Long Time Coming (6 page)

The Zurenborg district of Antwerp began its development as a treasure trove of exotically varied domestic architecture when Isaac Meridor was a young man. He saw the exuberant flights of fancy taking shape in brick, mortar, rooftree and gable in the triangle of land enclosed by the embankments of the railway lines leading from the south and east into the Gare Centrale and the redundant fortifications built in earlier centuries to defend the city. He saw; he admired; he envied; he coveted; and soon enough, returning from the years of toil in the Congo that were to be the foundation of his success in the diamond trade, he possessed.

The Cogels-Osy family, owners of the land and founders of the company that conceived and carried through the area’s transformation, bestowed their name on the central avenue where the most extravagant and expensive properties were built. For Meridor, only an address in Avenue Cogels-Osy would fulfil his ambitions. This he eventually acquired in the form of a pair of semi-detached residences, which he converted into a single large dwelling for himself, his wife and the numerous children he expected to have, but of whom, in the end, there was only one. The houses, mirror images of each other, bore the name
Zonnestralen
– Sunbeams. This was a more or less direct statement of the architect’s intent. High, wide windows filled the building with light, while cleverly located panels of rainbow-hued stained glass cast watery visions of sunrises and sunsets across the interior. When the sun shone, Zonnestralen glowed.

This, its high ceilings and deep rooms made the house ideal for the display and admiration of Meridor’s art collection. While Mevrouw Meridor might fail to supply him with the quantity of offspring he had hoped for, the dealers of Paris, Brussels and London could be relied upon to satisfy his taste in modern art ad infinitum. And perhaps the fracturing of light in Zonnestralen’s stained-glass images is what gave rise to his particular enthusiasm for Cubism.

The exterior of the house was Art Nouveau with a decadent edge. Wrought iron curled like vine. Balconies and window surrounds drooped like wax on half-burnt candles, as if some unseen giant had held up a magnifying glass to melt them with the concentrated power of those eponymous sunbeams. Porches and canopies hung low, like a sunbather’s sleepy eyelids. The bohemianism Isaac Meridor stood a pole apart from in his soberly suited business life was waiting, in finely dressed stone, to receive him at the end of every day.

That, it was clear, was as he wanted it. By 1940, he had long been wealthy enough to buy a country estate – or two – beyond Antwerp’s grimy reach. But he never showed any inclination to do so. A modest villa at Het Zoute satisfied his wife and daughter’s liking for seaside air. He seldom went there himself. Zonnestralen was the only home he wanted, which only the threat of German invasion could force him to abandon.

Quite apart from its comfort and status, the location was also convenient: a short tram-ride from the diamond district, not to mention the Gare Centrale, starting point for Meridor’s periodic art-buying expeditions. Eldritch Swan walked from the Café des Arts to Zurenborg that afternoon, to clear his head and aid his digestion after a long, unstinting lunch. The architectural
richesse
of the neighbourhood no longer amazed him. It was simply part of the scenery. He suspected the clean lines and soaring spaces of New York would come as something of a tonic after dwelling amongst so much ornateness, but he could happily cope with either. He was not a prey to his surroundings. They neither enchanted nor oppressed him.

Zonnestralen still possessed its two original front doors, with complementary stained-glass sunburst panels. The right-hand door, number 84, led to the family rooms, while the left, number 86, led to those Meridor used as art-hanging and entertaining space. Several archways had been knocked through the dividing wall, but a degree of separateness still prevailed. Swan entered to the left. It was, in fact, the only door he had a key to. His room was on this side of the house. And that was where he was heading, to pack his belongings for the voyage.

Meridor had returned to the Bourse after lunch. He had farewells to make. And he also had someone to do his packing for him: Jean-Jacques Nimbala, his Congolese valet, the only one of the servants who would be accompanying him to New York. The others – a cook, two maids and a chauffeur-gardener – were staying on to maintain the house. Meridor insisted – and badly wanted to believe – that he would be back as soon as the international situation had resolved itself.

Nimbala, known to his master and to Swan as J-J, was in the first-floor salon, where Meridor’s pride and joy, his collection of Picassos, had hung until recently. Swan caught sight of him as he reached the landing, a tinted and fractured sight thanks to the crisscrossing shafts of multicoloured light from windows above and around him that were so characteristic of the house. He stepped into the room, which seemed even larger than ever now its walls were bare, its furniture dust-sheeted and crowded into one corner. The doors to the balcony were wedged half open, allowing soft, spring-scented air to fill the salon. The light cast angular shadows across the wall to Swan’s left, where empty picture frames leant in orderly stacks. Nimbala’s work, it was clear, was almost done.

He was a tall, thin, slightly stooped man of forty or so, with flecks of grey in his hair and a sadness in his eyes that was somehow part of his dignified bearing. There were a good many Congolese in Antwerp, but none Swan had come across possessed Nimbala’s poise and percipience. Meridor had chosen him well. His latest task, the removal of the Picassos from their frames, had been
accomplished with his customary efficiency. The paintings had been wrapped and packed in the specially partitioned trunk that stood in the middle of the room. Nimbala’s long, slender fingers slid across their felt-covered edges as he rose from a crouching position by the trunk and turned to greet Swan, whose footfalls on the uncarpeted boards he could not have failed to hear.

‘Meneer Swan.’ He glanced down and flicked a speck of dust from his wasp-striped waistcoat. ‘I did not think you would return so soon.’

‘I have to pack, J-J.’

‘Of course.’ There had never been any question of Nimbala extending his valeting duties to Swan. He was the servant of one man only, grateful, presumably, for being plucked from a life of squalor and privation in Leopoldville, though of that gratitude there was little sign beyond his loyalty. And yet, it sometimes occurred to Swan, what greater sign could there be?

‘All’s well at the quay.’

Nimbala nodded. ‘The master will be pleased.’

‘He is. We lunched together.’

‘You lunched well, I hope, sir?’

‘We did, thank you.’ Swan gazed at the empty walls. ‘Tell me, J-J, do you think one day you’ll rehang those pictures in this room?’

‘Who can say, sir? The future is an unknown land.’

‘True enough. But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it? Putting it all back as it was.’

‘Indeed, sir. Very nice.’ If faintly childish, Nimbala’s expression, though not his tone, implied. He was a man obliged to deal in practicalities from his earliest years. Nice thoughts were an indulgence he had no time for.

‘I’ll see you later, J-J,’ said Swan as he wandered back out of the room.

Packing would have to wait, Swan decided when he reached his room, high up in Zonnestralen’s artfully windowed eaves, where an oculus with an iris of stained glass gave him a bird’s-eye view of the neighbourhood. He needed a doze, not least because he suspected
he might not sleep well that night. He hung up his jacket and hat, kicked off his shoes and lay down on the bed. He felt tired enough to sleep for a week.

But tired or not, his mind was active. Meridor had been franker than usual over lunch in his assessment of his prospects. ‘Many of my fellow diamantaires think I am foolish to be leaving, Eldritch. They think Belgium can stay neutral. Or, at worst, that it will be like last time. A few years of turmoil, then … business as before. But it will not be. Hitler hates us. The Jews, I mean. We have to go. Thank God I got Esther and her mother out early. I didn’t understand then that there would be danger for neutral ships. So, as my friends see it, I am being reckless as well as cowardly. You can’t win.’ He had laughed. ‘You can only survive. The New York Diamond Dealers’ Club will welcome me. There will be many … opportunities. There will be a future. We shall drink to that.’ And Swan had drunk. But now, in the mid-afternoon silence, he wondered if he should have clung so long to Meridor’s coat-tails. The Verhoest affair was a shadow he could not step out from. Maybe he should have gone back to England. Maybe—

There was a tap at the door. It opened before he could answer. ‘Eldritch?’ The soft voice belonged to Marie-Louise, one of the maids. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl – also firm-bodied and affectionate, as he had occasion to know.

He sat up and swung his legs to the floor as she crept into the room. She closed the door gently behind her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. Her eyes were red. It looked as if she had been crying.

‘You ask what’s wrong?
Mon Dieu.
You leave tomorrow.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘Will you?’

He rose and put his arm around her. ‘Of course I will.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘But I do. The master says we are to stay here and the bank will pay our wages. But what if the Germans come?’

‘They won’t.’

‘The master thinks they will. That’s why he’s leaving. That’s why
you’re
leaving.’

‘He pays my wages too, Marie-Louise. I have to do as he says. Just like you. At times such as these, it’s best not to think too much.’ It was only a pity, he reflected, that he could not follow his own advice.

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Well, maybe I can take your mind off it.’ He smiled. And, eventually, she smiled back. ‘Later.’

‘You are such a bad man, Eldritch.’

‘I know.’ He slid his hand down her back and squeezed her bottom. ‘But that’s what you love about me, isn’t it?’

Late that night, Pieter Verhoest made an unsteady exit from his favourite restaurant, A l’Ombre de la Cathédrale, in the Marché aux Gants, and headed across the moonlit cobbles of the Grand Place, confident that a kilometre or so’s walk through the old town would hone his one still unslaked appetite of the evening to a suitable pitch. He had eaten and drunk well. And he proposed to indulge himself no less fully at his favourite brothel to round off a fitting farewell to Antwerp. The years of drudgery as a junior administrator in the Congo had finally been rewarded. His tenacity in following the paper trail of Isaac Meridor’s diamond-smuggling racket would bring him a handsome and regular dividend for as long as he cared to claim it. He had Meridor – along with his smug English errand-boy, Swan – at his mercy. And mercy was not his strong suit.

The Grand Place was quiet, like the city as a whole. Belgium might be neutral in the European conflict that had been under way since the previous autumn, and that conflict might so far have been singularly uneventful, but Antwerp’s night life had undoubtedly been affected. The decline in shipping meant there were fewer carousing sailors on the street, for one thing. And the locals ventured out to bars and restaurants less readily. Verhoest had the square to himself.

Or so he thought. But, as he stopped and turned for a farewell look around at the Hôtel de Ville and the Brabo Fountain, smiling as he did so at the similarity, in his own estimation, between Silvius
Brabo’s legendary victory over the giant Antigonius and his over Isaac Meridor, he was surprised to see two men almost at his shoulder, ambling soft-footedly across the cobbles. They were darkly clad, with caps worn low, and were clearly not merrymakers of any kind.

At almost the same moment, he heard a car pull into the square behind him. There was a squeak of rubber on stone as it braked to a halt. Instinctively, he turned towards it. Then something hard and heavy struck him at the back of the neck. He fell, hitting the ground with a thump that drove all the breath from his lungs. He groaned and rolled over, glimpsing a blurred vision of the cathedral spire before a figure blocked the view and another blow descended.

A few seconds later, the cathedral clock began to strike midnight. But Verhoest did not hear it. He lay unconscious in the boot of the car as it drove out of the Grand Place and away into the night.

A few seconds later still, the clock of the Eglise Saint-Norbert in Zurenborg also began to strike midnight. Eldritch Swan was likewise deaf to the sound, but in his case because he was in the powerfully distracting midst of an orgasm, as his ever more urgent thrustings into the gasping, bucking Marie-Louise reached a deliciously protracted climax. For the moment, Pieter Verhoest was far from his thoughts.

The SS
Uitlander
cast off on schedule the following morning and eased serenely away from the quay, falling in behind the pilot’s launch that would lead it downstream towards the sea. It had been fully booked for weeks, but there were fewer people seeing it off than would once have been the case, perhaps because entire families were leaving, with no close relatives left behind to wave a hanky-clutching farewell. Nor had the sailing been much, if at all, advertised. It was as close to a non-event as the departure of such a large vessel could ever be. There was an impression of tail-between-the-legs about it, a hint of desperation.

Certainly many of those on board, especially the large Jewish contingent, were desperate, though they did not care to show it. Were they fleeing prematurely – or just in time? No one knew the answer. But they were fleeing nonetheless.

Isaac Meridor, muffled up in an astrakhan coat and homburg, watched the city of his birth slip slowly away behind him from the spacious vantage point of the first-class deck, puffing glumly at a cigar. Nimbala was below, preparing his cabin. Of Eldritch Swan there was no sign.

Meridor was still standing there, gazing into the middle distance, when the
Uitlander
began to round the first westward bend in the river, carrying it out of direct sight of the city. It was then that Swan made his appearance on deck, breathless from a
swift ascent of the companionways. He moved to Meridor’s side.