“Completely false,” Stossel assured her concerning the allegations against Haber, the details of which she did not want to hear. Too much knowledge, she had learned, is dangerous. Amina is unsure exactly why she accepts these risks. Perhaps as a penance for her disloyalty in hiding the Schriebergs, or maybe out of altruistic concern for the hunted, regardless of their crime, or their innocence. Perhaps for the thrill that comes from knowing secrets of life and death that induce the capitulation of those desperate to keep them concealed. Whatever the reasons, and she spends little time on their identification, she convinces herself that given the opportunity to do it all over, she would permit the Gestapo to load the Schriebergs onto the train-and the Nazi hunters to take the Habers to Nuremberg and hang them. But she does not have it to do over.
Neither Hanz Stossel nor Amina Rabun consulted Herr Haber in choosing his new identity; she simply told Albrecht Bosch what to print on the false passport and he did exactly that, without question, in exchange for her indulgence of his expensive appetite for more sophisticated printing equipment and additions to his typeface collections. Amina had not given birth to a child nor ever would, so she took great pleasure in bestowing new identities on the people who came briefly under her care. Gerry Hanson was a nice name, she thought, faithful at least to the first consonant and vowel of the original. And completely inconspicuous.
“Your passport, please,” she asks.
Hanson steps forward and presents the forgery. Amina opens it and examines the exit stamp from Buenos Aires, which appears over the talons and tail feathers of a perfectly reproduced American eagle that bears some resemblance to Hanson himself. The document is flawless.
“Any difficulties?” she asks.
“Nein.”
Amina raises her eyebrows.
“Pardon me, none, thank you,” Hanson corrects himself.
Amina gestures toward a guest chair and directs the fan toward him not out of concern for his comfort but to disperse the offensive scent of his perspiring body, which has suddenly overtaken the office. This most male of odors arouses in Amina the jealousy of the man with the red insignia on his shoulder. He appears briefly in a corner of the office to confirm Amina’s fidelity, then returns quietly to his couch in the living room of her subconscious.
“What are the names and ages of your wife and children?”
Hanson tenses as if he has suddenly forgotten; his contrived calm is easily cracked by the mallet of another interrogation. “Bitte, sorry,” he says. “Hanna, age 39, Franz, age 15, Glenda, age 13, Claudia, 10.”
Amina writes these down. “Hanna?” she ponders. “Would she like Helen? Helen Hanson?”
Gerry Hanson hesitates a moment, then nods his assent.
“You’re sure? We could call her something else. You must be certain, the name cannot be changed.”
“Yes,” Hanson replies eagerly, not wanting to insult this woman who holds so much power over his and his family’s future. His face suggests he does not like the name, but Amina moves on.
“Very well then. And Franz…Franz becomes…Frank?”
“Good,” Haber says. He likes this selection much better. Amina writes it down.
“Glenda… Glenda…? Gladys?”
Haber’s smile sags momentarily but returns. “Yes, Gladys, she will like that.”
“And now Claudia… Oh yes, do you like Cathy?”
Haber brightens a bit more. “Very good. Yes, I like Cathy.”
Amina rewrites the new names on a fresh sheet of paper and calls for her secretary, who appears immediately with a steno pad. Amina is pleased by Alice’s efficiency in front of her guest. “Please take this to Albrecht in the print shop, and tell him these are the additions for the Hanson project. Tell him I need a rush. It must be completed this afternoon.” She does not explain the nature of the project, and Alice does not ask.
Hanson is unable to maintain eye contact with Amina. So close now to freedom, a new identity, and a new life in the United States for his family. He is embarrassed and worried. “Thank you,” he says. “Bitte.”
“Welcome,” Amina replies. For a very brief moment, she feels sorry for the man, but she quickly dismisses this sentimentality and reverts into the shell of Survivor Amina, who has counseled her so long now and who, with Vengeful Amina, has dominated almost to extinction Fearful Amina and Nurturing Amina. “You have something for me?” she asks impatiently.
“Yes, yes,” Hanson says, even more embarrassed now for not having offered first. He stands the cardboard cylinder on end, removes the cap, and extracts a long roll of dingy canvas, producing a cloud of black soot that settles evenly across Amina’s desk. Hanson apologizes for the mess as he unrolls the painting, which despite charred edges is in otherwise good condition. It depicts a funeral procession under gray winter skies, a coffin being carried through a snow-covered churchyard into the shattered ruins of a Gothic chapel. The nave and clerestory of the structure have crumbled, leaving only a broken facade and a few heavy limestone columns surrounding the altar. The name at the bottom right hand corner of the work is Caspar David Friedrich. Amina smiles. She has long admired the nineteenth-century romantics, but most especially Friedrich, who lived in Dresden. The private girls’ school Amina attended in Kamenz, only a few blocks away from the boys’ school in which Helmut was killed, saw to it, by Nazi decree, that she knew first and most about Germany’s own great artists.
“Where did you get it?” she asks.
Hanson hesitates, calculating whether to speak the truth, giving Amina another lever over his soul, or to lie. “It has been in my family,” he says, choosing his words carefully. His evasiveness reminds Amina of the accusations against Haber, and she decides not to press for more information.
“They say Friedrich was influenced by Runge, but I don’t see it in his work,” Amina says. “Do you?”
Hanson has no response to this. He knows nothing about Friedrich, Runge, or romanticism; he knows only that certain objects have great value, measured by what others will do to acquire them. Stossel confirmed by cable to Buenos Aires that Amina Rabun would produce five passports in exchange for the painting. That, then, fixed its value and ended Hanson’s concern for it.
“I trust you are satisfied,” he replies.
“Yes,” Amina says, more coldly now and in the manner with which she dispatched the newsprint salesman. She exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I’m sure Hanz told you I would require authentication. Someone from the Albright-Knox Museum will look at it this afternoon. Assuming there is no problem, you may return at four-thirty for your passports.”
Hanson looks at the painting and then back at Amina, forcing a smile from his lips.
“Yes, thank you,” he says, bowing his head slightly. He turns and walks out of the office. Amina closes the door behind him.
“Victim?” Elymas whispers.
I am seated between him and Luas, watching the presentation. Hanz Stossel stands at the center of the Urartu Chamber, presenting his former client. A shaft of light courses through him, carrying away the fragments of Amina Rabun’s life and splashing them into the room.
“Of what?” I respond, absorbed by the presentation.
Amina props the canvas up on her credenza, leaning books against the corners to keep it erect. She steps back to imagine how it will look when framed. From this perspective, taking more time to observe and admire, the mourners in the painting appear to her as her own family must have appeared when carrying Helmut to his tomb beneath the twisted girders and broken concrete of the memorial her father had assembled for him from the debris of his school.
“Victim of injustice,” Elymas says.
Amina wipes away tears as the memory of that terrible day envelopes her. She has been so consumed with the horror of Kamenz all these years that she has rarely thought of poor Helmut. She succumbs to the unanswerable guilt of such neglect, and of having named the press for her cousin, Bette, instead of her own brother or her own mother or father.