The Butler(21)

“How could you survive it, Mama?” Joachim asked her, profoundly shaken, and in awe of her.

“I had no other choice. I had to take care of you and Javier. He was always different, though. There was always something in him that worried me. You were identical physically, but there was something in him that was always very hard as he grew up, like your father’s family.” The rest of what had happened to her made Javier’s abandonment and disappearance into the underworld seem even worse. Did she have to go through the pain of that too? It seemed so unfair. And Javier knew none of this.

    Perhaps Javier was like their grandfather too. Javier had turned into a gangster and a hoodlum, and probably a drug dealer. Their grandfather was a war criminal of the highest order, destroying families and lives with the sanction and approval of the Nazi High Command. He was truly a monster. Javier was just a small-time operator, but a criminal nonetheless and would come to no good.

“Do you think your father regretted what he did after he was convicted?”

She thought about it for a minute. “I’m not sure. I asked him questions about it in my letters, but he never answered. He wrote about the books he was reading in prison, memories of his childhood, and mine. He said that a soldier’s actions and recollection of them must stay in the confines and secrecy of the army he served, and at the time they existed. He said that war justifies all actions against enemy forces. But they weren’t enemy forces,” she said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “They were children deported in trains and sent to the gas chamber. And families, men and women. They stole everything from them. They robbed them of their homes, businesses, dignity, their lives, their futures. Their artwork is the least of it, and so little to give back to them. How do you make restitution for the children those people lost, the husbands and wives, their homes, everything they held dear? I can never make up for that.”

“No one can. But you’ve done everything you could to make up with what you could restore. It’s been your life’s work, Mama.” He had never loved or respected his mother more. “I wish I had known about all this sooner. I’m glad you told me now. Francois must have been so proud of you.” She smiled through her tears as she nodded.

“He was. No one ever knew why I did it, except him. And now you. I’m glad I told you too. That’s why I will never retire. This is my mission for as long as I live. And it feels so wonderful every time we make a match, and get a piece of art back to someone, even if only to a distant relative. It always matters to them, and to me too. It’s a victory every time.”

    They talked for a long time that night and finally hugged each other and went to bed. She had given him much to think about, not only about who their father and grandfather had been, but their perfidy, and the heinous things they had done, to her and others. He had also learned about his mother, and the extraordinary woman she was. It was some small consolation, as he cried himself to sleep that night, knowing that her noble blood ran in his veins as well as hers.





Chapter 6


When the agent from Sotheby’s called Olivia, she had three possible homes to show her. They were all available to rent for a year, sparsely furnished if she wanted them that way, or the furniture could be removed. There was a house and two apartments. She saw the house first. It was small and cramped. There was evidence of leaks in the ceiling and it smelled musty. It looked sad to Olivia, and the furniture in it was battered and drab. It looked as if it had been unoccupied for a long time and didn’t appeal to her at all.

There was an extremely modern apartment, which looked industrial and trendy, but everything about the place felt cold, like a refrigerator. It had no soul. It was minimally furnished and looked like a cheap hotel suite. The location was excellent and the building clean and nice. It was owned by Italians who kept it as an investment property and occupied it briefly from time to time between renters.

The third option was in the sixteenth arrondissement, in a beautiful old building in good condition, with a broad spiral staircase in the main hall. It had a grand look to it, and the apartment was on what the agent called the “noble floor,” or second floor, with high ceilings, wood paneling, beautiful old floors, and fireplaces. The kitchen was sparse and barely functional, and there was almost no furniture. If she rented it, she’d have to furnish it. It would be like camping out in the beginning, but the bare bones were beautiful, with high ceilings and good light. It was owned by a couple who had moved to Brussels for tax reasons and didn’t want to part with their apartment. It had magnificent cream-colored satin curtains, but the rest of the furniture was dingy and inadequate. It was more of a commitment than the others because she knew she’d have to furnish it and decorate, but the place was so pretty and inviting that it was hard to resist, and the rent wasn’t exceptionally high. The agent could see immediately how much she liked it.

    “You could put in an Ikea kitchen for very little money,” she told her. “And enough furniture to get by.” Olivia was well aware of it, but she also wondered if she was crazy to be renting an apartment in Paris, and if she should just go home in a few weeks and face real life, instead of running away from it and playing house. But it was such a pretty apartment, and in good condition, in a lovely building in a safe residential neighborhood, that she was sorely tempted. She felt as though she was in a dream as they walked down the grand staircase.