The Hiding Game

by Naomi Wood

  ‘As I had you.’

  I smiled, and in turn he smiled so warmly I knew it was the right thing to have come.

  ‘Please,’ he gestured to the first room off the hall, but at the moment he grasped the handle he hesitated, and I saw the regret in his expression before he opened the door and I could see, immediately, his mistake. Above the fireplace was the Weimar painting. I saw it now for what it was: a masterpiece. Emblazoned in light, it looked excellent here in this room of heavy furniture and tubs of lilies. It made the whole room.

  He came closer, so close that I could smell his hangover. He still had that approach: animal, noiseless. ‘Site of all my undoing. Ernst’s never worked it out. The trick. He thinks it’s to do with delicate brushwork.’ He scoffed. ‘He’s always been a philistine. So’s his wife.’ In the bottom right-hand corner it read: Steiner Studio: Weimar, 1923.

  ‘It’s double, isn’t it? The light.’

  ‘Most people don’t see it,’ he said. ‘Of course, I was very confused that summer.’

  A Japanese shade concealed half the room; there was a woman with a fan on the screen and a black bird with tipped wings. Nearby there was the photograph of us all at the Metal Ball with our paint wearing off and wheeled hats askew. Charlotte looked high, but it was Walter’s expression that surprised me the most. I’d seen this photograph before, but I hadn’t realised how happy he had looked. It must have been at the beginning of the night when we’d all been together. ‘This to me is the Bauhaus.’ He nodded at his painting. ‘Not that.’

  The maid brought in the coffee and I sat on the chesterfield. The density of the room reminded me of Walter’s Weimar apartment; a man adrift in treasure. I wondered where Mr Steiner worked. Whether it was the Chamber of Culture, or whether he had worked his way into a more powerful department. Maybe he had traded his paintings with some bigwig Nazi – they would have liked his Völkisch style – and been offered a job. He was ambitious. I knew that. He would have loved the power.

  ‘So many visitors this week, Mr König.’

  ‘Paul is an old friend.’

  ‘Yes, they all are.’ The maid fussed with the cups and saucers before she finally left.

  In the shaky pouring of the milk one could see how Walter’s years had been used. ‘How did you find me, Paul?’

  ‘Irmi works where Ernst drinks.’

  ‘The Kaiserhof?’

  ‘That’s right. You don’t go there yourself?’

  ‘No. That’s Mrs Steiner’s job. Sugar?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’m his nephew. It works out nicely for everyone.’ Walter supressed a smile and handed over the coffee with two hands. ‘Including Mrs Steiner. Irmi: how is she?’

  ‘She has a new boyfriend. She’s happy.’

  ‘I’d like to see her. Irmi always was very kind to me.’

  ‘She lives in Kreuzberg.’

  We were warming up; we were remembering what it was to be friends. I wondered how we might conceivably operate; how I would have to lie to Charlotte about where I’d been this afternoon. I’d never thought of Berlin as a city Walter and I would share, but it might be fun to set it alight together. Maybe even Charlotte, given time, would be able to forgive him.

  ‘Do you see anyone from school?’ I asked.

  ‘Franz visits sometimes. No one else, really. What about you?’

  ‘Just Kaspar and Irmi. Did you see the victory parade?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It was a surprise to see Ernst there,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t even wanted to go. But Charlotte wanted to see history unfold.’ I wondered what he would say to this: whether he might congratulate me; tell me he was happy at least one of us had got what we wanted. ‘She lives with me now,’ I added, without any sophistication.

  But there; nothing. As if I’d told him the day’s weather. Outside, the sounds of a rake against gravel. A big gull flew from the villa opposite. I looked back to Walter. He seemed self-conscious, but so was I. He took some of his coffee then looked at the painting. ‘Oh, Pauli,’ he said, ‘you make me feel very aware of how much time has passed.’

  ‘Do I look so old?’

  He didn’t answer. ‘How is Charlotte?’

  ‘She’s fine. Doing lots of painting. We can’t afford a loom.’

  ‘Painting? That’s nice. She’s a good painter, as I remember.’

  For moments he closed his eyes, like a person at prayer. They were wet when he opened them. Even for Walter this was odd behaviour.

  It occurred to me that maybe coming here was a mistake.

  ‘Did you hear the Bauhaus has set up in Berlin?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Jenö told me.’

  ‘Oh.’ I had always assumed Walter had been cut off from all of us. ‘I didn’t know you’d stayed in touch.’

  Walter shrugged. His dressing gown fell off one shoulder and he pushed it up. There had been something there. Old burned skin. ‘When Jenö was in Dessau, and I was in Weimar, we were both quite alone. I don’t know if I was his friend, but he answered my letters when I wrote to him.’

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  He smiled drily. ‘What’s love after a decade? A dried-up old thing. I have no use for it.’ A tongue darted out; he licked his lips. I felt he was buying time. Eyes back to the painting again, as if trying to chase something down. ‘Jenö came to see me last week.’

  ‘Oh.’

  In all the multiplicities of this conversation, I hadn’t imagined Jenö had got here first. ‘Was that nice? To see him again?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I saw him at Irmi’s Christmas party. It was quite awkward.’

  ‘He said.’

  ‘Well, it looks like Jenö has pipped me to the post again!’

  ‘He wanted help actually.’

  ‘Help? Help with what?’

  Walter’s face was tight, his expression hard.

  ‘Walter. What did Jenö want help with?’ I said, feeling that inexpressible vertigo, as I had done at the Obersee lake, that everything was about to invert and veer.

  ‘Don’t be angry.’

  ‘Just say it.’

  ‘He asked if I could help him.’

  ‘Yes, yes, help him how?’

  ‘He wants to leave Germany. I’ve arranged a job for him at my uncle’s gallery in London.’ His uncle; the one who would pay valuta. He ballooned his cheeks and let them go. ‘Jenö wants Charlotte to go with him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He wants Charlotte to leave Germany.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘It’s too dangerous for her here.’

  I laughed; this was absurd. ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Paul,’ he said, ‘you must listen.’

  A key turned in the door. Walter looked up, frightened. ‘Please, come away from the window.’ He pulled me behind the Japanese screen as we heard the maid’s footsteps, and I wondered what I would say if I saw Ernst again in the flesh. But it was women’s voices which filled the corridor: Mrs Steiner had come home; the Kaiserhof woman with her pressed curls.

  Behind the screen was Ernst’s desk: on top of it were papers and pens. A blueprint from an office building caught my eye, with unreadable words in blue ink.

  I had no desire to be here; to hear what could only have been confected by a man as mad as Walter König. To have visited in the first place had been a mistake. ‘This is stupid. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I should go. I shouldn’t have come.’

  He laid a hand on my arm, waiting for Mrs Steiner to leave the hall.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked, shrugging off his touch.

  ‘Listen, won’t you. Charlotte won’t go.’

  ‘Of course she won’t. Look, this is ridiculous. This is the maddest thing you’ve made up so far!’

  ‘No. Ernst has made it perfectly clear. Foreigners. Artists. Jews. They won’t belong in Germany soon. And neither will the Bauhaus. You do know she’s working at the Bauhaus?’

  �
�Of course.’ I levelled his gaze with my own. ‘We’ll be careful. Thank you for your concern, Walter, but it’s preposterous. Who would Charlotte go with?’

  ‘Paul, listen to me! You’re not listening. Jenö has a ticket for her to leave with him. It leaves in two weeks.’

  From the pinched seriousness of his mouth, it occurred to me that this was not a game. ‘No.’

  ‘Pauli—’

  ‘I will not persuade Charlotte to leave with Jenö Fiedler.’

  ‘You must. It’s not safe here. You must persuade her to go with him.’

  ‘I’ll ask her to go with me.’

  ‘You just said you don’t have any money.’

  ‘Not yet—’

  ‘He’s leaving in two weeks. Charlotte has to be on that flight.’

  ‘Why do you want to help her? All you have done for the past decade is try and destroy her!’

  He looked at me. ‘You mistake me,’ he said coolly. ‘I couldn’t care less what happens to Charlotte Feldekova. My fear is Jenö will stay if she doesn’t go. I have to get him out at least.’

  47

  Berlin

  In Dresden Palace there is a porcelain menagerie. Tiny birds perch on the walls, and on the floor are hundreds of animals: peacocks; rhinoceroses; monkeys. A hen hangs from a fox’s jaws; a vulture grips the heart of a cockatoo. The ruler at the time, Augustus the Strong, had suffered from what was known as a maladie de porcelaine. In the corridor leading from the porcelain room there are hundreds of blue-inked vases. Augustus’s porcelain-sickness was so perverse that he gave the King of Prussia a whole battalion in exchange for these vases. The soldiers would have marched from Dresden to Berlin knowing they’d been swapped for some pots. A battalion for a set of vases.

  My heart for Charlotte’s life.

  I left Charlottenburg and went directly to Steglitz. I don’t remember the journey but I knew where I was going. The train took me south and when we emerged from the tunnels rain streaked the carriage windows. The buildings receded as I marched toward the Bauhaus, feeling the weight of my gloved hands swing. I walked automatically, and saw hardly a thing.

  Walter’s words were crazy in my mind; his request absurd. In all his morbid gentleness I had expected him to confirm my suspicions. Yes, he should have said: Follow her. Go to the Bauhaus. See what she’s up to. But there had been no charitable condolences, no exhortations that all would be well, nor were there any poisoned barbs that Charlotte had been sent to devil me.

  Instead, he had asked me to be Jenö’s advocate.

  It was outrageous. Unfair.

  There had been a wildness to Walter behind the Japanese shade. Maybe the whole thing was yet another fiction. A wedge to push us apart. It was not unthinkable that Walter might meddle, even after so many years. What had I said to Franz in Dessau? That Walter was quick to forgive. How laughable that was.

  I walked the invisible suburbs until the Bauhaus appeared. It was a run-down warehouse, the scrubland around it littered with rubbish. The school’s sign swung lightly: ‘bauhaus’, it read, all in lower case. I remembered the double magnification of the Dessau sign; how big we had been back then, how grand!

  A class was going on in one of the rooms. The instructor – Josef! – holding different materials one at a time: wood, stone, fabric, metal, pointing out the properties of the material. Materialgerecht: how we understand our own inner properties; the nature of what we are.

  I waited. Charlotte would leave around now if she were to get home at her normal time. I didn’t want anyone to see me, and moved on. Around the corner, in a white room, Master Kandinsky sat at a tile stove, warming his hands, watching the fire. He was dressed in a suit with collar and tie, with his glasses halfway down his nose. It was probably the first time I had ever seen him doing nothing. I wondered who else from the staff had believed the Director’s vision could win out. He leaned over and put another briquette into the stove. I left before he saw me: a watchful student of the distant past.

  I climbed the earthen bank to see what I could of the top floor and suddenly there she was: a buzz-cut blonde, a man’s hat in her hands. Irmi had been wrong. No walks. No city strolls. All year she had been where I had always thought she would be: the Bauhaus, of course.

  And here: this is Walter’s familiar magicking: the truth pulled from deceptions – she puts her coat on, pulls her hands through her hair, places the man’s hat on her head. She embraces someone. Maybe it’s chaste; I cannot see.

  She leaves; is gone. And I am standing alone in the dark.

  And, for the first time, I think that Walter might not be crazy. A new and unexpected future has opened out dangerously in this day. Maybe she will leave me. Maybe she has already decided to catch that flight. Maybe, in two weeks’ time, Charlotte will no longer be with me, but with Jenö in England.

  That night I gave in and went through her bag while she was in the bath. There were metro tickets to Steglitz she’d not bothered to hide, and, because of Irmi’s advice, that I had not looked for. Foolishly I expected to find an air ticket to England. I found nothing. I tallied the cost of our lives: rent, bills, food. Not a pfennig left to take us from Berlin, never mind Germany. Half of my savings I’d spent on the Oriental shirt. Still, what could that have got me? A train ticket to Hanover. Nothing more.

  The copper tub was in the kitchen. Inside it she was knotted up like a child, and she was singing one of her Czech nursery songs. Voices came from the apartment next to ours. I could see her breasts in the water, small spikes floating. Had it been Jenö I’d seen her kiss? In the Bauhaus this afternoon? She tipped her head; her neck open in the steam. I remembered the heavy swing of my gloved hands, and how I had felt I might do something with them.

  ‘This couple have been arguing all evening,’ she said, her voice funny with her head upside down. ‘I wonder why they stay together.’

  ‘I saw Walter König today.’

  She knocked her head back. ‘Walter-from-Weimar-Walter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where on earth did you find him?’

  ‘Charlottenburg. He’s living with Ernst Steiner. They’ve moved to Berlin together.’

  ‘Oh.’ I could see her thinking. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not much. I just found out what he was up to.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Mostly being Ernst’s boyfriend.’

  She began soaping herself. ‘Walter König. I’d never have thought of him as a Berliner. If you become friendly with him again, you’ll tell me, won’t you? I don’t want to see him by surprise. Or if he starts seeing Irmi or Kaspar, you will warn me, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t care what he did, but I don’t want to see him again.’

  I was faced with a choice; I didn’t know what to do; and Walter’s words were boiling in my head: You must persuade her to go. Charlotte has to be on that flight. ‘Do you ever wish we had more money?’

  ‘Why? No. Do you?’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you might want more.’

  ‘We’re fine. Aren’t we doing all right?’

  A red light flew through the fogged window.

  ‘Would you leave? If you wanted to go, would you?’

  ‘Leave? Where would I go?’ She looked at me sharply. ‘What did Walter say to you, Paul?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You mean leave Berlin?’

  ‘I mean leave Germany.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if things got very bad?’

  ‘Then I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.’

  ‘You can go. If you want to go, you should go.’

  Her knees rose to her chin. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you get me a towel? It’s gone cold.’

  She was wiping the water away with her palms when I came back. She wobbled on the floor as I wrapped her in the towel. ‘Do you see Jenö at the Bauhaus?’ I felt her body stiffen under my hands. ‘I saw you there, today.’
>
  She gave me the same cool look she had given me at Rosenberg’s. ‘Did you follow me?’

  ‘No. Walter said you’ve been going there.’

  ‘Good old Walter.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘Let go, Paul, it’s too tight.’ She stood away from me. ‘The Director has let me use the looms, that’s all.’

  ‘Since New Year?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, defiantly. ‘Since New Year.’

  She left the kitchen and I followed her into our room. Her actions were quick in the cold, pulling on her fisherman’s jumper and black slacks, and towelling her hair.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Oh, why do you think?’

  ‘Do you speak to him? To Jenö?’

  ‘Please listen to yourself. I just wanted to work without suspicion. I knew you’d jump to conclusions. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’ She lifted her face to mine. ‘I haven’t been able to work for years! I’m not a painter, Paul. I need a loom. I need thread.’ Charlotte pulled me down to the bed with her. ‘I swear nothing’s happening between me and Jenö Fiedler.’ She saw that I had not softened. ‘Paul, what did Walter say to you?’

  I was on the brink. To cross it would mean not being able to come back. I thought of Master Kandinsky: old man, sitting in his chair, doing nothing. ‘Walter said Jenö wants to take you to London.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s offered to pay my airfare, that’s all. As a friend.’

  ‘When did he ask you?’

  ‘Days. Weeks ago. I said no immediately.’

  My body felt weak and insubstantial. ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here, with you. In our home.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to have this argument. I thought the matter was over; it would have been, if Walter hadn’t got himself involved. Please listen to me: Walter König will drop poison into your ear no matter what. It will benefit him to get me gone. He has form, don’t you see? He constantly tries to outmanoeuvre me, to rob me of what I have.’