‘As luck would have it, the only thing Jacob stole before being surprised by Fessler was the tube with the four Balsano landscapes. He had passed it on to the Künzi Brothers, who were outside the Fessler residence.
‘When the alarm was raised, all three thieves fled. Jacob, being of darker skin by virtue of his Indian origin, was recognized, but the Künzi Brothers, who were outside and had a start, escaped unseen. They had made away with the Balsano landscapes, and nobody knew that they had taken them. In fact, nobody knew that the Balsano paintings had even been stolen.
‘So the Künzi Brothers found themselves in possession of some seriously hot property at a time when the police were buzzing around. They had responded very quickly to the alarm. The Künzi Brothers had to find a hiding place, and, as luck would have it, they chose my antiques shop. They apparently threw the tube in through a window, with the intention of retrieving it early the next morning. I was, of course, totally unaware of this.
‘But the next morning, Sebastian, who always rose early, found the tube, and hid it among the rafters of my shop. There was some space between the thick horizontal beams and the slanting thinner ones, and Sebastian kept it there. He later told me that he hadn’t known what the tube had contained, but it had knocked down several antiques, and he had put it away. With my shop crammed from floor to ceiling, there was no place to store a long tube. He had therefore decided to put it on a rafter.
‘But before I came to the shop that morning, he had left to meet a customer and didn’t have an opportunity to tell me about the tube. So, I came to the shop unaware of what had transpired. Hardly had I stepped in when two men entered after me. They were the Künzi Brothers.’
Bhaskar paused again, and they resumed their slow journey down the walkways. Athreya remained silent, letting the older man tell his story the way he wanted to.
‘What happened in the next one hour was sheer hell. The Künzi Brothers shut the door from inside and assaulted me. When I professed ignorance of their metal tube, they thought I was lying. They tied me up and ransacked my shop. But they didn’t find their precious paintings.
‘In anger, the turned on me. Not believing that I had no clue to where their paintings were, they brought two lead pipes from their car and began thrashing me. Lead pipes wrapped in cloth tend to cause serious injuries that may not be visible from the outside. They may not break the skin, but they will shatter the bones.
‘They pounded me mercilessly and broke my legs in multiple places. Several times, I lost consciousness, but they splashed water on me and woke me up. Each time they would ask, “Where are the paintings?” How I endured that hour, I don’t know. But I will never forget the agony of it.
‘Just as I passed out for the last time, I saw a familiar figure materializing behind the Künzi Brothers: Sebastian. He hit one of the villains on the head and knocked him down. After that, I don’t know what happened.
‘The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital three weeks later. It was the middle of the night, and Sebastian was beside me. He told me what had happened, and said that he hadn’t told anyone about the Künzi Brothers assaulting me. The story he had told everyone was that I had been badly injured in a car crash. I didn’t know why he asked me to do this, but I played along. After all, he had saved my life.
‘Over the next few weeks, the rest of the story slowly emerged. That’s when I learnt of Fessler’s death and Jacob’s arrest. I also learnt that the Künzi brothers had died in a car crash in the Danube valley.
‘At first, Sebastian feigned ignorance. But I knew better. I knew that he had somehow engineered a car crash forty miles from where we had lived. He never told me the details, but I had no doubt that he had wreaked revenge on the Künzi Brothers for what they had done to me. I saw it in his eyes, in his young face that I knew so well. Each time he saw my mangled legs, he would shed tears and a look of grim satisfaction would shine through.
‘I still had no idea what had become of the Balsano landscapes. In fact, I was under the firm impression that the Künzi Brothers had been mistaken in the first place. When I came out of the hospital two months later, I was confined to a wheelchair. I couldn’t go around my shop very much, and it was Sebastian who managed everything.
‘It was only four years after I had returned to India that I discovered the four paintings. When I confronted Sebastian, he was unapologetic. In fact, he was surprised and offended. The four paintings were mine, he said. They were small compensation for what the Künzi Brothers had done to me. They were mine to do what I chose with them.
‘Fessler had died heirless, and had drawn up an elaborate will, dividing his collection among a dozen museums. The Balsano landscapes, never having been catalogued in his collection, were never noticed. His will had long since been executed and his assets distributed as per his instructions. That was essentially a closed chapter.
‘As far as the art world knew, the Balsano landscapes were owned by someone somewhere,
