Some Bitter Taste (22 page)

‘I told Ruth what had happened. I offered the price of the painting. I offered to sell another, more valuable one of my own for her. She refused. She didn’t want money. She had lost her family in the camps, lost her home, lost everything but what she had carried here in a suitcase. She asked for nothing and she took nothing except what was necessary to secure your future. When I asked her why she hadn’t told me she was pregnant before I left Florence to be stranded in England for the rest of the war, she answered me, “I was seventeen years old. Why didn’t you ask?” She was proud, Sara, your mother. She loved me unconditionally. She never considered using you to persuade me into marriage, even though I was only engaged when I found her again. I think—no, I’m sure—that she knew from the start what my marriage was about. She knew, too, that I loved her and would never leave her. She was part of me. She was, in the end, the only part of me that survived. She and Umberto kept me alive.

‘Well, your painting remained in my wife’s room and it remained Ruth’s property. Our decision was that it would return to her—or to you—on my wife’s death. It was Ruth who died first, as you know. My wife survived her by only a few months. She left her favourite painting to our son. He paid the death duties on it from her estate. It was the one memento of happier times that she had clung to. Not because it was my wedding present to her but because I was able to assure her that it was not one of those … tainted ones, the ones that had made her despise me … How could I have told her it belonged to the woman I loved and to you, our daughter?’

Here Jacob interrupted. The direction of his glance changed and another voice murmured something in the background. Jacob looked to one side, said, ‘Yes’, and the screen filled with fuzzy white spots, then went blank.

‘Damn!’ The prosecutor got up and reached for the remote control. ‘That can’t be the end and it’s obviously an amateur job. Let’s hope it’s not broken.’

It wasn’t broken. Jacob’s face reappeared. He was in a different chair, and the picture, which had been darkening as he talked, was now much brighter and clearer. Some leaves, tinged with rosy pink, were moving gently to the right and you could now distinguish the fine quality of Jacob’s clothes, his long brown hands. Evidently, he’d moved out into the lawyer’s garden, perhaps as the afternoon light faded in the big room.

There must have been a third person. Another voice said, ‘That’s fine. Don’t touch anything. Give me a shout if there’s a problem.’ A young, cheerful voice that belonged to another world. Then a pause.

‘Sara, the unforeseen …’ He stopped a moment and closed his eyes, and when he went on they remained closed for the first sentence or two, as though he were unable to look at the camera, at an imaginary Sara. ‘The unforeseen thing that happened to me … and to my wife is very hard for me to tell you. Even so, I am at the end of my life and the last thing that remains for me is to protect you by telling the whole truth and giving it into the safekeeping of Umberto in case you should need it.’

He coughed and murmured something, looking down. Someone gave him a glass of water from behind the camera. The marshal recognized the shiny, arthritic joints of the fingers, the age-spotted skin. Jacob sipped from the glass and, still holding it, forced himself to continue.

‘Ten years after my marriage I received a letter from a man whose name doesn’t matter. He is dead now. He had sold me a number of Impressionist paintings in the thirties for a very low price. Like your mother, he was fleeing from Nazi persecution. He and my father had dealt with each other for many years. He came back to me because he and his wife were old, sick, and penniless. I received him myself and took him to my wife’s private room since she was absent and no servant would be likely to disturb us there. He was … agitated. When I offered him compensation—which he considered so insufficient as to offend him—he became more angry, angry and noisy. I was worried we would be overheard. I asked him to step out into the garden.

’“Afraid somebody might hear the truth about you? That’s it, isn’t it? Your parents died the worst of deaths but at least they didn’t live to know how you stole from their trusted friends. How many of us were there? How many other desperate people did you cheat of their lives?”

’“I cheated no one. I paid. I paid for everything.”

’“Paid a pittance! Paid an insult!”

’“Paid as much as I could afford at the time.”

‘“You’ll pay the price of your actions yet! You remember that. You may not pay money but you’ll pay, you’ll rot! Under your fine clothes you are putrid!”

’“I have paid! My parents died in the camps. I was cheated out of my life in every possible way. I built another and you won’t destroy it.”

’“Give me what you owe me!”

‘I gave him a cheque. It was for a large amount, for a credible amount Did Umberto D’Ancona, behind the camera, say something they couldn’t hear? Or just look at him?

‘No … it wasn’t the full amount, not even then when I had everything. It wasn’t … I was afraid. How many others might appear out of the past?

‘At any rate, this man had the satisfaction of not only making me pay him an acceptable sum—oh, I could see in his eyes that he knew I was still cheating—but also of seeing his bitter words become fact. My wife had returned and heard our raised voices. She had come out to look for me and had heard everything. My marriage ended that night. It was June 13th, my birthday. That’s why she came back early. She didn’t want me to dine alone on my birthday.

‘If Umberto ever decides that you have need of this tape you will become the third person in this world to know the truth about me. Umberto always knew, your mother I told. She would have loved me with all the strength, all the fierceness of her generous spirit, no matter what I did. I think only women are capable of that kind of love and few even of them.’

Jacob reached out and unseen hands helped him to place the framed painting on his knees.

‘This painting, Sara, is yours. Umberto tells me that we must now take a Polaroid photograph of it and me and today’s newspaper, just like a kidnap victim. I suppose your painting is a kidnap victim. He also tells me that this has no validity in a court of law. It can only help protect you from any accusation of making a false claim. Umberto believes that I am doing it to ease my own conscience, that I should tell my son the truth now. I hope he is wrong in saying that my belief that Kista will do the right thing is an imaginative product of my cowardice. I think he will give you your painting when he receives my request after I’m dead. There is more of his mother in him than of me. I have no right to ask for your indulgence, Sara, but I must. The letter which my son will receive will tell him about Ruth, about you, and about the Monet. Unless you have need of this video, no one on this earth other than Umberto will ever know how I got the fortune which qualified me to marry into my wife’s greater one. No one other than my … victims. We did everything possible to prevent Kista from knowing about our broken marriage. My wife always behaved impeccably. Her manners never failed her. Oh, Kista may have felt something of the truth, he must have, but he never saw any manifestation of it. The rest … my past is something I must protect him from. His mother suffered from it all her life. I feel it as some hereditary disease that I don’t want my son to inherit. Sometimes he looks at me in a certain way, asks a question, and I think he suspects me, but he never insists. I know he doesn’t love me. He belongs in her world and sees me as a stranger. I don’t talk to him. What could I possibly say? I’ve heard it said that the degree of civilisation can be measured by the distance man puts between himself and his excrement. I believe that in the world’s terms it is the distance between a rich man and the source of his wealth. A few generations and any stink will fade away.

‘I hope that if you ever find it necessary to know this story, you will have something of your mother’s strength and compassion, not for my sake but for your brother’s. Try to love him. Loneliness is terrible … Loneliness …’

He sipped a little water. The hand that held the glass shook. A faint voice again off camera. Jacob shook his head and turned away. The screen went blank.

They waited but there was nothing more and the prosecutor pressed the rewind button. ‘And he says he never let Sara see this?’

‘No. When she went to him for help he told her what was on it but only the bit that concerned her—Jacob’s admitting paternity—and her painting. He suggested she just tell her brother it existed.’

‘So precipitating her death. Does he realise that?’

‘Yes. Of course. But he said if he’d shown her the film the result would have been the same.’

‘Not easily moved from his purpose, Umberto D’Ancona. Yet you think it’s worth my talking to him?’

‘Definitely, yes. It’s not that I think you’ll change his mind. What his organisation is doing is too important to risk and, as he says, it’s too late to help Sara.’

‘And have they succeeded in helping others?’

‘Oh, yes. Quite a few. He told me about one French couple living out their last years in dire poverty and the woman suffering from cancer. One of their paintings that had been stolen by the SS was spotted by a member of the organisation in an exhibition in Paris. Of course, I’m talking about stolen paintings now, different from Jacob’s thing, but it’s still quite a business to get them back, especially if they’ve changed hands a few times, and the last buyer loses out.’

‘Hm. They must have known of the dubious provenance.’

‘It’s still not easy.’

‘No. And D’Ancona’s right, of course. If Jacob Roth’s story gets splashed all over the papers—not just his ill-gotten gains, but Ruth’s story and poor Sara’s death—it will get a lot harder. A gift to the racists: “They rip each other off and we’re supposed to do the right thing.” He’s not going to change his mind for me, Guarnaccia.’

‘If you could just talk to him. There must be a way. You would think of something between you.’

‘Well, I’ll give it a try.’

‘Yes. We have to find the brother and find out where Rinaldi fits in and …’

‘And?’

‘There’s something more.’

‘You keep saying that. But surely, you already know from D’Ancona that Sara, infuriated by the way she’d been led on and wasted her life, was claiming more from Jacob’s estate than just her painting. I’d say her mother had a lot to answer for myself, but, in any case, you’ve shown me the dates and it all fits. The business of Sara’s needing psychiatric help after her mother’s death but not immediately after. That odd gap. It was the death of Jacob’s wife a few months later that did it. She thought she’d get her painting but Jacob held off, didn’t want his son to know. And then her more recent relapse. That was Jacob’s death. She inherited a brother and still no painting. She contacted him, she was seeing him. She wanted money; he, presumably, wanted her off his property. I agree that we need to find the brother, I agree that Rinaldi’s interest needs clarifying but that said, what’s happened has happened. The lawyer’s right when he points out that as nothing can save Sara now, the problem’s a judicial one. We want a conviction for the attack on her. The rest is history.’

‘Yes, of course. You’re right. I’m not competent to … So, you’ll go and see him.’

‘I’ll go. And I’ll see to it that in the meantime, a close eye is kept on Rinaldi. If we leave him in peace long enough, put it about that our case is sewn up with the arrest of the two porters—I’m going to let them out on bail—he’ll get careless and use his regular phone. He’ll probably even get together with them after a while. Why not? They work for him. People always get careless, fall into old habits. It’s to our advantage that he thinks he can laugh in our faces, as your man Lorenzini said.’ He got up and pressed the eject button. ‘I’ll have this copied and take it back to him.’

The marshal stood and picked up his hat. ‘What do you want me to do next?’

‘I don’t know but I know what I’m going to do next: get back into my own shambles of an office and smoke a cigar. Better switch this thing off … Right, let’s go.’

Out in the corridor he took a look at the marshal’s face and said, ‘Take a break from this business. There’s not much you can do right now. Have you much else on at the moment?’

‘No…’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘No, no … It’s just a case I was involved in, not my case at all really but—’

‘Come in and sit down a minute.’

Hadn’t the marshal said it himself, on hearing that Sara Hirsch had talked about him to D’Ancona as a trusted friend, someone she’d confided in when really she hadn’t? You only realise when it’s too late that if you’d trusted someone they would have helped you. He sat with his hands planted on his knees, staring dumbly at the prosecutor, struggling with the idea of taking a bit of his own advice.

The prosecutor was determined to find an ashtray.

‘It may look untidy but I know exacdy where everything is as long as nobody moves anything … Ah!’ He lit the tiny cigar and leaned back, contented. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you about, now I think of it. I was talking to Maestrangelo about arrangements for the surveillance of Rinaldi this morning, very early this morning—does he ever go home or—never mind. Anyway, he mentioned you. He seemed a bit concerned about you. That’s why I asked you if you had much else on at the moment. He was telling me about this latest Albanian affair, the young girl on the motorway. You were there?’

‘Yes, I was there. And if I’d …’

‘How is she?’

‘They had to operate twice. Now they’ve moved her to a place where they can teach her to walk but it’s not going so well. She cries a lot for her mother.’

‘I’m afraid her mother won’t be crying for her, or if she is, she won’t be looking for her. But they’ll get her on her feet again, you’ll see, and when they do—I think I told you when we met that I used to be a children’s judge?’

‘Yes.’ The marshal’s sad face brightened. ‘Is there something you can do to help?’

‘There is, yes. A good friend of mine—a very old friend, we were at elementary school together—runs a little home for children in distress out in the country. In my days as a children’s judge I often had need of him. You know the sort of thing. A man murders his wife, he gets put away, and the children are orphaned of both parents. A lot of cases of children battered or sexually abused within the family, children stolen from God knows what country, escaped from their Gypsy captors and a life of begging and being beaten, all the usual things. They have about fourteen children there now. It’s the first peace most of them have ever known. They go to school, do their homework together round a big table by a log fire, eat to their hearts’ content, help feed the hens and rabbits, play. Have you ever seen children who’ve never played, Marshal?’