by Adam Thorpe
Herr Hoffer had returned home late.
‘You smell funny,’ said Sabine. ‘Where have you been?’
She caught a whiff of cellars on his clothes and hair. His fingernails were dirty. She suspected him, in a strange leap of logic, of infidelity. She was very young and not long pregnant and grew easily jealous. The appointment of Herr Hitler as Reichskanzler that very day had brought her to a pitch of nervous excitement that was taken out on her husband. They had a superb row and actually broke their first china plate, but were interrupted by Reichskanzler Hitler’s inaugural speech on the radio. It was rather good.
‘This door?’
‘Yes. Then along the corridor and first right.’
‘It feels a strangely roundabout route, Herr Hoffer.’
‘It’s the correct route, dear fellow.’
‘That’s what they say about democracies. The roundabout route that never gets there, but is perfectly correct.’
We’ll get there, alright, Herr Sturmführer.’
Things undoubtedly failed to fulfil that inaugural speech’s promise. The day, in 1936, when the Party denounced lemons as unGerman and exhorted everyone to grow and eat rhubarb, Herr Hoffer realised the nation was in the grip of the deranged – and not only because he hated rhubarb, which stuck in his teeth. The rhubarb announcement was the same day as the Degenerate Committee’s purge.
The worst day of his life, in fact.
Oh, the purge.
He could not help it, he returned to that day over and over again, like a dog to its own vomit. Ziegler and Willrich had insulted the paintings. Second-rate, pornographic, Jewish slime, pavement-artist rubbish – why should he remember these when so many lovely lines had slipped away into oblivion?
Silence, the next morning, in the Long Gallery. The clouds heedless through the hatched glass. Herr Streicher coming in and trying to light a pipe, but his hands failing him – Herr Hoffer lighting it for him. Herr Streicher standing with his head hung down, his white hair everywhere, not saying a word. Rather like God, Herr Hoffer thought, after Adam and Eve had let Him down. But God might not be the God one imagined. He might be content, right now. He might be deeming them fools for even considering Schmidt-Rottluff, for instance, as a great artist, compared to the masters.
That yellow dribble.
Ziegler had shouted, on taking the Schmidt-Rottluff down, ‘Back to the kindergarten with you, my lad!’ And everyone else had laughed.
One never knew about God. One did not even know about oneself.
‘At least,’ he said, at last, ‘they have not taken the jewel.’
‘The jewel?’
‘The van Gogh, Herr Streicher.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘Or the Cezanne,’ Herr Hoffer had added.
‘The – the Poussin sketch?’
‘Of course not. In fact, they took nothing from the other galleries.’
‘They have taken my soul,’ Herr Streicher murmured, blowing his nose.
‘They cannot touch your soul,’ Herr Hoffer replied, with an awful lack of conviction.
‘Yes, they can. I am a shell. I am a sucked egg.’
Herr Hoffer’s own soul had collapsed and recovered, but not Herr Streicher’s. It had stayed collapsed. He suffered his first nervous attack a week or two later and was confined to his large house nearby, on Fritz-Todt-Strasse, for months of bed-rest, with only his pretty young maid for company.
But it was not the thought of rhubarb everywhere or even Ziegler and Willrich’s taunts that would keep Herr Hoffer awake at night during this period; it was the danger to the jewel. There were SS-Sturmführer Bendel’s visits and Herr Minister Goebbels’s interest in the artist, as well as that dreadful directors’ conference a year or two after the purge, in 1938, when Herr Hansen had officially declared Vincent van Gogh to be a mental degenerate.
He was living on his nerves.
When the Gestapo came, in 1941, they sniffed about the canvases in the Luftschutzbunker without a murmur. They were looking for Jews and Communists. They examined the attics. The vaults were deep and secure and the way down to them secreted in a cupboard full of brooms. But Herr Hoffer was still alarmed, especially by the size of their dogs.
‘Straight along the corridor, last door on the left. Then through the cupboard and down the stairs.’
‘Through a cupboard? Herr Hoffer, you are leading me to the Minotaur.’
‘Nothing so exciting, dear fellow.’
Where to hide, when the hounds of history are baying?
He had entirely forgotten the oubliette!
As soon as Bendel was posted elsewhere, in ’42, Herr Hoffer transferred the van Gogh and some fifty other paintings from the Luftschutzbunker to the vaults, making the total concealed just over a hundred. Werner helped him. It took them several evenings of hard, anxious work – up and down, up and down, up and down. His shoulders ached, afterwards, and he had pains in his knees.
He told no one, not even Werner, about his plans for the van Gogh.
The staff regularly checked the paintings in the vaults. So how to transfer the jewel to the oubliette? That was the toughest knot.
One September day in 1943, while sketching (with a bamboo point and encre de Chine) Erika and Elisabeth asleep in their beds, the knot was cut.
He had turned to a new page in the sketchbook. Erika stirred and rubbed her face sleepily. How lovely she was! And Elisabeth, too, lying there in her innocent dreamland . . . Lucky twice over! The blank page dared him to disturb its perfection, holding as it did the inward spirit of hills, mountains, trees, and his children’s loveliness. Simply a matter of coaxing it out, in the ancient Chinese way.
‘Papa, why are you drawing me? Let me see.’
‘Elisabeth, my suckling, I am drawing you because you make me so very happy. Don’t move.’
Though he was not much good, of course.
‘I wish our Führer could come and kiss me goodnight.’
‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea, my little poppet.’
‘Why not, Papa?’
‘Because his moustache would make you sneeze.’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘He would mind, though. Because you sneezing would make him sneeze. And his sneeze is so big it would make our whole building fall down.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘We’re the only ones who know it. And you mustn’t tell anyone else. Not even Erika or Mama. Are you good at keeping secrets?’
‘Very.’
‘Then promise not to tell a soul about the Führer’s sneeze. We don’t know anything about it. Do we?’
‘I promise. Papa, let me see it.’
‘There.’
‘You haven’t drawn anything.’
‘No. You kept moving.’
‘We can call it Elisabeth Kept Moving. Sign it, Papa!’
‘We’ll put it in a frame, my thumbkin. It’ll be my best drawing, ever.’
‘It’ll make the Führer laugh, when he visits us. Papa?’
‘Goodness me, I’ve had a very good idea.’
‘What idea?’
‘Oh, just to do with work.’
‘Papa, will the Führer’s laugh make the house fall down, too?’
She was bouncing on the bed. Erika woke up. Sabine came in and was annoyed. But what did it matter? He had cut the knot.
A few days later, then, Frau Schenkel and Werner Oberst found themselves assisting the Acting Acting Director in the vaults by wrapping twenty of the paintings in brown paper and string, numbering the parcels on the front, and placing them back in their positions on the trestles. This, said Herr Hoffer, was for extra protection. Herr Hoffer had even got Frau Schenkel to bring some brown paper from the factory where her husband worked, and asked to borrow some string from Werner’s library drawer. They had chosen the most precious works for this favour, with Frau Schenkel adding Paul Burck’s birch forest and Werner choosing the lacklustre Vollerdt copy as it reminded him
of childhood holidays in Berchtesgaden. Herr Hoffer personally wrapped the van Gogh and Werner numbered it: 19.
‘This cupboard is a dead-end, Herr Hoffer.’
‘Move the brooms to one side. The handle’s embedded in the wall, behind a flap.’
‘How very cunning of you, Herr Hoffer.’
‘Got it? Feel for the flap. Here, let me. Not far now, dear fellow.’
That night, alone in the vaults, Herr Hoffer carefully removed The Artist near Auvers-sur-Oise from its brown paper wrapping and swapped it for a blank, framed canvas of the same dimensions. He had sawn the wood for the stretcher himself, nailed it softly together down in the vaults, then sized the canvas with three coats, white upon white – as if it really was to be painted upon. He tapped it and it had resonance, like a drum. It had endless possibility – it wasn’t extinction, after all! He had briefly considered whether he might copy the van Gogh, but not even Frau Schenkel would be fooled by a talentless daub. At any rate, there was no time. Now, wrapping the blank canvas in the brown paper marked 19, he felt no nervousness at all. In fact, he felt exhilarated, as if the whole noble history of human culture was on his side – no, beneath him, like warm air, lifting him higher and higher on outspread pinions.
He took the van Gogh, protected by sackcloth, over to the oubliette and laid it in carefully, as one would lay a dead infant in the grave. As he dragged the slab into place, he was gliding in the empyrean without a single flap of his vast wings.
The jewel was hidden. Ah, the deep, comforting darkness!
The blank canvas was put back on the trestle, in the same place as the van Gogh, wrapped in the same brown paper marked 19. Herr Hoffer alighted on earth with a sigh.
It had all gone so well that he gave a little skip of joy back in the office, placed ‘Auf Flügeln des Gesanges’ on the gramophone, and drank a toast to himself as Heine’s divine words and Mendelssohn’s divine melody brought tears to his eyes in the darkness of the great building. He had served the gods, who were sipping cognac on their couches and nodding at him in approval.
At that moment a shadow had appeared in the door’s frosted glass. It was Gustav, carrying half a loaf of grey bread and a book. He would let himself in by an obscure back door, to which he had the key. Herr Hoffer gave poor Gustav a shot of the brandy and vowed to change the lock. The fellow took out his teeth and showed Herr Hoffer his scarred tongue. The book, to Herr Hoffer’s great surprise, turned out to be a banned volume – of poems by Rilke. Rilke was a Jew. But poor Gustav got very agitated when Herr Hoffer tried to take it from him, and hid the book in his coat.
Herr Hoffer changed the lock the next day. He had had no idea that Gustav would break in at night: but the fellow was harmless. He looked even odder, these days, because he had gone bald.
Once a month Herr Hoffer would check the oubliette, heaving the slab back and parting the sackcloth and gazing upon its contents glistening in the candlelight, the signed Vincent daring the world – the tormented, inspired brushstrokes defying death itself (which, for the artist, was in fact only a few weeks away). Of course that rake was an easel, of course that little fellow was the artist himself! Caught up in the great wild flow of nature’s bounty!
A triumph, this ruse. Yes, Herr Streicher: van Gogh and I are indeed close friends, in the empyrean.
‘Straight down, Herr Sturmführer,’
‘After you, Herr Hoffer. I’m not that stupid.’
‘Thank you, dear fellow.’
So far, in the two years since, no one had asked to see what was inside the brown-paper wrapping marked 19: the ‘Chinese picture’ had remained inviolate. Until now. Now it was going to be very awkward, he thought, the little metal prosthesis prodding his back as they began to descend the steps to the vaults, his socks feeling the cold stone like a man condemned.
48
There were others in there, beyond the sluice of bricks; Parry had clambered in with the woman behind and he saw them now in the grey smoky beams made by his flashlight. They were stood about like ghouls. The ceiling looked none too healthy above their heads and there was water trickling down from a burst pipe and there was a damp, sour smell generally. Maybe gas. He could taste it more than he could smell it. No one should be in this building, he thought. He wondered how many floors above him were not yet settled or hanging on for a small vibration to shift them so they’d come down kind of thoughtfully in a great white cloud of dust and kill them all.
‘What do you think?’ he said to himself, in his own head.
He whistled like a plumber you’ve called out for a small job who sees something he doesn’t like, because he’s a plumber who hears water slapping at the sides of every goddamn thing.
Even a whistle might cause vibrations.
It was smoky and sour and dark, but there was a glow from down below that settled on the faces turned towards him and the looks of those faces were as if they hadn’t been in the sun for twelve years. He made his way through those faces, sensing his power as a martial conqueror, as if he knew what the hell he was doing here.
In fact, the glow of light came from the bottom of a flight of stone stairs, cleared of its rubble down the middle. Apart from the bricks there were broken banisters, bits of cornice, metal springs, a suitcase, a pair of callipers and some books with puppy dogs and kittens on the covers. It was all pushed aside like snow was cleared back home so that a narrow trail went down the stairs through to the three people working hard at the bottom. They were attempting to open a door covered in metal plate, bolted all over like the side of a tank. All they had to see by was an old kerosene lamp, the kind he’d seen everywhere in Germany.
The real big problem was that the door was holding up the ceiling.
He could see that right away: the door must have budged outwards a few inches with the blast and it was now holding up the ceiling. The strange thing was, it was preventing the ceiling from falling further with only a few inches of contact. That’s what it looked like, anyway.
Parry was running his flashlight over the situation. The beam flickered over the situation like his mind was flickering over it.
The three people – two elderly men and a woman – were talking to someone on the other side of the door. Frau Hoffnung or whatever was just behind him, her hands up to her mouth, the fingers clawing at the lower lip so that it was curled right down and gleaming. He was in a basement corridor: the ceiling was run with pipes and wires and it had lowered itself this end as if by magic and was touching the top edge of the steel door. He could hear crying. There were a lot of people behind the door. The whole building was sitting on top of them and maybe moving the door would bring it down and bury them and also himself.
He was scared, but in a different way from when he was in combat. This was to do with forces that were not human. Even a shell was fired by a human being. But this was merely a matter of weights and balances, of pressure and force and gravity. It was mathematics or maybe physics. There was no mind involved. The only mind involved was their interference, and that interference might provide just the right element to bring down the whole structure, the entire world falling on their heads.
He looked up, his face bathed in sweat (it was hot down here, maybe from the fires), and saw how the plaster was coming down from cracks in puffs and sudden spurts, as if the building was considering its options. It seemed a very bad idea, what the three civilians were doing. They’d had no training, they were ordinary people, they were ignorant. He stepped between them and they looked at him and suddenly he was in charge. The American was in charge.
He said to them, holding his hands up, ‘Let’s bust them out of there, but let’s do it with intelligence.’
They understood, though they were foreigners.
He shone the light into the crack in the door. In the slit between the black shadows there was a glistening eyeball. There was whimpering. Beyond the whimpering there was moaning. There were more than a few people in there. This must be playing out all over town,
this kind of situation. It wasn’t the first time over the last months he’d seen people caught in shelters under rubble. No, he’d not yet actually seen it, but he’d heard about it from first aid guys white with dust. Most of the people he’d seen being pulled out of the rubble made by their shelling were in the dark for good, they were dead or maybe about as good as dead. Because of heat or gas or something. This was different. This begged for a professional hand.
He ran everything through his mind as the eyeball glistened.
He ought to go and get someone. But who? Some guy pulled from his drink, his nice warm fire, his girl? The clean blue waters were flooding in so quick that no one had time to sort out complex situations like this one – at least, it was not the armoured divisions’ job to mop up the mess, to save souls. That was left to the divisions behind, the ordinary goddamn infantry.
And he considered how he had failed Morrison, how he had never quite matched any situation with his full being.
Even fighting all the way from the coast, even slogging it thigh-deep in snow and harrying pillboxes and not knowing whether this or that wall or tree or hedge was about to spit your darkness at you, he’d never felt he was matching the situation with his full being.
He carried out his orders and hoped he would live. His galled ass and the general discomfort from wetness and cold and the tinned prunes and the dehydrated bean soup got worse, that was all. You got dirt in your ears and there was no real choice. Here there was choice.
He felt the responsibility welling up in him like something golden and good. He would save these people behind the door, he would take out from there Frau Hoffmann’s kids, he would prove to them what courage and goodness were and he would not die because he knew he wasn’t going to die, he was instinctively certain of it. The whole goddamn thing was on his side.
‘I’m thinking,’ he said. Because the people there were staring at him, saying stuff in Heini lingo he didn’t understand. So he raised his hand and said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking.’
And they went quiet, because they knew what he meant. And he made a deal with the higher powers or maybe just his own higher nature, there and then: if I rescue these people, I will merit the snowy mountains and the golden valley. Stored instead of liquor in my map pack. The nice item of salvage.
