Midnight Hunter
I suspect—no, I know—that not all the trading is legitimate. I know little about art but the signatures on a few of the more beautiful paintings catch my eye. Vermeer. Pissarro. Raphael. Such works were never on display in the East but I remember a passage in a school textbook about Nazi looted art.
One day I find Reinhardt contemplating a painting propped up on the mantelpiece. It’s about two feet across, a landscape showing some olive groves and mountains in the background, except that the colors are vivid oranges and blues instead of the expected greens and browns. The brushstrokes are thick and haphazard, merely suggesting the scene, but it’s not an ugly painting. In fact it’s very beautiful.
“Are you going to hang that there?” I ask. Occasionally Reinhardt finds a piece he likes or he thinks I’ll like and puts it in our house. Nothing that he believes was stolen, at my insistence. I don’t want to live my life surrounded by stolen objects.
He puts his arm around my waist and caresses my swollen belly. At seven months pregnant I’m becoming huge. “That, meine Liebe, is an act of aesthetic violence committed by a degenerate seeking to undermine the steadfast German spirit.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Is it? I thought it was just a painting.”
He laughs and kisses the top of my head. “Not to Hitler. This was confiscated by the Reich, probably from a museum or a Jewish collector. Hitler didn’t like Modern art.”
“And you’re selling it to the highest bidder.”
“Not this piece. This piece is going to the Louvre. An anonymous donation.”
I look at him in surprise. “Not into the hands of a collector?”
“No. It’s too good for a private collection. This is one of my conscience pieces.”
I don’t know what he means for a moment. Then I remember the other smuggling he used to do, reuniting families who’d been separated by the Berlin Wall. “Like Frau Schäfer?”
“Ja, like Frau Schäfer.”
I can’t say I’m thrilled by what my husband does and I suspect a great many of the pieces that pass through his hands should be sent to a museum, not just this one. But he did tell me he would land on his feet and I suppose I should be glad it’s paintings he’s dealing in and not something worse. There are no guns involved, no espionage. Most of his time is spent hunting through old auction catalogues and papers, trying to determine provenance and sniff out forgeries. It’s a different sort of hunting, and it suits him. “Promise me we won’t get wealthy from you doing this. It feels parasitic.”
He nods at the landscape. “We shan’t. Conscience pieces like this don’t come cheaply. Once I’m satisfied that you and the baby are taken care of I’ll send something off to Paris or New York every now and then. How does that sound?”
I think for a moment, leaning against him. It’s not honest work like farming or teaching or plumbing, but for Reinhardt it’s quite good. We regard the painting together for a while. How many more just as beautiful are being lost to rich men who hang them up where only they can see them? “It’s a shame to think of all these pieces disappearing into private collections forever.”
Reinhardt digs a little book out of his pocket and shows it to me. “Maybe not forever. These are all my sales, buyers and their addresses. If the Wall ever comes down and there’s peace in Europe the authorities may be interested in this.”
I flick through the pages and see the particulars of hundreds of pieces of artwork and dozens of buyers. There are detailed notes about the provenance of each piece and whether he suspects they were sold to him legitimately or not. “So they won’t be lost forever. I knew you had some conscience but you’re becoming positively burdened with one. When did this happen?”
He gives me a dry look and caresses my belly with a large warm hand. “Since I found out I was going to be a father.”
I’ve sensed a gradual change in Reinhardt since we left East Berlin. As he said, happy men do not snatch women from the streets. I think that in getting us out he’s laid a ghost to rest. He couldn’t save Johanna all those years ago but he was able to save me. Her specter seems to be dissipating and I hope that now her memory is at peace he can be, too.
“So you’re happy about the baby, Reinhardt?”
He regards me silently. “Some mornings I wake up and I don’t know where, or even who, I am. This place. No uniform for the first time since I was a boy. You getting so big with our child. I want to laugh because it doesn’t seem possible.”
“You don’t think you deserve it?”
He kisses me softly. “No. But I think I’ll try to. If I earn your love then that’s all that matters. Yours, and Fritzl’s or Magda’s, or whomever this little one will be. If I can make you both happy then I will have done better than I ever thought possible.”
I snort with laughter. “Fritzl or Magda? We are not having a Fritzl or Magda.”
Mock surprised, he says, “What is wrong with such good and sturdy names? But tell me, Liebling, are you happy here with me?”
I look up at my husband who was once so fearsome to me. Who desires my strength and has taken strength from me. Who gives me hope and all his love. For so long there was the gray of the Wall in his eyes but it’s been many months since I’ve seen that concrete scar reflected in their depths. They’re the blue of the sea these days.
I smile, and go up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Yes, Reinhardt. I am.”
Epilogue
Evony
July 12, 1966