THE WALLS OF their bedroom in Venice had been hung with paintings. Chiara, in Gabriel’s absence, had hung them here. Some of the works had been painted by Gabriel’s grandfather, the noted German expressionist Viktor Frankel. His work had been declared “degenerate” by the Nazis in 1936. Impoverished, stripped of his ability to paint or even teach, he had been deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and gassed on arrival along with his wife. Gabriel’s mother, Irene, had been deported with them, but Mengele had assigned her to a work detail, and she’d managed to survive the women’s camp at Birkenau until it was evacuated in the face of the Russian advance. Some of her work hung here in Gabriel’s private gallery. Tormented by what she had seen in Birkenau, her paintings burned with an intensity unmatched by even her famous father. In Israel she had used the name Allon, which means oak tree in Hebrew, but she’d always signed her canvases Frankel to honor her father. Only now could Gabriel see the paintings for themselves instead of the broken woman who had produced them.

There was one work that bore no signature, a portrait of a young man, in the style of Egon Schiele. The artist was Leah, and the subject was Gabriel himself. It had been painted shortly after he returned to Israel with the blood of six Palestinian terrorists on his hands, and it was the only time he ever agreed to sit for her. He had never liked the painting, because it showed him as Leah saw him—a haunted young man, aged prematurely by the shadow of death. Chiara believed the painting to be a self-portrait.

She switched on the bedroom light and looked at the papers on the bedside table. Her examination was demonstrative in nature; she knew that Gabriel had not signed them.

“I’ll sign them in the morning,” he said.

She offered him the pen. “Sign them now.”

Gabriel switched off the light. “Actually, there’s something else I want to do now.”

Chiara took him into her body and wept silently through the act.

“You’re never going to sign them, are you?”

Gabriel tried to silence her with a kiss.

“You’re lying to me,” she said. “You’re using your body as a weapon of deception.”

33 JERUSALEM

33

JERUSALEM