| Prologue |
Austria
June, 1939
It was holy ground. Sanctified. There was the small cathedral, the monastery, the school. He had spent his childhood days here, running through hills overlooking the blue uncertainty of the Danube, pretending to be Old Shatterhand, the famous cowboy.
Even then, he suspected the soil was special, that the Holy Spirit himself had soared above the riverbanks and lit upon the splendid oak behind the caretaker's cottage. He had unwittingly picked this site for a monument more than thirty years before, when the only territory he had seized was in his imagination.
The blueprints for the Linz Museum were spread out before him like linens over the long Benedictine table. A single copper lamp illuminated the drawings. The marble and stone walls inside the monastery evoked a familiar coldness, memories not fond or unpleasant, only alive.
Years before, the monks would have eaten at this very table. They would have dined in silence, on vegetables and freshly killed chicken, not far from the carved granite tabernacle. After dinner, the Abbot would preside over evening prayers and then there would be incantations, in Latin, and an hour of meditation before retir-ing.
Dusk had now arrived. The retreating light from the stained glass windows cre-ated a moving pattern of purples and blues over the fine sheets of drafting paper. Every so often, he would press his hands over the edges of the blueprints, strug-gling hopelessly to erase the memory from their stubborn curls.
He was alone. Yes, there were the voices on the phonograph record, the chorus from Der Fliegende Hollander. Even so, Wagner was not always a suitable compan-ion to him.
He smiled. Speer had done a grand job of it, had he not? The facade, the steps, the cupola, the domes. The courtyard, like some splendid Italian piazza with white roses and wisteria. It was just as he had specified. It would be the most magnificent building in all of Austria, a limestone repository of the world's most magnificent art. People would come from the farthest limits of the globe.
Of course, he would have done the drawings himself if he had either the time or inclination. But there were other matters more pressing, certainly, and Speer had performed quite admirably on his own.
Old Shatterhand looked at the second blueprint, the one with the lower floor plan described in cobalt ink with black lettering.
Here will be the Vermeers, he thought. The Rembrandts on this wall. An entire hall of Dutch painters such as the Louvre has never seen!
He moved his finger rapidly from one area of the blueprint to the other. And the German painters, right here in this gallery with the friezes and the frescoed ceilings! Tapestries right here, and over there, three entire galleries for the Italian masters.
A smile from a far away memory formed on his lips, and he could see his little brother Edmund running shoeless across the marble floors of the Museum, sliding like a speed skater from one gallery to the next. Poor Edmund. The measles had taken him. How Edmond had loved to skate, and to play Cowboys and Indians!
He arose from the table and stretched his limbs. Above him, the choir loft hung in the air, cold, creaky and abandoned. He sang there as a child, Gounod's mass, an alto, second from the left, third row, next to Freckle and Dietricht, the fat soprano.
He lit another cigarette. It was getting dark.
There was still much planning to do. The process of accumulation, attribution, restoration. And of course the proper hanging and sequence. Speer was working on the humidity control and the lighting. Yes, there was still much work to do.
How proud his mother would have been! And his father, who had mocked his ar-tistic talents. If his father could see him now, with these blueprints in front of him!
He chuckled to himself and put on his jacket. The car was waiting outside.
The Fuhrer was hungry, and it was time to eat.
|
|
|
