The Exiles Return (9 page)

‘I am not an art dealer, Herr von Kanakis, or an antique dealer. Though I could recommend you elsewhere, if that is what you want.’

‘Don’t be disappointed, Herr Doktor, that is not what I want from you, though later on I shall be glad to accept your offer of such introductions. No, before these become desirable, I want something which you, and I believe only you, can find for me. I remember having heard about a little gem of an eighteenth century pavilion, derelict and possibly in ruins, but still recognisable for what it once was, somewhere in one of the districts just outside the Ring. While I have been sitting here, I have remembered that it might have been your father talking about it to my father, perhaps suggesting that it was worth salvaging and might fetch a good price from an amateur. But my father was not interested, it was not his kind of thing, as you will understand if you have any memory of my father. He wanted peace and quiet – and safety above all. Safe as houses might have been his motto. Such an inappropriate comparison, as we have learned in our day, isn’t that so, Herr Doktor? Every time I see a heap of rubble and a few broken walls, the tag springs to mind.

‘But to return to my
pavilion d’amour.
I feel sure that something like it still exists, and I want you to find it for me. However little there may be left of it, if it is recognisable and can be reconstructed, that is what I want. You can also find me an architect who is able to do the thing in style, and with the requisite good taste. You will send me the description, you will send me the plans, and when the time comes I’ll come over again and have a look. I don’t expect you to find it today or tomorrow. But, please, don’t take too long about it: I don’t want a retreat for my old age, I want it in my prime, which is now. And your time and trouble will not go unrewarded. I know I’m asking for something rather out of the ordinary. But you think it over, Herr Doktor, and come and see me in a couple of days at my hotel so we can discuss the necessary financial arrangements. I shall be here till the end of next week and shall look forward to hearing from you. And, by the way, you might give me the address of that antique dealer you mentioned. I, too, might be able to take advantage of the reversals of fortune that have overtaken some people due to recent historical events.’

Kanakis got up from his chair to take his leave, and it was not until a few seconds later that Traumüller followed suit; as if, stunned by what he had just heard, he had needed Kanakis to move in order to come to his senses.

‘But what, in heaven’s name, are you going to do with this pavilion, or whatever you call it –
if
it exists and
if
I am able to find it?’

‘Why,
live
in it, Herr Doktor, and enjoy myself. That’s what I intend to do – enjoy myself – as one can only enjoy oneself in Vienna!’

Seven

It looked an insignificant little shop in one of the tiny narrow streets in the Inner City, a street very close to the offices of Dr Traumüller. It was on Kanakis’s second visit to Vienna that Traumüller had sent him there; the owner was, he said, the most knowledgeable and experienced antique dealer in town and, what was even more remarkable, a scrupulously honest one. ‘A Jew, Herr von Kanakis, an elderly Jewish gentleman who has returned from exile and, under our restitution laws, has recovered the premises he occupied before he left. His valuable stock had, alas, been dispersed. He was only able to trace a few pieces and those were of course restored to him, but it was not very much. However, Herr Castello has had the courage to return and to start afresh. A very learned and admirable man! As you might expect, his prices are high, but he only deals in top quality, and you may be sure that anything you buy from him has been acquired legitimately – not looted, you know. I have never heard that he has sold a fake.’ Dr Traumüller seemed immensely proud of the fact that Herr Castello had decided to come back and that his return had been welcomed. He perhaps over-stressed his high opinion of him because he was a Jew. He seemed to want to impress upon Kanakis that he himself and people like him were not and never had been anti-Semitic, that the horrors of the past few years were buried and forgotten on both sides: that Austrians on the whole had had nothing to do with them.

Kanakis smiled at so much disingenuousness. The issue did not touch him personally and in fact he was more interested in Castello’s artistic integrity than in his commercial practices. After all, you could only build up a profitable business if you bought, as cheaply as you could, what people desired to sell, and what other people, with newly-acquired wealth, would want to buy. Kanakis could see nothing reprehensible in that.

For a little while he stood looking into the shop’s one window. Through the soft translucency of old glass – no glare of bright plate-glass here – he saw the painted wooden effigy of a St Florian, the patron saint who protected houses and barns from fire, holding a house crowned with pointed yellow flames in one hand and a pitcher in the other. A piece of crimson brocade and a few folds of velvet hid the interior of the shop and set off the silver-grey gleam of a pewter jug and bowl which were the only other articles on display. Kanakis paid tribute in his mind to their sobriety, but he had no predilection for mediaeval or Renaissance art and crafts, his taste being entirely for the baroque and rococo. The shop was empty when he entered, nor was there anything to be seen there except a carved oak chest, an oak table and chairs, and a pair of tall eighteenth century pewter candlesticks. These immediately attracted his attention.

A bell had announced his arrival, and in a few moments a small grey-haired man, his head sunk rather low between his broad shoulders, giving him a slightly deformed appearance, came in from the back through a door concealed by the turn of a winding staircase. Kanakis mentioned Traumüller’s name and then murmured his own, which Mr Castello was nonetheless quick to catch.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ the old man murmured in his turn, and together the two of them looked at the candlesticks, as if in them lay the power to reveal something of each other’s purpose and intentions. ‘From the church of St Severin,’ Castello added in a barely audible whisper; ‘there are not many like them on the market these days.’ Meanwhile, he assessed Kanakis, wondering whether he was the son of old Kanakis whom he had slightly known in the old days, and whether there was anything the son wanted to sell.

But before either of them had decided whether to become more articulate, the sound of quick, light footsteps was heard on the winding staircase, and the figure of a young man appeared in the bend.

If there is such a thing as what is called in French a
coup de foudre
, an overwhelming emotional experience which originates entirely in the eyes, when what is seen carries the conviction of a revelation which no subsequent qualification or critical appraisal can refute or corrode, then this unexpected, and, for him, unprecedented experience happened to Kanakis in the moment in which the apparition of the young man on the stairs impinged on his senses. He had the porcelain figurine of a shepherdess in his hand. It was so exquisitely delicate that Kanakis felt himself catching his breath at the unconcerned manner in which the boy clasped its priceless fragility. Matters were made worse by his taking the last two steps at a leap.

‘No, Mario,’ he said, addressing the old man with a certain impudence by his first name. ‘I’m not leaving her. I’ve thought it over. The price you offer is ridiculous. I’m not all that hard up. I’ll see you another time.’ He made for the door, and had almost reached it when he was stopped by an exclamation from Kanakis.

‘Please, please, please don’t go! I – I would like –’ It was a weird sound, almost a shriek. Castello looked at him in surprise and the young man stopped and turned towards him. ‘Yes?’ he said enquiringly, while Kanakis worked his throat to regain control of his voice.

Castello instantly came to the rescue. He had already decided that Kanakis was a buyer, not a seller. ‘I believe, Prince,’ he said quietly, ‘that Herr von Kanakis has taken a fancy to your shepherdess.’

‘Indeed, yes indeed, the shepherdess,’ Kanakis said, speaking now with the slow deliberation which was his habitual mode of utterance. ‘Would you kindly put her down here on the table, it’ll be safer. I hope you did not intend to carry her through the streets, unprotected, in your hand! It gave me quite a shock to see you.’

The boy came back and stood the figurine on the table with such controlled gentleness as entirely belied the seemingly reckless nature of his grasp. ‘With pleasure,’ he said, and his face lit up with a smile which again made Kanakis catch his breath.

Mario Castello understood what had happened. ‘I think I ought to introduce you to each other,’ he said. ‘Prince Lorenzo Grein-Lauterbach – Herr von Kanakis. I’m afraid my youthful friend here is too young to have any recollection of our distinguished Greek community and the part it played in the world of finance and patronage of the arts. But you, Herr von Kanakis, are undoubtedly familiar with the name of the Princes Grein-Lauterbach. What you probably do not know, since you were not here at the time, is that, tragically, my young friend’s parents were among the first victims of the Gestapo when we were invaded in ’38. That he and I have both survived – in our different ways – constitutes a certain bond between us, however unlikely such a connection may seem at first sight.’

Castello went on talking, though he realised – and because he realised – that Kanakis was not listening. His head was bent over the shepherdess, whom he seemed to be studying attentively, but every so often his eyes slanted upwards to the boy who stood at ease before him, totally unembarrassed either by Kanakis’s gaze or Castello’s references to his person or family. He was a slight young man, rather under medium height, but so perfectly proportioned as to suggest that anyone taller or broader must inevitably be clumsy. His enchanting face was the exact replica, come to life, of the head of a young faun sculpted in the honey-coloured marble of a Greek statuette. All the outline was there, the small straight nose, the adorable mouth, the rounded chin – but all of it miraculously alive, the dark eyes sparkling, the mouth smiling a mischievous faunish smile; and the dark wavy hair, fitting close to the small head, made one involuntarily suspect that above the temples it was concealing two tiny horns which would have completed the picture.

As Kanakis started to discuss the shepherdess’s merits, Castello suggested that they adjourn with the figurine to his inner sanctum, where they would not be disturbed by any chance customer entering the shop, and there they examined in detail the qualities of the paste and the glaze and decided which year and where she was made. Kanakis even tried to guess the name of the artist who had modelled her, and he and Castello gained each other’s respect for their connoisseurship, while young Grein stood by, laughingly admitting his total ignorance of the subject. But he did know that luckily there was a second figure, a shepherd, to complete the pair, and if he proved to be in as perfect a condition as his lady, Kanakis was prepared to buy them for a substantial price. A meeting was therefore arranged between the three of them
and
the shepherd in Castello’s shop on the following day.

Kanakis was pleased with his prospective purchase which, with American values in mind, he considered a bargain. But bargain or no bargain, he would have paid almost any price for the chance of seeing that boy again. Meanwhile, he would have twenty-four hours in which to turn over in his mind the best way to continue the acquaintanceship. He now knew why he had come back to Vienna, and felt gratitude to the inspiration – from wherever it came – that had prompted him to do so. This was more, far more, than he had consciously had in mind. He had dreamed of a certain house, which Traumüller had since actually discovered for him and which was now in the process of being rebuilt; and he had anticipated attracting a pleasant circle of acquaintances – on different levels – by the power of his money and the kind of entertainment he would be able to offer them. He remembered his father saying that, if you had that kind of ambition, with sufficient perseverance and the necessary cash you could buy yourself into the most exclusive social circles. Yet that was not what Kanakis wanted. He was not a snob, but something far more exceptional, far more discriminating: he was a connoisseur: a connoisseur of material and workmanship in human beings as well as in artefacts. He detested cheapness and the common repetitive stamp of mass-production in people as well as in things, and while he was intensely perceptive and appreciative of people’s aesthetic and intellectual qualities, he was quite indifferent to what might be called their morality, and supremely so to the position they claimed for themselves, or that was attributed to them, in society.

Now this unexpected meeting with Lorenzo Grein had, as it were, fused all his vague expectations of an enjoyable life in Vienna into a new sense of fulfilment. One does not anticipate a
coup de foudre
, but Kanakis knew that it had happened and that it was irrevocable. However, it did not make him lose his head. Circumspection was called for. He must find out more about the boy. It was a pity, he thought at first, that he was a prince, bearing a historic name. But then he told himself: would he be what he was if he had not had such generations of breeding behind him?

Kanakis remained sitting with the antique dealer after Grein had left, and with every appearance of desultory curiosity questioned him about the young man and his history. ‘I don’t really know the exact details of what happened,’ Castello explained, ‘because I was fortunately not in Vienna at the time. Business had taken me to France, and though my instinct was to return at once to wind up my affairs, my friends in Paris were wiser than I was and insisted so vehemently that I mustn’t go back that I gave in, very reluctantly I admit. I would have gone in spite of all warnings if my wife had not been with me, and that would have been the end of both of us. But she was wiser than I was, and braver – ready to face a beggarly existence in exile: in brief, I was not here, and therefore have survived.