Tomorrow's Vengeance (14 page)

‘An exotic species,' Nancy commented, bending at the waist for a closer look at an orange glass flower, its petals as abundant and twisted as a Medusa.

She'd made a joke! I stared for a moment in surprise.

‘You're looking at me like I live here,' she said.

Oh, dear, I thought. One step forward and two steps back.

We made a complete circuit of the garden then paused to rest on a stone bench in a cherry tree grove that would, come spring, blossom in pink, heart-stopping splendor. The marble felt deliciously cool under the thin cloth of my slacks. I leaned back and said, ‘Ah … I could sit here all day.'

Nancy fussed with the buttons on her blouse and looked from side to side as if she were expecting somebody. ‘People do,' she said.

‘Do what?' I asked. ‘Sit here all day?'

‘Yes. I see them from my window.'

I turned to look at Blackwalnut Hall. Banks of picture windows winked at me like two dozen eyes. ‘Who do you see?'

She smiled slyly. ‘Frank. And me.'

‘That's nice,' I said.

‘Where is Frank?' she asked again, and once again I explained about the doctor.

‘OK,' she said, then screwed her face into a frown. ‘Can we go for a walk now? You
said
we were going for a walk.'

‘I declare that it is far from my idea to encourage anything like a state art. Art belongs to the domain of the individual. The state has only one duty: not to undermine art, to provide humane conditions for artists, to encourage them from the artistic and national point of view.'

Benedito Mussolini, Speech at the Opening Exhibit of

Il Novecento Italiano
, Milan, 1923.

‘B
AG' read the blue-and-white buttons we pinned on our lapels. Someone had not been thinking ahead when they named it the Baltimore Art Gallery.

The eclectic collection was housed in a former high school on Guilford Avenue, not far from Penn Station, in an area called Greenmount West that was emerging, slowly but steadily, from the rubble of the Baltimore riots of 1968. Did you watch the HBO drama,
The Wire
? Then you've been to Greenmount West.

Recently designated as a Maryland Arts and Entertainment District, the area had experienced a renaissance of theaters, cafes, and restaurants as well as an explosion of space for artists to live and work in the sprawling former Crown Cork and Seal factory. Nevertheless, the streets could be a bit dicey, so I was glad I had my posse with me.

‘Elevator or stairs?' I asked my friends as we entered the spacious lobby of the museum and showed our passes to the attendant.

‘Oh, stairs,' Izzy said. ‘I need the exercise.'

‘“The new Italian Renaissance,”' I read aloud from the exhibit brochure as we climbed the marble staircase to the gallery, ‘“was described by Margherita Sarfatti as a
ritorno al mestiere
, or a return to craft.”'

‘Sarfatti was Mussolini's mistress,' Izzy informed us. ‘Awkward for him, because she was Jewish. She ended up fleeing to Argentina, but she returned to Italy sometime after the war and became an influential art critic.'

‘Susan Sarandon played her in the movie,' Naddie added.

‘What movie?' Safa wanted to know.

‘
Cradle Will Rock
.'

I paused on the landing. ‘When I die, please note I want Susan Sarandon to play
me
in the movie.'

I started up the next flight. ‘Where was I? Uh … “This classicizing moment gave birth to renewed interest in Italian Renaissance painters such as Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca” blah blah blah … “and demonstrates the power of the neoclassical paradigm for postwar Italian modernists” … and so on and so on.' I closed the brochure and used it to fan myself. ‘Whenever I get to the word “paradigm” my brain shuts down.'

‘“Hegemony” does it for me,' Naddie confessed. ‘Best to let the works speak for themselves, I always say.'

At the head of the stairs, a huge banner hung from the ceiling – identical to the cover of the brochure – which indicated where the exhibit began. Sixty artists were represented, according to the banner, comprising painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, film, fashion and the decorative arts, on loan from museums all over the world.

‘I don't think much of de Chirico's paintings,' I commented to my friends as we browsed through the first gallery. ‘He seems to be a one-trick pony.' De Chirico's work featured oversized classical heads and weird classical buildings with an oddly distorted perspective that made me tilt my head and say, ‘Huh?' The foregrounds were often decorated, Dali-esque, with rubber gloves or bananas.

There were the stark, monochromatic still lifes of Morandi, who was fixated on bottles and vases; the abstracts of Balla; the cartoons of Sironi.

‘Now, this is more like it,' I said as we came to some vibrant, realistic portraits by Federico Andreotti, who posed his models in aristocratic scenes, often wearing eighteenth-century dress.

‘Airs and graces,' muttered Izzy. ‘My father couldn't stand Andreotti. Wouldn't have him in the gallery.' She dismissed the artist with a wave of her hand, and moved on to a series of paintings by Cagnaccio di San Pietro – a woman applying makeup at a mirror; another of a woman wearing a red dress; an old fisherman; and the little boy with the bubble, the painting that had been featured on the flyer.

‘I'd buy this in a minute,' I said, indicating
La Bolla di Sapone
. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

‘Got twelve thousand dollars?' Naddie wanted to know. ‘That's what the di San Pietros are going for these days. I looked it up.'

‘Maybe if I'm good, Santa will tuck the painting into my stocking for Christmas,' I joked.

Izzy and Naddie moved on. The paintings were growing progressively more abstract and, to my way of thinking, less interesting, so Safa and I took a detour to explore the section on decorative arts.

We were leaning over a display case of exquisite porcelain drinking cups by Gio Ponte, one decorated with circus acts and the other with airplanes, when I heard somebody wail. Safa and I exchanged worried glances.

‘That sounds like Izzy,' I said.

We raced back to the gallery where we'd left Izzy with Naddie. As I turned the corner, barging into a gallery that Safa and I had skipped, I saw Izzy holding onto the doorframe with one hand, pressing the other to her breast. ‘I can't breathe!'

I guided her to a nearby bench and forced her to sit down on it. ‘Is it your heart?'

‘No, no. My heart's fine.'

‘You're hyperventilating, Izzy. Put your head between your knees … that's right. Now breathe in. Breathe out. That's it.'

‘I'll go find some water,' Safa said, and she disappeared around the corner of the gallery.

I sat down next to my friend, reached out and began stroking her back. ‘Where's Naddie?' I asked.

‘Restroom,' she gasped.

‘In and out,' I repeated. ‘In and out. Better?'

She nodded, and several silver strands that escaped from her bun trembled around her face.

‘What is it? What happened?'

‘I, I …' Izzy began.

Safa returned just then, carrying a Styrofoam coffee cup of water. She knelt on the tiles in front of Izzy, her skirt puddling around her. ‘Here, drink this.'

Izzy took the cup in both hands and took a sip, then another, then handed the cup back.

‘Better?'

‘Yes, I think so. It's just … that painting,' she said, pointing to a wall of portraits, one of them featuring a young boy kneeling with his arms wrapped around a dog. The animal had thick, curly brown and white fur. His large brown eyes stared out at the viewer, just like those of its pint-sized master.

‘The one of the boy and the Portuguese water dog?' I asked, just to be certain.

Izzy nodded vigorously, dislodging even more hair from the confines of her bun. ‘It's not a water dog, Hannah. It's a Lagotto Romagnolo named Pecorino, and that little boy is my brother.'

Needless to say, lunch at Sofi Crepes was forgotten as we sat in the gallery's cafeteria over pre-made sandwiches and bottles of designer water in pastel colors, discussing what to do.

While Izzy was a study in anxious indecision, Safa had donned full battle gear, prepared to march up to the gallery's office and put them on notice that they were in possession of stolen property.

‘That's no good,' Izzy complained. ‘They're not going to say, ‘Oh, we're
soooo
sorry, we didn't know,' take the portrait off the wall, tape it up in bubblewrap and hand it back to me, are they?'

Safa looked crestfallen but reluctantly agreed. ‘I guess you're right. We don't want to give them a head's up or the painting might disappear.'

Naddie and I concurred, urging caution. ‘You need an attorney,' I said.

Izzy stared back at me blankly.

‘Do you
have
a lawyer?' Naddie asked.

Izzy thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘Only in Pennsylvania, and his specialty was real estate and probate.'

I patted Izzy's hand. ‘I have a brother-in-law who's an attorney in Annapolis. He rejoices in the name Malcolm Gaylord Hutchinson, but everyone simply calls him Hutch. Would you like me to call him? If he can't take the case he will certainly know someone who can.'

Izzy looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. Until then she'd been able to hold her tears in check but suddenly the floodgates opened. ‘Yes, please,' she sobbed.

Safa grabbed a wad of napkins from a dispenser and tucked them into Izzy's clenched fist.

Ragazzo con Cane
, I thought. Boy with dog. An unassuming title, a modest painting, yet tangible proof of Izzy's life before the Nazis. It had hit her like a blow to the stomach. Simple oil pigments dabbed onto a rectangle of canvas, yet representative of everything Izzy had lost: her father and mother, her brother, even her country.

Izzy cried until the tears would no longer come, and like good friends we sat there handing her napkins, making comforting noises, and let her.

‘Jews, Free Masons and those opponents of National Socialism who are affiliated with them … are the authors of the present war against the Reich. The systematic spiritual battle against these forces is a task made necessary by the war effort.

I have therefore directed Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg to carry out this task … His staff for the occupied territories is authorized to search libraries, archives, lodges and other … cultural establishments for relevant material and to have this material requisitioned for the ‘Weltanschauung' tasks of the NSDAP, and for future scientific research by higher educational institutions. The same regulation applies to cultural treasures which are the property or in the possession of Jews, which are ownerless, or the origin of which cannot be clearly established.'

Adolf Hitler, Decree of the Führer, 1 March, 1942.

W
ell before nine the following morning Izzy and I waited in my brother-in-law's Annapolis conference room while he arranged for his receptionist to bring us coffee. I'd rushed out of the house wearing slim jeans, a tank top and open-toed sandals, without applying makeup or blow-drying my hair, but compared to Izzy I looked like a cover model. She'd dressed in tennis shoes and a lime-green jogging outfit. She'd drawn her hair into an untidy ponytail at the nape of her neck and her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying.

I knew Izzy's painting wouldn't be going anywhere soon; the exhibit would be running through January, according to the brochure, so there was no particular need to rush. Izzy had been so agitated, however, that I felt we had to get the ball rolling. When I called him at home the previous evening, Hutch's calendar, by some miracle, was free, so I'd made the appointment for Izzy and me to come in.

‘The painting is by Clotilde Padovano,' Izzy explained when Hutch returned to the room and sat down at the conference table opposite us. ‘It's one of a pair, and the other is hanging in my town home.'

I watched as Hutch scrawled ‘Padovano' on the yellow legal pad in front of him. ‘You said your father was an art dealer?'

‘Yes. He owned the Galleria Rossi in Rome. When the Nazis came he was forced to sell. The paintings went for a fraction of their actual value but my father had absolutely no choice. If he hadn't sold they would have been stolen outright.'

‘Who bought the paintings from your father, Mrs Milanesi?'

‘I don't know. There were several buyers, maybe a half dozen or so. Because we lived over the gallery I saw these people come and go but I never knew their names. I was very young at the time,' she added.

‘Is the picture owned by the Baltimore Art Gallery, or is it on loan from another museum?' Hutch asked.

‘It's owned by the gallery; at least, there was no label on it to indicate otherwise.' She sat back in her chair and sighed. ‘I wonder where it's been all these years and how it got from our home in Rome into a gallery in Baltimore.'

‘The provenance will tell us that,' Hutch said. He scribbled something down on his pad then added: ‘I'm sure the gallery believes it was purchased legally. As you probably know they're very careful about establishing provenance. Galleries have researchers to handle that sort of thing. The Baltimore Art Gallery is thoroughly reputable. They
will
have bills of sale.'

‘A bill of sale is meaningless, Mr Hutchinson, if it's filled out while the seller has a gun pointed at his head.'

‘True,' Hutch agreed. ‘I've done a bit of research and there are a number of jurisdictions that have accepted that fact. The American Association of Museums recently issued guidelines that require extra scrutiny on all acquisitions that changed ownership between 1932 and 1945, especially if the work in question was previously owned by Jews.'