فصل 39

florian

I sat in the corner, watching. They didn’t have much food, but what they had, they shared. The small boy discovered an old gramophone and dragged it across the floor. He found a single disc, a Swedish starlet named Zarah Leander singing “Davon geht die Welt nicht unter.” They played the record over and over. The squatty shoemaker made the giant woman dance with him. For his age, he was a good dancer, much better than she was.

I remembered dancing.

Dr. Lange had asked me to accompany his daughter to two balls. Unfortunately, I was a better dancer than she was and it made her angry. She was a selfish girl with a nose like a woodpecker.

The nurse walked over to me. “It’s only bean soup, but it’s warm.” She held out the cup.

“Give it to the girl,” I told her.

“She’s already had some. Take it, you’ll feel weaker tomorrow if you don’t eat something.”

I took the cup from her.

She sat down next to me, uninvited. “I’ve heard this song before. I know she’s singing in German, but I don’t completely understand the lyrics,” she said.

I spooned the warm soup into my mouth. “She’s saying it’s not the end of the world.”

The nurse folded her legs up under her skirt and rested her chin on her knees. “Well, that’s good to know. It’s nice to hear music. At the hospital, we sometimes played music for the patients. The soldiers loved the song ‘Lili Marleen.’” She looked at me. “Do you know it?”

“No,” I lied.

“It’s beautiful. It’s about a boy who longs to see his sweetheart.”

I wasn’t going to correct her, but the song was based on a poem written by a German soldier during the first war. The song was about him meeting his girl under a lamppost. Then he leaves for war. By lantern under a barricade he thinks of his Lili of the lamplight.

“So you like to dance,” she said. It was more of a comment than a question.

“Me? No.”

The shoemaker glided over to us. “Come, my dear Lithuanian, let us have a dance.” He extended his knobby hand to the nurse. “Do you understand what she is singing?”

“Of course.” She smiled. “She’s saying it’s not the end of the world.”

“Very good! Let us dance and celebrate. Tonight we sleep as aristocrats,” said the shoe poet.

“I doubt the aristocrats slept on the cold floor,” the nurse whispered to me before accepting Poet’s hand. I wanted to laugh, to keep talking with her, but instead I said nothing.

The shoemaker danced her around the room, holding her appropriately and closing his eyes. He had probably danced with a lot of pretty girls in his day. He seemed like a wise man, a kind man. I imagined he worked by oil lamp, cutting and sewing leather well into the night. He probably employed an apprentice and taught him an honest trade, unlike Dr. Lange, who had lured me with lies.

Lange must have considered me an easy target. I was so eager, captivated by all the old paintings, staring at them for days until they confessed their secrets to me. Dr. Lange taught me to carefully dissolve and remove discolored varnish. I studied pigments and tinting to match antique patinas. We spent months experimenting with the methods the old masters used to create real gesso. I learned quickly. I came to recognize all the crack patterns and each type of canvas and stretcher used by every school of art. Dr. Lange was impressed with how quickly I could detect a repainting, fake, or touch-up. My restoration work always passed, completely undetected.

“Stunning, Florian,” he would whisper over my shoulder. “You, my boy, are the Reich’s best-kept secret.”

My boy. My stomach turned with disgust. What an idiot I was. If I could detect a flawed painting so quickly, why had it taken me so long to see the truth about Dr. Lange?

The song ended and the nurse returned and sat down. I got up and carefully lifted my pack onto my shoulder. “I don’t suppose there’s a working commode?”

“You can leave your pack.” She looked at me, her brown eyes earnest. “No one will take it.”

I would not leave my pack. Ever. It had my supplies, my notebook, my future, my revenge. I walked across the stone floor, away from her. As I neared the tall doorway, the shoe poet raised his hand to stop me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He stared at me and then looked down at my boots. “The shoes tell the story,” he whispered.

My heel. He had heard the hollow in my step as I walked across the room.

He knew.