“Thanks be to God. Thanks be to you, my friends,” he said. “We have found them.”
52
Edith
Outside Puławy, Poland
April 1941
ONE EVENING, AFTER HANDING THE DAY’S INVENTORY over to the kitchen women, Edith felt an overwhelming need for a breath of fresh air. Behind her, she heard the officers’ laughter, their companionable banter at the table. Would they—and would she—ever make peace with what they were doing? And did they suspect her at all? Edith pulled her wool coat over her drab, wrinkled uniform and stepped outside.
In the moonlight, Edith could make out the silhouettes of the estate garden’s formal patterns and flower beds. A crisp layer of frost had settled over the surfaces. A Nazi flag so large it hardly seemed real stood quiet in the still air, its swastika hung from the eaves of the home and draped down two stories to the bench where Edith sat, watching her breath turn into a puff of vapor. She pulled her collar closer to her neck.
For nearly three months, Edith and Jakub had diligently copied the day’s inventories and transportation manifests, entrusting them to the hands of the kitchen women. Such a small act, Edith thought. Would it make a difference? If even one train car, one armored truck full of precious possessions and works of art was saved, Edith thought, then yes, it would be worth it. Edith thought of her father now, and his own small acts of resistance in the last war. With all her heart, Edith wished that she could talk to him, could tell him what she was doing, could ask for his counsel.
It had been so long without a word from her father or his nurse. Edith lowered her head to her knees, folding her arms around her head. She pressed her eyes into the sleeve of her coat and held her breath for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut against the emotion.
“Edith.”
Edith pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, as if she could push away the sting.
“Edith,” she heard again, a gentle voice.
She turned to see Franz, standing in his uniform, stark against the edge of the flag hanging from the villa’s façade. Even in the darkness, she could see that his cheeks were flushed in the icy air. He sat next to Edith on the bench and they both stared out into the black. Suddenly, she felt his broad hand on her shoulder. What was he doing? He knew she was engaged to be married. Was he so starved for female affection that he might try to kiss her anyway, to take advantage of the lonely isolation of this strange place, so far from home and everything they loved?
But when she turned to meet his gaze, she saw that his face was grim instead, his eyes bloodshot.
“There is news of your Heinrich.”
53
Dominic
Siegen, Germany
April 1945
THERE WAS SOMETHING SOOTHING AND FAMILIAR ABOUT the mines, Dominic thought, dank and pungent as they were. Fires built in the rooms brought warmth and light to the black tunnels. With the assurance that the fighting was over in their hometown, the refugees had started to venture into the early spring sunlight. A hint of joy seemed to come back with them, in the cleaner smell of their clothes, in the new color in their skin, and the glittering in their eyes. Or perhaps that was just hope: hope they were not all going to die down there in the mines.
But it was not the refugees that made Dominic feel at home in the mines. He stood guard over one of the many storerooms full of art they’d found, leaning comfortably against the wall as he cradled his rifle, knowing that it was unlikely he’d actually have to use it right now; he was protecting the treasures more from the refugees than from anything else. They were civilians, but they were humans, after all, and faced with the loss of everything they owned. Who could blame them for having sticky fingers, under the circumstances?
Apart from the bedraggled citizens they had found in the mine—people who were more than willing to help—they had to hire prisoners, too. Most had been arrested for petty theft and needed to be watched closely among the treasures, but the Allies had had no choice. There was too much to do. Days had already passed, and Dominic knew it could end up drawing out into weeks.
Siegen reminded him of the coal mines he’d spent all his working life in, back home in Pittsburgh. His work had been backbreaking and dirty, deep below the touch of the sun, but it had been good and hard and peaceful, and he missed it. He missed the camaraderie with the other miners and the knowledge that he was doing honest work to bring people something they needed. He missed having hard, calloused, tired hands that had chipped coal out of the earth to warm the homes of the people he cared about. Now those same hands had, for months, done little but kill.
But most of all, he missed his family. It had been nearly a year.
Footsteps in the storeroom behind him caught Dominic’s attention, and he hurried to open the door, holding it aside for the group of servicemen who carried a gigantic wooden crate between them. This was one of many rooms they’d discovered packed to the roof with works of art; Dominic spotted the label KÖLN stamped into the side of the crate as the men carried it past. They’d discovered pieces from so many museums in German cities secreted away here in the darkness. Cologne, yes, but also Essen, Munster—more than Dominic could keep track of. There were altarpieces, oil paintings, sculptures, gilded busts, all of them old and beyond pricing. Nearly forty boxes of documents and original musical scores had come from Beethoven’s house in Bonn. Dominic could only shake his head in wonder.
Hot on the heels of the men carrying the crate came other soldiers, these carrying individual oil paintings with great reverence. Dramatic war scenes, lush countryside, deep-eyed portraits wobbled past Dominic in the soldiers’ dirty hands, heading for the surface and transport to safehouses.
“Wait!” The other soldier who was guarding the door alongside Dominic reached out to stop a soldier carrying a painting past him. “Is that what I think it is?”
The round-faced man stared at the other serviceman. Dominic still did not speak to his comrades much, but he knew his fellow guard, George Weaver, was a Bostonian who had arrived on the Normandy beaches along with the hordes on that same fateful day as Dominic. “What do you think it is?” asked the other soldier.
“It is.” Weaver’s eyes lit up. He reached out with a reverent hand, almost touching the painting, but hesitating when his trembling fingertips were an inch away. “It’s a Rubens,” he breathed. “An original.”
Dominic studied the painting. It depicted a magnificent Madonna and child surrounded by saints, an image whose peace rang down through the centuries.
“Imagine!” said Weaver. “This painting stuck down here under the earth.”
“Well, it weighs a ton, so if you don’t mind,” snapped the other soldier. He shouldered past Weaver and headed for the surface, muttering grumpily.
Weaver’s enthusiasm remained unflagged. “Most people think of Rubens as Flemish,” Weaver said to Dominic, pointing at the ceiling of the mine, “but he was actually born right here in Siegen.”
As the masterpieces continued to parade by, Dominic recognized the mixture of wonder and dismay in Weaver’s face, remembering the day that knuckleheaded Kellermann had seized his sketch of Sally and mocked it in front of all the others. It was a lonely thing to be an art lover in a world of war.