The Detour (33 page)

I might have kept making bricks for many more years if it hadn’t been for the war, which started in earnest with the invasion of Poland, in September 1939. In Warsaw, later, they took down an enormous bronze statue of Frédéric Chopin and melted it. Had I ever really believed the Nazis wanted to preserve artwork? Had I ever really believed they wanted to preserve anything?

Following the first rounds of casualties that drained away the best of German’s youth, the Wehrmacht Heer decided it needed me back, and I went, my sins forgiven as long as I was able to tie my boots and carry a rifle. The other soldiers thought we were underfed in the army, and we were—but not in comparison to where I’d spent more than a year. In my first two months, I managed to gain back ten kilos.

I didn’t expect to survive. Why should I, when so many others had not? Even my sister Greta and her husband failed to make it through. They perished in 1944, their home leveled in an RAF bombing run. Sometimes, it seemed like everyone had been wiped out by the war—everyone and everything.

As it turns out, even some fragile things did manage to survive. Later, I would discover that Italians had done a remarkable thing to preserve their statues, ancient columns, and historic monuments that could not be moved to safety, out of bomb’s reach. With the help of wood and sand and mounds of brick, entire massive works of art—including Michelangelo’s
David
—were entombed. What a strange thing it would have been to visit the Accademia in Florence and to have seen those domed and beehive-shaped mounds, like the ziggurats or pyramids of a new and tragic age.

I did the same thing with my feelings for Rosina and my question of whether I would ever see her again, or even know if she had survived the war. I entombed that subject, not heartlessly, but lovingly, knowing that in dangerous times, the walls must be built to withstand great damage. And because the walls were indeed built strong and tight, it would take a while to dismantle them.

Three years passed between the end of the war and my life’s return to relative normalcy. I got a job with an international commission, cooperating with the U.S. Army and the governments of several other nations, to sort through and repatriate
hundreds of thousands of great artworks through several collecting points and back to the dozens of countries from which they had been bought, or more frequently, stolen.

In 1948, I was still only thirty-four years old, though I felt much older, with ruined feet, an arthritic left hand, deafness in one ear, and chronic back pain (my own passport of disability, with stamps from Neuengamme and the Eastern Front). I was only a lowly assistant in an incomprehensibly vast effort, the most important job of my life, far more important than the job I’d been given in 1938. It was a chance for me to redeem myself, the first time I even dared to think about what life could become again.

Railcar after railcar traveled across Europe, returning one item after another: the
Bruges Madonna
back to Belgium, da Vinci’s
Lady with an Ermine
back to Kraków, Holy Roman regalia back to Vienna. Each returned object helped me feel as if I had gotten a piece of myself back, as well—the part of me that had always loved art, not only because of my own search for greater perfection, wholeness, worthiness; but also, simply, because each work was its own story, its own world. These artworks placed no limits on humanity. These artworks only enlarged it.

The
Discus Thrower
was one of the last pieces to be returned—to Rome, ten years after it had been removed—and is, of course, the reason that I am in Italy now. It is fitting, in a way, that it took so long. One of the first and most ancient masterpieces
acquired, one of the last to be returned. Tapped gently back into place like a puzzle piece. Other gaps remain, to be sure, and some masterpieces—and many more people—are lost forever, never to be seen again. But the
Discus Thrower
was one of the earliest of The Collector’s coveted items. One of the earliest symbols of our questionable intentions.

There is nothing worth recounting about the first part of that trip from Munich to Rome—a few delays, perhaps, and one ancient Perugian woman in the seat opposite me, muttering that at least the trains had run on time before the war. But I knew it wasn’t true. The trains had never run on time, and why should they? Is there something so terrible about the occasional unexpected delay?

I traveled with the repatriated statue, saw it unpacked and documented—all very quietly, and all without incident.
Ohne Zwischenfall
.

When all was done, the relief was far greater than I had anticipated. The bricks that I had expected to dismantle slowly, one a time—someday, perhaps when I was a wizened old man—came tumbling down, and the sand spilled out. And there were the feelings, and the question. There was the thing inside that I had to do, that I wanted to do.

Clearly, my subconscious had seen this moment coming, as the contents of my suitcase proved. I had packed a little more heavily than I had on this same trip, a decade earlier. Three shirts, instead of two. Better shoes, so that I might blend in with the Italian crowds. A nicer jacket, dark blue instead of brown, suitable for a dinner or a drink with a friend, should the opportunity arise.

W
hich brings me to this road: long, but perhaps not long enough—could I turn back still? And to this town, just waking from a late-afternoon lull, the autumn sun soft between the trees, soon to drop behind the close-packed stone buildings that wind along the narrow streets.

There are only two cafés, I’ve been told. I wander into the first, dark and sour smelling and unpleasant—the wrong place, I’m immediately certain—and continue down the street, to its more successful competitor, where there is not only the smell of good coffee and warm bread, but the sounds of life.

The cigarette smoke, the tap of glasses on the bar, the sounds of women laughing in a corner and three young boys clamoring for gelato—all of it makes me feel old and foreign and out of
place. I tried memorizing something clever to say, but when Rosina comes to take my order, wiping her hands on her apron without looking up, all I can utter is “
Fragola
”—the word on a label attached to the bin behind the glass. I don’t know if it is strawberry or some other red fruit, and I don’t care.

The three syllables are enough. She catches the accent, stops wiping her hands, and looks up.

“
Gelato?
”

“
Sì. Io voglio
 … 
Vorrei
 …”

“
Fragola?
”

“
Sì, fragola
.”

I sound more infantile than the dirty-kneed boys milling around me. She takes her time with the scoop, pushing it into the soft ice cream. I watch her face, trying to distinguish between anger, fear, or repulsion.

When she comes back, she has relocated her German vocabulary, rusty from a decade of disuse, and delivered brusquely. “Wait for me outside. Five minutes.”

“I’m sorry to bother—”

“Just wait. I have to take care of the other customers and talk to the owner. Go.”

When I try to pay, she waves her hands in frustration.

Outside, I can’t eat the gelato. My stomach is turning.

Five minutes pass as I wait for Rosina outside, then ten, then fifteen.

Perhaps I am remembering things inaccurately, after all. We slept together, certainly, but so what? I can’t quite recall her last private words to me; I remember a promise about something, about singing, I think, but perhaps not. Possibly I have
left things out, or added things, or simply made too much of a few days in Italy long, long ago.

I am wondering if I should leave, if I should have never come, when she exits the café, pulling the kerchief off her hair as she walks, shaking out the dark waves.

“First,” she says, standing in front of me without so much as a hello. “Take a look. Tell me what you see.”

“I was only hoping—”

“No, tell me. Inside the café, it was smoky and dark. Here we are in the sun. Tell me a single lie and I won’t talk to you again. Tell me what you see.”

I take a step back and look her over, top to bottom.

“Your hair is turning gray. And I’d say, maybe five more kilos, on the arms and across the middle. But maybe that isn’t from ten years passing. Maybe that’s just from working too close to the gelato.”

She crosses her arms, deciding.

“But you are still beautiful, Rosina. You are still an exceptional woman.”

“I am forty-four years old, you bastard—” and she attacks my chest with both fists, pummeling without vigor. “Why did you have to take so long?”

I hesitate. “Your last words, if I’m not mistaken: ‘Can’t you just leave?’ And: ‘We hate you all.’ ”

“Hate who?”

“Germans. The Gestapo who came.” It’s difficult to say. “And me. Perhaps not that other Munich lover you had all those years ago, or maybe him, too. I could never be sure. It would be understandable—”

“Oh,
liebling
. You’re wrong about so many things.”

“Am I?”

“That lover who meant nothing. I mentioned him only because I was flirting and wanted to sound more confident than I felt, so you wouldn’t take advantage. And then I had to flirt even more, so that you
would
take advantage.” Hands on her hips, shoulders back, she’s on the verge of smiling. But then the light in her eyes dims. “And those last minutes at the graveyard. You’re all wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to reach for her, though she resists at first. “I’m so very sorry.”

She lets me hold her, there on the street, on the pavement, with the dropped gelato in a bright red starburst at our feet. It is the most wonderful thing to feel her crying, her chest heaving and her arms softer than they were ten years ago—not quite her mother, but getting there, and making the most of it, hugging me and hitting me at the same time.

“And what are you doing, coming for gelato? Buy me a drink,
figlio di puttana
.”

“Must you keep swearing?”

“I get to swear for a day at least. A night and a day, Ernesto,” and she begins to cry again, pushing her balled-up kerchief into her eyes. “Couldn’t you have written to me, at least?”

When I don’t answer, she confesses, “I didn’t remember your last name. I only thought to ask it when my son was seven or eight and started to ask questions—about his uncles, about the farm and the old days—and then it was too late. There was no one to ask.”

“It’s Vogler, by the way.”

“Volger.”

“Almost.” I say it again.

“Did you tell me that, when we first met? I should have remembered. Why couldn’t I remember?”

And I share her worry, that we both had it all wrong, that things didn’t happen quite as we remembered, that we are gambling too much on past events and interpretations.

“Ernesto Vogler,” she repeats, and it thrills me just to hear it transformed by her voice, her lips. “Ernst Vogler.”

“Either way. Whatever you prefer.”

She’s gotten control of herself now, eyes dry. “My uncle must have been shocked to see you.”

“He was. He said I’d changed.”

We’ve been holding each other’s hands, there on the street. She takes a step back, studying me as I studied her, without comment, refusing additional assurances.

We cross the street to go to a restaurant she knows, but on the way, we walk past a window and see white tablecloths, and on the wall, a print by Van Gogh—that peculiar man, painter of green skies and blue fields—of sunflowers.

“There,” I say. “This one.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

We enter the restaurant, order wine and dinner, espresso when it seems that we are wrapping it up, and more wine again when we decide to hell with it, there’s no reason a good dinner can’t last three hours or four. I can’t stop staring, except for those brief moments I look down at the tablecloth in order to focus on the sound of her voice, the lilting accent that I
could remember even after other details had faded. At the end of the evening, she touches the back of my hand and says, “I should be getting back. He is with a neighbor, she’s very kind, but she’ll be worrying by now. And he’ll be worrying. He’s like that, very protective.”