"Then will you at least have a look at this?"
Without waiting for an answer, Gabriel pressed a photograph of the painting into her hands. For several seconds, Lena Herzfeld's face betrayed no emotion other than mild curiosity. Then, bit by bit, the ice began to crack, and tears spilled down both cheeks.
"Do you remember it now, Miss Herzfeld?"
"It's been a very long time, but, yes, I remember." She brushed a tear from her cheek. "Where did you get this?"
"Perhaps it would be better if we spoke inside."
"How did you find me?" she asked fearfully, her gaze still fixed on the photograph. "Who betrayed me?"
Gabriel felt as if a stone had been laid over his heart.
"No one betrayed you, Miss Herzfeld," he said softly. "We're friends. You can trust us."
"I learned when I was a child to trust no one." She looked up from the photograph. "What do you want from me?"
"Only your memory."
"It was a long time ago."
"Someone died because of this painting, Miss Herzfeld."
"Yes," she said. "I know."
She returned the photograph to Gabriel's hand. For an instant, he feared he had pushed too far. Then the door opened a few inches wider and Lena Herzfeld stepped to one side.
Treat her gently, Gabriel reminded himself. She's fragile. They're all a bit fragile.
17
AMSTERDAM
Gabriel knew the instant he entered Lena Herzfeld's house that she was suffering from a kind of madness. It was neat, orderly, and sterile, but a madness nonetheless. The first evidence of her disorder was the condition of her sitting room. Like most Dutch parlors, it had the compactness of a Vermeer. Yet through her industrious arrangement of the furnishings and careful choice of color—a glaring, clinical white—she had managed to avoid the impression of clutter or claustrophobia. There were no pieces of decorative glass, no bowls of hard candy, no mementos, and not a single photograph. It was as if Lena Herzfeld had been dropped into this place alone, without parentage, without ancestry, without a past. Her home was not truly a home, thought Gabriel, but a hospital ward into which she had checked herself for a permanent stay.
She insisted on making tea. It came, not surprisingly, in a white pot and was served in white cups. She insisted, too, that Gabriel and Chiara refer to her only as Lena. She explained that she had worked as a teacher at a state school and for thirty-seven years had been called only Miss Herzfeld by students and colleagues alike. Upon retirement, she had discovered that she wanted her given name back. Gabriel acceded to her wishes, though from time to time, out of courtesy or deference, he sought refuge behind the formality of her family name. When it came to identifying himself and the attractive young woman at his side, he decided it was not possible to reciprocate Lena Herzfeld's intimacy. And so he plucked an old alias from his pocket and concocted a hasty cover to go with it. Tonight he was Gideon Argov, employee of a small, privately funded organization that carried out investigations of financial and other property-related questions arising from the Holocaust. Given the sensitive nature of these investigations, and the security problems arising from them, it was not possible to go into greater detail.
"You're from Israel, Mr. Argov?"
"I was born there. I live mainly in Europe now."
"Where in Europe, Mr. Argov?"
"Given the nature of my work, my home is a suitcase."
"And your assistant?"
"We spend so much time together her husband is convinced we're lovers."
"Are you?"
"Lovers? No such luck, Miss Herzfeld."
"It's Lena, Mr. Argov. Please call me Lena."
The secrets of survivors are not easily surrendered. They are locked away behind barricaded doors and accessed at great risk to those who possess them. It meant the evening's proceedings would be an interrogation of sorts. Gabriel knew from experience that the surest route to failure was the application of too much pressure. He began with what appeared to be an offhand remark about how much the city had changed since his last visit. Lena Herzfeld responded by telling him about Amsterdam before the war.
Her ancestors had come to the Netherlands in the middle of the seventeenth century to escape the murderous pogroms being carried out by Cossacks in eastern Poland. While it was true that Holland was generally tolerant of the new arrivals, Jews were excluded from most segments of the Dutch economy and forced to become traders and merchants. The majority of Amsterdam's Jews were lower middle class and quite poor. The Herzfelds worked as peddlers and shopkeepers until the late nineteenth century, when Abraham Herzfeld entered the diamond trade. He passed the business on to his son, Jacob, who undertook a rapid and highly successful expansion. Jacob married a woman named Susannah Arons in 1927 and moved from a cramped apartment off the Jodenbreestraat to the grand house on Plantage Middenlaan. Four years later, Susannah gave birth to the couple's first child, Lena. Two years after that came another daughter, Rachel.
"While we regarded ourselves as Jews, we were rather well assimilated and not terribly religious. We lit candles on Shabbat but generally went to synagogue only on holidays. My father didn't wear a beard or a kippah, and our kitchen wasn't kosher. My sister and I attended an ordinary Dutch school. Many of our classmates didn't even realize we were Jewish. That was especially true of me. You see, Mr. Argov, when I was young, my hair was blond."
"And your sister?"
"She had brown eyes and beautiful dark hair. Like hers," she added, glancing at Chiara. "My sister and I could have been twins, except for the color of our hair and eyes."
Lena Herzfeld's face settled into an expression of bereavement. Gabriel was tempted to pursue the matter further. He knew, however, it would be a mistake. So instead he asked Lena Herzfeld to describe her family's home on Plantage Middenlaan.
"We were comfortable," she replied, seemingly grateful for the change of subject. "Some might say rich. But my father never liked to talk about money. He said it wasn't important. And, truthfully, he permitted himself only one luxury. My father adored paintings. Our house was filled with art."
"Do you remember the Rembrandt?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "It was my father's first major acquisition. He hung it in the drawing room. Every evening he would sit in his chair admiring it. My parents were devoted to each other, but my father loved that painting so much that sometimes my mother would pretend to be jealous." Lena Herzfeld gave a fleeting smile. "The painting made us all very happy. But not long after it entered our home, things started to go wrong in the world around us. Kristallnacht, Austria, Poland. Then, finally...us."
For many residents of Amsterdam, she continued, the German invasion of May 10, 1940, came as a shock, since Hitler had promised to spare Holland so long as it remained neutral. In the chaotic days that followed, the Herzfelds made a desperate bid to flee, first by boat, then by road to Belgium. They failed, of course, and by the night of the fifteenth, they were back in their home on Plantage Middenlaan.
"We were trapped," said Lena Herzfeld, "along with one hundred and forty thousand other Dutch Jews."
Unlike France and Belgium, which were placed under German military control, Hitler decided that the Netherlands would be run by a civilian administration. He gave the job to Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a fanatical anti-Semite who had presided over Austria after the Anschluss in 1938. Within days, the decrees began. At first, a benign-sounding order forbade Jews from serving as air-raid wardens. Then Jews were ordered to leave The Hague, Holland's capital, and to move from sensitive coastal areas. In September, all Jewish newspapers were banned. In November, all Jews employed by the Dutch civil service, including those who worked in the educational and telephone systems, were summarily dismissed. Then, in January 1941, came the most ominous Nazi decree to date. All Jews residing in Holland were given four weeks to register with the Dutch census office. Those who refused were threatened with prison and faced confiscation of their property.