The Art Lover Read online

  “Transferred?” The word seemed unfamiliar to him.

  I lowered my voice. “Will I be going somewhere new, Herr Keller?”

  “Going somewhere? You barely made it here, this morning. How am I to know where you will be going?” His throat filled with laughter once again. “But you have youth on your side, and strength. Those qualities are welcome everywhere.”

  Yes, welcome especially where ditches must be dug and where fields await their adornment of barbed wire. My stomach turned, but it must have been from the train trip and the unsatisfactory breakfast. Travel wasn’t good for the digestion. Disturbed sleep, foreign water; even the air smelled different and more complicated. What was Rome’s elevation? How did men manage to live in foreign cities, or in fields of war, for that matter? In barracks where—I recalled my own interrupted basic training all too well—men whispered and groaned, living out all their small pleasures and larger miseries in soul-wearying proximity. In diseased trenches of the kind that had swallowed my father’s generation, twenty years earlier. Youth and strength, Keller had said, laughing just enough to make his soft jowls quake, just enough to make my esophagus tighten, to keep the acidic, undigested truths my stomach already feared from finding their way up to my brain.

  In response to my silence, Keller cocked his head, half frowning, half smiling. “You looked a little lost when we first met.” That had been two years earlier, just after the Berlin Olympics, when he had been lean and stern—in contrast with now, ten kilos and many deals later. I had been different, too, of course—only four years out of secondary school, still recovering from the annulment of my athletic ambitions, and not yet employed in my current field. And yet look how far I’d come. But that was one aspect of working in today’s Germany. Those who fell vanished without a trace. Those who rose, rose quickly.

  “Others were impressed with you,” he chuckled. “I didn’t share their enthusiasms, necessarily . . .”

  When I didn’t take the bait, he cleared his throat. “But there can be no chance here. The border in three days, or they’ll come looking, and no one, north of the border or south of it, will be pleased. And don’t look so miserable to be here.”

  He winced, like a father embarrassed to be seen alongside his unimpressive son—a gesture that was familiar enough to fill me with unease and the beginnings of a quiet rage. Struggling later to think why I did not see through Keller and his plot from the start, I would remember that condescending wince and my own withheld anger, filling my senses with steam, blocking the view of what should have been painfully clear.

  I said, “I’m not miserable.”

  “You have no reason to feel inadequate or uncouth, if that is the problem. That whole notion of the sophisticated world traveler is a myth. You know why young men of more prosperous times went on the Grand Tour? Not to experience eye-opening epiphanies, but only to have their prejudices confirmed. And you? I’m guessing you’ve confirmed your prejudices already, in less than twenty-four hours. But see? We Germans are efficiency experts.”

  He touched my shirtfront with the tips of his manicured fingers. “That’s a joke, Herr Vogler.” A disappointed sigh. “Anyway, three days. And trust Enzo. Here he is.”

  Already the blond Italian had reappeared, right hand steering a small, buzzing vehicle with little more heft than a motorized bicycle, left hand clutching the handle of my small suitcase. Though he was a short man by northern European standards, this tiny scooter was too small for even his frame, and he was forced to buckle inward, like an adult folded into a baby chair. Dropping the suitcase at my feet, he revved his engine, drove the wobbling vehicle up a ramp with exhibitionist speed, and disappeared into the back of the truck.

  My eye followed him, and I saw there was already one crate in the truck, identical to the crate that had been carried out of the museum, now resting at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. I watched Cosimo and Enzo and the four Roman policemen load the second crate, inside of which I had not been granted a single, ennobling glimpse.

  It is difficult to photograph marble well. Nearly always, too much flash is used, and one is left with only a clear outline of the statue’s shape, a lifeless representation suitable for non-expert cataloging, and nothing more. But of course, even the best photograph can’t rival seeing a masterpiece in its original form. With marble, there are the unique striations in the stone itself. Plus—while not intended by the artist—the subtle pittings of age. Breaks may reveal the drama of history, as in statues flung from rooftops onto the heads of invading barbarians. Lines carved into the buried surface of a marble back may recall the blade of an oblivious medieval farmer’s plow. Other lines may signal further weakness, threatening new breaks to come.

  All this, despite the fact that only the best white marble is used in quality sculpture. It is marble’s purity, as well as its relative softness for carving, and the subtly translucent quality of the topmost layers—a waxy quality that can fool the eye into believing it is seeing a living body, real human skin—that have made it so timeless and valuable to artists.

  Beyond the stone, there is the carving, and one will never see truly identical copies of an ancient original. The smallest difference in each sculptor’s ability determines everything, is everything; it is the difference between life and death, masterpiece and mere object, soul-filled body and dull corpse.

  The British Museum owns a copy of the Discus Thrower, or Discobolus, as it is sometimes called—one of several Roman copies made of Myron’s original Greek bronze, now lost. The British copy, bought in 1793, was restored incorrectly, with the head facing forward, rather than turned to the side. (Forward or turned, the face is still the same—it is a simple, blank-eyed, classical face, without the brilliant, brooding intelligence of Michelangelo’s David, for example. But the face is not the essential element here.)

  The inappropriately positioned head is a major gaffe, often discussed, but more interesting to me, from the first time I studied photographs of the Discus Thrower, were the small differences: the lesser tension in the torso; a lighter quality to the tensed thigh and left calf; a disappointing smoothness in the arms and a less realistic grip on the discus itself, held high and far back, in the right hand, in that frozen moment just before release. Even the fingernails appeared different, especially the right thumb; even the tension in the toes, gripping the statue pedestal.

  What was most remarkable about the Rome museum copy was all that was missing from the British one: the arms so finely formed that arteries were visible and perfectly articulated; the shadows that fell across the muscles of the right leg all the way up the buttock, over the hip, and across each delicately curved rib of the torso. The skin’s mottling spoke not of marble, but of real skin: the faint capillary flush of an athlete in motion. The balled left calf shined slightly, catching the sun.

  But perhaps I was wrong about such subtle and essential details. I had not seen the British copy in person. And now, as of this July day, I had not managed to see the more famous Roman—rather, German—copy in person. How could I say anything with authority? I could tell you what the German copy cost our government—five million lire. But could I tell you what the German copy was worth? Could I tell you whether it summed up everything that was best in the human form? Could I tell you whether it justified Der Kunstsammler’s fanatical interest? Could I tell you whether a nation should have been escalating its acquisitions of fine art, rather than feeding its people, or finding some future for its youth beyond the trench, the munitions factory, or the museum?

  I could not tell you, just as I could not tell you with authority how the heart might respond to the Discobolus’s representation of a moment—not a moment in action, but a moment just before action, the moment just before the discus flies, when nothing has happened yet, when no one has been judged, and no one has succeeded or failed, won or lost. When everything remains possible.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Why you are not speaking?” Enzo asked, catching me brooding. We
were just outside Rome, heading north.

  When I didn’t answer, he waved a hand in front of my face. “Ciao? Guten tag?”

  I nodded briskly.

  “You are hungry?”

  “Not very much,” I said, clasping a hand over my stomach to silence the grumbling. To my left, Cosimo drove with the silent, focused attention of a barely literate man struggling to complete an essential government form, unhooking his fingers from the steering wheel only to scratch once at a spot under his tight, close-trimmed curls. To my right, his more handsome and apparently carefree brother drummed on the dashboard, shifted in his seat, stared out the window, flipped open a square brass lighter.

  And snapped it shut.

  Open. And shut.

  “I am hungry,” Enzo announced after the twentieth flip of the lighter. “We do not buy sandwiches when we have a chance at the train station.”

  This would be a problem with Enzo—the relentless present tense, which allowed for no reflection or prediction, only statement and complaint.

  There was an exchange in Italian between the brothers about who was responsible for the food, I was fairly certain. Enzo had three times as much to say, the mark of a guilty conscience. Cosimo exhaled slowly, extinguishing his frustration in a series of softening taps against the steering wheel.

  “If you please?” Enzo continued a moment later, bending forward to squirm out of his black suit jacket. He loosened his satiny blue tie, slipped it over his head, folded it several times, and tucked it into the jacket pocket. Then he attempted to hang the jacket behind his head, over the back of the truck bench. But there wasn’t much of a gap. The jacket wouldn’t hang straight. He scowled as he tried to smooth out the wrinkles, twisting left and right.

  Cosimo also removed his jacket, but, less concerned than Enzo about wrinkles, he simply wedged it between his leg and the door.

  “If you please?” Enzo said again, and this time when I nodded, he draped the folded jacket across his lap and mine. “It is all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, assuming this was a temporary arrangement while he continued to get comfortable.

  “That is very heavy material,” Enzo said, rubbing the thick brown sleeve of my jacket between his thumb and forefinger. “It is too warm, maybe, for summer?”

  “It is durable.”

  He touched a hand to my trouser leg just below my knee, the part exposed beneath the jacket he had settled atop my lap. When I flinched, his hands flew up to his face. “So sorry! I am only feeling—it is the same?”

  “It is.”

  He clucked his tongue. “The shirt is nice, though.”

  Then he switched into Italian again, discussing something with Cosimo about Roma and scarpe, an increasingly bitter commentary.

  “They have better uniforms,” Cosimo finally explained to me in German, noticing me trying to keep up, flipping back and forth through the unwieldy dictionary that Enzo had successfully retrieved from my hotel room. “On this drive, Mister Keller asks us to wear plain clothes, to be less noticeable, like the truck.” It was a modified Opel Blitz with a separated cab, which could pass for a tomato or produce truck except for the heavy-duty tires. It had been borrowed from the German consulate in Turin, to be returned by the brothers once our mission was accomplished.

  Cosimo continued, “Our usual uniform, it is nothing special. Enzo says the Romans, they all have the same shoes. We have no special shoes. We buy our own. What can I say? Small town polizia municipale. We are not the Carabinieri. We are not even the polizia provinciale. Enzo does not like our uniforms—but this is even more humiliating, to wear no uniform at all.”

  I turned to Enzo. “In Germany, the Gestapo wear plain clothes, I believe.”

  “They get respect, the Gestapo?”

  “I would say so. I believe they are very effective.” Somehow, it gave me pleasure to say this at the time—me, in my brown suit, hot and coarse and unfashionable, out of place here.

  A half hour later, Enzo’s jacket was still on my lap, warmed by the sun and collecting more heat through the windshield with every passing moment; immobile, like a black, self-satisfied cat that couldn’t be ejected without offending its owner. After a while, my knee tickled where sweat was collecting and dripping into the top of my sock garter.

  Squeezed stiffly into the middle, trying to avoid touching either companion, I was unaware of how much I’d been squeezing my legs, buttocks, and even my toes until a cramp flared in the arch of my left foot. I tried to flex my foot inside my shoe, but the shoe was tied too tightly. The burn faded slowly into a dull ache. Cosimo’s side was warm against mine, halfway between soft and firm, appropriately unresponsive; I could at least pretend I was leaning into the arm of an overstuffed chair. Enzo, to my right, continued to fidget. Every time I yielded another millimeter of space, he expanded into it and pressed for more, emanating more heat and—as the day wore on—the salty, pungent smells produced by heat. On the trip south, I had found my train compartment to be uncomfortably small, but now I belatedly appreciated its spaciousness and ease.

  At long last, I cleared my throat and gestured to my damp lap. “Excuse me . . .”

  Enzo looked up, startled. “Oh? Yes?” He recognized the jacket suddenly, as if it were an object he’d forgotten somewhere and rediscovered only now. “Of course! It bothers you? Is that better? Are you comfortable? We promise to Mister Keller to make you comfortable, all the way to the border.”

  Cosimo took his eyes off the road to glance at Enzo, who pretended not to notice. “Don’t you worry,” Enzo said. “Yes? Am I saying it correctly? Don’t worry.”

  “Is there a reason I should worry, Enzo?”

  “No, that is why I say it: don’t worry.”

  Several hours had passed since we’d unloaded one of the two crates from Cosimo’s truck, and, with the help of the four Roman policemen, loaded it onto the train. It had not been heavy at all, an obvious decoy. When the policemen had failed to transfer the heavier Discobolus crate to the train, I’d been only mildly surprised. Keller had mentioned improvisation. Minister Ciano’s approval of the statue’s sale had been strongly protested by many prominent Italians, including the minister of education, Giuseppe Bottai. Many were unhappy with Mussolini’s waiver of a key export permit. Plenty of people would have been thrilled to see our transportation of the statue disrupted. (I reminded myself that King Ludwig’s purchase from Rome of the Barberini Faun, a century earlier, was beset by similar difficulties, requiring ten years of political finagling and attempts at confiscation before the statue itself could be whisked north, to Munich.) For the sake of art—for the security of the art we were transporting—I couldn’t ignore all of this tomfoolery entirely, as much as I would have liked to. “Trust Enzo,” Herr Keller had said. Did I have any other choice?

  Now we were past the traffic snarls and blaring horns. We were driving alongside green fields. In the distance: the glinting curves of a blue-gray river, also fleeing the clamor of the city. I asked Enzo, who seemed to prefer answering for them both, “Are we driving to another train station, outside Rome?”

  “As I explain: we are driving.”

  “But—to a different station, or all the way to Germany?”

  “Yes. All the way to the border. It is better, because of the way things are today.”

  “And how are things today?”

  “Not so good. But the weather is better away from Rome, as Mister Keller say.”

  “The weather, really?” The sky had been clear and blue all morning, uncomplicated by clouds or breeze.

  Enzo smiled, pleased with himself. “Not really the weather. How do you say it?”

  “The atmosphere,” Cosimo said. His eyes flickered rhythmically, checking the side-view mirror every few seconds.

  “Keller said I should ask you both about that—about some increasing gloominess. Has something changed in the last day or so?”

  “Everything changes,” Enzo said, and smiled. “Everything always changes. Tha
t’s why it is good to keep driving.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The second truck, following closely behind, accelerated to pull up alongside us, driving in the path of oncoming traffic. One of the Roman policemen leaned out of the passenger window — “ benzina, benzina” — exchanging words with Cosimo, who bared his teeth in a distracted grin, nodding. The Roman truck pulled all the way in front of us. Cosimo’s chest swelled with a deep, anticipatory breath. Up ahead, the other truck took a small side road, crossing railroad tracks on its way into a small village where fuel was sold, just off the highway.

  We could still see the loose canvas flaps beating against the back of the second truck, when suddenly, ignoring the exit, Cosimo stepped hard on the accelerator. It took a moment for the truck to respond, and when it did we bucked forward and I bit my tongue. The taste of iron filled my wounded mouth as the truck battled to gain the next hill, rattling and groaning with the effort.

  When I pressed him for information, Cosimo interrupted by raising a protective arm in front of my chest, pushing me back into the seat. The truck slowed, reaching the top of the hill, lurched, and kept going—down the other side, much faster now, fast enough to make my stomach drop. A man on horseback, riding toward us, reached up to touch his flat cap in greeting, then thought better of it and leaned forward, urging his horse to the narrow shoulder. As we passed, the horse sidestepped nervously, stirring up dust, while the angry rider flicked the underside of his chin, cursing us.

  Enzo had pushed his left arm out the open window and was grasping at handfuls of wind, whooping with glee. Now he pushed his entire head out, and his loopy blond curls parted, regrouped and parted again, like a golden field bending in a storm. When he finally settled back into his seat, his hair looked twice as long, with hanks standing nearly straight up, a great, leonine ruff.