Neil Olson - The Icon

“You only conjecture that it’s stolen.”

“No,” the old man countered instantly, then seemed to restrain himself. “You must have seen documents from the lawyer. What do they say of its provenance?”

“It’s more or less in line with the work you and I have discussed.”

“The Holy Mother of Katarini.”

“They don’t use that name, but it’s an obvious match. Preiconoclastic, original source unknown. The last few centuries in a church in Epiros.”

“And how did it come to be in Kessler’s possession?”

“He claimed to have purchased it from a fellow Swiss businessman.”

“So that fellow is the thief. Or the one before him. What does it matter? Somewhere along the line it was stolen. What Greek would have willingly parted with it?”

“Maybe one who needed money after the war.”

“It was taken during the war, I tell you. The Germans took it with them when they left.”

Now we’ve arrived at it, Matthew thought. His godfather had been hinting about something for weeks.

“How do you know that?”

Fotis sighed, smoothing his hands out across his gray pleated pants.

“Very well. Very well, I told you I had seen the work before.”

“Yes. That’s how we got talking about it in the first place.”

“I didn’t tell you everything. It was during the war that I saw it, in that church in your grandfather’s village. It was your Papou, in fact, who arranged for me to see it. I have never forgotten that time. Less than an hour, but I was completely possessed by its beauty, by the power emanating from within it. You know I was with the guerrillas. I was in charge of the resistance in that area, and I sent a man to get the icon from that church. Before the Germans took it, or burned the place without knowing what it was. They burned so many villages, churches and all.”

The old man paused, lost in a vision of houses aflame. Matthew watched the men who watched the birds. He sensed that this story would end up troubling him, and not just because the museum would never touch stolen work. The information, which he was hungry to learn, would come at the price of his neutrality. Every word got him deeper into whatever it was his godfather had planned. Yet how could he resist? These old guys gave up their secrets so infrequently.

“What happened?”

“Yes, what. I’m still not sure. The man I sent was my best man. To Fithee we called him. We all went by different names, so the Germans could not get information about our brothers, or our families. It must sound foolish to you now.”

“To Fithee. The serpent.”

“The Snake, if you like. Because he was so good at slipping into and out of places. And for other reasons. He had his own ideas of how best to do things, but I trusted him.”

“And he failed.”

“No, he succeeded. Too well. He understood the icon’s value even better than I did, and he decided to take it at all costs.” Fotis wet his lips with his tongue. “He killed a priest.”

Matthew sat back on the bench. This was uglier than he would have guessed.

“Why?”

“I speak too quickly. I do not know for certain that he did it. The priest intervened somehow, and he died.”

“What happened to the icon?”

“The church was burned, by the Germans, I think, though he might have done that also. At the time, I assumed the icon burned with it. Later I learned that my man had given it to a German officer.”

“Given it?”

“Traded it, for guns and ammunition. To fight the communists. Once we knew the Germans were beaten, that became the priority. So you see, he was not being a thief, but a patriot. For all I know, he was under orders from someone above me.”

Matthew tapped his feet to drive out the chill, as well as quell his agitation. The icon was suddenly marred, as if blood had been flicked across its surface. He would not be able to see it in the same way. Fotis seemed to read his thoughts.

“Many have killed for this work, and others like it, over the years. It should not surprise you, my boy. Or are you shocked to find blood on your godfather’s hands?”

“You didn’t send him to kill the priest.”

“No. But I commanded him, controlled him, I thought. He had his own game; everyone did. It’s a sad story. I am sorry to upset you. You would like to see the work in a purely artistic way, but since you are a kind of historian, I thought you should know.”

“This wasn’t a history lesson. You were talking about the Greek church, remember?”

“Indeed. My only point was this. We’ve discussed the minor importance the work would have to your museum. You know, or you should know, the value the icon had, not only as a source of faith, but as a source of healing, in the old country. This would seem to me sufficient reason to return it there. If not, well, then you have my sorry tale of its theft, and at what cost in blood. Can there be any doubt after that as to what the correct course should be?”

“So you want me to tell Ms. Kessler to donate the work to the Greek church?”

Fotis’ eyes widened. “I see, you are afraid of defrauding her. No, the church is quite willing to pay. Of course, they might win the work in a lawsuit, but proving the theft and tracing the crooked path of ownership could take years, and cost as much in lawyers as it would take to buy the piece in the first place. They will make her an offer, perhaps not as much as she wants, but a fair offer, I have no doubt. And she is rich, so I would not be overly concerned about that.”

“But you want me to talk her into it.”

“To advise her, let her know your own heart on the matter. The rest will follow.”

Matthew rose slowly, resisting the urge to swear, kick the bench, simply walk away. Instead he just stood there beside the shrunken old man.

“What are you up to?”

“What have I to do with it, my child? The situation is what it is. Fate chooses her own weapons.”

Weapons, not tools, Matthew mused. He tried to think of himself as a weapon of fate. What a joke.

“Fate didn’t bring me into this. You did.”

“Am I not also an instrument? You were meant to be involved.”

“That’s a simple formula for justifying any damn thing you like, isn’t it? That must make life very easy.”

In fact, Fotis’ life had been anything but easy, and Matthew did not hope to either understand or undermine his philosophy. Yet his godfather seemed unperturbed, serene; infuriatingly so.

“It is called faith, and it is available to anyone. You need not be your father’s son.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing, my boy. It was a foolish thing to say. I apologize.”

They had both misspoken, and silence followed. Matthew walked the pond’s edge. The water was clear, springtime-fresh, with no dead leaves or debris. He could see the worn concrete shelf, then the bottom. This was Matthew’s backyard, this whole section of park south of the museum to Seventy-second Street, the place he came to walk off stress, absorb a loss, get his head together. This was the very spot he would have chosen to contemplate the troubling revelation now before him. Yet here he was, and there was no comfort. He watched the still water and the vibrant spring light, smelled the damp earth, without emotion, without any reaction at all. An invisible screen seemed to have gone up between himself and the world. He would like to blame it on the conversation with Fotis, but that wasn’t right. Had the feeling not been with him for the last two days, only now crystallizing? Could he not place it almost to the moment he stood before the icon, the dark eyes holding him, Ana Kessler’s words, her breath, in his ear? And since then work, conversation, the necessary chores of life hummed like one long, dull interruption until he could think about the icon again, talk about it, see it. He wandered back to Fotis. The older man seemed far away in thought until Matthew began to sit.