The Forger (20 page)

We both went down to get Fleury and I stood in Fleury’s apartment while Pankratov gave him the news.

Fleury was lurid in red smoking jacket, which apparently doubled as a dressing gown. He didn’t have his glasses on, and his bright blue eyes looked small and useless. “The French army will stop them,” he said confidently. “And there’s still the British Expeditionary Force. They’re in Belgium.”

“The French and British armies,” said Pankratov, “are falling back toward the sea.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Fleury. He turned to me. “You mustn’t believe what he’s saying.”

But I did believe it. If the Maginot Line had not stopped the Germans, nothing would. I had held on to the flimsy faith that the Maginot would simply prevent them from starting. I imagined that people all over France, all over the world, were encased in that same numbed helplessness that I felt at this moment. We had believed it wouldn’t happen. Now we would stand by in our helplessness while it did.

I had no real image of the Germans as an enemy. They had remained a vague menace. But slowly they were taking shape, a rolling thunder in the dense pine forests of the Ardennes. A human flood. Unstoppable. “What are we going to do?” I asked Pankratov.

“I need your help,” he said. “We are going to move some paintings to a safe place.”

“All right,” I said. “When?”

“Now. Immediately.” Pankratov glared at Fleury. “You, too. If you have some food, bring it along.”

Fleury shuffled off to get dressed, then laid out some food on the kitchen table—bread and apricot jam and some apples and chocolate and some cervelas sausage and a bottle of wine. We stuffed as much as we could into an old canvas satchel. I slung it over my shoulder, feeling the wine bottle dig into my hip.

A little white Citroën van stood parked outside the building. On its side was the logo of a bakery:
GALLIMARD ET FILS. BOULANGER. PROVISANT DE PATISSERIES DE MAISON.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

Pankratov didn’t answer. “Just get in,” he said.

It was cramped with the three of us in the van. There were old chocolate bar wrappers balled up on the dashboard. The seats were torn and shined with use, the grain of the leather worn off. The floor showed the marks of someone with large feet who had rested his heels on the same spot many times.

Pankratov crashed the gears, jolting us forward. Then he crashed them again, swearing in Russian. He clung to the steering wheel as if it were a snake with its tail in its mouth that would slither away out the window if he didn’t keep his grip.

“Would you like me to drive?” I asked.

“Of course not!” he snapped. “Don’t be ridiculous. Stop asking questions!”

Fleury glanced at me and rolled his eyes.

Five blocks later, Pankratov had chewed up the gears a few more times. The grating, zipping sound of crunched metal made us all wince. Pankratov swore in several languages within the same sentence. Eventually, he pulled over, got out of the van and walked around to the other side. As he did this, he pounded his fist on the hood, as if it was all the van’s fault. When he reached the passenger side, he hauled open the door. “God damn all machines!” he shouted.

I drove us the rest of the way. The light was grayish-purple, the way it is before dawn on a cloudy day.

Pankratov gave me directions to the Jeu de Paume museum. It was a long, rectangular building made of pale khaki stone. It stood at the far northeast corner of the Tuileries Gardens, right where the Rue de Rivoli intersects with the Place de la Concorde. It had been built by Napoleon as some kind of indoor tennis court and was then converted into an art museum. The front had two large letter N’s engraved on it. It was an ugly building, compared to the grandness of Concorde and the tall houses along the Rue de Rivoli.

We joined a line of other trucks in the Place de la Concorde, at the base of a short flight of stone stairs. The trucks were all different types. Some were mail vans. Others were delivery trucks, with company names painted ornately on their sides. They kept their engines running. I saw a wisp of tobacco smoke seeping from the cracked-open window of the truck in front. A hand held out a cigarette, flicked ash from its tip, then retreated from the cold air.

The main doors of the Jeu de Paume were wide open. Through a screen of trees that grew between the road and the museum, I could see a table set up on the gravel outside. On the table was a storm lantern. A man with round glasses sat at the table, encased in the light of the lantern, alternately writing and then handing out sheets of paper to the drivers of the trucks, who jogged back down the steps to their vehicles. Others were carrying paintings wrapped in white sheets and stacking them in the trucks. A few men in civilian clothes stood guard at the top of the steps, shotguns slung over their shoulders. They wore heavy sweaters and the cuffs of their trousers were rolled up around their boots.

The only noise I could hear was the puttering of engines and wind shuffling through the trees of the Tuileries.

One after the other, the trucks were loaded up. They gunned their engines and left in different directions.

“Where are they going?” I asked Pankratov, forgetting that I was not to ask questions.

“No idea.” He was hunched down in his seat, arms folded across his chest.

“Well, where are
we
going?” asked Fleury. “Do you know that, at least?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” he said. “There’s the signal. Drive up. Come on. Drive up.”

I pulled the truck up to the base of the stairs, riding onto the curb, directed by hand signals from one of the shotgun men, who showed me his palms when it was time to stop.

Pankratov jumped out.

Fleury and I followed.

We went up the steps to the table, footsteps crunching on the yellowy gravel. There were two men ahead of us.

In the foyer of the Jeu de Paume, I saw men and women removing paintings from frames and stacking the empty frames to one side. They sized sheets against the paintings and tied them up with balls of string. The white balls unraveled across the floor. They worked quickly, without talking. The sheets were then marked with numbers in black laundry pen. The paintings were carried past us and down the steps to our van.

The man at the table glanced up at us when it came our turn. On his desk was a list of names of paintings and next to each name was a code number, the same numbers that were being written on the sheets. In another column was a letter. The paintings which had been sent down to our truck were all marked “Q.” The man took off his glasses and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. His jacket was hung over the back of his chair. Next to his left hand was a hammered brass ashtray that was filled with cigarette butts. Tiny bugs weaved around the lantern’s light. He took an envelope from a box. The envelope had the letter Q marked on the front and nothing else. He tore a sheet off his notepad, on which the paintings were listed by code number only. Then he handed the envelope and the sheet to Pankratov. “Head around the Place de la Concorde and get on the Champs-Elysées. Head for the Boulevard de la Grande Armée. That will get you on the main road out of Paris to the west. Once you are out of the city, open your instructions and follow them. When you get to your destination, check the paintings against the numbers. Make sure they all get delivered. When you get back to the city, return the list to me. All clear?”

“Clear,” said Pankratov.

A woman walked out of the Jeu de Paume and right over to us. She was the woman from the gallery opening. The one with the crowd gathered round her.

I couldn’t remember her name.

“Alexander,” she said to Pankratov, raising her chin slightly as she pronounced his name.

Then she glanced at Fleury. “Monsieur Fleury,” she said. “Under the circumstances, I suppose I should be glad to see you here.”

Fleury smiled weakly.

“But now that I have a better understanding of your methods,” she continued, “these are the only circumstances under which I would welcome your company.”

“The honor is to serve,” said Fleury grandly, returning her insult with one more subtle than her own.

“Madame Pontier,” said Pankratov. “This is David Halifax. He is one of the painters we will be using.”

“Ah,” said the woman. “You are the American.”

“Not any more,” I said, and shook her hand, which was strong and bony.

“We have high hopes for you,” she said, and turned and walked back into the building.

“Who was that?” I asked Pankratov.

“That woman owns you right now.” Pankratov’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “So think nice thoughts about her.”

“Well, I know what I’ll be thinking about her, anyway,” said Fleury.

When we reached the street, the last of the paintings was being loaded into our van. In the back were mountings where the bread bins had been. By the thin light of a bulb in the compartment I could see traces of flour in the gridded metal floor. I wondered what the owner of the truck would do without it.

I climbed behind the wheel and pulled out into the Place de la Concorde. The buildings that we passed loomed dark and empty. The trees along the Champs-Elysées were leafy and still. I saw no people in the streets.

It was cold in the truck, even with the three of us squashed in.

“That woman on the ramp,” said Pankratov, “is Emilia Pontier, curator of the Duarte Museum. She’s been put in charge of removing works from all the major galleries. She’s probably the only one who knows the locations of all the paintings. She made up the lists and code numbers, found locations, and contacted people who would hide the paintings. Right now, she’s probably the most important person in the French art world.”

Pankratov tore open the directions. He took out a sheet of paper and a stack of fuel ration coupons. He let the envelope fall to the floor. “Normandy,” he told us.

Again, I thought about that day in the streetcar. So much had happened since then, it was as if I’d robbed the memory from someone else’s life.

“Where in Normandy?” asked Fleury.

“To the Ardennes Abbey,” he said. “The ancestral home of the Count and Countess de Boinville.”

“De Boinville?” I asked.

“That’s right.” Pankratov nodded. “They offered to let us store some paintings there.”

“I didn’t know Marie-Claire was a countess!” said Fleury. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“She asked me not to. What difference would it have made, anyway?”

“It might have made a difference to Balard,” I said. I wondered where Balard was now, still alive or dead up in some muddy field in Belgium.

We drove out through the flat farmlands west of Paris, the long straight roads lined with hedges and crop fields neat and geometric. After the city, it was strange to have the horizon broad and open again and to see thick groves of trees. I saw a dull red tractor plowing a field. Mist clogged in the muddy furrows. A jumble of magpies and seagulls followed behind the hunched-down driver. A pipe jutted from his mouth.

There was no sign of war. No soldiers, tanks or guns.

Pankratov stared out the window, steaming up the glass with his breath and then wiping away the condensation again. He unbuttoned one of his pockets, pulled out an apple and munched at it.

“Where is this abbey?” asked Fleury.

“Near Caen,” said Pankratov.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “Just hang them on the wall?”

“Actually,” explained Pankratov, “we’re going to put them
in
the wall. If France falls, some German magistrate is going to be living in the abbey and the last thing he’ll want is for his new house to be damaged. The paintings will be behind a few feet of plaster and paint and he’ll never know they’re there.”

By afternoon, we were approaching Normandy. The roads became sunken and narrow. Sometimes, all we could see was a tunnel of thick bushes closing over us. Pankratov said this was
bocage
country. The roads were below the level of the fields because they were hundreds of years old. Over the centuries, the level of the fields had risen with each successive crop, while the road level stayed the same. I beeped the horn every time we came to a bend in the road, in case there was a car coming the other way, but after a while, I gave up slowing down. Once in a while, over the sound of our own roaring engine, we heard the gooselike honking of another horn and I jammed on the brakes. The only vehicles we passed were two milk trucks and a tractor. Once we had to stop to let a herd of black and white cows cross the road, pestered on by a boy who slapped their muddy flanks with a stick.

We had long since run out of conversation. Now we lived alone in our thoughts.

A fine rain was falling as we passed through Caen. The wipers jolted drunkenly across the windshield. In the distance I could see the thin spike of a cathedral spire, jutting from a cloak of fog. We tanked up for the third time in a place called St. Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, using the fuel ration coupons. By then, we were only a few miles away. I had been driving for over ten hours. At the gas station, I could smell fuel around the pumps and the reek of grease and rubber from the repair shop. Next to the gas station was a bar café run by the same man who pumped our gas. His once blue overalls were bleached the color of cigar smoke.

We went into the café, where the owner served us our Café National in heavy cream-colored mugs with a green stripe around the top. He refused to take our money. “If you don’t drink it, the Germans will, and I’ll throw it away before I give it to them. Besides, they probably have real coffee, anyway.” Then he went on to tell us that he had killed a bunch of Germans in the Great War. “And now they’re coming back for more,” he said. “I must have let a few of them get away last time.”

Pankratov sipped at his coffee. “Better hope they don’t remember your face.” Then he walked outside to stretch his legs.

The morning papers arrived while Fleury and I were sitting there. Large black headlines in
La Nation
announced the invasion of Belgium and attacks on French airfields up north. The Germans had used dive-bombers to break French strongholds along the Meuse River. The French Seventh Army, under General Giraud, was withdrawing toward the Dutch coast.