“There is much to do here,” she said, gesturing to the painting on the easel.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. Don’t get comfortable just yet.” Edith watched Herr Buchner pull a file from under his arm and place it on the worktable. “I’ll get straight to the point, Edith. You have new orders.”
“New orders?”
Edith’s shoulders fell. All the wind went out of her lungs and she dropped down in the chair, feeling it spin around until she felt dizzy.
Part VI
Recollection
78
Dominic
Munich, Germany
May 1945
THE WAR WAS ALL BUT OVER, BUT DOMINIC’S HEART WAS heavy. He was not going home. He was only reassigned.
Dominic’s footsteps were slow and shuffling as he followed a British officer around the Allies’ newest Central Collecting Point. The building was massive. Its rows of doors stood between vaulted pillars, frowning down on the street with its high window ledges like disapproving brows. Brooding right at the center of Munich, the building loomed over the road, its shadow wrapping Dominic in a chilly embrace in the still-crisp spring morning.
Dominic followed the officer around the building’s façade, learning the locations of all the locks and exterior doors, windows, and fire escapes. He’d already been briefed on the building’s extensive alarm system. He walked along the street with his hands pressed deeply in his pockets, still feeling awkward and lopsided without his rifle; but there was no more need to carry a gun on the streets of the Allied-controlled Munich.
In exchange for turning over information about a priceless painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Dominic had been rewarded with a job at the Munich Collecting Point, where works of art would be cataloged, conserved, and eventually returned to their owners. He was a hero, Stout had told him, though Dominic could hardly imagine why. Just lucky, he thought, to run into that lady on a hilltop with his fly open.
Dominic followed the officer from door to door, listening to his explanations in round tones that spoke of English hills.
“And now you have heard everything about the outside,” said the officer as they finished their circuit of the building and reached the front door again. He grinned at Dominic. “The boring part is done. Now let’s take you inside so you can see what you’re really here for.”
Dominic dredged up a smile. “Yes, sir.”
Guards saluted them as they walked down the hallways into the voluminous front room. The officer walked briskly, talking excitedly about the art that was being unloaded inside the Collecting Point, but Dominic found himself only half listening.
He knew he should be excited to be working here. Not only had he been taken out of the fighting—and not assigned to the heart-wrenching task of cleaning out the concentration camps—he also got to work with some of the priceless masterpieces that had been collected from hiding places throughout Germany and Austria. He might even get a chance to take a second look at some of those glittering paintings that he had glimpsed only fleetingly as they were passed up into other hands, and into a line of armored vehicles back at the mine in Siegen.
But Dominic was struggling to find enthusiasm for the project. Much as he loved being around the art, he had hoped with everything in him that his performance in helping to retrieve some highly precious work—paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, and even da Vinci—from the home of one of the most wanted Nazi leaders would be enough for his superiors. He had hoped it would be enough to send him home at last. He had seen so many stunning masterpieces and he had loved them all, but none of them could begin to compare to the hope of returning to his family.
The front room of the Central Collecting Point was similar to the one at Marburg; desks in orderly rows across the floor, professionals busy photographing and cataloging the pieces that were carried up from loading docks by American, Australian, and British soldiers. “We can’t keep up,” said the officer. “We’ve been calling in more and more staff to help. The stuff just keeps coming in from all corners of Europe. The scale of the Nazi confiscation is mind-boggling.”
In Munich, Dominic sensed a change in the atmosphere compared to Marburg. Then, there had been a feeling of desperation; every piece of art had been handled nervously, with respect to the blood that had been shed to find it, and with horror at the thought that this might all be in vain. At any moment an Axis bomb could have come down on the building in Marburg and destroyed all their hard work. But now that the war was won, the entire building buzzed with excitement; new hope filled the eyes of the professionals as they photographed and wrote. They touched the art with reverence and joy, taking in the beauty of every piece.
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” said the officer. “Come on, let’s have a walk through the storerooms.”
The rooms here had a more permanent feel than the slapdash setup at Marburg. Everything felt more settled, more organized. And though this building was easily twice the size of the old state archive at Marburg, it was even fuller. Room after giant room opened off the corridors, all stacked high with beautiful artwork, neatly arranged in various categories. Paintings hung on walls or stood on easels instead of being stacked on top of each other; some effort had been made to arrange the sculptures on the shelves in an eye-catching manner.
“Hard to believe it’s all in this building, eh?” said the officer.
“Why is that, sir?” said Dominic.
“Because these were Hitler’s own Nazi headquarters.” He shuddered, his eyes far away, and Dominic wondered what he had seen. For Dominic, the very mention of the name Hitler brought back the vivid image of those boxcars at Dachau, piled high with the dead. It was an image that he knew he would take to the grave with him, as vivid—down to the smell and the sound of the soldiers’ screaming—as it had been the day he had witnessed the hellish sight.
“Well,” said the officer, straightening, “now it’s where we sort the art they stole and give it back to the people who rightfully deserve it.” He found his smile again. “Come on, I want to show you an old friend of yours.”
Curious, Dominic followed the officer upstairs into a huge, square room that would have been stark and sad if its walls had not been hung with beautiful paintings in gilded frames. There was only one window—a stern, rectangular affair facing west, letting in a square of grayish light—but it was enough to illuminate the portraits that lined every wall. Skillfully depicted faces stared out at Dominic in a variety of attitudes; reclining, fighting, posing, frowning, smiling, and laughing.
But it was the portrait at the center of the room that immediately commanded his attention. The soft eyes of the girl so skillfully portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci stared past him, the placement of the painting on an easel in the middle of the floor making her even more striking. Among the other works by grand masters, somehow this girl still stood out, her beauty ringing down through the centuries to seize Dominic’s heart.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “It’s her.”
The officer laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it. Duty starts tomorrow morning. Until then, enjoy yourself.” Before Dominic could thank him, the officer was gone and Dominic was left once again to gaze into the eyes of Cecilia Gallerani.