For the first month, and the second and third, as he grew accustomed to his metamorphosis from Teodor to Teo, to his new, altered life, little changed in their routines. He made himself scarce during the days, wandering the wooded back garden, reading the art books Freddy set aside for him, writing in his journal. Freddy made a makeshift studio for him in the salon, complete with mirrors, a barre and a phonograph, and Teo did practice most days, but could not maintain the dancer’s schedule he needed to keep in shape. He stayed clear of Cook and rarely ran into Albert.
Freddy was never home before dark, but always visited him in his bed at whatever hour he arrived. Quickly, Teo learned to absent himself from these situations, flying off in his mind to sunny afternoons in one dance studio or another or back to his fateful dance at the Staatsoper.
On occasion he found himself trying to explain this new life of his to Sofie; she would float before him, her face blankly impassive, as he told her that what was rightfully hers was being taken from him by force. And yet, he could not deny, to her or to himself, the terrible, bewildering arousal that Freddy provoked in him. After a while his shame was too great, so that when she came to him in daydreams or night dreams he had to push her away. Soon he could no longer recall what it had felt like to hold her in his arms.
Sunday became Teo’s favorite day of the week, when Cook and Albert were off and Freddy was home. In the morning Freddy would spend hours showing him his newest acquisitions, works of art he had generously—he said—purchased for the Reich from departing Jews only too happy to rid themselves of unwanted baggage in exchange for much-needed cash. Freddy told him stories about the artists, how their lives crisscrossed their art, how it was the insane or the depraved or the debauched who produced the freshest, most startling work. He explained paint, he explained canvas, he explained light and shadow, perspective and palette, with extraordinary patience and boyish enthusiasm. He shared his secrets about how to judge a fake from the real thing, gave Teo books and articles to study. Teo saw Freddy was in love with the paintings, there was no other way to describe it. He found himself waiting with a conflicting sense of dread and guilty impatience for the moment when Freddy would turn that same proud, amorous gaze on him. Teo worked hard to remember his lessons, to prove a worthy pupil, and with time these oeuvres and their creators became his best friends, his companions through long, dreary days alone.
In good weather they might amble, after a languorous brunch in the enclosed garden, toward the edge of the property, to Freddy’s tiny dock on the Halensee, the blue-black lake that lapped at their corner of Berlin. Here he would draw Teo: backed up against a mossy rock, or prone in the grass, or legs dangling in the inky water. Teo posed shirtless, or fully clothed, or in the nude when Freddy could be certain no neighbors were watching them from their own docks. Sometimes he dashed off sharp, angular pencil drawings and other times he lingered, using oil paints he would mix and mix until the soft hues were exactly as he desired. Once he used a huge canvas—the length of Teo’s body—rendering him life-size, sprawled lazily among rows of pink cyclamen Freddy had planted especially for this purpose. At these times he doted on Teo, was his mentor, and the boy was enthralled almost to the point of forgetting the man’s other, malevolent, side.
Teo never saw what Freddy did with those drawings and paintings, where he stored them, nor did he ever glimpse them again.
When it was too cold or dreary for drawing they would stay in the house, where Freddy would place a record on the phonograph for Teo to dance. Mostly he selected French or Russian composers, as romantic and airy as possible, and Teo would fit them with some routine he had once learned to other music. Sometimes he simply danced a Bournonville lesson, since Freddy would never know he was watching a Danish dance class, and it felt good to Teo to remember what he had been taught. Freddy was invariably enraptured, his hand often hiding much of his face: his teary eyes, his panting mouth. Later in the afternoon, if there was still enough light in the sky and if Freddy was not aroused, he might unlock the gates and drive Teo to the Tiergarten or Charlotten-Schlossgarten for a stroll, or to Café Kranzler or the Breitscheidplatz for coffee and a cream cake, safe in the knowledge that without the forged certificates and papers he had had prepared for the boy by a Jew living underground in the Kreuzberg district, Teo would never try to escape. In public, when he thought no one was looking, Freddy would rub his hand on the front of Teo’s trousers or plant a sharp kiss on his lips. Once or twice they were nearly caught, but Freddy merely laughed off these close calls. Teo prayed these moments would end quickly and without incident.
Just before Christmas Freddy announced he would be going home to his family for the holidays. At first the plan was to leave Teo alone in Berlin, but this worried Freddy for reasons he did not share with Teo. And besides, he told him one evening in his study while making Teo stand naked in front of him as he drank and sketched and drank some more, he would go mad without touching the boy’s smooth thighs, he would fall ill if he could not taste his lips every day.
In the week before their departure Teo saw more of Berlin than he had for all these long months. Freddy took him to buy clothing, had his hair cut and lightened. He took Teo to hear Hitler speak at a rally in the sports stadium, but he became excited groping Teo under a coat placed strategically over their laps and they left early, Freddy racing the car home and pouncing on Teo when they had barely gotten through the front door.
During that week Freddy brought home for Teo a thigh-length Waffenrock military coat with braided silver belt, piped steingrau trousers and a pair of white gloves. He taught him about his family’s Christmas traditions and rituals, and coached him on the few remaining sounds he made that were not perfectly German in their enunciation. “Make your h’s softer and all your other consonants harsher,” he scolded him. “You Poles sound like you’re mashing your food when you talk.”
Two days before Christmas they left Berlin, both Freddy and Teo in full-dress uniform, the Mercedes piled high with gifts for his family and their own luggage.
They drove south past Leipzig, stopping twice at roadblocks at which Freddy instructed Teo to speak as little as possible. Each time, as their papers were being scrutinized nearby, Freddy rubbed his hand between Teo’s thighs with one hand and squeezed his own member with the other while Teo gazed listlessly out the window, silently willing the guards to send them on their way quickly. Back on the road, Freddy opened the windows to the cold air, banging the steering wheel jubilantly, shout-singing an odd mixture of nursery rhymes and songs the enlisted men sang. He glanced at Teo during one particularly raunchy ditty and laughed. “So grave, Liebchen,” he said, tousling his hair. “We’re having fun. Stop looking so serious!”
They stayed overnight at a small inn east of Regensburg, at the edge of the Bohemian Forest. While Freddy slept deeply atop a pile of down comforters, Teo threw open the wooden shutters and swallowed the cold air deep into his lungs. He heard music from somewhere in the village, something he had once danced to back in Poland, and thoughts of escape entered his head. Freddy had locked them in and pocketed the key, but perhaps he could climb out onto the low roof and jump to the terrace of another suite. In uniform and with exquisitely forged papers, he thought he might just get somewhere. He looked at Freddy sleeping innocently, glanced outside to the quiet village below. He lifted the poker from the fireplace, tested the sharpness of the tip; would it penetrate Freddy’s temple, bore through his brain? Freddy stirred and Teo returned the poker to its place, choosing, instead, to strip to his underwear and dance to the music, unable to leap in that tiny German inn but following the dance through nonetheless, flying and twirling in his mind. His body ached to move to its fullest, to push through gravity to the other side of movement. But the walls and the roof and the furniture—and the man sleeping soundly on a bed of comforters—had caged him in. Eventually he dressed, curled up on a small sofa under a window, covered himself with a heavy curtain, and slept.
Teo was awakened by Freddy before dawn for a rough and numbing hour on a thick rug in front of a hot fire. In the small breakfast room below they were served eggs and sausages by the fat, smiling, innkeeper’s wife, who praised their bravery and kept up a continuous rant about the Jews. Freddy found this highly amusing and goaded her into telling one venomous story after the next, tossing laughing winks all the while to his young companion.
By late morning they were climbing into the mountains. “Fresh air at last,” Freddy said with a smile. A while later he pointed to a snowy peak straight ahead of the car. “Look a bit down and to the right,” he instructed Teo. “That’s Schloss Edelwald.” It was a fairy-tale castle of turrets and ramparts. Teo wondered where he would be sleeping.
Another hour passed as Freddy sped recklessly around bend after bend before they reached the castle. He tooted the horn loudly as they entered the cobblestone courtyard. A young boy, eight or nine, emerged first from the castle doorway, but a girl with a small bouquet of flowers clutched in her hand pushed past him and jumped into her father’s arms. Presently, Freddy’s wife and mother appeared with a toddler and several servants. Teo watched the boy, dressed in lederhosen and a Tyrolean jacket, as he stopped halfway to the car and stood waiting to be summoned, while his sister was still enjoying a big, hearty hug from her father.
Teo thought about his own sister, Margot, who would be ten now. He tried to imagine her taller and older than he had last seen her, but he could conjure no clear picture of her. Nor could he precisely remember his parents’ faces. He sat watching this family’s reunion from the car, his throat clogged with sadness.
Freddy embraced his plain wife perfunctorily, and made the baby cry when he wrenched him from his mother’s arms. Teo stepped slowly from the car and marched across the courtyard past the curious children to the arched doorway. “Pleased to make your acquaintances, your ladyships,” he pronounced carefully, as Freddy had instructed him. “Heil Hitler,” responded Freddy’s wife, and Teo was not certain whether this were not a reproach.
“Teo,” Freddy was shouting, “meet my son Leopold. Leo—Teo, Teo—Leo!” Freddy and his little girl laughed heartily at the silly rhyme. The boy eyed Teo with suspicion, his face grave, but he bowed politely.
Freddy had Teo assigned to a large circular room in the castle’s highest turret, despite the protestations of the baronesses von Edelwald, who had planned for him to occupy a more central wing of the house. Freddy was adamant, however, insisting on the spectacular view for this guest who, he explained to the ladies, was from flat Schleswig-Holstein, up near the Danish border, and should take full advantage of the mountain view. More importantly, the stairs to the turret were accessible by a passage that lay hidden behind a bookcase in Freddy’s study.
Here in the south, in his ancestral home, Freddy was bolder than ever. He visited Teo’s bed every night full of mountain air and ardor. The weather in the valleys was particularly mild, so during the day he took the boy on drives to secluded forests where they hiked and picnicked and he could find more opportunities for reckless sex. If the children were permitted to accompany them, Freddy would tease them into a game of hide-and-seek in order to steal a few orgiastic moments with Teo, or send them on missions to find wildflowers or berries. Once, as Freddy smothered him in a field of purple and yellow loosestrife, Teo thought for one sickening moment that he spied Leopold glowering at them from behind a spindly birch.
Just after the new year, Freddy announced a family ski trip on a nearby mountain slope. The next morning they set out, with Freddy and Teo up front and the rest of the family in the back. A servant had driven up the mountain earlier with their ski equipment and food. By eleven o’clock they were on the slopes. The baroness stayed with the children on the easier slopes, while Freddy insisted that Teo join him on one of the higher slopes. “You’ll learn to ski quickly when there’s no way but down.”
After a brief lesson at the top of the mountain, Teo took to skiing with ease. Freddy brought him down the slope in stages. When they reached the bottom Freddy threw his arms around Teo and lifted him in the air. A few other skiers took note.
The next time, Freddy led Teo to the back side of the same mountain, a steeper run on the shaded side of the hill. Here it was colder, gray and bleak. Teo saw few skiers below them.
They skied quickly this time, Teo trying to keep pace with Freddy without tumbling dangerously. Several times Freddy got far ahead and Teo lost sight of him. He nearly ran into Freddy in a long arcing curve, surprised to find him waiting in a grove of three or four tall firs off to the side of the piste. From here, the lower hills were just barely visible. Teo thought he could see the baroness and the children skiing slowly down a nearby slope.
Freddy pulled him in close, their woolen snow jackets hissing as they slid together. He kissed Teo roughly on the mouth and plunged his tongue deep into his throat until he nearly choked. Teo’s eyes were open, he could still see skiers on other hills careening silently down the slopes.
Freddy had his hands around Teo’s neck now, mashing their faces together. He maneuvered his right ski between Teo’s so that the boy’s leg stood squarely against his groin, then leaned in to ensure that Teo would feel his hardness through bone and flesh, through lined gabardine ski pants and thick underwear. Freddy’s eyes stayed closed as he rubbed himself slowly on Teo’s leg, pulling the boy closer all the time and smothering him with kisses from his warm, pink mouth.
Freddy pushed Teo away from him, just slightly, and Teo thought this crazy moment on a ski slope in gray daylight was over and they could continue down the mountain. Freddy took a brief look around, then pushed Teo to his knees. With his right hand he unbuttoned his ski pants and fumbled through his underwear, while with his left he held on to Teo’s hair, a tinted blond tuft caught neatly between his long, thin fingers.
Teo was frantic to find a way for Freddy to finish quickly. He was pulling too hard on his hair, smashing his nose into his groin, and the cold snow was beginning to seep through his trousers to his knees. Freddy was at a steady rhythm, plunging himself deeply into Teo’s throat, when suddenly he released his grip on the boy’s hair and stopped pumping. He pulled Teo to a standing position. Freddy’s face was wild, his mouth a crooked frown. “Step out of your skis and your snow boots,” he ordered. “Now, quickly!” he added, in the moment that Teo hesitated.
While Teo did as told, settling his stocking feet gingerly onto the freezing snow, Freddy yanked the boy’s ski clothing and underclothes away from his body and pointed to his socks. “Take those off, too,” he said brusquely. Again, Teo did as ordered and stood, finally, bare and shivering in front of Freddy.
Freddy rubbed his hands up and down Teo’s chest, tweaked his erect nipples and gave a tug to Teo’s limp penis. He pulled him close again, at first in an embrace that Teo mistook for a kind gesture, Freddy wanting to warm up his freezing body. But Freddy was groping for his buttocks, the buttons on his ski jacket boring small circles of freezing pain into the skin up and down the boy’s chest.
Freddy turned him around, spit into his hand, made an initial stab at forcing his way in. Teo stood frozen and raw, stunned and numb, too shocked to plead or argue. He no longer cared whether another skier would catch them there; in fact he no longer felt guiltily complicit in this horrible act, but, finally, a victim. And although he knew that if caught and brought before the authorities it would be he who would be punished and not Freddy the aristocrat and high-ranking officer, Teo nevertheless prayed for someone, anyone, to come close enough to them to interrupt Freddy and make him realize the madness of his obsession. But the slopes were eerily silent, deserted, and Teo could imagine Freddy having bribed some ski patrolman above to keep skiers off their slope for an hour. He was devastated to realize that in this horrifying moment, as always, no one would come to his rescue.
A raven cawed noisily overhead and for a brief second Teo thought the bird had pulled Freddy back to his senses. Instead, Freddy pushed him roughly to the snow, flat out on his belly, and was immediately on top of him, tearing at him with more ferocity than he ever had before. He clawed and pawed and humped him, mashed his face and body into the snow thrusting himself deep, deeper, without compassion or mercy. Finally, after several terrifying minutes, when Teo could no longer contain his shivering pain, he began to scream and sob. Freddy, hearing Teo, increased his pace and his ferocity, pushed harder and harder and, much too late for Teo, released himself in a raging gush. Teo was by this time barely conscious, no longer moving, and so he pulled himself off the boy, roused him, and dressed his raw, bluish body, talking the whole time to revive him. He put him on his own skis but then moved him down the hill pressed up against his back, until they reached the lodge a difficult twenty minutes later.
“He fell behind and I didn’t realize he’d taken a spill,” Freddy told the startled attendants. “He must have lain in the snow for half an hour before I reached him.” They covered Teo with blankets and plied him with hot chocolate, but his fever was climbing and he could not stomach the drink.
Back at the castle, Teo remained bedridden and delirious with fever for days. A nurse was brought in to care for him, but Freddy himself insisted on doing most of the nursing, ignoring the comments made by his wife and his mother. He ladled warm broth into Teo’s mouth, kissing away the droplets that remained on his lips. He carried the boy tenderly to the toilet, cooled his forehead with dampened cloths and lay next to him on the bed, holding him tight to keep him from shivering. He spent hours crooning love songs in English, German and Italian, and read to him of Alexander the Great and of the Emperor Hadrian, whose love for the dark and lithe lad Antinous he claimed was the greatest love the world had ever known. He begged Teo to get well quickly, promising him they would leave the south just as soon as he could travel, and was oblivious to Leopold, who, silent and stealthy, crept up the secret stairway to spy on them. They needed to return to Berlin, Freddy told Teo, where they could continue their life together. He knelt next to Teo’s bed. “I love you,” he told him as Teo drifted off to sleep, his fingers tangled lightly in his beloved’s hair.
But Teo thrashed in his bed, finding himself back on the Staats-oper stage, poised to begin his solo. He could hear the boots of the German vice-minister receding into the darkness backstage, could see the no jews sign on the Unter den Linden; he was staring into the faces of two thousand rapturous Germans—suddenly his official enemies—awash with the excitement of an impending victory and conquest. He could also now, with a clarity of vision he had not experienced since leaving home, see his family: his sister, Margot, her weak eye and black, kinky hair, her shy and lovely smile; his father, Oskar, wiping his eyes and waving from the pier in Danzig; and mostly his mother, Rosa, at his side for every adventure and every disappointment. Anger rushed up from the floorboards through his body so violently that it nearly threw him from the bed. In wakeful dreams his legs shot up from the floor, his arms flung out from his shoulders. He felt out of control of his own body. He was suddenly a bloodred demon spinning across the stage, setting the floor beneath him on fire with each pirouette. His skin was burning, his fingers and toes were stilettos, each movement was razor-sharp, each breath fire. Kill, slash, burn. The music was faster than he had ever heard it, the sweet melodies gave way to leering violins and mocking clarinets; or maybe there was no music at all, maybe the musicians had caught fire and imploded, maybe, too, the audience had burned up, the hall smoky with the scent of singed fur and silk and human hair. He did not know what had happened to them all for sure, he could see and hear only red, a screaming, howling, throbbing, fuming red. He was no longer dancing: he was hurtling, flying, flailing; he was a tornado, a tidal wave, an earthquake, a volcano. His body was a devil’s chorus of shouts and groans, a cacophony of pain. And then, after one final tremendous leaping spin in the air—around and around and around so many times, too many times—he landed, and there was a tiny moment of complete silence before sound erupted and washed over him and he was aware of the musicians stomping their feet and tapping their bows to their instruments, the audience jumping from their seats to shout Bravo! Bravissimo! Up to the highest balcony he could see them, their hands raw from clapping, their mouths open and red, barking praises. Every last one of them, save one officer, so close by at the edge of the first balcony, simply staring at him.
He took it all in, rooted. He did not smile, nor would he bow down before them. The audience was still applauding with ecstatic energy when he dashed from the stage and vomited noisily into a pail of water holding dozens upon dozens of perfect white roses.
Teo opened his eyes to find Freddy wiping his brow.
Several weeks passed before Teo was fully well enough to make the trip to Berlin. Freddy remained solicitous, and although he resumed his sexual demands before Teo’s fever had completely waned, he was gentler than before, cautious and tender with his depleted boy. He kissed Teo more than he had before, held him for long hours in his arms, told him he loved him and needed him. Once, as they lay together, he asked the boy whether he loved him in return.
Teo held his breath until a small bird trilled outside the window. Freddy did not ask him again.
It was nearly February by the time they returned to Berlin. Germany’s war was clearly going well; the city was full of bunting and flags and cheering crowds. At home, Freddy felt it would be a danger for Teo to be around Cook any longer; she had been suspicious from the start about his origins and Freddy worried she might turn them both in. He installed Teo in an old servant’s bedroom at the back of the cellar, where he remained motionless and silent during daylight hours; Cook was informed that their guest had at long last returned to Denmark. Then, after a week, he fired both Cook and Albert on the pretense that he would be closing the Berlin house until further notice.
It then became Teo’s job to cook and keep house, which he did without interest. Day after day, locked in the gated house and forbidden even from strolling in the garden, he made simple meals, washed and ironed Freddy’s clothes, made the beds and swept the floors and all the while dreamt his dreams: of his family, of returning to Denmark to dance, of simply walking out the front gate and into a park, where he could watch the swans bathe and squabble. He dreamt of Madame Valentina, his ballet teacher in Warsaw, who (he had no way of knowing) had been killed as the small airplane ferrying her and her diplomat husband to a new posting in the Congo had sputtered and swooped, plunging with grace into a cool lake at the edge of the jungle.
Freddy became more and more busy as the war blazed on. He was up early, gone before Teo could climb from their bed and home often past midnight. Occasionally he would be away for several days, after which he would return with a new painting or sculpture. He had less time and less patience to explain these works to Teo now.
On a crisp Sunday morning in autumn 1941, more than two years after Teo had come to Berlin, Freddy announced an outing. “Pack us a picnic lunch, we’re taking a drive.” Teo was glad for the diversion, but surprised to see that Freddy was taking his leather bag of magnifying glasses, solvents, brushes, tweezers and chisels with them, as if going to work. On the way out of town Teo spotted passersby with yellow Stars of David pinned to their coats. He swiveled his head to get a better look, which Freddy noticed. “New regulations,” he explained. “Can’t leave the house without them. I understand Jews in other parts of the Reich have been wearing them for a while already.” Teo could see that Freddy was bothered by this medieval form of ostracism, but his mood was too jubilant to ruin.
“Why do they stand for it, why didn’t they leave?” Teo asked, his gaze fixed on a young Jewess just passing in front of the car.
“They can’t anymore, Teo, but even when they had the chance they stayed, always thinking the situation would improve.” Teo thought about all those clever Jews on the ship bound for America, and his own parents probably still in Warsaw.
“You know,” Freddy said in a matter-of-fact voice, “a frog will leap out of his pond if you pour a lot of hot water in all at once. But if you add it slowly, gradually, the frog will remain through discomfort, then danger, then death. He never figures out it’s time to jump, and then it’s too late.”
“Some frogs,” Teo said quietly, “don’t have a choice.”
They headed west in the Mercedes, toward Brandenburg, but turned off at an estate on the Havel River. As they entered a huge park of forests and ponds with an enormous home set at the river’s edge, Teo read the name Himmel-an-der-Havel—Heaven on the Havel—on the stone portals.
They pulled up in front of the house, where the door was opened by a thin and sallow man in an elegant suit. Freddy bounded up the stairs and shook hands warmly with the man. “Teo, come meet Ernst Halberstadt, Berlin’s foremost collector of art and my most esteemed teacher. Ernst, this is my assistant, Teo.” Teo was surprised by the thin man’s strong and bony grip on his hand. “Please, do come in,” he told them both.
Inside, the house was nearly denuded of furniture, and what remained was covered in cloth. Halberstadt was clearly planning an imminent departure. “My apologies for the state of affairs here,” he told his guests as they passed through the kitchen to a hidden stairway that led down to a secret room underneath the house. Here it was cozy if crowded, obviously the room to which Halberstadt had removed all his most essential belongings. There was a bed, a desk, several chairs, neat piles of clothing on a bureau and a large bookcase built into the stone walls. A fire glowed in the hearth. Herr Halberstadt invited them to be seated while he poured three snifters of brandy.
“Ernst, you’d be proud of your pupil,” Freddy said as he stuffed and lit his pipe. “I picked up an exquisite van Gogh and discovered a brilliantly forged Brueghel last week, both in the same collection. Stein family, you know them, they love anything Dutch. I don’t believe they knew what they had, the old wheezer blanched and almost fainted when I showed him the worthless Brueghel. Must have paid a fortune for that one, though I had the feeling he’d gotten the van Gogh for a song.”
Herr Halberstadt was mainly quiet, nodding occasionally or asking a question when Freddy’s prattle slowed. He had a neatly trimmed mustache that twitched and bobbed and seemed to have a life of its own. Several times Teo caught Halberstadt peering over his snifter at him.
After a refill of brandy Freddy sat up higher in his chair. “Well, now, Teo, we’ve come to help our dear friend Ernst here with a problem he’s having. You see, like yourself, Ernst is of the Jewish persuasion and should have left Germany long ago.” Teo and Ernst exchanged glances, each quite astonished. “But he could not part with his art, and couldn’t get it out of Germany, either, so he stayed. Now we’re going to help him escape.”
Ernst stood, pulled a book from the shelf on the wall, reached his hand into the empty space and then stepped back from the shelf. The entire bookshelf spun slowly sideways, revealing another room behind the cozy sitting room. “Ah, the good stuff!” Freddy said as he tapped the remaining tobacco leaves from his pipe and put it in his pocket. The three of them passed by the bookshelf and into the room.
Even Freddy was silent as they stood on the threshold peering in. It was a large room, perhaps the size of the entire floor above them, and it was completely full of the most sumptuous works of art. Teo could identify many, had seen a number of them in Freddy’s art books. But there were others, new and raw and exciting, that he did not yet know.
Freddy pointed to one canvas standing nearby. “That Soutine,” he said, breaking the silence. “I’m sure I saw it at the firefighters’ headquarters before the war, when they burned all those priceless works of ‘degenerate’ art. You managed to salvage it,” he said with awe.
Halberstadt nodded. Then he turned toward Teo and raised his hand feebly in the general direction of the crowded room. “My life’s work,” he said with a sigh.
“Your obsession,” Freddy said offhandedly.
“My passion,” Ernst corrected him.
Freddy shrugged. “What’s the difference?”
“Oh,” Ernst said, turning to face him, “the ancient Romans could tell you. Passion means suffering, the suffering of intense desire that remains unfulfilled. So Toulouse-Lautrec had an insatiable passion for shady women that never dissipated. Gustav Mahler for Alma, Kafka for Milená Jesenská; how about our own marvelous Else Lasker-Schüler, with her poems full of strange, protean passions? I could name scores of the greatest artists and writers and composers, all of whom were driven by this wonderful, terrible, consuming passion that, in the best of cases, erupts like lava into the most beautiful works man has ever created, or for the less artistically inclined among us, into new inventions, the massing of wealth or technology.”
Freddy smiled broadly. “Then I am a man of passion.”
Ernst seemed to weigh his words before letting them out. “I hope for your sake it’s passion and not obsession. Passion creates, but obsession destroys. Your Mr. Hitler, for example, has his obsessions and I am about to pay for them with my own life’s passion, these most astonishing works of beauty.”
“You shall be reunited with them after the war, I’m certain of it,” said Freddy.
“Which will you be taking with you?” Ernst asked.
“Well, first we need to work from your catalogue. You do, I assume, have a complete catalogue?”
Ernst nodded.
“From that we’ll create a new catalogue for my department. Teo here has a lovely handwriting, we’ll ask him to record our selections. That’s what I’ll be working from when I come with my team to remove them. As for my own selections, I have a few ideas, but let’s get to work and make those decisions later.”
For hours the three of them created a new catalogue and hauled each selected artwork upstairs to what had been the library. Ernst seemed to mourn each selection, though some caused him more grief than others. When they had finished, the library was filled with twenty-two paintings and six sculptures. The secret room underneath the house still contained at least eighty paintings as far as Teo could tell, and perhaps two dozen sculptures.
On their last trip downstairs Freddy stood looking at the remaining works and, hands on hips, said, “Ernst, you know my tastes. I can’t leave without that exquisite Monet and the boy dancer by Degas. I thought he’d only sculpted girls.”
“That’s the only one,” Ernst said evenly.
“Now I know I should be happy with those two, but, well, there’s just one more I’d like, and I know it’s being selfish but I can’t resist.”
“She’ll bring you trouble,” Ernst said.
“I know. The best things always do.”
“Leave her here Freddy, come visit. She’ll be safer at Himmel-an-der-Havel than in the middle of Berlin.”
“I can’t Ernst, I have to have her. I’ve always wanted her, you know that.”
Ernst sighed heavily. “You haven’t changed, young Baron von Edelwald. You are talented and clever, but you let your obsessions blind you, you do not know when to stop.”
Teo expected him to take offense, but Freddy laughed loud and hard. “Right you are!” he said cheerfully. “You know my motto, Ernst: Ad astra. There’s no stopping until you’ve gone all the way to the stars.” He pushed past them to the back of the deep room, returning a moment later with a smallish portrait, one that Teo had not noticed before. He placed it on an easel and flicked on an overhead lamp. The three men stood in front of the painting, silent.
It was, Teo could see for himself instantly, glorious. A pale young woman in a butter-yellow ermine-trimmed cloak, her gathered hair the color of sun-baked wheat, stands fiddling with a pearl necklace around her neck. She is gazing at herself in a small mirror on the wall, or perhaps she is enraptured by whatever is taking place outside the window next to the mirror.
Teo was intrigued by the bland nonchalance of her expression, the simplicity of her gaze. She seemed completely self-absorbed, clearly unaware of the attention she was drawing. In fact, he suddenly realized, she reminded him of Sofie Sonnenfeld. He quietly revisited their pas de deux late that one afternoon in Copenhagen, and he wondered what had become of her and her family. Did she think of him sometimes, or did she presume him dead?
“She’s more than two hundred and fifty years old, but she’s sweet and pure as a fresh-cut flower,” Freddy said with hushed passion. Teo turned to look briefly into Freddy’s face; this was a voice he had heard Freddy use only when ardor and desire had taken over his senses.
“Look here, Teo,” Freddy said, without taking his gaze from the painting. “Vermeer was a genius with light. Look how the room is flooded with it from the little window here, next to the mirror. Look how the light is refracted in the curtains, in the wall, and especially in her robe.”
Teo, too, was captivated. Freddy instructed him, “Now tell Herr Halberstadt where the vanishing point of the painting is.”
“Just above the tabletop,” he answered dutifully.
“And what do you think this chair is doing in the foreground?”
“Perhaps it has something to do with depth? The chair seems to add space between the girl and us.”
“Well said,” Ernst remarked. Freddy beamed.
“And why do we think Mr. Vermeer chose to put pearls on his model?”
Teo thought for a moment. He could not recall any paintings with pearls in his apprenticeship with Freddy, or having learned anything about them. “Purity?” he ventured. “Perfection?” Teo glanced from Freddy to Ernst.
“In fact,” Ernst answered, “we cannot truly know. To some painters pearls did symbolize virginity and purity. To others, pearls were a symbol of womanhood, or motherhood. And indeed, Vermeer’s young lady, who may in fact be his niece, looks as though she might have been pregnant. Mostly, however, pearls were a symbol of vanity, and this was certainly an accepted theme among Dutch painters of the seventeenth century. The mirror, too, may be there to remind us of the worthlessness and transience of all things worldly.” Ernst nodded to himself, and glanced around at the room still full of art.
“She is exquisite, one of a kind, Ernst,” Freddy exclaimed, ignoring his quiet reverie. “You were a genius for getting her away from the Pergamon.”
“Oh, but of course I had nothing to do with that. These are strange times, who better than you would know that, my friend. Everything is in flux. I was simply clever enough to recognize her when she was made available, and rich enough to give her a good home.”
“But Ernst, I feel certain you will agree with me that there is still one work of art in this room even more beautiful than our exquisite Frau mit Perlen.”
Ernst raised his eyebrows in surprise but said nothing. Freddy turned to Teo and kissed him full on the mouth. “This young man, of the mismatched eyes, is more perfect and quite a bit more responsive than anything here.” To Teo he said, “Don’t look so shocked. Ernst is a fellow connoisseur.”
He hit Teo squarely on the bum and shepherded him up the stairs, his treasures in tow.
At the front door Freddy removed a small box and an envelope from his work bag and placed them in Ernst’s hand. “The documentation and tickets should get you safely to Switzerland, where I suggest you wait until this madness is over.” He opened the box for Ernst, and poked his finger into the contents. “You’ve got some larger ones and some smaller ones, should fetch almost one hundred thousand francs from the right people. This one little blue diamond is apparently worth half that alone.” He plucked the stone from its bed with his thumb and forefinger, held it to the light and passed it to Teo. After inspecting it carefully, Teo offered it to Ernst, who declined. He laid it in the box next to the others, and Freddy replaced the lid.
“I hope you know something about sewing, you’ll really have to hide those things carefully. But keep one or two for bribes if necessary. There’s some cash, too, in the envelope,” he said as he let himself out the front door and made his way to the car. He opened the door for Teo, then bounded back up the stairs.
“Good luck, old friend,” he said with emotion as he embraced Ernst Halberstadt and raced back down the steps to the car. He did not look back as they sped out through the park, toward Berlin.
Freddy was brimming with excitement on the trip home. He turned his head frequently to catch a glimpse of the Vermeer on the back seat, and chatted loquaciously. “If I am correct, even our wise friend Ernst does not know how valuable this painting really is. I believe that the Woman with a Pearl Necklace is the first in a series of five canvases Vermeer painted in this same room, this same corner, with the same young lady, most often in her glorious gold robe. The action from picture to picture tells a story, for sure, but on a deeper level may even hint at political and social developments in Holland at the time. I’m working on a theory right now.”
The car was waved through a roadblock and Freddy continued.
“In the other paintings, our lady is involved in seemingly domestic occupations. But in ours she is preoccupied, not really paying attention to the necklace at her throat. It’s the window that draws our attention, and hers, especially the light from outside. In fact, King Louis XIV of France had at that very time marched on Spanish Holland and the country was in turmoil. The letters our lady is seen writing in the other paintings may well have something to do with that, some sort of espionage. And in our painting there is no map on the wall. In Woman Playing a Lute Near a Window, for example, that same wall holds a huge map of Western Europe.
“Look at these,” he said, fishing several sheets of folded paper from his breast pocket, reproductions of paintings. He tossed them onto Teo’s lap. “Woman Playing a Lute Near a Window, Lady Writing a Letter, Lady with Her Maidservant, The Guitar Player. And now our lady of the pearl necklace. How grand to have found the fifth and last, or rather first, in the set. Do you see, Teo, do you see?”
Teo scrutinized them, then looked to Freddy’s new painting on the back seat for some clues.
It was the same woman in each, indeed, in the same buttery cloak. Sometimes she wore her hair in ribbons, sometimes in long curls. Mostly she looked to the left—out a window, at her maid, at someone outside the frame of the painting—but once, taking a break from writing, she gazed directly at the painter with a small smile of recognition. Maybe even complicity.
Teo, however, was not interested in Freddy’s theory. In fact, since leaving Halberstadt, only one question had been on his mind. So when, on a particularly dangerous curve that shut Freddy up for a moment and forced him to drive with caution—more for Messieurs Vermeer, Degas and Monet than for their own safety, he knew—Teo turned in his seat to face Freddy and asked, “Were those diamonds real?”
Freddy frowned, and Teo noticed his knuckles, strained and white, on the steering wheel. Then suddenly a pleasant smile spread across his face and he reached to stroke Teo’s cheek. Teo turned his head before Freddy’s hand could touch him, swinging around in his seat to face the side window.
Later that evening, as Freddy lay deeply sleeping and Teo sat up in bed watching the pearl lady on her easel, Ernst Halberstadt, age fifty-six, art collector and lifelong bachelor, last in a line of four hundred years of German Jews, including a brother killed in the Emperor’s service in the Great War, was stopped at Eisleben, not one hundred kilometers from his home on the Havel, and was divested of his diamonds, his tickets, his documents, his hat, his shoes and his clothes, then shot in the back of the head and hurled into a shallow grave with four other hapless travelers.