Fen nodded and smiled. Bingo. It was obvious now that all Rose’s talk of treading fine lines was just her cover story. But why she needed one was still a mystery to her. ‘So, you and Henri were both trusted by the Germans… then what happened?’
Seven
‘The Germans found themselves needing an art specialist to value and catalogue the art they were stealing from the Jewish homes and galleries. Abetz recommended Henri for the job, not realising that Henri was as passionately patriotic to France as I was.’
Rose paused as if taking the time to consider what she’d just said.
‘Henri spoke to me of Abetz’s offer to him one night and we came up with a plan. I was to be his assistant and follow him around noting down his evaluation and, more often than not, his valuation of the paintings that the Germans wanted. They saw everything in terms of francs and Reichsmarks; it was heartbreaking.’
Rose took a moment to collect her thoughts, then continued. ‘I would then come home here and type up my shorthand notes, creating a list of the paintings. In the meantime, they were moved from the apartments to a warehouse.’
‘Not just any warehouse,’ Simone nudged Rose.
Fen wondered if she knew the story so well due to Rose telling it often enough or if it was common knowledge among the Resistance fighters in the area.
‘Not just any warehouse, that’s right. The German officers could be cruel beasts and shout at you until spittle came out of their mouths, but they were also a pushover once they trusted you and fundamentally lazy. If you could offer them an easy, collaborative plan, they would more than likely say yes. So, Henri suggested they used his own warehouse space, just to the north of the city, to house the paintings as they awaited transit to Germany or to the auction house.’
‘Auction house?’
‘Yes,’ Rose stubbed her cigarette out and played with her long rope of pearls again. Fen wondered if it was the artist in her that always had to have her hands occupied in doing something but tried not to let it distract her from what Rose was saying. ‘It seems war is an expensive business and the Nazis decided to sell the paintings they didn’t deem worthy of the Reich. Modern pieces, valuable, to be sure, but what they deemed “degenerate” art. That’s why they brought in Henri, an esteemed dealer of modern and contemporary art as well as an expert in the classics, to tell them what to keep and what to sell, and how to sell it. The trade here was booming throughout the war, with less scrupulous dealers asking no questions regarding the provenance of works.’
‘That’s so terrible.’ Fen could imagine the crates of packed-up paintings being shipped away from their rightful owners, or worse, sold to pay for the cruelty that was being visited upon them. It pained her to think of what those families had so recently been through. ‘But you didn’t let them get away with it, did you, Rose?’
‘What could I do?’ Rose shrugged, but Fen noticed a twinkle in her eye.
‘Rose?’ Fen was on the edge of her seat.
‘You’re right.’ The older woman sat forward now and let her long necklace dangle between her knees as she lit another cigarette and spoke animatedly about her plan. ‘I was there, you see, in those apartments. And if I didn’t know whose apartment it was, I would look for clues: unopened letters on a console table, a labelled postal box in the communal hallway, or maybe I just listened to what Henri and the officers said. And when I typed up the list of all the paintings and sculptures, I came up with a code. A cipher, if you will. Not a complex one, but enough to disguise the name of the family whose apartment we’d been in that day and who owned the art.’
Fen waited, impatient to hear more of the story as Rose took another sip of her drink. ‘Then I hid that coded name into the list, disguised as a transit number or some such. The Germans, so in love with pointless bureaucracy, never even noticed it there.’ She chuckled to herself as she inhaled from her cigarette, then coughed, but laughed again. ‘I even managed to code in where I heard Müller – he was the man in charge, you see – say the art was destined for, like “this one for Hitler himself” or “my wife loves the countryside, she can have that one of the haystack”, you know the sort of thing.’
Fen felt her jaw drop. ‘So you knew exactly what was stolen, and from whom?’
‘And sometimes where it was going.’
‘You were a brave woman,’ Simone said approvingly.
‘Wasn’t it terribly dangerous? What if you’d been caught?’ Fen asked.
Rose shrugged. ‘What could they say? I was an assistant. A mere woman, a clerk just parroting what the men said. To all onlookers, I was helping the Reich. Ha! The thought of it.’ She took a deep inhale from her cigarette in its holder and flicked away the ash. ‘And what would they find? You know what manifests and transport lists look like, they might as well all be in code, they look so like double Dutch anyway. Of course, if I’d been caught at the time actually writing down who the paintings belonged to, while we were there in the apartments, I probably would have been shot.’
‘Or sent to Ravensbrück,’ Simone shuddered.
‘Yes, so I kept it all up in here,’ Rose tapped her head, ‘until I was alone with my typewriter and cipher and then I came up with these bogus columns of “transportation serial B”, or whatever, and then handed the list over to Henri to mark up which were to be sold or sent to Berlin. That was when the real work happened. Henri had the list rubber-stamped by Müller, then gave it to his warehouse manager, who, under the
