by Nikki Stern
And she didn’t. But soon after, we had to vacate the room. Paul insisted I should come and live with him in Amstelveen, rather than return to the ‘corridor’, as he called my old room. Meantime, we had our first fight when I tried to enlist his help cleaning the editor’s room in preparation for its occupant’s return. We needed to tidy the overflowing ashtrays and general debris that had resulted from weeks of neglect. I was determined to leave it even cleaner than when it was lent to me, but Paul prevaricated. It became obvious he had no intention of helping and he left the cleaning to me while he got stoned.
I worked late into the night to make it presentable and by morning I had forgiven Paul, because I knew that I loved him.
3
So I found myself back at Paul’s student dorm. I missed the women and the atmosphere at the squat complex, but the noise of the punk band, buses and tourists outside my room had left me sleep deprived.
Paul was approaching his final high school exams. I was worried I would be a distraction, but he seemed confident. The night before each exam, he smoked a worrying amount of marijuana.
‘I don’t mean to sound like your mother, but shouldn’t you be studying?’
‘Hey, I don’t need to study. I’m doing four languages and art. I speak better English than my English teacher, who’s Polish.’ He did a humorous imitation of ‘Miss Pissovotski’ and her ‘Ponglish’, as he called it. It was true—he had a supreme gift for languages and certainly his results didn’t belie his confidence.
We were still making frequent visits to downtown Amsterdam, where one day I noticed a T-shirt in a shop window. The comic script read how to roll a joint and it had cartoon drawings.
‘Hey, look at that—it’s kind of cute,’ I said, thinking I might buy it for Paul.
I was certainly not prepared for his reaction. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, that’s my drawing! The bastards have ripped me off. I drew that on a piece of paper as a joke and the owner liked it so much I traded it for a hash pipe.’
Inside the shop, the manager told us that the T-shirt was a hot-selling item. It had been reproduced in three different sizes and colours. Paul was livid, but there was nothing to be done.
He became agitated and I felt a melancholic pall descend on his normally cheerful disposition. ‘That’s the story of my life. Everyone wants something or tries to rip me off. Even my fucking parents: I’ve got a father who won’t acknowledge me and a mother who’s sold out—fucking whore. She married my stepfather for his money and now she’s miserable. Serves her right. I once had a bet with my friends that I’d be dead by thirty.’
I was shocked by this dramatic statement. ‘But why?’ I asked somewhat naively.
‘Because I’ll probably die of a heroin overdose. They’ll find me in a gutter somewhere.’
I couldn’t believe he’d think that. He had so much going for him. I told him not to say stuff like that—he was scaring me. I knew he smoked a lot of dope and we’d sampled some speed and acid together, but I’d never known any actual addicts.
Desperate to understand him, I asked Paul endlessly about his mother and stepfather. He described Vlad as looking exactly like Colonel Klink, the bumbling German commandant in the 1960s TV show Hogan’s Heroes.
He said that when Vlad had come over from Czechoslovakia, he’d opened a car wash, which turned out to be a great business in Holland, what with all their acid rain. He made an absolute fortune. He’d originally been part of the Bayer family—the poor cousins. His branch had once had a fifteenth-century castle, plus apartments on the Black Sea. They’d owned a whole block of the Wenceslas Square in central Prague, but when the communists came to power the family had lost it all.
Vlad’s mother had been left living in a tiny apartment, with the remnants of her art masterpieces crammed into a couple of rooms. She refused to follow him to Holland because she was convinced that the communists would confiscate her collection—apparently, she was a paranoid old crone who slept with a knife under her pillow.
Paul had never shared this with me before, and I was spellbound. He said that for years Vlad wouldn’t go back to Czechoslovakia, for fear of being arrested. So, after he married Saskia, he used to send Paul back to Prague to retrieve some of the art treasures. ‘Since I refused to carry his surname, there was no official connection with Vlad. Later, he was able to regain entry; but for years as a child, I’d go to Prague and smuggle stuff out. You have no idea what my mother and stepfather put me up to. From the age of about twelve, I’d make a trip roughly once a year. There was just so much loot and it was worth a fortune. Like the Renoir.’
‘Renoir—the impressionist painter?’
‘What other Renoir is there?’ he asked rhetorically.
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘Well, admittedly not one of his finest, but a Renoir nevertheless.’ Apparently, they pasted a hideous portrait of Vlad’s mother over the original and gave Paul a carton of Marlborough to take on the train. If the border guards got suspicious, he was to offer them the cigarettes as a bribe.
Sure enough, at the border, one of the guards started inspecting the painting at the edges. The frame was a bit of a giveaway—it was obviously expensive. So Paul put on his most innocent expression and, as he produced the carton of cigarettes from his bag, asked, ‘Are you allowed to take these across the border?’ The guard immediately snatched them out of his hand and waved him through.
I found all this very hard to believe. But Paul said he would show me the Renoir, plus a painting by a seventeenth-century original Dutch master, Joris van der Haagen, that was listed in the Prague National Gallery as being under repair but which Saskia and Vlad had hanging in their dining room.
Then there was all the other stuff: the stamp and postcard collections, the Bohemian crystal . . . and not forgetting the diamonds. One time Paul had been heading back to Amsterdam with some diamond jewellery stuffed in his shirt pockets. There was a passenger, probably KGB, who noticed his bulging pockets and he got really nervous, but Paul averted suspicion by looking so angelic.
Because I sounded so disbelieving, he decided to take me to dinner with Saskia and Vlad. He’d already told his mother about me and she’d said she wanted to meet me anyway. I was full of trepidation and didn’t know what to wear—I could hardly turn up in my leather gear and fishnets. So, I decided on the only dress I had—a 1950s polka-dot op-shop outfit—although I felt very self-conscious.
Saskia greeted me with consummate charm and polish. She was tall, and I could see the remnants of her former career as a model in her posture and poise. Her face had a fragile beauty—high cheekbones and a strong chin, like Paul. There was a hint of sadness in her eyes. She introduced me to Vlad, a large dapper man with impeccable English. He too was a paragon of politeness, and I had difficulty envisaging him as the dog-tormenter or child- and wife-basher that I had been told about. Paul’s younger half-brother, Rudi, was there too. Paul seemed happier to see his dog, Bobby, than his family and he lavished attention on the pedigree boxer.
As soon as I entered the dining room, I saw the van der Haagen: a gentle landscape of muted colours. It was the intricately carved massive gold frame, however, which lent an air of opulence to this masterpiece. I could see Paul watching my reaction. It certainly looked authentic to me and it provided an intriguing contrast with their modern art collection. The apartment was furnished in a minimalist style: quality leather and steel sofas, and cabinets of Bohemian crystal and trinkets. I even thought I recognised some classic Gallé glass. And so I sat in their dining room eating spaghetti with the Dutch master’s painting on the wall while contemplating the circumstances that had brought me here.
The conversation was stilted, and I could sense that Saskia disliked me. She was grilling Paul about his plans for the future. She thought he should study art in Montreal. It would be good for him to get away from Amsterdam, and he could stay with family there. She reminded him that he would be drafted into the Netherlands army soon if he didn�
�t continue studying. She and Vlad were prepared to pay for his ticket so he could start college in the autumn.
After dinner, Paul and I had some time alone. ‘I have to show you the Renoir. It’s in my room,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. It’s in the spare room, now that I’ve moved out. It’s under my bed—they didn’t want to hang it, in case it got stolen.’
We entered Paul’s old room and there, under his single bed, was the painting. It was a historical painting—Mary Queen of Scots being led to her execution. It wasn’t in Renoir’s typically light and saturated colours but it was signed, nonetheless.
However, I was sceptical, even after examining the signature. Renoir mainly did parties and portraits; I was not aware of him painting that kind of subject matter. I wondered about its provenance— how did Paul know it wasn’t a fake?
‘It just isn’t . . . and the provenance got lost in Prague. Anyway, these people didn’t need to buy fakes, because they could afford originals. You have no idea how rich they were.’
‘Okay, okay, I believe you,’ I said. ‘It’s just hard to believe. You know, I don’t actually like that Renoir much—I wouldn’t want it hanging in my house either.’
Paul laughed. ‘Yeah—that’s why I put it under my bed. I used to chuck my dirty undies and socks on it.’
Back at Uilenstede, we dissected the evening. Paul reckoned Saskia was trying to break us up and I agreed. ‘Well, maybe you should study in Canada,’ I suggested.
But Paul said he loved me so much he couldn’t bear to be without me: ‘I know we haven’t known each other long, but I don’t want to be with anyone else . . . ever.’ He’d often said that we were meant to be together, and I’d felt that too; I couldn’t imagine loving anybody else.
Still, he seemed to be way too young to be saying such things. But he argued that, while he was chronologically only nineteen, he’d done a lot of living and a lot of soul searching. ‘You think all that shit, like smuggling stuff out from behind the Iron Curtain, doesn’t give you a certain perspective on life?’
He’d definitely seen a lot more than the average person. I was, though, eight years older than him; I doubted this was going to work. It was a holiday romance: one day, I’d go back to my life in Melbourne and he’d go to art school and marry some nice Dutch girl, just like his mother wanted him to.
‘No, that’s not going to happen,’ he said emphatically. He was becoming emotional and had tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what I might do if you left me.’ I was shocked by Paul’s veiled reference to suicide. He continued: ‘I just can’t see a future without you in it. What I’d really love is if you’d say you’d marry me.’
Jesus. I was floored. I’d never been proposed to before. I was flattered, of course, but floored.
The fact was that our relationship histories were vastly different. Since early secondary school, I’d been pursued by boys. As a ‘nice Jewish girl’, I lost my virginity at eighteen to my ‘nice Jewish boyfriend’. We were together for three years, usually making love furtively in his 1960s Chrysler—at the drive-ins or outside my parents’ house. But I had been unfulfilled—the emotional component had been lacking. So I took up with an unconventional zoology student (who introduced me to Brautigan, Baudelaire and Buber) with whom I lived for three years; but he turned out to be obsessively jealous of other men and I felt constrained.
It was at that point that I decided to make up for lost time by becoming promiscuous. I picked and fucked whoever I fancied—at first from the Monash Uni left-wing crowd, and then from among Australia’s glass artists. I sometimes decided which propositions I would accept by the toss of a coin. I was no longer the demure virgin waiting for the boy to make the first move; instead, I revelled in my new-found sexuality, spurred on by my feminist friends.
After that, I had two more relationships, both non-monogamous. One lover I shared with his girlfriend (although I cared for him deeply, I was never jealous); the other was in Adelaide (a talented poet and painter, who referred to me as his ‘free spirit’). Over those years I would have lost count of my dozens of lovers if I hadn’t kept a tally but, by the time I left for Europe, I was unattached.
By contrast, Paul had never had a real relationship—perhaps a few hot dates, but no deeply committed partnership. Now he simply said he loved me a lot and didn’t want to lose me—I hoped this wasn’t just impetuosity. Still, he was prepared to emigrate to Australia if it meant he could be with me always, and he assured me this was not about him getting out of the army. He’d go to Canada for a bit, but long-term he wanted to come back to Melbourne with me. We could set up a studio together and do art. Maybe even have babies.
Marriage was something I’d probably always craved, without ever articulating it. I had Dory and Egon’s marriage as a model— solid and compatible, based on unquestioning devotion. With them there were never lies or affairs, and yet I guessed that neither was there a strong sexual component.
For me sex was important but in some ways it was always incidental. I craved an emotional connection, and that was what I felt I’d found in Paul. Moreover, he had a really convincing answer to every objection I raised. It was as if I was waiting to be persuaded; I let him take charge while he painted a romantic portrait of our life together.
Deep down, I wanted this—it would fill the emotional void created by Egon’s death and my estrangement from Dory. I had always thought marriage a bourgeois construct; but I knew I’d never felt like this about anyone before. Besides, if I said no, I stood to lose him forever—and I couldn’t bear that.
Almost before I realised it, I had agreed to marry him. He was utterly elated. Admittedly, I was ecstatic too, although a little overwhelmed. It was all happening so fast. I knew we loved each other deeply and I wanted to be in a monogamous relationship with him.
Much of our time in the student dorm was spent drawing in the Mondrian kitchen, as I called it. Paul would spread out his sketchbooks, his Indian ink bottle and metal quill pens. He liked the ‘warm’ line they produced and was very particular about nibs, whereas I had always used a rapidograph, a technical drawing pen. Together we would draw while listening to our favourite music: AC/DC, UB40 and Nina Hagen. As the best of The Beatles blared from his blaster, I sang along to the familiar lyrics. Experimenting with colour and collage, and with Paul cartooning by my side, I felt totally fulfilled.
We were doing a lot of photography, mainly of each other. I did a series of photos of him after using a black marker to write and draw on his body. The most successful of these was a close-up of his buttocks with the words dutch boy’s bum emblazoned across the right cheek.
Occasionally, his school friends visited. There was more bad news as we heard reports that Paul’s T-shirts were selling in such far-flung places as Sweden and Spain.
One afternoon, Paul had an idea. ‘I’ve always wondered how I’d look if I’d been born a female—why don’t you dress me up as a girl and take photos?’
I was a little puzzled. ‘Why would you wanna know what you look like as a girl? You’re a guy.’
‘Yeah, I know it’s weird, but trust me—they’ll be really great photos.’
I objected that there was no way he was going to look feminine— his chin, for example, was just too prominent. But he said that didn’t matter—they’d be arty photos. I could put make-up on him and dress him in my clothes.
I remained dubious: ‘I just don’t understand why you’d want me to do that.’
‘Trust me,’ he repeated.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘if it makes you happy . . . but it feels a little weird.’
And so I did as he asked. I made him up, using my eye-shadow and mascara. He had Cupid’s bow lips and my red lip gloss accentuated his smile. He wore a fishnet body stocking that he’d bought for me—on me it did up at the crotch, but on his masculine frame it came to his waist. The dress, also a gift, had the open zipper turned away from the camera so it appeared to fit his girth.
/> He was right—the photos were arty, a result of the ethereal lighting combined with his pouting facial expressions. He had recently dyed his hair black and the images were striking against the white walls.
Soon after, we were playing pool one evening in a dingy pub when we noticed some punks with a rat.
‘Hey,’ Paul said, ‘I’d love a pet rat. What do you reckon?’
‘Nah, I’ve had one before—when I was doing my science degree. All us third-year psych students were given one of those albino rats with red eyes and we had to train them using a Skinner box—you know, where they have to depress a lever to be fed.’
‘Come on, it’ll be fun. I love animals and this will be “different”. I miss my dog, you know.’
I relented. ‘Okay, but I don’t want to get stuck looking after it.’
And so one of the students in Paul’s dorm arranged for a white lab rat, complete with cage, to be delivered to our apartment.
‘I’m gonna call it Chaimie—from the toast “L’Chaim, to Life”—like in Fiddler on the Roof. It’s such a Jewish name,’ he cackled. ‘Hey, we can do some great photos with it. It’s a strong image.’
It was true. Chaimie was interesting to photograph, and Paul enjoyed taking it out on excursions.
Our relationship continued to encompass a mixture of art, sex and love. My devotion to him was unlimited: I had an inkling of his past suffering and my heart bled for him. He would tell me constantly how much he loved me—I was his saviour, his muse, his soul mate and his lover.
True to her word, Saskia bought Paul a ticket . . . to New York. She told him he’d have to find his own way to Montreal by bus since a direct flight wasn’t covered by her frequent flyer program. She was, however, unprepared for my decision to go with him.
We both loved New York. A friend had recommended the Carlton Arms on 3rd Avenue and 25th Street, which was a most amazing alternative artistic experience—something akin to the punk cafe in Amsterdam. The reception area boasted a mannequin wearing a welding mask and our room had pale-pink walls daubed with green and purple splodges. The bathroom, with its missing tiles and cockroaches, featured a dilapidated claw-foot bath. Behind the torn vertical blinds was our own fire escape. The place was inspiring and we were soon taking photos, in between visiting the Guggenheim and other galleries.
