“You should have reported the painting to the register of stolen art,” I said. “I’m certain that the Art Gallery contacted them and, since the painting wasn’t registered with them, she is now the good-faith owner. If you want to know the legal details, ask your lackeys.”

“All the drama with the loan just to lure us here? What did she want from us?” Gundlach shook his head. “Women! They don’t understand that what’s done is done. That if you want to move forwards you have to leave the past behind. Schlepping along old loves and friendships…you grow out of them like you grow out of old clothes. After a while they smell musty.”

Gundlach may have been right, but he irritated me. “Didn’t you want to stop the march of time? Didn’t you want the painting back so you could stay young with the young Irene?”

“He said that?” Schwind asked.

“To stay young with the painting of the young Irene, I didn’t need to come see the old one. Besides, you still haven’t told us what you’re doing here.”

I stood up. “What does it matter?” I went down and sat on the beach and heard Gundlach and Schwind speculating as to why I was here. Then they recounted their futile journeys in funny little anecdotes, that they might tell at a party. Gundlach boasted about the Hans Gundlach Foundation, named for his father, which had paid for the restoration of village churches in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. Schwind thought foundations were something for one’s last will and testament, something for whatever was left after women and children, talked of his five children from four marriages, lamented the democratization and banalization of art, and mocked art therapy for the handicapped and painting contests for children.

I took off my shoes and socks. The sea was warm, I undressed and swam in the bright moonlight, until I could no longer hear the voices on the balcony and no longer see the light from the candle. At the end of the cove, a boulder rose up out of the water. Its slope was completely smooth, and I stretched out. The stone had absorbed the day’s sun and warmed my back, and the balmy breeze stroked my face and chest and belly.

Had Irene wanted to be the same woman she had been for Gundlach and Schwind in those days? Her coquettishness in the role of mother, her pleasure at the pair’s admiration, her laughter at their jokes, the sanitized story of her life – she had set out to please them. To draw them out? So she could see who they really were? Or was she still who she was back then to them, the way people say they’re always children to their parents, even when they’re adults and their parents are old?