Feeling bold and wanting to make a strong statement, she booked a first-class one-way ticket to Paris. She picked a website that showed short-term apartments to rent on the Left Bank. She took one for a month. It looked bright and airy, with a view of the Seine. She had no idea what she was going to do when she got there, but one thing was for sure, she had learned the most important lesson of all. Nothing and no one lasts forever, and the one thing she wasn’t going to do was hide and let her life slip past her, like her mother had.
Whatever it took, and whatever it cost her, she was going to Paris. She would forget the magazine she had lost, and her mother’s morbidly depressing life. She was going to live! If she didn’t, she would have learned nothing from her mother, and Olivia’s whole life would have been a waste, spent on a failed magazine, watching her mother fade away. She had even cheated Olivia of the chance to have a real conversation with the man who had been her father, and neither he nor her mother were ever brave or honest enough to admit it to her. They were weak, frightened, selfish people who thought of no one but themselves, without courage or integrity. Their lives were defined by selfishness and cowardice.
Whatever the future brought, Olivia wasn’t going to waste it, or hide from it. She had only one mission now and that was to be fully alive and seize every minute that came her way. She had learned from her mother how not to be, and she was determined to use the lesson well, wherever it took her, whatever it taught her, even if it was frightening at times. She had a life to live, and nothing was going to stop her now.
Chapter 4
When Joachim’s plane from Buenos Aires landed in Paris, he went straight to his mother’s apartment. He had wanted her to get a better one for years, the neighborhood had become commercial, with shops and restaurants all around her, and the building was old and poorly maintained. But she said she liked where she was. It was where she had lived with Francois since she’d come to France twenty-five years before, and it was home for her. She had all her treasures and souvenirs there. It was orderly chaos, with clutter that she loved, although Joachim would have liked something better for her. He had offered to buy her an apartment from the savings he had invested well, and she always refused. She was happy where she was and had no desire for luxuries. She had learned how meaningless they were when her father lost everything he had.
She was still at work when Joachim got there, and he tried to tidy up some of the mess while he waited for her. He did her breakfast dishes and cleaned the kitchen. He had bought her a dishwasher, which she seldom used, and a washing machine she had grudgingly accepted, and conceded was practical. He vacuumed the living room when he finished in the kitchen, fluffed up the cushions on the couch, and made neat stacks of the art magazines she had everywhere. He was used to having other people do that kind of work in his job, but he liked doing it for his mother, and wished he could do more for her.
She arrived punctually at eight o’clock that night, after taking the metro home. She still worked a full day, from nine A.M. to seven-thirty in the evening, even at eighty-one. She didn’t mind the long hours and loved her work, playing art detective as she tracked down paintings, as well as the people she hoped would receive them after the appropriate identification. The work still thrilled her after all these years. She had no intention of retiring, and didn’t see why she should. She was blessed with good health and was agile and active for her age. Although her face was weathered, she still had a translucent beauty, and the same fair looks and piercing blue eyes as her father had had, and her sons.
She was startled to see Joachim sitting in her living room reading one of her art magazines when she got home. She knew he would be coming back from Buenos Aires soon, but wasn’t sure what day.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said, smiling at him. He stood up to kiss her. She had a straight back and good posture for a woman her age. She was wearing a simple black dress, and her snowy white hair was pulled back in a tight bun. There was a severe simplicity and beauty to her, and always warmth in her vibrant blue eyes whenever she saw her son. “When did you get in?”
“This morning.” She glanced around as he said it and smiled.
“I see you’ve been doing some housekeeping.” Her apartment always looked better when he was there. Housecleaning bored her and she didn’t mind a little friendly mess, as long as it was clean. She was immaculate, just messy.
“I was waiting for you to come home. You still keep such long hours, Mama,” he reproached her gently.
“I have a lot to do. I’m hot on the trail of a family for a beautiful Monet. I’m trying to find the heirs. Two of them survived Auschwitz but would be very old now. I’m hoping they had children. I think they might be in London, or Geneva, if they’re the right ones. They never came back to France.” She knew all the stories, and the heartbreaks that had happened, the tragedies where entire families had been wiped out. Many of the paintings she was able to trace and lay hands on went to museums, mostly the Louvre, because of her efforts. She preferred the outcomes where family members, even distant ones, received the artwork in the end. She loved the human side of what she did, and it was a joy to locate the paintings too. Some had remained hidden in storerooms for nearly eighty years. A few were damaged almost beyond repair, but most had been well preserved. Some were still being found in Germany, and a great many had traveled to South America when members of the Nazi High Command had been able to escape and take their concealed spoils of war with them.
She took some pâté and sausages out of the refrigerator for their dinner. Joachim made a salad, and she heated some artichoke soup she had had for dinner the night before. It was an adequate meal and suited them both. She waited until they sat down to ask him about the trip.
“So how was it?” she asked Joachim with a tender look. Buenos Aires felt like another lifetime, and it was for her. It was still the home of her childhood and youth, where she had lived with her father and first husband, and where her sons had been born. She had a million memories that she rarely allowed herself to think of now. She had twenty-five years of memories in France to balance them, but knowing he had been in the city she had loved so much touched her heart, and she always hoped for some news of Javier.
“It was even more beautiful than I remembered,” Joachim admitted. “I have such happy memories there as a boy. There’s an undercurrent of sadness there now. The economy isn’t good, and people are suffering because of it, but there’s no place like it.” He still felt Argentine in some ways, and had maintained his citizenship, although thanks to his stepfather he had a French passport too, and was a dual national, French and Argentine. He had only lived in Paris for his student years, and five aimless years after that, when he pined for his brother and felt lost without him. And he had lived in England now for almost half his life. He felt an allegiance to all three countries. But he had a particular nostalgia for Argentina, because of his boyhood there. It had been a time of innocence for him, and he remembered it as a happy, carefree time. Once he left Argentina, he had been separated from his twin, which had been painful for him for many years. He accepted that a part of his soul was linked to Javier forever, perhaps because they were twins, which was a special bond. Sometimes it was hard for him to know where he ended, and Javier began, they had been like one person for so long during the early part of their lives.