Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

Like many a soldier before me, I returned to the States, to my lucrative cattle ranch, and to my wife and two children. I fell immediately into a normal, straight life. Like so many others—the lucky ones—I was able to compartment off my war years from the home life I had gone to war to preserve. And like so many others, I wasn't quick to respond to my children's innocent questions of "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" because I had gone to war to save them from knowing what one has to do in war and the totally different person it demands you be.

It was only when I was feeling vulnerable or nostalgic that I thought back on what I had done with men during the war—and inevitably my thoughts at these times went to Jake.

I shouldn't have rewrapped the painting in the yellowed German-language newspaper print. In shipping it had clotted with what must have been still-damp paint on a hip of stone on the side of the Zugspitz and took the top layer of paint away, leaving an impression of the printing on the newspaper. For a year or more I searched for an artist who would touch the painting up for me. All of them in the Denver and even the Los Angeles area said that the work was too fine for them to touch.

They all asked me where I'd gotten it. I, of course, was vague with my answer. After a while, considering the interest the painting evoked from other artists, I began to fear that someone would think that I had raided the art stash in Bavaria that my unit had been assigned to protect and I hid the painting away. I could not forget it, though, and each time I took it out to look at and my eyes went to the lone pine, I remembered—and I felt myself go hard. The painting kept pulling me back to it and, nearly a year later, when I had occasion to go to New York City on business, I decided to make another effort to have the damage to the painting repaired.

A prestigious gallery in New York said they had an artist who could attempt a touchup. "But I doubt that anyone can match the delicacy and tone of the original artist. You'll be able to tell the difference."

"Do the best you can," I said. "It pains me to see it like it is now. It looks wounded, and I don't want to think of it that way."

"By the way, do you have any idea what you have here?" the gallery official asked.

"Yes, it's of the Zugspitz in the German Alps. I served near there at the end of the war. It looks just like the real thing. It was given to me by a refugee, in exchange for food."

"Yes, it would look like the real thing," she said. "You have here a Jacob Gelmen painting. There's his mark down in the corner. This painting is worth a big fortune, even with the flaw. Very few Gelmens survived the war, although he was the toast of London galleries when the war started. It was ironic, but the London studio where he worked and where most of his paintings were stored was bombed out by a German rocket during the London blitz."

"A famous artist?"

"Absolutely," she said. "A real tragedy. He was Jewish, you know. He was safely away in London—well, as safe as London was under rocketing conditions. But his family was in Germany. He left London to go find them long after everyone knew that would be suicide—he was Jewish, you know. Yes, I already told you that. Sometime in 1943, I think. Yes, indeed. Should you ever want to sell this, Sothbys would be delighted to handle an auction for you."

"Thank you, but I don't think I could ever bear to part with it," had been my answer. I was so choked up that I barely could get the words out. Besides the fact that if I did try to sell it, the question of how I got it when I was in charge of protecting an art stash would crop up again, there's no way I would ever give it up.

I almost didn't ask, but I couldn't bear not to. "The artist, Gelmen. Did he stop painting?"

"He must have been killed in the war when he returned to Germany," she answered. "Nothing has been reported of him since the war. This looks like the paintings of his later work. It may have been one of the last pieces he painted."

The gallery's artist did a decent job of touching the painting up—at least it was better than the mar of the paint removed by the newsprint—but the real benefit of having it retouched was that the touchup only highlighted how much finer the original artwork was.

And, even more than before, it no longer offered a "marred" focal point to take away from the centrality of that lone pine, clinging to life on its rock.

Before the end of the decade, I found an excuse to fly back to Germany—and to Bavaria—on my own. On the ruse of wanting to hike in the German Alps, I went back to Obersalzberg, being able to stay in the U.S. Army's General Walker Hotel thanks to having maintained reserve status and risen to the rank of major. I found where our camp had been, now, I was happy to see, returned to productive farmland. And I found the opening in the rock wall at the base of the Kehlstein.

I found the shack, but the roof had caved in and there was no sign that anyone had been there for years. The winter of 1945-46 had been a rough one in Germany. It was hard to conceive that Jacob Gelmen could have survived if he had remained here. I almost poked around in the ruins of the shack but decided not to, being very afraid of what I might find.

But if he had survived, there would have been no reason for him not to have resurfaced in the art world and taken his rightful place and enjoyed his international reputation.

I both didn't want to think about it and wanted to cherish the memory of the short time we'd had together—in what now was a world that was closed to me and taboo to mention to anyone.

The painting, though—and the art gallery official had shown me on the back where it had been titled as "Mountain Memory"—was mounted over the fireplace in the living room of the ranch house.

There was a fire in that section of the rambling, log-sided ranch house in 1952. The only object I was able to save in addition to getting the family out before the roof collapsed was "Mountain Memory."

I had saved from that fire all that was precious to me, though.