and told me to hide it in a safe place. He planned to give it to Eva Braun as a wedding present when the war was over. Taking it out of its frame, I rolled it up and it stayed in my kitbag, close by, for the rest of the war.’

  ‘It seems odd that you would present the same gift to your own mistress – wasn’t it stained by the association with Hitler?’

  ‘There is something transformative about that painting – it captures your spirit and your heart – you’ll understand when you see it, when we get it back.’

  ‘I never had you down as a sentimental fool,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘There is a huge difference between sentimentality and romanticism.’

  Rebecca wondered why this hurt so much – was it that her father loved a woman who was n
ot her mother? Or was it that the person who seemed so in control, her own all-powerful patriarch, revealed himself to be just another mortal? She started to walk away from her father, fighting back tears. She realised how little she knew about the man who had brought her up, whom she worked with every day of the week. Behind her she heard the tap of the cane and Memling’s heavy tread as he caught up with her.

  ‘I was nineteen when the war started, twenty-five when it ended. I had five extraordinary years travelling around Europe looking at beautiful objects – those years were my high school and university rolled into one. For the first time in my short life I had more than enough to eat. I never had to kill a man; I was insulated against most of the pain and hardship. We went to every great house from here to Normandy, living like kings. I drank wine from the cellars of Château Lafite and slept in the King’s bed at Vaux-le-Vicomte. I dined under the portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici and slept with the great-great-great-granddaughter of a Borgia prince. My only task was to spot beautiful objects. We worked with dealers and auctioneers, connoisseurs and academics. Everywhere we went we were assailed with suggestions. Everyone was out to make some money out of the war. In the seventy-odd years that I have been dealing art, I have never seen a market like it. Over a million works were auctioned at Le Drouot in Paris between 1939 and 1945,’ he said. ‘I am not particularly gifted; unlike you I can’t spot a Titian from three hundred yards. I don’t have your powers of detection. I have a talent for detail – that is why you have found me out.’

  ‘The Watteau was your undoing – if it weren’t for that painting I would never have started looking.’

  Memling stopped – the irony was not lost on him. Was this Esther’s act of revenge from beyond the grave? Pushing these thoughts out of his mind, he continued with his story. ‘The war ended. My bosses were executed or imprisoned. My father killed my mother and himself, sealing up the windows and doors of our apartment and turning on the gas. I didn’t even have a passport, only army papers. I had nothing, I was nobody and I was shamed.’ He turned to face Rebecca. ‘If you expose me you will inflict this shame on yourself and your family. Do you really want, at fifty years old, to be standing where I was at twenty-two?’

  ‘Maybe I would rather live with a clear conscience,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘I entertained that thought in 1945. I was standing by a small farmhouse in Bavaria built next to a disused mine. In its cavernous depths there were hundreds of valuable pictures, objects and jewels that my squad had hidden during the war, destined for Hitler’s personal collection. During the last four years, we carefully siphoned off some of the best things we captured, on the Führer’s instructions, mainly to keep them from Göring. Four other people knew about the cache; three killed themselves rather than face the Nuremberg trials, one died of typhus.’

  ‘So you decided to keep it all for yourself ?’

  ‘I had no plans at that moment, apart from staying alive. I went to the farmhouse because it was the only place I could think of. Once the war had ended it was a kind of mad free-for-all with each of the winning countries trying to hoover up what was left. The Russians were like locusts: they scooped up everything and took it back to Moscow. The Americans sent over a posse of experts, the Monument Men, to try and stem the tide of all the looting and pillaging, but what could a hundred men or so do when the whole of Europe was up for grabs? We had stolen thousands and thousands of works, over twenty per cent of all Western art. Though paintings were not worth much, art was still an internationally accepted currency. You might only get a hundred dollars for a Klimt but at least it was a hundred dollars.’

  ‘When did you get the idea of impersonating Memling Winkleman?’ Rebecca asked.

  Memling walked slowly up the path towards the Serpentine Gallery. At the top, wheezing slightly, he answered her question. ‘It happened by accident. Three days after the war ended I went back to our family apartment and found the bodies of my parents. Then I ran upstairs hoping to find just one member of the Winkleman family, but they had all disappeared. On my way out, on an impulse I took some books and the library card that had belonged to Esther’s son, Memling. I took various other paintings out of their frames, rolled them up, and by foot and only at night, I made my way to the farmhouse. I spent a year there living on nuts and berries, trapping small animals and birds. I became terribly thin; my hair grew long and matted. My clothes were ragged. In the autumn of 1946 a passing American platoon car spotted the smoke rising from the chimney and decided to check the building for fugitive soldiers. They caught me quickly. I would not say my name; I could not say my name. They searched the building looking for clues to my identity or for weapons – who knows. One officer found the library card – they put two and two together – I was a Jew who had escaped the death trains and had hidden out. God knows how they came up with that story – the Americans love a good story. They drove me back to Berlin, sorted out my papers, gave me a passport and offered me a new life in America. Seven weeks later I arrived in New York. In my bag were some jewels, the Watteau, a tiny Rembrandt and five hundred dollars courtesy of Uncle Sam.’

  ‘I suppose they tattooed you too,’ said Rebecca, her voice soaked in sarcasm.

  ‘I had that done in a Korean parlour on the Lower East Side. By then I had found out what happened to the Winklemans – all gone. This number is Esther’s – you might find it hard to believe, Daughter, but I had the tattoo done as a mark of respect, not as a shameless piece of cynicism.’

  Rebecca walked ahead of her father, trying to decide which aspects of his story she believed. Looking around, she saw the bridge over the Serpentine, an artificial lake made in the eighteenth century. She wondered how many knew that Harriet Westbrook, the pregnant wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, had drowned herself there on finding out about his infidelities. Or that the Hanoverians had celebrated the anniversary of the British victory at Trafalgar there, another war where thousands lost their lives. She wondered how long it would take before the atrocities of the last war became just another faded memory or an entry in Wikipedia.

  ‘You make your story sound so plausible, but your whole life has been one long shameless lie. You stole your dead friend’s identity and dead people’s possessions – you even stole their religion and brought your children up with some phony heritage. You are not a man – you are a parasite!’ Rebecca turned and shouted at her father. A woman walking close by looked at them nervously and hurried on. Memling stopped and gripped the black iron railings with both hands.

  ‘I wanted to live,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Were you able to forget where it all came from?’ Rebecca hissed.

  ‘Never, but at least I provided you with some alternative.’

  ‘What about Marty?’

  Memling’s head hung down and his shoulders hunched. ‘He sent me a letter saying that he had found out. I wrote back immediately offering to turn myself in or to swallow a cyanide pill that I keep on my person at all times.’ Reaching into his jacket pocket, Memling took out a small silver box and, opening it, revealed a tiny blue pill sitting on a velvet cushion.

  ‘Put it away, Father. It’s not time for amateur dramatics,’ Rebecca said coldly.

  Memling turned to face his daughter. ‘Your brother was my pride, my joy, and our future.’

  Rebecca did not contradict her father; she knew that he was speaking the truth. She knew too with some sadness that, although her father was fond of her, it was Marty whom he loved.

  Tears sprang from Rebecca’s eyes. ‘Poor Marty – he couldn’t cope with having to hold the scales of justice, having to choose between right and wrong, exposing you and mortifying us.’

  ‘Believe me – I would have given up everything, gone to prison, surrendered to the authorities, Simon Wiesenthal – whatever it took to have kept him here,’ said Memling.

  ‘Mama – did she know?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘No, nor did she ever suspect.’

  ‘At least, thanks to her, I am a Jew – I h
aven’t been sitting in synagogues all my life as a Nazi – what did that feel like, Papa? To have to pray through Holocaust Day?’

  ‘I prayed, Rebecca, just not for the same things,’ said Memling, bending down and sinking his hands into his dog’s fur. Tiziano turned and nuzzled his master’s face. Memling did not push the animal away but let him lick his folds of skin.

  ‘I often wondered if you loved your dogs more than any member of your family,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Will it shock you to hear that I think love is an overrated emotion?’ Memling said. ‘I am very fond of dogs, as I am of my children. I am particularly grateful for the dogs’ unquestioning and uncomplicated affection. Do you remember, when you were children, going to the National Gallery at weekends?’ Memling asked.

  ‘Every weekend.’

  ‘Many of those great works were owned by unscrupulous and mendacious collectors – slave traders, racketeers and murderers. But when we look at those men’s possessions, their Rubens, Hogarths, Raphaels, Titians and Velázquezes today, we just see beauty.’

  ‘What has this got to do with anything?’ Rebecca asked incredulously.

  ‘I was trying to teach you about a bigger picture, about the passage of time, to look beyond individual stories,’ said Memling.

  ‘Art does not have the power to eradicate sin,’ Rebecca said. ‘What strange, twisted tales you have had to tell yourself in order to justify your actions, and your dishonesty.’

  ‘I have never tried to justify anything but there are things which are greater, more long-lasting and important than myself or my family.’

  Rebecca steered them to a bench by a small copse. Overhead a flock of brightly coloured parakeets, escapees from a private collection perhaps, swooped and screeched as they flew between trees, flashing incongruously iridescent colours; yellows, greens, reds and blues among the gentle greens and blues of the English parkland. Memling sat down heavily and, taking out a starched white handkerchief, he wiped his face.