In the Full Light of the Sun

by Clare Clark

  ‘You should get a decent price even now,’ he said. ‘That the drawing is a study for so beloved a work will add considerably to its value.’

  ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I only wish I could afford to buy it myself. The thought of parting with it—’ Rachmann shook his head ruefully. ‘I’m afraid I have all the wrong instincts for a dealer.’

  ‘On the contrary. If it doesn’t break your heart to part with a work you have no business acquiring it in the first place.’

  Reflexively Julius looked across the study to where the afternoon sun struck the white wall and for a moment he saw it, Vincent’s haunted, haunting face fixing him with his unblinking stare. Then the light shifted and he was gone. Julius looked back at the drawing. The nude figure stood astride, his feet square, exposing his naked body with all the blithe confidence of youth, but his face was turned away, his eyes closed and his arms bent at the elbows as though the emotion that seized him was simply too powerful to contain. In the garden a bird sang, a rushing trill of notes.

  ‘Are you familiar with Charles Blanc?’ he asked. ‘He was director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris after the February Revolution. He claimed that drawing was the masculine art and paint the feminine one, that, while drawing can show us what passes in the mind, it is painting that illuminates the secrets of the heart. I would only have had to show him this drawing and his thesis would have crumbled into ash.’

  ‘You feel it too.’

  He used the familiar du but there was no insolence in it. He spoke quietly, trustingly, as a son might speak to his father. Julius smiled.

  ‘How could I not?’ he said.

  Julius bought the Marées. He paid five times what it was worth. He did not look at Rachmann as he handed him the money order, just as he did not look at the beggars in their army greatcoats when he dropped the folded notes into their outstretched hands. He did not want to see the transaction reflected in the young man’s eyes, the excessiveness of the sum and its insufficiency. He thought of the widow in Düsseldorf and he knew it changed nothing. A vast swirling drain had opened in Germany, sucking everyone down. A man could throw every last pfennig he had into a hole like that and make no difference at all.

  It was not how they had imagined it. When the war had come, they had greeted it with rapture, the artists and the writers, the poets and the musicians. They had imagined a great purification, the fiery cleansing of a corrupted, philistine world, from whose ashes would emerge a new, pure Germany. A natural work of art, Karl Scheffler called it. Too old to fight on the front line, Julius had volunteered as an ambulance driver, a soldier in a sacred struggle that he believed would deliver the world to a new state of grace. The horrors of the war had changed him from the inside out, but they had not completely extinguished that hope. Month after endless month, sick with fear and exhaustion, his clothes stiff with other men’s blood, Julius had thought of Dostoevsky, that unwilling soldier who had understood what all soldiers come to understand, that men are not gods, that the only hope of redemption was for every man to accept his share of the guilt and shame and horror of living and to endure it together, a spiritual family bound by frailty and forbearance. On the battlefields of Flanders it was impossible to imagine a return to the unthinking venality of the old Germany.

  And still it had come. Five years later the new Germany was more venal than ever, a cobbled-together nation of collaborators and spies: shopkeepers selling under the counter for foreign currency; black marketeers paddling policemen’s palms with one hand and pocketing their profits with the other; fur-swaddled farmers’ wives licking the cream from their fingers at the Kurfürstendamm cafés while starving children rummaged in the rubbish bins for scraps.

  And Julius was one of them.

  III

  Three months were to pass before Julius saw Rachmann again, three dizzy months that spun Germany faster and faster, prices spiralling upwards so fast it was impossible to guess from one week to the next the cost of a cup of coffee or a taxicab or a ticket to the Philharmonie. No one knew where it would end. Before the war a man waving a thousand-mark note might have expected to attract attention. By the middle of June, when Rachmann wrote to ask if he might bring a Trübner landscape for Julius’s authentication, housewives were using thousand-mark notes as spills to light their boilers. The hundred thousand note, hastily introduced in February, bought half a dozen eggs, if there were any to buy. To meet the demand for money, the banks had thirty paper factories and nearly two thousand printing presses working around the clock. The production of banknotes was one of the country’s few remaining profitable industries.

  Julius wrote back to Rachmann by return, suggesting a meeting the following Monday. He felt a thrill of anticipation. A Trübner was in a different league from works on paper, even works by Marées, if it were not that in recent months the trading of treasures had become commonplace. These days there was no guessing what people would part with and for what.

  He wrote to Luisa too, his anger stoked by brandy and lawyerly prevarication. Afterwards he could not recall precisely the accusations he had made. By the time he came down the next morning, heavy-1 imbed and headachy, Fräulein Grüber had already sent out the post.

  Böhm had moved premises. The elegant nineteenth-century building with its large lobby and uniformed lift attendant had given way to a featureless concrete block on a dismal shared courtyard near the Criminal Court. Böhm’s office was on the first floor, a once-large room clumsily partitioned to create two cramped offices and a tiny waiting area. It was only when he saw URSCHEL & BÖHM ANWÄLTE painted on the glass panel in the door that Julius was sure he had come to the right place.

  Böhm looked older, his clever face lined and grey. When Julius asked how he was, he shrugged. ‘We must change with the times, must we not?’ he said. ‘Luisa has made you an offer.’

  ‘What offer?’

  ‘If you consent to a divorce, agree to accept responsibility for said divorce and continue to provide financial support, she will return the van Gogh. The terms of the support are set out here.’

  Julius stared at the piece of paper. Beneath the exorbitant sum a note was printed in capital letters. DUE TO CURRENCY FLUCTUATIONS ALL PAYMENTS SHOULD BE MADE IN FRENCH FRANCS.

  ‘But that’s extortion,’ he hissed.

  ‘It’s a negotiation. A question of what compromises you are willing to make.’

  ‘No,’ Julius said. His hands were shaking but his head felt very clear. If it was war Luisa wanted, then war she would have. ‘There will be no compromise. We file for divorce. Adultery. My wife’s. No financial support, not a sou, until I have my painting. And my son.’

  Böhm was silent. Then he picked up his pen. ‘You have evidence, I suppose?’ he asked. In the twenty years Böhm had been his lawyer Julius had never once lied to him. He took care not to lie now. When Böhm asked if he had discovered Luisa in flagrante, Julius shook his head.

  ‘But there were clear signs of sexual congress?’ Böhm pressed. He did not ask between whom. Julius laughed grimly.

  ‘There was a naked man in my wife’s bed,’ he said. ‘Do you have another explanation?’

  ‘Do you know this man’s name?’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly the moment for formal introductions. But he was one of her crowd. It won’t be hard to find out.’

  ‘Perhaps. Although in these situations people tend to close ranks.’

  ‘Not Luisa’s friends. They’d sell their grandmothers if there was profit in it.’

  Böhm frowned, sitting back in his chair. ‘Very well then, perhaps you should make some enquiries. We have time. We can file a preliminary petition without a name and, as things stand at present, with all the backlogs, there’s no chance of a hearing before the summer recess. Perhaps in the autumn, if things improve—?’ He shrugged wearily. ‘Might she attempt to deny the allegations?’

  ‘It’s Luisa. She’ll deny everything.’

  ‘Then we’ll need proof. Without it the courts w
ill decline the petition.’

  Julius thought of Frau Lang, the horror on her face as she covered her eyes. ‘There was a witness. My housekeeper. She saw everything.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Böhm said and Julius nodded, stiff with triumph and self-disgust.

  Rachmann looked tired and thin, his slenderness ground to something harder and more delicate. The sharp line of his cheekbones emphasised his startlingly green eyes, the Botticelli fullness of his mouth. In the study he glanced towards the bare wall.

  ‘A van Gogh self-portrait,’ Julius said. ‘Perhaps the finest he ever painted.’

  ‘It’s on loan?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Rachmann shook his head. ‘You’ll think me foolish, but somehow I’d convinced myself the Marées would be here. Convinced myself so thoroughly that just now, when I walked in, my first thought was that it had been stolen.’

  Stolen. The word hung in the sultry air. ‘You miss it, the Marées?’ Julius asked.

  ‘Horribly. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘And I had hoped for a happy life.’

  ‘As a dealer? Not a chance.’

  Rachmann laughed. It was early, but outside it was already getting dark. A storm was coming. Against the looming thunderheads, the trees were van Gogh-vivid, thick swirls of white and emerald green.

  ‘So did you keep it?’ he asked, attempting casualness. ‘The Marées, I mean.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m glad. I was suddenly afraid you might have sold it weeks ago.’

  ‘I didn’t sell it. It’s in my dressing room upstairs.’

  Rachmann nodded and fiddled with the straps of the portfolio he carried. He said nothing. He did not have to. Julius could almost hear it, the low hum of longing like a bee in a flower. It was too much to ask, of course. There was no room in the house as privately his as his dressing room. Jesus, Ju, why do you always have to be such a gimlet? Gimlet, just one of Luisa’s slang words for bore. She had hundreds: bluenose, fire extinguisher, flat tyre, old fogey. Old anything.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to see it?’ he said suddenly.

  Rachmann stared at him. ‘Please, you don’t have to, that is—you wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He led the young man up the stairs. At the top he paused, a little out of breath. Rachmann stopped beside him, taking in the high-ceilinged gallery, the exquisitely inlaid double doors that led to the drawing room. When Luisa had been here this had been her friends’ favourite place to congregate, leaning over the balustrade as music blared from the gramophone, their laughter and cigarette ash spilling into the hall below. These days the doors were kept locked. Julius had not been into the drawing room since she left.

  The dressing room smelled of leather and soap, and, faintly, unmistakably, of himself. As they stood in front of the Marées, Julius was pricklingly aware of the battered leather slippers under the chair, the splay-bristled toothbrush in the cup by the sink, the silk dressing gown on its hook on the back of the door. In her silver frame his mother smiled shyly, her head on one side. Dressed in an evening gown with diamonds in her hair, she looked young and awkward and absurdly beautiful. He saw Rachmann glance at her, the smile deepening in his sea-green eyes, and it was as if he had let the young man climb inside his skin.

  Back in his study Julius felt the intimacy of the dressing room moving like a current between them, altering the shape of the air. He wanted to ask Rachmann if he had enough money, enough to eat. He wanted to confide his loneliness, his fear of growing old, the bitter hatred he felt towards his wife and the man she was making him become. Instead he gestured at the carefully wrapped painting.

  ‘Tell me about this,’ he said.

  Rachmann took the package on to his lap and frowned at it. ‘I bought it in Cologne. Not a dealer. A man on the street. You know.’

  Julius did know. These days there were men like that on every corner in Berlin, women too, shabby in once-respectable clothes, their family heirlooms laid out on bits of sacking and traded for sausages and coal.

  ‘He told me that his father and Trübner were friends,’ Rachmann said. ‘That they met in Karlsruhe. His father had kept it in his study all his life. I didn’t want to take it from him, it felt all wrong, but he was so grateful, so desperate. He said I was helping him. Of course he had no paperwork for the painting, no provenance as such—’

  Julius shook his head. ‘Provenance counts for a great deal less than the bean counters would have you believe. Attribution is not a matter of accountancy.’ He put his spectacles on, then gestured towards the window. ‘Bring it over here. We need all the light we can get.’

  A fake. Julius knew it the moment he saw it, or rather he felt it, the familiar tightness in his throat, the clammy chill under his skin, the seasick roil in his stomach as if the floor was pitching. As though the wrongness of the painting made it pitch.

  He closed his eyes, leaning on the back of his chair. The dark behind his eyelids was dizzy with silver. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips. Slowly the queasiness receded. He did not look at Rachmann. Instead he took off his spectacles and, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully polished them. The steadiness was coming back into his hands. He worked the handkerchief into the corners of the lenses. When he was sure they were quite clean, he put them back on and looked again. Trees, sky, a glimpse of Italianate facade, all in Trübner’s characteristic style but without his instinct for colour, his play of light and shadow. A vision of nature reduced to a view, decorative and dead.

  He steepled his hands, steeling himself to say the words.

  ‘It’s not a Trübner, is it?’ Rachmann said very quietly.

  ‘No. It’s not. I’m sorry.’

  Most disappointed dealers grew defensive, belligerent even. They disputed his conclusions, demanded he reconsider. The young man clasped his hands together and said nothing. Only the whiteness of his knuckles betrayed him.

  ‘You could always take it to someone else,’ Julius said. ‘Get a second opinion. Walter Ruthenberg is reliable, do you know him?’

  ‘Might he disagree with you?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But if he did he would be wrong?’

  ‘In my opinion, yes. I’m afraid so.’

  Rachmann was silent, staring at the painting. Julius wanted to put a consoling hand on the young man’s shoulder. Instead he waited. When Rachmann finally looked up at him his face was soft and sad as a child’s.

  ‘I have no right to ask you this,’ he said. ‘You’ve already given me so much. But might you be able to tell me why? It’s just—if I could only understand what it is you see, how you know, then perhaps—perhaps I wouldn’t feel like such a fool.’

  ‘You’re not a fool. I know many more experienced dealers than you who would have made the same mistake.’

  ‘But I can’t be like them, don’t you see? I couldn’t bear it. If I’m to do this, if I’m to make it count, I need to see as you see, with my heart.’

  Julius could not remember the last time someone had spoken to him so openly, as though there was nothing to be lost by speaking the truth. ‘A man who feels as you do is already halfway there,’ he said, but Rachmann only shook his head.

  ‘I wish that were true, but it isn’t. It sounds fanciful, I know, but I saw the way the painting passed through you, the wave of it. As if in that moment it was part of you. As if you were part of it. Look, I’m sorry, I should go.’ Hurriedly he fumbled the painting into its wrappings. ‘Thank you, sir, for your time and your honesty. I am very grateful for both.’

  Julius put a hand on the young man’s arm. Rachmann hesitated. ‘Then stay,’ Julius said. ‘Stay and I’ll tell you what it is I see.’

  Gently he took the painting from Rachmann and set it on the desk. Then, scanning the shelves by the window, he pulled out a heavy book, leafing through it until he found a colour plate of Trübner’s Monastery on
Herreninsel.

  ‘Trübner was the most painterly of painters,’ he said. ‘He believed that the true beauty of a painting lay not in its subject but in its composition, the colours, the texture of the paint. In art for art’s sake. See here, in your painting, where this tree has been reworked? A bodge like that would have been unendurable to him.’

  Rachmann frowned, his determination to master his feelings clenching him so tightly it might almost have been anger. ‘That’s how you knew, because of that tree?’

  ‘Not immediately, no. Yes, the tree is important, the flawed perspective here too, once you see them you know that Trübner could never have made this painting, but that comes later. At first it is something else, something more—instinctive. Imagine you meet an old friend on the street. He looks just as you remember him, he smiles and speaks as he always has, but it is not him. You know it. Later perhaps you will be able to say why, his voice was too high, his nose too long, but in that instant all you know for certain is that you are being deceived. You feel it in your gut, your bones. Whoever he is, this man, he is not your friend.’ Julius sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I wish it were otherwise.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’

  A sudden flash of lightning lit the room, followed, a moment later, by the rumble of thunder. The air had the metallic tang of rain. Julius slid the window shut.

  ‘A drink before you go?’ he asked, but Rachmann shook his head. There was somewhere else he had to be, if he did not leave soon he would be late. Reluctantly Julius rang for Frau Lang. Rachmann took his hat and umbrella from her with a bow. His gallantry was lost on Frau Lang. As he turned away she puffed her lips, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. When Julius glared at her she subsided like a soufflé.

  Rachmann looked down at the painting in his arms, then, with a sardonic twist of a smile, held it out to Julius. ‘I couldn’t interest you in an almost-Trübner before I go, could I? Something for that empty nail in your study?’