“He was always a Berliner at heart. He would have stayed there forever. That wasn’t possible, of course. My father saw the storm clouds coming and didn’t waste any time getting out of town. By the end of 1936, we’d left Berlin and moved to Paris.” He looked at Gabriel. “Too bad your grandfather didn’t do the same thing. He was a great painter, your grandfather. You come from a good bloodline, my boy.”

Gabriel quickly changed the subject. “Your father’s gallery was on the rue de la Boétie, wasn’t it?”

“Of course,” Isherwood replied. “The rue de la Boétie was the center of the art world at that time. Paul Rosenberg had his gallery at Number Twenty-one. Picasso and Olga lived on the other side of the courtyard at Number Twenty-three. Georges Wildenstein, Paul Guillaume, Josse Hessel, Étienne Bignou—everyone was there. Isakowitz Fine Arts was next door to Paul Rosenberg’s. We lived in an apartment above the exposition rooms. Picasso was my ‘Uncle Pablo.’ He used to let me watch him paint, and Olga would give me chocolates until I was sick.”

Isherwood permitted himself a brief smile, which faded quickly as he resumed the story of his father in Paris.

“The Germans came in May 1940 and started looting the place. My father rented a chateau in Bordeaux on the Vichy side of the line and moved most of his important pieces there. We followed him soon after. The Germans crossed over into the Unoccupied Zone in 1942, and the roundups and deportations began. We were trapped. My father paid a pair of Basque shepherds to take me over the mountains to Spain. He gave me some documents to carry with me, a professional inventory and a couple of diaries. It was the last time I ever saw him.”

A horn sounded loudly in Duke Street; a squadron of pigeons burst into flight over the shadowed yard.

“It was years before I got around to reading the diaries. In one of them I found an entry about a painting my father had seen in Paris one night at the home of man named Isaac Weinberg.”

“Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table.”

“Weinberg told my father he’d bought the painting from Johanna not long after Vincent’s death and had given it to his wife as a birthday gift. Apparently Mrs. Weinberg bore a resemblance to Marguerite. My father asked Isaac whether he would be willing to sell, and Isaac said he wasn’t. He asked my father not to mention the painting to anyone, and my father was all too happy to oblige him.”

Isherwood’s mobile phone chirped. He ignored it.