Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kristina

Paris, June 1946

‘Take your time, Madame Bergeret,’ Georges told Kristina as they stood in the anteroom in the Palais de Justice looking at two masterpieces claimed to be by two of the world’s greatest artists – Botticelli’s beautiful Flora and Rembrandt’s moving portrait of his wife, Saskia – but which Serge Lavertu was adamant had been painted by her.

Eve was with them. While the young woman wasn’t exactly wringing her hands, her desperation was palpable. But Kristina was not so much trying to remember painting the works, as to actually make herself believe such a thing was possible. Because even if she had copied each of Botticelli’s and Rembrandt’s brushstrokes to perfection, the paintings before her had none of the flatness of imitation. And they were vastly different from one another: Botticelli painted for the flamboyant Medicis and the Catholic church with its pomp and colour. Rembrandt’s patrons were sombre protestants and his dark colours reflected that. Yet the paintings shimmered with life, as if they had each been animated by the soul of their creator.

More than a year had passed since Kristina had been rescued from the concentration camp. Docteur Gabriel had told her that most improvements in amnesia were seen in the first months after the incident that caused them. ‘After that,’ he explained, ‘further recovery is unlikely.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, as if she might be able to force herself to have a seizure. Perhaps an out-of-body experience would allow her to travel back to the past. But she couldn’t conjure up such a condition; they happened spontaneously and she wasn’t a magician.

She studied the paintings again – this time with an art critic’s eye. She remembered that Botticelli sometimes placed himself in a work, as he did in Adoration of the Magi . But Flora was not her, nor were any of the nymphs. Rembrandt’s Saskia was most certainly his wife. The paintings were both rich with blooms and she looked for an image of herself hidden among the petals, but found none.

The awful burden of having a man’s life dependent on her memory weighed on her again and she could feel herself begin to panic. But before the terror reached a crescendo, another sensation took over. She was somewhere else, no longer in the anteroom and no longer with Georges and Eve.

She was standing at the bottom of the staircase at the Villa des Cygnes, and the pretty dark-haired girl she knew from Inès Bonne’s album to be Nadia was talking to her. If a forgery is so good that it can pass the most expert examination, doesn’t that mean it’s also a work of genius?

Kristina could hear Nadia’s voice clearly. She sensed her own feet on the tiled floor and the fabric of the clothes she was wearing against her skin. But more importantly, she could feel the bond between her and her daughter. It was an invisible thread that could not be broken.

What is this? she wondered. A hallucination? No, it was too real and vivid for that. It was a memory. The first one to appear out of the mist of everything that had happened between 1923 and 1945. It was only a flash – just seconds – yet she experienced it like a triumph and was hungry for more.

She turned to Georges and Eve. ‘Can I see Monsieur Lavertu... Serge, I mean?’

Eve and Georges exchanged a glance between them. They looked uneasy. It wasn’t until they went to Fresnes prison together that she understood why.

***

Kristina looked up from the enclosed courtyard to the three levels of cells on either side. All those doors! she thought. Behind each one she sensed a soul. Someone with a story. Someone who was suffering. She felt their misery as acutely as if it was her own – the loss of freedom, the monotony, the starvation... the fear. Then she knew why it felt so familiar.

‘I was held here, wasn’t I?’ she asked the guard who was escorting them up to the second level. The air was so fusty she could hardly breathe. The place smelled like a sewer and they were all sweating. Then she recalled someone telling her that the prison was built over a swamp. But who was that? When was that?

The guard nodded grimly. ‘If you were a resister and you were sent to a concentration camp, it is possible you passed through here first to be interrogated. But there won’t be any record of it. The Germans burned the evidence of their atrocities before they left.’

He took them to an empty cell that was used as a conference room. It contained only a wooden table and chairs. Another memory sparked in Kristina’s brain. Uniforms. Germans. Flashes of light in her eyes. Docteur Gabriel had said that the loss of her memory might have been induced by trauma – a shutting out of something that was too horrific to remember. She realised that if she eventually remembered Serge and recalled the ‘time bomb’ she planted in the forged paintings, other nightmares might resurface. Would she be able to bear them?

‘Are you all right?’ Eve asked, squeezing her arm.

There was a jug of water on the table and Kristina was desperately thirsty. But no one drank from it. None of them could afford to get dysentery with the trial less than three weeks away.

Then a tall man was brought in by the guards. There were chains around his wrists and ankles. His clothes hung loosely, but he maintained an air of dignity about him despite his condition. He looked at Kristina with such feeling her heart nearly broke.

‘Kristina,’ he said tenderly.

He had the same expectation in his eyes that Inès Bonne did – waiting for her to do or say something – but what? She was not the Kristina he knew. She was a woman who went to sleep one night in 1923 and woke up in the future with no recollection of what happened in between.

‘Do you know who I am?’ the man asked.

‘Serge Lavertu.’

Her declaration cut the tension in the room, but she only knew it was Serge because of the photograph Inès had showed her. He sensed this and she saw it shocked him. Eve said she had warned him of her condition, but Kristina understood that it must be very difficult to comprehend. Yet he recovered himself and seemed intent on comforting her.

‘The self-portrait I bought at H?tel Drouot was very beautiful. I’m glad you are painting again.’

Somehow the idea that he bought her painting made her happy. ‘I’m sorry that I don’t remember you,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he replied.

Their eyes met and she understood. This man loved her. She wanted to be free from her mental prison as surely as he wished to be released from his physical one, but neither of them had the key. Tears welled in her eyes.

‘It’s all right, Kristina,’ he said. ‘I’m happy knowing that you’re safely home and that you are painting again. Better than ever.’

He tried to lift his hand to touch hers, but he couldn’t because of the chains. So she reached out to touch him. As she felt the warmth of him under her fingertips, a name suddenly came out of the mist of her mind. ‘Monsieur Lapin,’ she said.

His face instantly lit up and despite the dire circumstances, he laughed.

Eve piped up then. ‘Who is Monsieur Lapin? Kristina mumbled his name in her sleep the other night.’

Serge turned to her. ‘It was the nickname of a portrait she painted of me holding her pet rabbit. She did it during the war in the style of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine . The official title was Frenchman with a Rabbit , but we called it “Monsieur Lapin” for short. It was a joke between us, but she went to enormous lengths to pay tribute to da Vinci’s work. She even painted it with monocular perspective.’

‘Where is the painting now?’ Georges asked, suddenly animated. ‘We could use it to show that Madame Bergeret is capable of reproducing works from the Renaissance.’

‘It was probably stolen, like almost everything else in the villa,’ Kristina said. ‘My butler reported the theft to the Artistic Recovery Commission but only a few of my paintings have been returned and nothing like the one you are describing.’

Georges turned to Eve. ‘We must find that painting.’

The guard indicated that their time was up. As Serge was led away, a deep feeling welled in Kristina’s heart. She may not remember a thing about him, but she knew that she loved him as much as he loved her. She would not abandon him, no matter how difficult the trial got. She would go through any ordeal for him, as she believed he would for her.