The Quest for Anna Klein

down the opposite side; she found nothing, reversed the process, again found nothing, and then stepped back behind Wald.

One of the soldiers then moved forward and did the same to Danforth, with the same result.

“Turn around,” Wald commanded them after the soldier took his place with the others.

Danforth and Anna turned to face him.

“Passports,” he said.

They gave them to him.

“You came by way of France?” Wald asked as he looked at Danforth’s passport.

Danforth nodded.

“Your purpose there?”

“I am an art dealer,” Danforth answered.

“Art?” Wald said. “You are an importer, is that not so?”

“Yes, and art is one of the things I import,” Danforth said coolly.

Wald’s eyes ranged over the paintings that hung on the surrounding walls. “What do you have to say of these paintings?” he asked.

“German naturalism,” Danforth answered. “They remind me of the work of a great American naturalist, William Bliss Baker.”

“What is this painter’s most famous work?” Wald demanded.

“Fallen Monarchs.”

“Fallen kings?” Wald asked as if he’d caught Danforth in a political opinion.

“No, it’s a painting of fallen trees,” Danforth answered. “A very beautiful painting.”

Wald simply stared at Danforth a moment, then turned and left the room with his accompanying entourage.

“Don’t act as if anything has happened,” Danforth told Anna. “Let’s just go on around the room.”

With that, they continued to move along the side of the room, and though Danforth knew she must have been as shaken by Wald’s interrogation as he’d been, she appeared quite calm.

Seconds later, they heard footsteps coming, the hard precision of military boots, but when they turned around, they saw only a few soldiers standing guard as a group of civilians came through the door.

As the group moved forward, its ranks thinned, and suddenly the wall broke entirely, and there he was, coming toward them. His head was turned and he was talking to Ernst, saying something amusing, evidently, because there was a very slight smile on Ernst’s face when he turned to them, a smile that was still there when he made the introductions.

“Herr Danforth,” he said, “it is my honor to present the chancellor of the German Reich and the Fuhrer of the German people.”

Danforth had never heard the word Fuhrer spoken, but what surprised him was how profoundly serious the man seemed, despite the comical Charlie Chaplin mustache. He clearly had little time for this.

“So,” the chancellor said, “what do you think of these paintings?”

There was a brusque quality to his voice, though Danforth heard nothing threatening in it, only the tone of a man who was very busy but who had found the time to drop in on these Americans because he couldn’t help but be curious about what they made of his work.

“I find them quite interesting,” Danforth said, working very hard to keep his voice and manner relaxed, looking for all the world as if he weren’t trembling at the very thought of the man who now faced him. “As I said to Herr Kruger, I think many Americans would find them quite to their liking.”

The chancellor nodded but seemed suddenly to lose interest, as if Danforth’s answer had been neither more nor less than he’d expected.

Still, Danforth had no choice but to soldier on, and so he did. “Your subjects, as I told Herr Kruger — fields and dells and the like — they are very natural, and this has great appeal for Americans.” He allowed himself a nervous laugh. “Because so much of the American landscape has been taken over by cities, there is nostalgia for the countryside.”

The chancellor no longer appeared to be in the least interested in what Danforth was saying; he seemed impatient with the commonplace and banal remarks, which were unworthy of any further expenditure of his time. He glanced at his watch, then turned to Ernst. “Well…” he began.

“The subject is you,” Anna said suddenly.

The chancellor turned to her and waited.

“Not impressionistically, of course,” Anna continued. “What your paintings show is your condition when you painted them.”

The chancellor said nothing but listened as Anna continued.

“They are the paintings of someone struggling to live.” She held her gaze on a painting that seemed to fade away at the edges. “A painter rushed ... by hunger.” She might have left it there, and Danforth, cringing inside, certainly hoped she would. But instead she turned boldly toward her target. “Were you hungry when you painted them, mein Fuhrer?”

Danforth would forever poignantly recall the look in the chancellor’s small round eyes at that moment,