Florian's Gate (22 page)

The sound of Mozart lilted in harmony with the room's elegance. Jeffrey sat and listened and looked out through the tall windows that flanked the polished grand piano. The
windows were open to permit the gentle breeze entry. He was borne on the music out to the water that flowed in constant peaceful silence just beyond the palace grounds. The melody, soft and coaxing, carried him away from the questions and the problems and the issues and the worries. Its purity spoke to something deeper, beyond the turmoil that had buffeted his world. He closed his eyes and saw the furniture he had studied so carefully, not as items to be evaluated and sold, but as works of art. In that moment, the price tags and the buyers' greed and the dealers' cynicism and the business competition were all swept away.

He listened, and visualized the pieces that had come to be his own personal favorites, savoring the artistry and the loving craftsmanship that had gone into their creation. He listened, and felt the world to be split in two—the creation and the craftsmanship on one hand, the greed and the material desire to have and to hold and to possess on the other. He listened, and saw himself balanced on the fulcrum, teetering to either side, not knowing where he belonged.

Jeffrey reached over, slipped his hand into Katya's, and waited. Sometimes when he did that she reacted as one trained to be polite even when faced with something repulsive. She would sit and let her hand rest there with the cold limpness of a dead fish, then a few moments later extract it softly and pull her body slightly away. It always left Jeffrey tremendously hurt and afraid to try again.

But this time she
enfolded
it in both of hers with the calm movement of one giving him his rightful place. She too was caught up in the music and the mood and the flowing waters and the evening's perfumed breeze. Jeffrey felt his heart grow wings as she drew his hand farther into her lap, where she could better nestle it with one hand and softly stroke the hairs of his wrist with the other.

At intermission she sat for a long time, not looking his way, not letting his hand go. Finally she stirred and sighed gently. “Shall we stretch our legs?”

They joined the crowd drifting through the adjoining rooms, inspected paintings and gilded adornments in silence, too shy over this newfound closeness to face each other directly.

At the sound of the bell, Jeffrey followed the crowd back into the throne room, only to realize upon his arrival at their seats that Katya was no longer with him. He returned back through chamber after interconnecting chamber, and breathed a silent sigh when he found her in the very back room, what once had been a formal library. He walked toward her, then faltered when he saw the tears on her face.

She stood before a statue of a young woman, a girl probably a year or so beyond puberty. She was nude save for a long shawl draped over her head. Her arms were tied behind her back with the same rough cord used to bind her ankles. She remained on her feet, yet crouched down so that she could cover much of her naked body with the shawl. There was an air of tragic submission, of utter fear, of helpless fragility about the girl.

“Katya?”

She turned and looked at him with brimming eyes. “She's going to be put on the block and sold into slavery. Did you know that was the story? It's written here in German. It happened all the time in the Eastern lands, Jeffrey. All the time. The Tartars or the Cossacks or the Mongols or the Turks would come marching through, and all the girls young enough and pretty enough were stripped and shackled and counted as loot. This wasn't a thousand years ago, and it wasn't on the other side of the earth. This was yesterday. And today, somewhere else on this earth. Some girl is trapped and scared and helpless, some father has been taken away without reason, some mother is no longer there to take care of her. This is what they've done to these people, Jeffrey. Enormous evil for the sake of greed.”

Jeffrey swept her into an embrace. He stroked her hair,
and shushed her gently, feeling for her own pain, wondering if this was what it meant to be in love.

“Why is the world so cruel, Jeffrey? Can you tell me that? When will it ever end?”

CHAPTER 10

The next morning Jeffrey and Katya returned to the lawyer's cluttered office. “She wants to know if you were able to speak with Mr. Kantor,” Katya translated.

“Yes. He was very upset by the news. Extremely upset.”

Frau Reining nodded as though expecting nothing less. She spoke in a torrent of German, which Katya translated as, “Not half as upset as the people I am representing. I would like to hope that such horrors are behind us completely, but the times have taught me nothing if not caution.”

Jeffrey took a breath, then announced, “We have decided to give back the income from the sales of Götz's antiques.”

The words were greeted with silence. Frau Reining turned to Katya and demanded a translation. Reluctantly Katya turned her eyes from Jeffrey, told her what he had said, then asked him, “Is it true? That's what you and Alexander discussed?”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the lawyer. “All of it.”

Frau Reining said sharply, “You no must.”

“We're going to do it anyway.”

She appeared not to hear him. She stood and went to her desk and returned to the table with a letter which she handed to Katya.

“This is a notarized document,” Katya translated, pointing to the official seal and signature at the bottom. “It says that they are relinquishing all rights to prosecute or request restitution.”

“You no must,” the lawyer repeated.

“Yes, we do,” Jeffrey replied. “Tell her that there is a difference between what the law says we must do and what is right. We are giving it all back. Commissions included.”

The lawyer's sharp gaze bore into him as she listened to Katya's translation. Then she asked, “How much?”

“I don't know the exact commission we charged, but I would guess the total to be around nine hundred and seventy thousand pounds.”

The gaze continued to rake him for a long moment. Then she reached for her pack of cigarettes and lit one with trembling hands. She said with the first gulp of smoke, “Million pounds.”

“Give or take some change,” Jeffrey agreed, and told her what he had spent sleepless hours mulling over. “We want you to set up a trust to help cover the damages caused to everyone you can find. We will draft a letter of instruction, but it is important that you offer us any suggestions you may have as to how the money should be spent.”

He was startled to find Katya's hand slide over his. He glanced her way, but found the gaze too inviting to pay it any mind just then. He went on. “We want to remain very flexible about how the money is to be used, so that it can be matched to individual needs. Since this is not legally required as repayment, I think we would prefer not to have it all go back to the people who owned these particular antiques. You can give them something; we'll work out a figure. But not all of it. There are too many others in need.”

When Katya had translated, the lawyer nodded agreement. She said with Katya translating, “It now looks like the German government will provide compensation to the victims of these crimes if we can successfully prove our case in the courts. But this will of course take much time. Your money will help a great deal to cover their needs in the meantime.”

“Much needs, much help,” the lawyer said in English, approval shining in her gaze. “Thank you. For all families. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and stood. “Come. We go.”

They followed her down the stairs and out of the building. She set a brisk pace over the cobblestone passages. Katya
walked between Jeffrey and the lawyer, never letting go of his hand for an instant.

She paused before a block-long building topped with the watch-walk of an imitation medieval castle. Miniature turrets rose at each corner, far too small to be more than pillars intended to hold up the sky. Despite its finery and broad windows and fresh white paint, there was an air of isolation to the place. No one walked along that side of the road—all crossed over to the opposite side, all refused to look at it. No one entered or left through the high central portals.

“Stasi,” the lawyer announced. “Secret police. Before, not now.”

“The place of children's nightmares,” Katya said quietly.

The woman spoke rapidly. Katya translated. “When the protest marches began the week before the Wall toppled, there were forty thousand the first night, and eighty thousand the second. Out of a population in Schwerin of one hundred and twenty thousand. That left the Communists, the grandfathers, and the babies at home. We all walked down to this building, and set eighty thousand candles into the stonework at the building's base. Then we stood and held hands and sang. Toward dawn we went home smiling, because that night we knew we had won.”

She set off once more at her brisk pace, talking all the while. Katya translated in breathless snatches. “When we all marched on the streets, we were truly one Volk. One people. It was this spirit of community we had to build up in order to survive. If it had not been there, the Wall would never have come down.

“It's all gone now, put to sleep by greed. Nowadays everybody hears that they can have everything they want, buy all they desire, if only they go out and work and earn more money and don't give it to anyone else, just keep it for themselves. This new greed isolates us. It makes us more conscious of being alone. And overnight the feeling of pulling together was lost.

“People are diving headfirst into consumerism, and don't understand that there are rocks beneath the surface. Nothing in their lives has prepared them for the shock of this change. Everything tells them to buy now, the signs on the street and the new fancy shop windows and the television and the radio and the newspapers and the magazines. Everything. Buy, buy, and nowhere is anything teaching them the principle of self-discipline.

“They have never learned the first basic lesson of debt, that whatever they borrow they have to pay back. Under the Communists, debt was not allowed to a private citizen. Many people do not even know what the word
interest
means. So they are given this enormous freedom which they don't understand, and they buy everything immediately. The strain on these people, and their families, is tremendous.”

She turned into a worn-out building with stone stairs beaten by countless feet into scrabbles of crumbling granite. She fished in her purse for yet another set of massive keys, led them downstairs into a dank and grimy cellar, and stopped before a solid-looking door.

Through Katya she said, “This is from a client. An honest man. Someone who is not part of any plot or secret action. He received these two pieces from a relative before the war.”

A heavy skeleton key was inserted and twisted with both hands. She stopped with the door only half ajar and looked back at Jeffrey.

“There are questions everywhere. Questions from everyone, East and West. Too many evil men have hurt too many innocent people, so now there are questions about all hoards of private wealth.”

Katya rushed to keep up with the woman's hurried speech. “This is an honest man whose family must have money now. There is a person in the West who claims their home. It is a historical right, granted to people who can show that they were forced out of their holdings by the Communists. Those who can prove this can have their holdings back. She doesn't
have any quarrel with the law, just with the pain it is causing to innocent people.

“The person in the West is going to sell the house, and this family will lose the place they have lived in for more than thirty years unless they can come up with the money. There is an enormous housing shortage, and if they can't buy it they don't know where they will live.”

The lawyer waited until Katya was finished, then said directly to Jeffrey, “I trust you. You trust me. This not bad man. Good man. Honest. Not many, but this one yes. Honest. You take?”

“I don't even know what it is yet,” Jeffrey replied. “But if it is an antique and I think we can sell it, yes, I'll take it.”

She nodded her satisfaction when Katya had translated, then opened the door and flipped on the light. Jeffrey stepped into the doorway and breathed a long sigh.

The room's single bare bulb shone down on two articles so fine that even the bare concrete walls with their covering of mold and dust could not alter their impact. Jeffrey stepped forward, feeling the thrill of discovery.

The first was an Italian work, probably Florentine, certainly from the seventeenth century or earlier. It was designed as a cabinet and rested on four graceful mahogany legs connected by a crisscrossing centerpiece. The cabinet itself was modeled after a single-story villa with a tiny roof terrace lined by an even smaller, intricately carved banister. The villa was flanked by four Grecian columns, and paneled with gracefully inlaid floral and fountain scenes. It was in immaculate condition.

The more valuable of the two items was at first glance the less impressive. Jeffrey had never seen one in person before, but he had inspected enough pictures to be almost positive what lay within the blank dark exterior.

From the outside, it was a simple hardwood cabinet, standing on short sturdy legs, rising up to about chest height. The exterior wood had been darkened by time and by its original finish to the point that it was impossible to detect either the
grain or the type of wood. It was unadorned save for brass handles on each door, a keyhole designed for a ten-inch skeleton key, and a small wooden lockbox on the chest's top. But from the side Jeffrey could see the cleverly imbedded hinges and the three-inch thick solid wood from which the box was constructed; these two clues gave the cabinet away.

He stepped forward, swung open the doors, and felt a tingling up his spine. It was a royal family's jewelry chest. Date uncertain, but without doubt prior to seventeen hundred. Probably central European.