Authors: Dayna Rubin
Dauphine had unlocked the door, but stopped when she realized that what he had just said was exactly what she had been thinking. An involuntary chill coursed through her.
“Okay.” Dauphine didn’t doubt he would perform the task any differently than he had just stated.
Finding the painting unharmed, Dauphine saw the alarm was signaling an increase in temperature of the system to warning level.
Dauphine flipped a couple of switches to cool the system, removed the painting from its enclosure, then carefully brought it to the counter, which lined one side of the room under a bank of cabinets used for storage.
“It’s Skippy.”
Dauphine glanced up at him, after placing the painting on the counter, somewhat unsure of him, but sensed he wasn’t going to be a threat or any danger to her.
“You were wondering what my name is. Thanks for trusting me. I have to go now.” Skippy left, and gave a little hop just as he approached the door.
Collapsing to the right of the painting, Dauphine laid her head over her folded arms on top of the counter. It always freaked her out when he did that. He was assigned to ‘Special Projects’, but nobody knew what those were, or if they did, they didn’t speak of it.
Turning her head sideways on the counter, she could view the painting with all of its individual brush strokes. She imagined its creation, and its narrow escape from the fire. She wondered if the painting was saved by someone who loved art, or maybe by a group from the French Resistance, or maybe even by a German officer set on keeping it for himself.
How had Natanya come by it, had she and her family kept it hidden all this time, only to sneak it back into the world anonymously? But why?
Dauphine couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and finally, giving in to the temptation of sleep, she closed them.
Chapter Seventeen
Tragedy, Ecstasy and Discovery
Warren said to Natanya, “Before I was asked to leave, I found that an Old Master had been forged over another work thought to have been purposefully destroyed during the war by the Nazis. It was incredible!” Warren’s hands were extended to the sky as he finished his statement.
“What was the Old Master, I mean who was the artist and what was the title?” Natanya asked hesitantly.
“Do you really have to ask? It was Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance. It was painted, or should I say, you painted over Van Gogh’s Painter on the Road to Tarascon. A painting thought to have been destroyed during one of the ‘degenerate’ bonfires in WWII.”
“I know, that’s what I heard…”
“Dauphine must have told you that we found it.” Warren stated.
“Yes, she told me… What do you think the Board of the National Gallery is trying to accomplish by hiding these findings?” Natanya asked Warren.
“I don’t know, but after they realize they don’t have the real Vermeer, the fake Vermeer, or the Van Gogh, there’s going to be a huge problem.” Warren walked steadily along between the buildings until he found a restaurant they could slip into through the back alley.
“Natanya, how did you end up with the Van Gogh?” Warren asked.
“I didn’t know I had it…well, that’s not entirely true, I have a few dozen canvases, but they’re all either partially painted on, or they are blank, just like that one, so your discovery is amazing to me as well.”
“I don’t understand…how would you have received any of the canvases of Vincent Van Gogh?” Warren asked as he led them into the large walk-in pantry behind the kitchen.
“There were over a thousand canvases by Van Gogh that were thrown out even before the war, I believe it was estimated that there were as many as fifteen hundred that were thrown out. Some had partial or complete paintings, some didn’t. During the second World War, they were turned in for a loaf of bread or some soup. They were considered nearly worthless except by a few astute art connoisseurs like my Aunt, and many of the Resistance.”
“Do you realize the importance of this finding? You could have even more of Van Gogh’s paintings within those canvases. This is monumental! We need to find a way to get back to your…place, and pick up the rest of the canvases.” Warren declared.
“We can’t do that. Our apartment is filled with police,” interjected Philippe.
“I see…but there must be a way-”
“What did you end up doing…I mean, did you find any others and clean them?” Natanya interrupted.
“Yes, we had been able to clean many of the Old Masters, revealing their original illustrious colors with…”
“How many?” Natanya asked, becoming agitated as she began pacing in the small space.
“Does it matter? Our discovery is huge! If you hadn’t used that canvas to…”
“That’s not it, there were more.” Natanya said as she continued to pace.
“What do you mean? What does she mean?” Warren addressed Philippe and Pascal who were leaning against the steel shelves within the pantry.
“Were…you said were.” Warren said excitedly.
“Yes, they saved, I mean the Resistance saved Impressionist paintings along with other ‘degenerate’ works by painting copies of Old Masters on top of them. What I did wasn’t anything new.”
“Okay, so what you’re saying is that by cleaning these Masterpieces…ahh, I don’t know what you’re implying.” Warren raised his hands then dropped them to his side.
Natanya stopped pacing and stood before Warren. “What we and others like me did was to paint encrypted passages on the forgery to trace the placement of another picture, the original Old Master.”
Warren finally grasped what she was saying, “And they saved the Impressionist or ‘degenerate’ work as well as an Old Master in the process.”
“Yes, they saved other pieces as well. Sighing, she watched a mix of anguish and disappointment flit across Warren’s face.
Warren kicked a line of garbage cans stacked neatly along the wall. “So, the original Old Master is completely and totally lost since I may have possibly removed the painted symbols, is that what you’re saying?”
Warren began pacing within the confined area of the pantry and storeroom of the kitchen.
“Show him the album, Nat,” Philippe whispered as he handed her the album, then he plucked a toothpick out of an open box lying on the open mesh steel shelving unit as he waited for her take the album from him.
“Mr. Panetiere?” Natanya approached him tentatively once he had stopped pacing. He stood still, facing the wall, leaning on it with one hand. Natanya tapped on his shoulder, then showed him the album after he turned around.
Taking the album from Natanya’s extended hand, Warren asked, “What’s this?”
“These are photographs of the Old Masters, Impressionist and degenerate paintings encoded with symbols to save them during World War II.” Natanya said solemnly.
Warren was mystified by what she was telling him. “Explain what you mean by encoded.”
Natanya swallowed hard, and pushed back her fear of revealing her secrets. “There are symbols within the paintings, which were added afterward to give the celestial coordinates of where the original paintings were hidden along with changes within the signature depicting ownership.”
“Would that mean that all the pictures of paintings that had been forged or copied are contained within this album?” Warren asked.
“Not necessarily. There wasn’t always time. In some cases, they just marked the paintings.” Natanya explained.
Warren looked sideways at Philippe while Natanya spoke, who seemed very nonchalant about the entire situation. “What happened to your face?”
Philippe shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, propped himself up by placing his right foot behind him against the wall, “What do you think? I connected with some unsavory characters who are going to sell that Vermeer for millions of dollars. They’re working with the family of one of the most notorious dealers within the Third Reich. They didn’t want me to know who they were, but they wanted me to know who they were, if you get my meaning.”
“Which dealer?”
“Kajetan Muehlmann.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Does my face look like they were just joking around?”
Not ready to redirect his questions from his main source, Warren turned his focus back to Natanya, “Besides saving the pictures, you’ve indicated they used an identifying mark. You need to explain that to me.”
“All right, I can see how this is coming as a big surprise to you. Under the law of the Torah, a Jewish individual must give their property an identifying mark in order to have it returned. The relationship between a Jewish individual and his own property is to be honored under all circumstances. This identifying mark is called the Mark of Siman, which invokes Hashovas Aveidah or its literal translation ‘All is Not Lost’.”
Warren opened the catalogue, finding the handmade envelopes containing multiple photographs in each. Warren asked as he sifted through the contents, “If you knew all this time, why didn’t you come forward?”
Natanya replied, “The album was lost and without it there’s no proof. This album is what we received in exchange for the original Vermeer. You’ve seen what happened when you started asking questions and making problems for the gallery. I’m not sure how many others know there were fakes created for the purpose of deceiving the Nazis, but I do know that most of them are still being shown as originals in museums, galleries, and private homes. There’s a big coverup about it and I don’t know why.”
“Open the catalogued grouping of pictures within the album, and further to the back, you should see the section for Vermeer. Extract the first photograph. What do you see?” Natanya asked.
“It’s the Saint Praxidus by Vermeer, and I don’t see anything unusual about it at all. It looks just as it should look.” Warren handed Natanya the photograph.
Natanya gently took the photograph offered to her. “I’ll need more tools to find all the embedded codes, but I think I can decipher a few for now.”
“You had said something about the signature. The signature is or has always been strange, and no one has been able to give an explanation that truly makes sense. This is the copy by Vermeer that materialized in 1962.” Warren stated.
“You do realize the one on display is a copy, and there is another that is actually the original? The signature is letting us know the code used is from the Hebrew Alphabet, and not the Phoenician.”
“Some of them are inscribed using the Phoenician alphabet?” asked Pascal. “How do you know which one is being used?”
“A symbol depicting the Hebrew alphabet will be placed within the signature. The Hebrew word for letter is ‘ot’ and it means sign or wonder, pointing to the wonderful truths about life.”
Natanya begrudgingly answered Pascal, annoyed with him for a myriad of reasons; the first being he could be down right annoying, the second being, she did not wish to be distracted. “The Hebrew alphabet is read from right to left…I see the two lower case letter o’s which mean ultimate support, and since there are two, they may mean a doubling has taken place. The cross had been added within the closed hand and she was given a receding hairline…hmmm.”
Philippe leaned casually against the shelves of the storeroom, plucked another toothpick from the open box and played with it between his teeth, jumping it from one side and back to the other.
Warren cast a disdainful look in his direction, while Natanya continued to hold the picture up to the light.
“Closed hands, a cross, receding hairline…the cross is the last letter of the alphabet or tav, which is the 22
nd
letter proclaiming ownership, and the closed hand is the tenth letter, but we have the doubled lower case o, and of course the receding hairline.” Natanya slid down the wall holding the photograph. “It’s either 22 and a 10 multiplied by 2 or maybe it’s 10 divided by two….but it’s two individual digits because of the double o’s.” Natanya worked the problem aloud.
“It’s 55,” declared Pascal. “You’re clue is the receding hairline which means to reduce not divide. It’s two fives or 55.”
“He’s right. The celestial coordinates would be 22 degrees East by 55 degrees North.” Natanya stood up alongside the wall.
“The original is located there? These celestial coordinates somehow indicate where this particular painting was hidden?” Warren asked, unsure of what he was hearing.
“Yes.” Natanya began to say, but Pascal interrupted.
“It’s in Russia, according to my GPS, something they didn’t have back then, and it is, ahh give or take a few miles, at the Ragnit Castle. This is what it looks like.” Pascal passed his cell phone to Warren who looked him over quizzically, then accepted the offered phone.
Entranced by what he was seeing, Warren scrolled through all of the views, “The coordinates given are indeed in Russia.” Warren stated in amazement. “Here it is, the views from that spot…East, West, North, South, then back to the castle, which is just as Pascal had said. It’s not precisely within the coordinates, but understandably so because of the rotation of the Earth’s axis or Right Ascension, and the Epoch.”
“What is the Epoch,” Philippe inquired.
“An Epoch signifies a moment in time. A measurement using the Celestial Coordinates within different time periods must be rotated to match a common Epoch. During WWII, the Besselian system was in use, and was much more complicated to compute. Currently, we use the Julian system when measured out for January 1, 2000, it would be J2000.0.” Warren explained.
“Well, I’m certainly glad that was so easily explained, and found. Unfortunately, we’re not going to be quite so lucky with all of them,” Natanya said, grabbing a toothpick herself.
“What do you mean?” asked everyone in unison.
“This is going to be much harder to explain, but I’ll try. During the war, an individual by the name of Benoit Mandelbrot, a Polish refugee who had been attending college studying a specific type of mathematics in France, was forced into hiding. He had a talent that no one was able to foresee, and it turned out to be very useful. Initially, he was a messenger, but because so many of the notes intended for the French Resistance fell into the hands of the Germans, he began encrypting the notes, and showing others how to decipher them. This took on larger proportions when one of the degenerate artists had the idea to paint copies of Old Masters, the most valued paintings of the Third Reich, then sell them to the Fuhrer for inflated prices. In some cases, the Resistance would leave them for the Nazis to confiscate, believing that they had acquired something of value, when in fact, they had nothing more than a cheap imitation.”
“I don’t understand how this is different from the painting you just deciphered.” Warren said.
“Benoit was studying the exploration of geometric forms which compute into mathematical equations. He was studying the findings by Gaston Julia at the time, when it occurred to him that these very things, Fractals, could be used within the paintings themselves.”
“How so?” asked Pascal.
“A visual pattern is created by beauty and power within an image, showing the correlation to mathematics. These patterns create links between mathematical formulas. These links illustrate an equation describing a surface with one local maximum or peak, the scale and viewpoint reveals the property of the number. Fractals are codes that can actually generate pictures, or visa versa; the picture can generate a code, which is a Fractal.”