Time for another tack. 'What I'm trying to find out, monsieur, is what makes you think that the Rembrandt that's now in Dijon is the same one-'
'Flinck,' he said aggressively, 'not Rembrandt.'
'Well, either way, how do you know-'
'How do I know?' he said sharply. 'I'll tell you how I know.' He pushed himself forward a little more, chin thrust out. Perched on the edge of his seat, with those hunched shoulders and that pointy nose, he was like a belligerent little sparrow hawk.
'I never forgot that painting, monsieur. How could I? And I didn't forget Vachey either, but I didn't know what had happened to him. A few years ago I learned he was still alive, in Dijon, but what could I do? I assumed the painting was long gone. Then, a few weeks ago, there were stories of a mysterious Rembrandt he was giving away-a picture of an old soldier, it was said. Well, that gave the game away, because my father's painting was of an old soldier, and it was once thought that it might be by Rembrandt. But he had it looked into, you see.'
'He had it appraised?'
'Yes, by some expert he'd heard of; from the Sorbonne, I think. It's definitely by Flinck. He was Rembrandt's student, you know.'
'Ah. Even so, mightn't-'
'Let me finish. As it happens, my wife's cousin's son knows an Echos Quotidiens reporter who is familiar with the story. She was invited to the reception on Monday, and called me at once to describe it.' His chin was thrust pugnaciously out; the tendons in his neck looked as if they might snap. 'It is the same painting in every detail, monsieur!' he said triumphantly. 'The old soldier, the hat, the plume!'
'Still,' I said, 'if you haven't seen it for yourself, you can't be sure-'
'And how am I to do that?' he said angrily. 'My brother-in-law-ah, that is to say, my attorney-has demanded that I be given an opportunity to view it, and the Vachey people refuse. How then am I supposed to identify it? I ask you, is this just?'
Actually, yes. The thing was, the burden of proof was on Mann, and Sully had the right to refuse to let him see the picture. In a case like this, so the reasoning ran, it would be too easy for a spurious claimant to look at the object in question and say: 'Yes, definitely, that is the very same painting stolen from my family fifty years ago. Now I remember this fly speck, that fleck of glue on the frame, this repair.' Who could argue? On the other hand, keeping the painting hidden from view left precious little in the way of ammunition for a legitimate claimant who had no independent proof-no photographs, no insurance records- that it was his.
It was just, all right. What it wasn't, was fair.
'My apologies, monsieur,' Mann said abruptly. 'Would you care for an aperitif?'
I nodded gratefully. I cared for anything that might loosen things up.
The side table next to him held a tray with a freshly opened bottle of Chablis, a cut-glass decanter of cassis, the blood-red black-currant syrup the French love so much, and two silver-rimmed, ornately etched glasses that would have been right at home in my Norwegian grandmother's cupboard. He mixed us two Kirs -wine and cassis - and handed one to me. 'To your health, monsieur.' He swallowed.
The stuff is a bit sweet for my taste, but I raised my glass to him and took a sip. 'Have you gone to the authorities about this, Monsieur Mann?'
He nodded. 'The Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Justice. They gave me a form to fill out. You know what they want to know?' He laughed bitterly. ' 'Describe any identifying marks on the back. Describe the type of frame.' Can you believe this? A seven-year-old child is expected to know such things, and then remember fifty years later?'
I was glad I hadn't gotten started on the list of questions I'd thought up for him: Which way was the subject facing? What color was the plume? Could you see one hand, two hands, no hands? For one thing, Mann would have taken offense and possibly thrown me out on my ear. For another, he was right: you couldn't expect a kid to be accurate about details half a century later. If he got the answers wrong, that didn't prove his story wasn't true. And if he got them right, that wouldn't prove he hadn't been coached.
'I have no such proof to offer, monsieur; just my own memory of the painting hanging in our living room.'
'No papers at all? What about the attribution? Wasn't it documented?'
He shrugged. 'Gone.'
'Well, do you know anything about its provenance, about who owned it before?'
'It had been my Aunt Marthe's. She had it a long time. I think it was in her husband's family. They're all dead now.' He spread his palms. 'That's all I know. I wish I knew more.'
So did I. 'There aren't any relatives who could testify that they'd seen the picture in your house?'
He lifted his glass to his mouth with both hands and drank. His face was hidden. 'From those days,' he said, 'I have no more relatives.'
'What about-what about friends, neighbors? People who'd been in your house in the old days?'
He smiled. 'I'll tell you a little story, monsieur.' He stood up and went to the window, looking down on the railroad yards.
'In those days we lived in a pleasant apartment in the thirteenth arrondisement. Very nice neighbors. My father was a supervisor in the Post Office; a valuable employee, the Nazis let him stay on. But on December 28, 1942-just a few weeks after Vachey came and bought the picture-they came for him. For my mother, too, and my brother, Alfred. And me. We went to Birkenau, you know where that is?'
'Poland,' I said softly. It was one of the camps at Auschwitz.
'Yes, Poland. Well, three years later I came back, without a family now, and went to live in Strasbourg with the family of an older boy I met in the camp. Then, in 1948, I returned to Paris. I was fourteen. I went back to see our apartment building. It was on the Avenue D'lvry. Some of our old neighbors still lived there, a very kind old couple named Odillard, just below our old apartment. They were happy to see me, and terribly distressed to hear about the deaths of my father and mother and brother, and they made me stay for dinner. They gave me boeuf a la mode, not so easy to find in those days.'
He was leaning on the windowsill, staring into the haze but not seeing it. 'They gave it to me on my parents' dinnerware,' he said tightly. 'The willow-pattern plates my mother had bought when my brother, Alfred, was born, the silver that had been a wedding gift from her sister in Toulouse. In the corner was the buffet that we had kept them in. They didn't even realize it.' He turned toward me, as if curious as to what my response would be.
I didn't know what to say. 'They'd stolen them?'
I think he smiled, but it was hard to tell. 'Not stolen, no. These were good, kind-hearted people, not thieves or monsters. Still, after the Nazis took us away, they just walked upstairs and took what they wanted. So did our other neighbors. We were Jews, after all, and what ever they might say now, they didn't expect ever to see us again. And then, somehow, these good, kind-hearted people managed to forget where they'd gotten these fine, new possessions, managed to forget the times my mother had served them coffee and cake on those same cups and plates. And they really did forget, you see.'
He came back and sat wearily down. 'And so, Monsieur Norgren,' he said, picking up his Kir again, 'do you really expect that I could find friends and neighbors who would remember the beautiful portrait that hung in our home, and vouch for my claim?'
Again, there wasn't much I could say. I sipped some more from my drink.
Mann had finished his, and the alcohol appeared to have mellowed him. I suspected he didn't often drink; both bottles had been full to start with. 'You seem like a nice young man,' he said-making that twice in one day that someone had called me 'young man.' 'But I must warn you that I will not rest until this painting is returned. What's right is right.'
Underneath the resolution there was a kind of subdued despair. He was fighting the good fight, I thought, but in his heart he didn't believe he could win it. Not against the famous Rene Vachey. Not against a big American museum.
'I understand,' I said. 'We're not against you, Monsieur Mann. We want the painting to go where it rightfully belongs. If it's your father's painting, I will do what I can to help you get it back. I mean that sincerely.'
Behind the bottle-bottom glasses Mann's small, fierce eyes reappraised me. He'd begun with the idea that he was receiving an enemy. Now he wondered if I was-maybe not an enemy.
'Thank you,' he said gruffly. 'I would like you to know that my motive is not profit. I would never sell it. It's
