The Roses Underneath (26 page)

Anna stole a look at her daughter by way of the small pass-through to the living room. The girl was sitting on the sofa playing with her dolls.

“Oh, that is very kind. But really, my aunt will be able to watch her in the evening. It’s all arranged. I am not worried.” She paused, then heard herself say, “My aunt is feeling much better, so she can help me a little more, too.”

Frieda nodded. “Very well. If you change your mind, just say so. But you mustn’t need to be afraid of Emil. I will keep him in line. He’s not a danger. He’s just confused. And don’t worry about Amalia either. I look out for her as if she were my own. I feel that way about all my children. I can do that, since you aren’t with her.”

Anna bristled at Frieda’s insinuation, that she was somehow lacking as a mother. She turned on the water and began to rinse her coffee cup. “Of course, the schools will be starting soon and she’ll be going to kindergarten. And, when my husband comes, we’ll likely be on our way anyway. I don’t know what will happen.”

“Oh? Emil said you were a translator for that Captain. I thought it was an important job that you’d want to keep. I must have misunderstood. But I hope you are happy with the arrangement for now.”

Anna gestured Frieda toward the door. “If Emil turns up here I’ll be sure to send him home.” She pulled on the door. “Amalia, come say goodbye to Fraulein Schilling.”

Amalia appeared in the living room door and mumbled a good-bye, her eyes
fixed on the floor.

“If it stops raining tomorrow we can finish planting the vegetables,” Frieda said, her voice a
sing-song of enthusiasm. She thanked Anna and made her way down the stairs. Anna closed the door and locked it.

Anna stared at Amalia. “Maus, is something wrong? You seem upset.” She reached for her daughter but the girl turned away.

“I am not staying there tomorrow am I, Mama? For the night?” she asked.

“No of course not, Maus. I would miss you too much.” She scooped the girl off her feet and carried her into the living room. Madeleine was sitting up in the bed, brushing her long white hair. Anna deposited Amalia on the blanket.

“Who was that? You could have introduced us. I am almost presentable.” Madeleine played at scolding Anna.

Anna explained Frieda’s visit as she straightened up around the room, expelling her nervous energy. “Madeleine, do you think it will it be all right with you to watch Amalia tomorrow evening? I think I do have to work late with the big delivery coming.”

Madeleine nodded. “Of course, my dear. It’s all right with us, isn’t it?” She reached for Amalia. “I am feeling much better.”

“Maus, you just come straight home in the afternoon you understand? Do you have your key?”

Amalia nodded and pulled it out from under her blouse and held it up. “But Mama, will you be very late? Who will tuck me in?”

“I shall be tucking in this week,” Madeline sang. “I have been known to be a very good tucker-inner in my day. We’ll have fun. You’ll see.”

Amalia furrowed her brow but said nothing. Anna pulled her daughter into her embrace and staggered backward to the sofa, where they fell in one pile, legs entangled. Amalia giggled as Anna tickled her armpits.

“I am just going to be a little bit later than normal. Auntie will take good care of you. Will you take good care of her, too?”

Amalia nodded and buried her head into Anna’s shoulder.

“And what about if in a few days you can stay home all day with Auntie again? Would you like that?”

Amalia nodded. “But what about Herr Schilling? Where is he?” she whispered and stroked Anna’s hair between her fingers. “Who will take care of him?”

Anna had fallen asleep without setting the alarm clock and all three of them overslept. After running nearly the whole way from the Adolfsallee she’d sent Amalia to run up to Frieda’s house on her own. “Don’t worry, Mama, I can do it,” Amalia said as she ran up the hill. Anna watched her disappear into the shadows of the tree-lined street before going through the sentry gate.

The big delivery day at the Collecting Point was well underway. Dozens of GIs and German workers milled around the courtyard, all looking up the length the Frankfurter Strasse as if waiting for a parade to start. Anna made her way through the crowd and into the main foyer of the museum. The building was deserted. She went upstairs and deposited her bag under her little desk, pulled up the blind, and opened the window. As she looked down on the scene, she pulled her hair into its clip and re-tucked her blouse. The soft breeze and remaining cool night air helped settle her down.

She went downstairs and passed the administrative office near the front main entrance. It was deserted. An old table doubled as the reception desk and behind it were several rows of filing cabinets—some American Army-issue, others left over from the museum’s pre-war days. She looked at the front door, then down the length of the entry foyer. The plaster walls were silent; no sounds of activity reverberated in the double-height arches. Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself tiptoeing past the desk and into the file room.

She scanned the small paper labels on the front of each drawer. She had no idea what she was looking for. Endless drawers marked the various levels of operations at the Collecting Point: personnel records, field reports, building operations, restitution claims, military correspondence, and on and on. The cabinets went all the way to the open window that faced directly onto the perimeter chain link fence and the street beyond. She hunched down between the cabinets and crept to the last row, pausing under the window to get on all fours.

These cabinets held civilian personnel records. She ignored the itch to look up her own file and instead ran her finger along the row until she got to the end. A tag on the last drawer on the bottom row read
Art Dealers: Hesse
, which would cover everyone who had made themselves known in the entire region, including Darmstadt. The tag was freshly typed and held on with a piece of tape. She paused and chewed on the inside of her cheek. Waves of excited voices floated in from outside. She put her hand on the metal pull and gave it a tug. The drawer was half empty; only a few files lay inside. She examined names: Arndt, Dornberger, Kranz, Proch, Heinrich, and then, there it was: Schneider. She pulled out the file and opened it.

A handful of papers fell out and scattered on the floor. She picked up the one closest to her. It was the letter of introduction for Schneider, recommending him for an advisory role at the Collecting Point based on his “vast experience in matters of art and restoration,” signed by Major James E. Phillips. Copies had also been sent to the Collecting Points in Munich and Offenbach. Underneath, someone had scribbled a note:
Capt. Cooper, interviewed, declined 15 August.
Attached to the memo with a paperclip was another report, this one noting a repository of paintings at a villa west of the city. Anna felt a jolt. This memo came from a Lieutenant Colonel in the Regional Military Government in Darmstadt and noted that the repository had been inspected by MFAA officer Cooper and accompanying civilian translator Anna Klein on 14 August 1945. The second part of the memo requested an explanation of the fact that the repository had not been reported in a timely manner, as required, to the regional military headquarters. Anna turned the page over, looking for an annotation, a reply, anything that indicated a next step. She leaned her back against the wall. How did Cooper’s late reporting of the repository get attached to the memo about Schneider? She scanned the words again, looking for a clue, but there was no mention of Schneider or any claims on the repository. Just that she and Cooper had been at the villa and had not properly reported what they had found. So who else knew about the art in the basement? Whoever had attacked Cooper and taken his gun did, that was for sure. But what did Schneider have to do with it?

“Frau Klein? What on earth are you doing down there?” A voice came over the top of the cabinet. Shrill,
high pitched: Frau Obersdorfer. Anna looked up at the red face.

“Frau Obersdorfer, hello. I was researching something for Captain Cooper. He wanted to make sure his report had been filed.”

“These are not the field reports. Those are over there. She pointed a finger to the next row of cabinets. And besides, you have no business being here. If you need a file, you ask the clerk.” Frau Obersdorfer cocked her head in the direction of the empty desk at the front.

“Oh yes, of course.” Anna nodded. She shuffled the pages into the folder and pushed it back into the drawer. Standing up, she straightened her pants and looked the woman in her beady eyes.

“Everyone is to be helping with the delivery today. That is what is expected,” Frau Obersdorfer said.

As Anna walked out of the file room—with the woman close on her tail—the sound of applause skated in from the courtyard, followed by the rumble of engines. Three GIs ran past her and Anna followed them to the door in time to see the first of a phalanx of trucks and tanks crawling down the Frankfurter Strasse at a funereal pace. Along the street, people who had gathered began to cheer. Little boys ran alongside the tanks and waved. There was
Cooper, waving his arms to direct the first truck as it turned into the courtyard, taking the bumps at the entry slowly. Behind that one, another truck waited and behind that, another and another. Anna counted fifteen trucks, but that was only until the tree canopy obscured her view.

The first truck sighed to a stop at the loading dock and an American jumped out to open the tailgate. Cooper sent several others to the back door where they stood guard while a small band of skinny Germans unloaded the truck. They formed a line and began handing crates from one to the other until it reached the building entry. Officers Anna had never seen before stood in small groups chatting and pointing. With their hands on their hips and caps askew on their heads they carried the air of victory, the jovial camaraderie over a job well done.
Captain Farmer, the director, stood earnestly in the shadows, clipboard in hand, making annotations.

People clamored to be close to the action, and the crowd carried Anna forward. On the outside of the fence another crowd gathered. MPs patrolled the perimeter as women, children and old men pushed against the chain link fence, hands grasping the wire, faces eager.

Cooper jumped from the back of the truck and called instructions to two GIs who edged a large rectangular crate toward the lip of the truck bed. A buzz rose up and the visiting American officers shook hands and thumped each other on the back.

Anna turned to the old man next to her. “What are they saying?” she asked.

He gave her a toothless grin. “It’s the painted queen. Nefertiti. She is safe again!” He wiped his eyes with a shriveled hand.

Out of nowhere, a chill ran down Anna’s spine as she envisioned the ancient
sculpture, witness to millennia of human affliction, emerging from her tomb in the Merkers salt mine. Anna joined the round of applause that rose from the crowd as the news spread. A tall American with a scruffy mustache in a sweat-stained uniform shouted for people to get out of the way and the crowd pushed back a bit. Anna wanted to help, but it seemed unloading was the first order of business. She went back inside and upstairs to her alcove, sat down at her desk and looked out into the courtyard. As the first truck pulled away, another stood ready to take its place. Anna let the feeling of participating in a greater cause wash over her. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt that sensation.

“Anna—Frau Klein—come help with these, will you?” Cooper shouted as he passed their office. Anna jumped up and left the lists she had been scouring to follow him to a bathroom at the end of the hall where three women were filling bowls and buckets with water.

“Take one and follow me,” Cooper said. He was sweating through his shirt but his face was in a state of bliss, transformed. She took a porcelain bowl from one of the women and caught up with Cooper down the hall.

“Here, put that in the corner there.” He pointed to an empty spot in a room already crowded with stacks of crates taller than she was. “Then get another one and put it over there. Keeps the humidity up.”

Anna retrieved another bowl and squeezed through the narrow canyon of crates to put it in the corner he had indicated. An odor of something she could not identify hung heavy in the air.

Cooper’s head appeared in the gap between two rows of crates. “It’s the salt. The smell.” He inhaled. “From the mine. It’s all over everything. Awful.” He thrust a clipboard at her. “Here. I need all hands on deck. You can inventory this room. No need to open the crates. Just note the markings on every item and its dimensions. The brass want to be here when things are opened, but we need to at least keep a count. It would have been nice if Frankfurt had sent a pro forma or at least a list to go with all this stuff. We don’t even know what all we have.”

“All this was in that mine? For how long?” Anna asked.

“Oh there’s plenty more, this is only the start. I think the Nazis moved it all when the bombs started, so it’s been a good few years. It’s the entire collection of the National Gallery in Berlin. And I’d like to make sure it stays intact.”

“Was that really Nefertiti, in the crate?”

“Sure was. They put her in the first truck and marked her clearly.
That driver felt every bump between Frankfurt and here, I guarantee it. I think I felt them too, and I wasn’t even in the truck. But she made it.”