A Sudden Change of Heart (23 page)

“She’s a clever woman, self-supporting and self-sufficient.
She runs the antique porcelain shop, you know. I like Rosa. Actually, I admire her.”

“Self-sufficient?” Laura repeated, and raised a dark brow questioningly.

“Yes, yes. Rosa appears to be perfectly happy being alone. She doesn’t seem to need anyone.”

“Not even her son?” Laura asked now, sounding puzzled. “I thought she was rather possessive of him.”

“I don’t think so,” Megan replied, giving Laura a strange look. “Whatever gave you that idea? Oh, I know. I should have said
who.
It was Claire, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but she didn’t actually use the word
possessive,
she just implied it.”

Megan nodded, shifted slightly in her seat, and was about to respond, when the door was pushed open and Rosa came in from the kitchen.

“Rosa, the soup smells delicious!” Megan exclaimed, looking up at her hostess and smiling as the steaming bowl of fragrant liquid was placed in front of her. “Thank you.”

Laura could tell that Rosa was flattered to receive her grandmother’s compliment. Although she didn’t reply or smile, or make any kind of acknowledgment, her eyes seemed to brighten as she inclined her head, and then she quickly disappeared again.

“I’ve had this soup before,” Megan said to Laura. “It’s crystal clear, and delicious. You’re going to love it.”

A moment later Rosa was back once more, putting a bowl of the chicken soup on the table for Laura. “Thank you,” Laura murmured.

“I’ll be right back,” Rosa said. “Please … start.”

Laura stared into the soup. It
was
very clear, but a pure
golden color with a few slices of carrot floating in it along with a small matzo ball. Her grandmother was right, it did smell delicious, and Laura found her mouth watering.

“Please, let us eat, Megan … Laura,” Rosa cried as she finally sat down at the table.
“Bon appétit,”
she added, picked up her spoon, and dipped it into her bowl.

Out of the blue, Megan announced, “It takes twelve chickens to make a soup like this,” and then she looked at Rosa and asked, “Am I not right, Rosa?”

“You are, Megan.”

“How did you know that, Grandma?”

“Oh, I know a lot of things you don’t know I know,” Megan answered somewhat enigmatically, and then, observing the bafflement on Laura’s face, she explained. “Your grandfather and I had a wonderful partner at one point in our theatrical careers. He co-produced a lot of my musicals with your grandfather. His name was Herbert Lipson, Herb we called him, and his mother made the best chicken soup in the whole world. She used to call it Jewish penicillin, and whenever we were in Philadelphia she invited us to dinner and she always served us her soup.”

“Yes, that’s what it is, Laura, Jewish penicillin, because it does seem to cure everything,” Rosa explained.

The two older women immediately embarked on a discussion about the healing properties of ethnic foods, and Laura spooned up the soup and listened, lifting her head from time to time to scrutinize Rosa.

Laura had been very much aware of Rosa’s pleasant and welcoming demeanor from the moment they had walked into the apartment. The last time she had seen her had been at the museum in Paris, looking at Renoirs, and Rosa had appeared cold, hostile, wary, and slightly odd.
Tonight she was a different person entirely. It was true she had a curious reserve about her, but Laura now decided this must just be her natural manner, perhaps a reflection of her personality. On the other hand, when she had hovered over Megan earlier, a lovely warmth had emanated from Rosa, and Laura found this touching; it pleased her that Rosa apparently cared about her grandmother.

Rosa even
looked
different, better, not as old as she had appeared in the d’Orsay, and much less dumpy. Perhaps this was because she was wearing a well-cut tailored suit of deep purple silk, gold earrings, and a matching gold pin. This evening Rosa’s dark hair was stylishly coiffed, and the gray streaks she had noticed in Paris were no longer there. They had been carefully tinted out.

Studying her surreptitiously for a moment, Laura decided that Rosa’s face was much more attractive than she’d realized; but what she needed was a bit of makeup to define her good bone structure, bring out the luminosity of her large, pellucid gray eyes, the richness of her thick chestnut hair. But perhaps she can’t be bothered or doesn’t care, Laura thought. Some women didn’t, they were content to be as they were, without artifice.

Two things about Rosa were most distinctive, and Laura had noticed them particularly tonight: her beautiful, shapely legs and her voice. The latter was husky, even sexy, and her French accent added a special flavor.

Suddenly she wished she knew a little more about Rosa Lavillard than she did. Unexpectedly, Laura was riddled with curiosity about her. What she did know was that she was Jewish, French born, and had grown up in France during the war. After marrying, she had come to America, where her son, Philippe, had been born. And she had lived
here ever since. Laura remembered that Philippe was about forty-one or two, and so Rosa was probably in her mid sixties, even late sixties, perhaps.

Her husband, Pierre Lavillard, had died some years before; Laura, with her prodigious memory, had an instant recollection of him. She had met him at Claire’s wedding, and in her mind’s eye she saw a tall, distinguished man with a great deal of continental charm. His expertise was in French antiques and porcelain from all over the world, she remembered. He dealt in the great marks such as Meissen, Dresden, Herend, Limoges, and the important porcelains of England from Royal Worcester to Royal Crown Derby. He had owned a shop on Lexington Avenue when Claire and Philippe had married, and it was there that he had sold French antiques and antique porcelains.

Laura was roused from her reverie with a small start when Rosa announced, “I will bring the next course.” As she spoke, Rosa pushed back her chair and stood, picked up Megan’s soup bowl and her own.

Laura attempted to rise. “Let me help you,” she said, getting to her feet.

“No, no, I can manage. It is better I do this alone, I am well organized,” Rosa insisted, and was gone before Laura could protest further.

The next course was steamed carp served with homemade horseradish sauce and freshly baked challah, followed by a chicken that came out of the oven a crisp golden brown and was succulent and moist inside as Rosa carved it at the table. This was served with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas and carrots.

Finally, Rosa brought in the dessert. It was the most extraordinary apple strudel Laura had ever tasted, topped
with whipped cream and cherry sauce. Always a picky eater, Laura realized at the end of the meal that she had demolished everything, and with relish.

Essentially, it had been a simple dinner, but every dish had been meticulously prepared and beautifully cooked, and that was the secret of its perfection. Laura said this to Rosa, adding, “It’s the best dinner I’ve had in a very long time. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.”

“Yes, it was superb,” Megan murmured, and added her own thanks.

Rosa looked gratified. “Thank you,” she said. “I enjoy cooking. And now I shall serve coffee.”

O
ver coffee in the living room, Rosa said, “Congratulations, Laura.”

Laura glanced at her quickly. “Thank you. And I assume you’re referring to the return of the Gauguin painting to Sir Maximilian West?”

“Exactly. I read about your press conference in
The New York Times,
and I thought it was wonderful you had negotiated a deal with Mr. Grant.”

Rosa Lavillard smiled for the first time that evening, and went on. “It was a triumph for you, and it gave me great hope that other people will do the decent thing … if they
know
they possess art looted by the Nazis. That they will return it to the heirs of those poor souls from whom it was stolen during the war.”

“Some people will. Others won’t,” Laura replied. “I truly believe it’s a moral question. Naturally, there are those who disagree and think of it in financial terms. They won’t want to give up paintings they have paid good
money for. That was Norman Grant’s attitude at first. He wanted to triple his investment in
Tahitian Dreams,
make a lot of money from the painting. But I finally convinced him, managed to induce him to accept Sir Maxim’s offer of 6.4 million dollars. If you remember the details in the story in the paper, that was exactly what Mr. Grant paid for it five years ago.”

Megan volunteered between sips of her coffee, “He would not have accepted the money if he’d been really smart. Instead, he would have given the painting to Maximilian West. And if he had been wise enough to do that, he would have come out a hero. As it is, he looks like a greedy little man.”

“Sir Maximilian must be thrilled to have the painting back after all these years,” Rosa murmured.

“He is,” Laura told her, suddenly smiling. “And so am I, on his behalf. Actually, looking back, I think I accomplished a miracle. And you, Rosa, I can see that you love art.” Laura glanced around. “And also that you love beauty in all its forms, that’s apparent from the lovely things you have gathered here.”

“Yes, beauty is essential to me. There is far too much ugliness and suffering in this world. Such immense cruelty. Beauty does soothe the soul….”

Laura did not say anything. She had caught the faint echo of words Rosa had uttered in the d’Orsay on that cold December day last year, and there was such great sorrow in the woman’s voice, it pierced Laura’s heart.

Megan said slowly, “Rosa’s father was a well-known art dealer in Paris, Laura. She inherited his love of paintings, especially the great Impressionists. You and she have the same taste.”

“A gallery in Paris,” Laura began, “what was its name? Where was it?”

“It was called Duval et Fils. My father was the
fils,
the son. But then, my grandfather was also the
fils,
the son. For three generations we were art dealers. And the gallery was on the rue de La Boétie in the eighth arrondissement, which was sometimes called the French Florence.”

“I know all about the rue de La Boétie from my studies at the Sorbonne. It was very famous because every major dealer had a gallery there,” Laura exclaimed.

“That is true. There were the Bernheim-Jeune brothers, who represented your favorite and mine, Renoir. And also the great Paul Rosenberg. Wildenstein, Cailleux, and Josef Hessel all had galleries on the rue de La Boétie as well. It was the center of art through the 1920s into the ′30s, and, of course, it became the focal point of Hitler’s greed for art during the Occupation.”

Laura nodded. “Yes, I know that altogether the Nazis looted some twenty thousand paintings, drawings, and sculpture from France, and that they were all shipped to Germany during the war.”

“Stamped property of the Third Reich,” Rosa muttered grimly.

“Do you feel like telling Laura something about your life, Rosa?” Megan asked in a low voice. “Or would it be too exhausting for you? Too draining?”

Rosa shook her head. “No, Megan, it would not. I will recount a little of my life to Laura … I think that perhaps, under the circumstances, she should know something about the Rosa Duval I once was.” Rosa looked across at Laura, pinning her pale, transparent eyes on her, and finished. “If you want to hear about that part of my life.”

“Yes, I would like to,” Laura answered. “But as my grandmother just said, I wouldn’t want you to tire yourself out.”

“Oh, no, that is all right, I will be fine. But I think I would like to get myself a glass of water first. Would you like one, Laura? And what about you, Megan?”

“Ice water would be lovely,” Megan said. “And perhaps a little more of the coffee. Thank you, Rosa dear.”

“I’d like a glass of water too, please,” Laura said. “But let me come and help you.”

Rosa shook her head. “I can manage perfectly well. I will only be a moment.”

23
     

“N
ow I shall tell you about my life when I was a little girl in France,” Rosa said, focusing her attention on Laura. Leaning back in the comfortable armchair, she took a sip of water and then began.

“I spent my early years growing up in the art gallery on the rue de La Boétie. Duval et Fils was our home, as well as my father’s place of business. My father, Maurice Duval, had inherited the gallery, which was an entire building, from my grandfather, who had died in 1934. On the first and second floors my father showed Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, some modern art, and sculpture. My grandmother Henrietta, my father’s mother, lived on the third floor with her daughter, Aunt Sylvie. We were on the fourth and fifth floors, and the domestic help was on the sixth. It was a wonderful arrangement, in the time-honored tradition of old Europe, when the family lived above the store, so to speak.

Grandmother spent a lot of time with us, and so did Aunt Sylvie, who wasn’t married. We were six in our little family. Mama, Papa, my brothers, Michel and Jean-Marc, and my sister, Marguerite. I was the youngest and the favored child in a sense, everyone’s pet.”

Rosa looked off into the distance, as if seeing something
very special in her mind’s eye, and a faint smile touched her mouth. “My father called me
mon petit chou á la créme,
his little cabbage with cream, and he adored me. I was the spoiled girl, I suppose, but I was a good girl. Those years were wonderful. My father was a most gregarious man, outgoing, charming, hospitable, and very giving of himself. He entertained both clients and artists at the gallery, gave splendid evenings. Picasso was a favorite visitor, and sometimes Matisse came with his model Lydia Delectorskaïa. They all made a big fuss of me, and I have never forgotten them.

“My father’s gallery was considered one of the most elegant in that very elegant neighborhood; it stood at the corner, near avenue Matignon. It had beautiful exposition rooms filled with extraordinary light from the windows, and a glass ceiling in one of the rooms. It was soft filtered light that was perfect for the paintings. My father believed in providing rich backdrops for art, and he had walls covered in red silk brocade and blue damask. The exposition rooms were like a museum, and clients came just to sit there and admire the art … at different times my father represented Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Marie Laurencin, and, of course, Picasso and Matisse, to name only a few.

“When France and Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, I was nine years old. My father was worried because we were Jewish, but he did not want to flee the country at first. He was a clever man and he believed in studying situations, appraising everything, and he wanted to see what would happen. And so he continued to study and evaluate the situation before making any rash moves. However, because he was afraid Paris might be bombed by the Germans, fearful that the gallery could be
damaged if such an event occurred, he decided it would be wiser to move some of the paintings from the gallery. He began to systematically send them down to the Gironde, to a chateau in the countryside just outside Bordeaux, which belonged to an old friend of his. He had thought of storing the paintings in the cellars of the cháteau, and his friend agreed that this was a prudent move. And so arrangements were made.

“Jacques Pointine was my father’s right hand, and it was Jacques who transported the paintings down to the chateau. Pointine was married to an Englishwoman, Phyllis Dixon, who also worked for my father as a personal assistant, handling many of his art deals. She was very knowledgeable and intensely loyal. A little later Phyllis and Jacques took another collection of canvases to Bordeaux, where they were stored in a bank vault my father had rented. He was sure the paintings would be safe there, and he suggested to several artists that they take the same precautions with their work.

“My father had all of the paintings registered under the name of Jacques Pointine’s married sister, Yvette Citrone, again as a precaution. Then he shipped one hundred and twenty more to a warehouse in Grenoble, this time in Phyllis’s name. Altogether he managed to move over five hundred paintings out of Paris, some of them from his own personal collection; the rest were part of the gallery’s considerable inventory. Other dealers were taking similar steps, especially the Jewish dealers and gallery owners, and a number of painters were doing the same thing … Picasso, Braque, and Matisse included.

“In November of 1939 my father decided we could no longer stay in Paris, and so he took the whole family to
Bordeaux, which he knew was safe, and where he rented a large apartment. He insisted that Phyllis and Jacques come with us, and Papa left the gallery under the management of Alain Brescon, who had worked for him for years and was as loyal and devoted as Phyllis and Jacques.

“Our life in Bordeaux settled into a relatively normal routine, and anyway, it was the period known as the Phony War, when nothing much was happening. Every day I went to school with my brothers and sister; my mother and grandmother supervised our household; Papa worked with Phyllis and Jacques on the inventories of the art, and stayed in daily contact with the Paris gallery. He also talked with many of the other dealers and artists he was close to and cared about. But in a sense, I suppose, we were all holding our breath.

“But by June of 1940 that Phony War had become a real war. The news was suddenly alarming. On June third Paris was hit by eleven hundred bombs from two hundred Third Reich planes. The Wehrmacht was on its steady and relentless march across France. Its destination: Paris. The French Army was almost at the end of its strength and resolve, and the roads were overrun with hundreds and hundreds of refugees fleeing south. The Germans entered Paris on June fourteenth, and France fell. The French government in exile in Bordeaux surrendered, and was replaced by the right wing Vichy government, under the leadership of Maréchal Pétain. Almost immediately, Vichy passed anti-Jewish laws, and long before the Nazis had demanded that any measures be taken against Jews.

“My father had gone down with bronchitis that same June, and it turned into pneumonia, and as often happens with this kind of illness when it strikes in summer, it took
him a long time to get well. Even then he was left debilitated and listless. Certainly he was not in a frame of mind to move out of Bordeaux. In any case, we were in the southwest, which was Unoccupied France, and my parents believed us to be safe.

“It was not until July of 1942 that disaster and tragedy struck my family. I have often wondered if we stayed too long, have asked myself what
I
would have done in the same circumstances. But I have no real answers. The times were difficult, the situations hard to gauge accurately, and in any case, we were not being bothered.

“I will never forget the date. It was the sixteenth of July and I was almost twelve. My mother had asked Phyllis Dixon to take me to the doctor that afternoon, because I had been complaining of my tonsils. We were walking down the street toward our apartment, when she suddenly grabbed hold of me and dragged me into the doorway of a building. ‘It’s the police,’ she whispered. ‘There is a French police truck outside the door of your building, Rosa. I cannot take you home.’ I remember that I started to cry and frantically tried to pull away from her, to escape her clutches. But she was too strong for me. She held on to me tightly and wouldn’t let go of me. She kept peering out, and it was when I heard her choke on the words ‘Oh my God’ that I knew the police had come for
my
parents. Finally we heard the truck driving off. I wanted to race home to make sure my parents were safe. I kept telling myself that I had been
wrong,
that they had
not
been arrested. But Phyllis wouldn’t let me leave the doorway for a very long time.

“When we did eventually return to my family’s apartment, there was no one there. Not Papa, or Mama, or
Grandmama. Aunt Sylvie was gone as well. And so were my brothers and sister. They had taken them all … even the children. Phyllis and I were in a terrible state of shock. Jacques was in Grenoble, checking on the paintings in the warehouse, and we didn’t know what to do, since he wasn’t coming back until late that night. Phyllis was afraid to leave me alone; anyway, she didn’t know whom to go and see to find out what had happened. In the end, she grabbed a few of my things, threw them in a suitcase, and took me home to their apartment. It was not far away, and it was there that we waited for Jacques.

“When he returned home at about nine o’clock in the evening, he was as shocked as we had been, and as frightened for my family as we were. He had always been very close to my father. Jacques immediately went to the authorities in Bordeaux. Eventually he discovered that my parents were being held in the prison there, along with other Jews … men, women, and children. It seemed there was nothing he could do.

“I never saw my parents again. Nor the rest of my family. The next day they were shipped to a French concentration camp in Drancy, just north of Paris. It was the first stop on their fearsome journey … to Auschwitz.” Rosa stopped, her voice suddenly trembling, and then after a moment she continued more steadily. “They all perished there … Papa, Mama, Grandmama, and Aunt Sylvie … my brothers, Michel and Jean-Marc, and my sister, Marguerite. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, everyone I loved was gone, ripped away from me forever. I couldn’t believe it, I had seen them only a few hours ago, and been with them. Suddenly I was alone except for Phyllis and Jacques. I will never forget how stunned and terrified I
was. And Phyllis and Jacques were terrified for me. They feared the police might come back to get me. Later that night, Jacques sent me with Phyllis to his sister’s house at the other side of Bordeaux, until he could work out a plan for me, for all of us. The Pointines were not Jewish, and Jacques hoped I would be safe with his sister. For a while.

“Jacques Pointine was sharp, clever. I suppose he was the kind of man we would call street smart today, and he was beginning to worry about the art. But even so he did not fully grasp exactly what was going on, or the extent of it. But then, very few people did. It was only later that information about the massive looting of artworks came out.

“Jacques also worried that he and Phyllis could be in danger because of their association with my father, and he determined that we should all disappear.”

Rosa paused in her sorrowful tale and drank some water before continuing.

Neither Megan nor Laura spoke.

Megan leaned back against the needlepoint cushions and sighed, looking around this gracious room, her mind awash with thoughts of evil and man’s baseness and cruelty and inhumanity. And once again her heart went out to Rosa Lavillard, as it had when she had first heard her story so long ago.

Laura wanted to say something to Rosa, but she did not have the right words. There were no right words. Words were meaningless. Anything she could say would sound trite, even ridiculous, in view of the enormity of what had happened to Rosa all those years ago. It was beyond human comprehension. Glancing at her grandmother, she tried to imagine what it would be like to have
her
family
taken away and murdered in cold blood in a death camp. She
couldn’t
envision it; the mere idea overwhelmed her.

In a low, subdued voice, Laura finally said, “How … how did you manage to go on, Rosa? The horror of it …” Laura was unable to finish her sentence and she felt sudden tears pricking behind her eyes.

Rosa said, “I don’t know, I have often asked myself that. And there were times when I wished I had been at home, that I had been with my parents, my family, so that I could have shared their fate, been taken with them to Auschwitz. At least we would have all been together. But I wasn’t, I was saved by chance, by luck, and by Phyllis Dixon. There were times afterward, when I was growing up, that I thought I might have been saved because I had a special purpose in life. But I don’t know. It’s as I just said, fate played a hand, along with Phyllis.” Rosa looked at Laura. “You asked how I managed to go on … I suppose because I was a child. Children are resilient. I wept a lot, I worried about my family, and sometimes I was almost paralyzed by fear for them, but we were on the run, moving around a lot, and Phyllis kept telling me I had to keep my wits about me in order to survive.

“It was soon very apparent that the Vichy government was deporting Jews to Germany on a large scale. Jacques and Phyllis found it incomprehensible that the French state was so casually delivering
children
to their murderers. There was complicity everywhere. Perhaps you do not know this, but the French Jews were the most assimilated of all the Jews in Europe, and they had become, over the centuries, part of the fabric of French life. It was obvious that ordinary French people were turning Jews in … without those dossiers at the prefecture, Jews would not
have been found. They could not have been deported. Or killed.

“Jacques was conscious of this, and he became convinced that my father and the family had been turned in by a collaborator, which is why he feared for
my
safety. You see, I was not only another Jew to be exterminated, but I was also the heir to Maurice Duval’s immense and valuable art collection. And so we moved around a lot. We went to stay with relatives of Jacques in Mérignac, then we moved on, and stayed in Grenoble for a short while, before going to friends of Phyllis who lived near La Martellière. It was there that we moved into a small house. It was on the outskirts of La Martellière, and belonged to a sister of one of Phyllis’s friends. At first Jacques was relieved that we had a respite, could stay put for a while, that we did not have to move around so much. But then it became a nightmare. Suddenly, Jacques was convinced the police were watching the house, and just when he had finished making arrangements for us to leave, Phyllis broke her shoulder and leg when she fell down a flight of steps leading into the cellar. She was incapacitated, and so Jacques had to cancel our plans to go to Bellegarde, near the Swiss border. He thought it was too long a trip for Phyllis.