Shadows in Paradise, Page 3

  The bronze had had the right feel in the shop; the contours and reliefs were sharp, which may have been the reason for the museum expert's opinion, but to me they did not seem new. When I closed my eyes and felt them slowly and carefully, I became more and more convinced that the piece was very old. I had seen a similar bronze in Brussels. At first the curator had taken it for a Tang or Ming copy. The Chinese had begun long ago—as early as the Han dynasty at the beginning of our era—to bury copies of Shang and Chou bronzes; the patina on these pieces was just about perfect, and it was very hard to identify them unless there were slight mistakes in the ornaments or defects in the casting.

  I put the bronze back on the window sill. From the court down below I could hear the metallic voices of the kitchen helpers, the clanking of garbage cans and the soft throaty bass voice of the Negro who was carrying them out The door opened, and the silhouette of the chambermaid appeared in the lighted rectangle. She stood there for a moment and then cried out in horror: "A dead man!"

  "Nonsense," I said. "I'm asleep. Close the door. My bed has already been turned down."

  "Don't tell me you're asleep. You're wide awake. And what's that?" She pointed at the bronze.

  "A green chamber pot," I said. "What did you think it was?"

  "What you won't think of next! But I won't empty it. You can do it yourself. Or you can just learn to use the toilet like everyone else."

  "I'll try."

  I lay down again and fell asleep in spite of myself. When I woke up, it was deep night. For a moment I didn't know where I was. Then I saw the bronze and almost thought I was back in the museum. I sat up and took a deep breath. I'm not in the museum, I said to myself inaudibly; I've escaped, I'm free, free, free. I said the word "free" over and over like an incantation, audibly now, in a fervent undertone, until I was calm again. I had often done this when I woke up in the course of my wanderings. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the bronze showed a faint trace of color and seemed suddenly to come alive. Not so much the form, as the patina. This patina was not dead; it was not laid on or produced artificially with acids; it had developed ever so slowly down, through the centuries. It came from the water in which the bronze had lain, from the minerals of the earth that had fused with it, and probably, along with the clear-blue stripe on the foot, from the phosphorus compounds produced hundreds of years before by the proximity of a corpse. This patina had the faint shimmer that the unpolished Chou bronzes in the museum derived from their porousness; it did not absorb the light, like an artificial patina, but reflected it, taking on the texture of coarse raw silk.

  I kept the bronze for two more days, then I went back to Second Avenue. This time I was received by the second Lowy brother, who resembled the first except that he was dressed more fashionably and seemed more sentimental— within the limits possible for an antique dealer.

  "So you've brought it back," he said, reaching for his billfold to return my twenty dollars.

  "It's authentic," I said

  He gave me a look of kindly amusement "It's been rejected by a museum."

  "I say it's authentic. I'm returning it to you so you can sell it."

  "But what about your money?"

  "You'll give it back to me with half the profit That was our agreement"

  The Lowy brother reached into his right-hand pocket took out a ten-dollar bill, kissed it, and put it into bis left-hand pocket. "What can I treat you to?" he asked.

  "You mean you believe me?" Lfelt Very pleased. Nobody had believed me in a long time.

  Lowy laughed. "Let me explain. I made a bet with my brother: two to one; five dollars for him if you brought the bronze back and said it was a fake, ten for me if you said it was authentic."

  "You seem to be the optimist in the family."

  "The professional optimist He's the professional pessimist That's our way of sharing the risks in these hard times. Nobody can afford to be both these days. How about a Kapuziner?"

  "Are you Viennese?"

  "Yes. Viennese-American. And you?"

  "Adoptive Viennese and citizen of the world."

  "Fine. Let's have a Kapuziner over at Emma's. The Americans are funny about coffee. They boil it to death or they make a whole day's supply in the morning. But Emma's different. She's a Czech."

  We crossed the roaring avenue. A Department of Sanitation truck passed, spraying water in all directions. A lavender vehicle rushing diapers to pampered mothers almost ran over us. Lowy saved himself with a graceful leap. I saw that he was wearing patent-leather shoes.

  "Aren't you and your brother twins?" I asked.

  "Yes, but we call ourselves Senior and Junior to make it easier for the customers. My brother is three hours older. That makes him an astrological twin, too—Gemini, don't you know. I'm Cancer."

  A week later the owner of the firm of Loo and Co., an expert on Chinese art, returned from a trip. He couldn't imagine why the museum had thought the piece was a forgery. "It's no masterpiece," he said, "but it's definitely a Chou bronze. Late Chou, transition to Han."

  "How much is it worth?" asked Lowy Senior.

  "It ought to bring four or five hundred at auction. Not much more. Chinese bronzes are cheap right now."

  "Why?"

  "Because everything's cheap. The war. And there aren't many collectors of Chinese bronzes. I can give you three hundred for it."

  Lowy shook his head. "Ill have to offer it back to the museum first."

  "Why should you?" I said. "It's half mine. You have no right."

  "Have you an agreement in writing?"

  I looked at him open-mouthed. He raised his hand. "Just a minute before you start yelling. Let this be a lesson to you. Always make your agreements in writing. I learned that the hard way myself. And now listen to me. I've got to offer it back to the museum because it's a small world— the New York art world, I mean. In a few weeks the story would get out. And we need the museum. Understand? I'll see that you get your share."

  "How much?"

  "A hundred."

  "And how much for you?"

  "Half of anything over that, Okay?"

  "It may be peanuts to you," I said. "But I risked half my fortune."

  Lowy Senior laughed, showing a mouthful of gold. "A crazy business," he said, "but I think I know how it happened. They've appointed a new curator. A young guy. He wanted to show that the old fogy he replaced didn't know his business, that he'd wasted the museum's money on forgeries."

  We finished our coffee in silence. I was still mulling over my wrongs. "Ill make you a proposition," he said finally. "We've got a cellar full of things that we don't know too much about We can't know everything. Suppose you look them over. We'll pay you ten dollars a day. Plus a bonus on everything we sell."

  "Is that compensation for the bronze deal?"

  "Partly. Of course it's only a temporary job. My brother and I can manage the usual business by ourselves. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said.

  "Fifty thousand to kill a man?" asked the elder Lowy, chewing furiously on his cigar. "In the First World War they did it for ten thousand."

  "People are cheaper in Germany," I said. "In the concentration camps they figured out that a young Jew in good condition is worm sixteen hundred twenty marks. They hire him out to German industry as a slave laborer for six marks a day. It costs the camp sixty pfennigs a day to feed him. Amortization of clothing comes to ten more. Average longevity: nine months. That brings the profit to something over fourteen hundred marks. Then there's what they call the rational processing of the remains: gold teeth and fillings, hair, personal apparel, money and valuables, minus two marks for the cost of cremation. The net profit comes to about sixteen hundred twenty marks. Allowing for children, the sick, and the aged, whom it costs approximately six marks to gas and cremate, it still averages out to twelve hundred marks."

  Lowy had gone deathly pale. "Is that true?"

  "Those are the figures drawn up by the competent German authorities. But they hav
e underestimated a little. Unforeseen complications. There's no difficulty about the killing. At that the Germans are world champions. Way ahead of the Russians, who are no slouches."

  "I know," said Lowy in an undertone. "Our allies, whom we supply with arms."

  "The trouble is getting rid of the bodies. It takes time for a body to burn. Burying it isn't so simple either, so many thousands of them—if you want to do a neat job. There's an acute shortage of crematoriums. And half the time they have to shut down at night on account of the bombers. Yes, the poor Germans are having a hard time. And all they wanted was peace."

  "What!"

  "That's right. If everybody had done what Hitler wanted, there wouldn't have been any war."

  "All right," Lowy growled "That's enough of your jokes" His red head drooped. "How can people do such things? Do you understand?"

  "No. But the men who give the orders usually think in abstractions. They don't see any blood. It all begins with a man sitting at a desk. He doesn't shoot, he's never seen a gas chamber, he just writes out orders." 'Lowy was very unhappy. I felt sorry for him, but I couldn't stop. "And there are always plenty of people willing to carry out orders —especially in Germany."

  "Even when it's cold-blooded murder?"

  "Especially when it's murder. Because an order from above frees a man from responsibility. He's free to act like the savage he is."

  Lowy ran his hands over his hair. "Have you seen those things."

  "Yes," I said. "I wish I hadnt"

  "And here we are," he said, "having a peaceful afternoon in a shop on Second Avenue. What do you think of that?"

  "I think it feels like peacetime," I said.

  "That's not what I meant I meant: how does it strike you that people just sit around with their hands folded when such things are going on?"

  "Who's sitting with folded hands? What about the war against Hitler? I admit the war doesn't seem very real to me. Real war is only in your own country. Anything else is unreal"

  "But people are being killed,"

  "We haven't imagination enough to count very high. Most of us can only count to one. Or maybe two."

  The shop door opened. A woman in a red dress wanted to buy a Persian silver cup. Could it be used as an ash tray? I took the opportunity to disappear into the cellar. I hated such conversations, which struck me as naïve and useless. Such conversations were for outsiders who thought they were doing something if they worked themselves up, for people who were not in danger. How deliriously cool the cellar was by comparison. Like a comfortable air-raid shelter. A collector's air-raid shelter. The roar of the traffic overhead was like the muffled sound of planes.

  It was late afternoon when I returned to the hotel. In a surge of simplehearted generosity, Lowy Senior had given me a fifty-dollar advance. He had instantly regretted it— that was obvious—but after that harrowing conversation he hadn't dared to ask for it back. So some good came of the conversation.

  Melikov wasn't there. But Lachmann was in the lobby, as usual agitated and perspiring. "Did it work?" I asked him.

  "Did what work?"

  "The water from Lourdes."

  "Lourdes? Who said anything about Lourdes? That water was from the Jordan. No, there hasn't been a miracle. But I'm getting ahead, yes, getting ahead. All the same, that woman is driving me crazy!"

  There was madness in his eyes. "If I don't get that woman soon, I'll go impotent. You know about my obsession. Those dreams have come back; I wake up screaming and bathed in sweat. Those thugs wanted to castrate me. Not with a knife. With scissors; And the way they laughed! If I don't get that woman soon, I'll dream that they succeeded. Terrible dreams. And so real. I jump out of my bed and I can still hear the laughter."

  "Get yourself a whore."

  "I can't do it with a whore. With whores I'm impotent already. Or with normal women. You see what they've done to me!"

  Suddenly Lachmann heard a sound. "There she comes! We're going to the Blue Ribbon. She likes Sauerbraten. Come along. Maybe you can put in a word for me. You talk so well."

  I heard the melodious voice on the stairs. "No time," I said. "But maybe she's as neurotic about her foot as you are about your limp."

  "Think so?" Lachmann had stood up. "Do you really think that might be it?"

  I had said that without thinking, just to comfort him. When I saw his excitement, I cursed my loose tongue, because I knew from Melikov that the woman slept with the Mexican. But it was too late to explain, and Lachmann had heard all he wanted. Already he was limping away.

  I went to my room but didn't turn on the light Some of the windows across the court were lighted; in one of the rooms a naked, hairy man was standing at the mirror, putting on make-up. When he had finished, he put on a pair of light-blue panties and a bra, which he filled out with toilet paper, so intent on what he was doing that he forgot to pull down the shade. I had seen him a few times in the lobby; a retiring sort when dressed as a man, rather noisy and bumptious in female attire. He had a weakness for evening gowns and big floppy hats. The police knew him and had him listed as incurable. I watched him for a while. Then, overcome with sadness, I went downstairs to wait for Melikov.

  IV

  Lachmann had given me Harry Kahn's address. His legendary feats were well known to me. He had turned up in southern France shortly after the Germans moved into the unoccupied zone. He called himself José Tegnèr, carried a Spanish diplomatic passport, and drove a car with a diplomatic license. He dressed like a dandy and was so shamelessly self-assured that even the refugees were taken in.

  He drove about the country making use of his usurped position to help his fellow refugees. He looked very Jewish, but that, as he airily explained, was common among the Spanish nobility. When stopped on the road, he flew into such a rage and became so haughtily abusive that the German patrols preferred to wash their hands of him: maybe he really was a Spanish vice-consul, and what a dressing-down they would get from their superiors then! Franco was known to be Hitler's friend, and this Senor Tegnèr was Hitler's friend's representative.

  He had connections with the underground Resistance. That was probably where he got his money, his car, and the gas to run it with. He transported leaflets and the first underground newspapers, little two-page pamphlets. Once, when his car was full of subversive literature, a German patrol wanted to search it Kahn shouted such dire threats that the patrol decamped on the double. But Kahn wasn't satisfied. After unloading his incriminating cargo, he called at the local German headquarters and fumed until the commanding officer apologized for the idiocy of his men. Kahn departed with the Falangist salute, to which the officer replied with a brisk "Heil Hitler!" Later in the day Kahn discovered that there were still two pamphlets in the car.

  Somehow Kahn came into possession of a few Spanish passports, which he used to save the lives of refugees who were personally wanted by the Gestapo. He managed to hide them in French monasteries until he could arrange for a guide to take them across the Pyrenees. He had saved two refugees, who were already under arrest, from being shipped back to Germany. In one case he had explained to a sergeant that Spain had a special interest in the prisoner, because his knowledge of languages fitted him for counter-espionage work in England; in the other he had plied the man's guards with rum and cognac and then threatened to report them for drinking on duty.

  Then one day Kahn disappeared from view, and all sorts of rumors cropped up. We all knew that this one-man campaign could end only in death. He had been getting more and more foolhardy, as though deliberately tempting fate. I myself felt sure that he had fallen into the hands of the S.S. And then I heard from Lachmann that he was alive in New York.

  I found him in a shop where President Roosevelt was making a speech over six radios at once. The noise was unbelievable. The shop door was open, and a large crowd had gathered on the sidewalk.

  Conversation was impossible; we would have had to shout. We ended up talking in sign language. He shrugged his shoulders apologetica
lly, pointed at the radios, then at the people outside, and smiled. I understood; he thought it was important for the people to listen to Roosevelt's speech. I sat down by the window, lit a cigarette and listened. I listened to the man who had made it possible for us to come to America.

  Kahn was short and slender, with black hair and large sparkling eyes. He was young, not over thirty. His thoughtful, sensitive face suggested a poet rather than the daredevil he was. But Rimbaud and Villon had also been poets; and it took a poet to conceive of exploits such as Kahn's.