by Clare Clark
‘Is it your father’s forgiveness you are seeking or your own?’
Matthias was silent. ‘My father’s, I think,’ he said at last. ‘Though I have little hope of either.’
‘You were ill. Many good men were. It was not your fault.’
‘Being born wasn’t yours. It does not stop either of us from taking the blame.’
It was dark when Matthias finally left, and very cold. Julius did not go back to his study. He stood in the empty hall beneath the Vuillard, his thoughts swirling and settling like fresh snow.
VI
The new mark held its value. The streetlamps came back on and suddenly everything was available, not just eggs and bread and potatoes but gingerbread and Glühwein and dates and crystallised fruits and piles of bright oranges with glossy green leaves. In the windows of the Wertheim department store, huge Christmas trees winked with hundreds of coloured electric lights, gaily wrapped boxes heaped beneath their branches.
Julius had not set foot inside the place for years. The monumentally columned and frescoed atrium glittered with illuminated cabinets displaying hats and musical instruments and porcelain figurines. Huge faux-Greek sculptures loomed in lit recesses along the walls, Dionysus leering over a bunch of grapes, a scantily clad Artemis brandishing her bow and arrow as though demonstrating it for sale. Between the sweeping staircases that led to the upper floors, a colossal gold clock in the shape of a sun hung like a gigantic altarpiece, counting down the minutes until closing time.
He took one of the store’s eighty elevators to the toy department. The shelves were crowded, the sheer range overwhelmed him. He could not imagine what a child of Konstantin’s age would like. He was relieved when a uniformed shopgirl came to his rescue and suggested a rather elegant Noah’s Ark. He waited while she wrapped it up. Behind her on the wall, the shop’s name was spelled out in letters decorated with flowers. Julius thought of the painting of almond blossom that van Gogh made for his newborn nephew. By then Vincent was very ill. He told Theo that the boy was all the years that would never be theirs, that he would flourish and grow and do the things that his weak and foolish grown-ups had left undone. Between his seizures Vincent painted madly, whole canvases in a single day, but he wrote to Theo and his wife Johanna that it was better to make children than pictures. He was angry when they christened the baby Vincent. He did not want the child to be cursed with his name.
The Noah’s Ark was startlingly expensive. The shopgirl handed him the package with a smile. ‘Your grandson is a lucky boy,’ she said, and he nodded and wished her a happy Christmas.
Some months before, Julius had been invited to Munich, where the university wished to bestow some honour or other upon him. He had refused to attend. He was too busy, he told his publishers, and besides, the award was specious, academic ceremonies interminable and Munich infested with cretinous fascists. Reluctantly his editor had agreed to receive the honour on his behalf. Per Peritz was a shy, bespectacled man with a bald spot and a habit of stammering over his Ps. Introductions were a torture to him. When Julius telephoned to tell him he had changed his mind, that he meant to go to Munich after all, Peritz’s relief was palpable. They’ll be so pleased, he said. Pleased took a long time to say.
It was not how Julius had wanted it. He had written to Luisa with painstaking civility to ask if, with Christmas coming, she would consent to allow Konstantin to stay with him for a few days in Berlin. Whatever their difficulties, he was still Konstantin’s father, the house on Meierstrasse still the boy’s home. Konstantin could travel with his own nursemaid or a suitable replacement engaged to collect him; either way, Luisa would not be inconvenienced. Frau Lang, he added, was already buttering her cake tins.
The reply came from Luisa’s lawyers. Frau Köhler-Schultz sent her apologies, but arrangements had already been made for the festive season. The afternoon post brought a scrawled note from Luisa. The spikes of her letters slashed the page so that the words seemed to cross each other out.
You bastard. All this time and suddenly you want to play the Weihnachtsmann? But of course you do. The only things you’ve ever wanted are the ones you couldn’t have.
The train pulled into Munich’s Hauptbahnhof a few minutes before seven in the morning. Otto Metz had sent a car to collect Julius and drive him the twenty miles to his house at Wurnsee. The morning newspapers lay folded on the back seat beside a wicker hamper: hot buttered rolls wrapped in a napkin, a Thermos bottle of coffee, a flat silver flask of what Julius discovered was excellent cognac. As the proprietor of Germany’s largest publishing house, Otto Metz took the comforts of his successful authors almost as seriously as he took his own.
‘There’s something I need to do in town first,’ Julius told the driver. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’
Julius had forgotten how small Munich was and how relentlessly picturesque. The winter dawn stained the snow a rosy pink and tipped the roofs with gold. They crossed the river and abruptly they were in the suburbs, the houses hidden between high walls and stands of trees. The citizens of Haidhausen liked to keep themselves to themselves.
The Noah’s Ark was cumbersome, the pavement slippery with ice. Julius stepped cautiously out of the car. The night in the train had left him stiff. Where there had once been a wicket gate, a heavy iron contraption had been installed. It was locked. Julius peered through it at the house and, shivering, rang the bell. When no one came, he rang again. In an upstairs window a light came on.
The front door opened. A maid peered out, a pale slip of a thing in a thin black dress. Wrapping her arms around her for warmth, she hurried down the path. A key on a leather loop dangled from one hand.
‘Are you Herr Behne?’ she said. ‘Only Herr Aust says to tell you he specifically asked that you come round the back.’
‘My name is Köhler-Schultz. I am here to see my son.’
She flinched. ‘I didn’t—that is, we was expecting Herr Behne.’
‘You need to let me in. The child is here, isn’t he?’
The girl looked unhappily back towards the house. ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting, sir, I’ll fetch Herr Aust.’
Julius remembered Aust, an officious little man with pink eyes and an oily manner. He had served with Julius’s father-in-law’s regiment during the war, a regular soldier who somehow contrived to attach himself to Walther Draxler as his batman. Walther always called him Putzer, the cleaner, a piece of derogatory slang straight from the front. He said it was an old joke between them. It was accepted in the Draxler family that Aust’s devotion knew no limits.
‘I have no intention of waiting for anyone,’ Julius snapped. ‘I have travelled all night to see my son. Now open the gate.’
The maid twisted her hands together, her ears scarlet. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that. Herr Aust—’
‘Hilde? What on earth is going on?’ Aust stood in the porch. Dipping a clumsy half-curtsy, the maid fled gratefully back towards the house. Aust frowned at her, then walked unhurriedly up the path, his mouth stretched in a bland smile.
‘Herr Köhler-Schultz,’ he said. ‘What a surprise.’
‘I need you to open this gate. I will not be stopped from seeing my son.’
Aust tutted regretfully. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I wish there was something I could do, but unfortunately Frau Köhler-Schultz and the child are not presently at home.’
‘Do you think I’m a fool? Unlock this gate, Aust, or I swear I’ll break it down.’
‘You’ll understand, sir, if I ask you to leave now. I will of course let Frau Köhler-Schultz know that you called.’
‘Don’t turn your back on me, come back here!’ Furiously Julius banged on the gate, rattling it noisily in its frame, but Aust was already walking back towards the house. As he closed the front door Julius banged the gate one last time, half-heartedly. He wondered if Konstantin heard the echo of it, chiming like a clock in the frigid air.
That afternoon Julius sat with Otto in his winter garden. They talked about
the new coalition government, about the appointment of Stresemann as Foreign Minister and the chances of fiscal stability. Against the snowy landscape the jungle of tropical plants was a vivid poison green, the leaves fleshy as tongues. A fountain splashed. Julius’s mind kept circling back to the light in the window of the Draxler house. He could not shake the sense that there was something else he should have done.
‘So, come on then,’ Otto said. ‘Who’s the next van Gogh?’
Julius shrugged. ‘Let’s say I’m considering my options.’
‘Good. Well, consider fast. The public may have bought Vincent by the yard, but the public has the memory of a goldfish. Peritz has had a rather wonderful idea, by the way. Did he tell you?’
‘Fortunately for us both, Peritz has always left the ideas to me.’
‘Michelangelo!’ Otto said triumphantly. Perhaps, Julius thought, it was the secret to Metz’s uncommon success, that he only ever heard the things he wanted to hear. ‘Apparently the greatest artist of all time was a repressed homosexual who lived in squalor and smashed up his sculptures when they wouldn’t speak to him.’
‘Fascinating. Just not a story I’m interested in telling.’
‘So tell it your way. Do what you did with Vincent and treat the record with the disdain it deserves. Only a fool lets the facts get in the way of a good story.’
‘“Art is a lie that helps us see the truth.”’
‘You or Vincent?’
‘I thought you just said it didn’t matter.’
‘It doesn’t, but any man who quotes himself deserves to be boiled alive like a lobster.’
‘In that case it was him. Unquestionably.’
Otto laughed. ‘I’m looking to buy another, actually, a portrait, Nadine’s always hankered after one of those, but so far no joy. I even had Cornelius go directly to the brother’s widow—they say she’s got a few still stashed under the bed—but he claims she won’t bite. You know her, don’t you?’
‘Johanna van Gogh? A little. I visited her once or twice before the war.’
‘She must adore you, I mean, Vincent? You couldn’t buy the publicity.’
‘On the contrary, she took great umbrage. I had the temerity to remember that she pushed Theo to stop giving Vincent money. In her version her devotion knew no bounds.’
‘So she wouldn’t be inclined to do you a favour?’
‘Not even slightly.’
‘Pity. Of course, there’s always your Self-portrait. I hear an ex-wife can leave a man open to negotiation.’ He was only half joking. When Julius gave him a narrow look Otto snorted. ‘I know, you’d rather cut your wrists, blah, blah. Let’s hope for my sake the lovely Luisa bleeds you dry. Till then, you’ll let me know if you hear anything, won’t you, usual commission and all that?’
The usual commission was ten per cent. Julius nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He stayed for the weekend. Nadine Metz insisted. Among the dozen or so guests, she told him, there was someone she particularly wanted him to meet. Recently widowed, Elvira Eberhardt was elegant and intelligent. They talked of Schiller, so fiery and volatile, and his long friendship with the chilly, taciturn Goethe. When she was a girl, Frau Eberhardt said, her father would summon her downstairs in her nightdress to sing ‘Ode to Joy’ to his guests before dinner.
‘He was like Goethe, my father. The impression he gave was always of coldness. I never once saw him show affection, not even to my mother, but Beethoven made him cry like a child.’
Her own daughter was almost grown up. ‘She’s being finished in Switzerland. If she doesn’t finish with them first. It is the finest school of its kind in Europe, but my daughter abhors it. She’s like a dog in a cage, barking and barking to be set free. Do you have children, Herr Köhler-Schultz?’
‘One, a boy, and nowhere near being finished. So far he is barely begun.’
‘You are lucky. Boys are easy. Emmeline—well, you’ll meet her tomorrow.’
‘She’s here?’ Julius said, surprised.
‘It’s not what anyone wished for. Otto and Nadine have been very understanding.’ She sighed, then forced a smile. ‘I thought we might walk around the lake tomorrow. Perhaps you might accompany us, if you’re not joining the skaters?’
‘I’d be delighted.’
When he rose late the next morning, however, there was no sign of mother or daughter. It was a crisp, fine day, the sky a brilliant blue. He breakfasted alone, then took his coffee to the winter garden. He had imagined it a pleasant place to read the newspapers, but the humid air was heavy and oppressive and the glare of sun on snow gave him a headache. He saw the girl by chance, as he rose to leave, turned away from him and half hidden amongst the thick foliage. She was curled in a wicker chair, her dark hair tumbled about her face, her knees pulled up to make a kind of easel of her legs, on which she had propped a sketchbook. She sat very still, her pencil poised above the paper, her gaze fixed on something Julius could not see. He held his breath, matching her stillness with his own.
Suddenly, decisively, she began to draw. She did not look down at the paper. Her pencil moved swiftly, so certain of its marks that Julius found himself almost on tiptoes, craning to see what she had made until, as abruptly as she had started, she stopped. She glared at the sketchbook and, with a howl of vexation, hurled it to the floor. It landed face down, its pages bent. She kicked out at it with one foot, sending it skidding across the tiles, and threw her pencil after it. Then, pulling a cushion into the crook of her neck, she squirmed down in the chair, her legs pulled up so that her bare feet rested on the arm, yawned wide and pink like a cat, and closed her eyes. Within a moment she was fast asleep.
Cue curtain and house lights, Julius thought. Little wonder she was a trial to her mother. Turning to leave, he accidentally knocked an iron plant stand, sending a pot crashing to the floor. The girl yelped, startled, and sat up.
‘I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ Julius said. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
The girl shrugged, stretching sleepily. Her fingernails were bitten and dirty, almost as dirty as the soles of her feet. ‘No, well, I was hiding.’
‘I see.’
‘If my mother finds me she’ll make me go for a walk.’
‘You don’t like walking?’
‘Not with my mother. There are only so many improving homilies a girl can take before she stabs someone in the eye.’
Julius raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah. So you must be Fräulein Eberhardt.’
‘My fame precedes me.’
‘I sat next to your mother at dinner last night.’
‘Splendid. So you already know what a disappointment I am.’
‘On the contrary,’ he protested. As the girl grimaced, blowing dismissively through her lips, he felt a flare of sympathy for her immaculate, exhausted mother. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. Good day, Fräulein. And happy hiding.’
‘Fat chance. You’re Herr Köhler-Schultz, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You wrote The Making of Modern Art.’
‘I did,’ he said, gratified. He sometimes wondered if the success of Vincent had wiped every other word he had ever written from the public memory. ‘And still am, God help me. A new edition comes out next year.’
‘So you’ve changed your mind?’
‘Not exactly. But the world moves on and we move with it, willingly or not. One sees new sides to things when one’s standing in a different place.’
‘Tell that to my mother,’ she said, tilting her head at him, and he thought of Renoir’s portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary, her dark eyes and flushed cheeks, the luminous cream of her skin. Samary’s father had been a cellist so obsessed with cleanliness that he washed his hands thirty times a day. Fräulein Eberhardt’s fingernails would have driven him to nervous collapse.
‘You do realise that she’s looking for a husband,’ she added.
Julius frowned. ‘Now, really—’
‘It’s true. The
inflation did for us completely, every penny. She only came here because of you.’
‘That’s enough.’
‘She is after someone rich and famous and you are rich and famous, aren’t you? Enough for her, anyway. She doesn’t even care if you’re divorced. She’s very modern that way.’
‘I said, that’s enough!’ Julius snapped and, snatching up his newspaper, he stalked away into the house.
‘Fine,’ Fräulein Eberhardt called after him. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you. She pretends she’s sweet as honey but she’s not. There’s nothing sweet about her at all.’
Julius returned to Berlin that afternoon. An urgent business matter, he told Nadine when she remonstrated with him. No peace for the wicked. He was grateful for the distraction of the returning skating party. Suddenly there were servants everywhere, bustling around with glasses of whisky and jugs of Glühwein, and the drawing room was noisy with laughter.
He was at the car when he heard her calling his name. Reluctantly he turned. She had changed out of her painting clothes into a silky black sweater that emphasised her narrow waist, the curve of her breasts. Julius looked away. She was a child, he rebuked himself, a silly, importunate child. The chauffeur opened the car door.
‘Fräulein Eberhardt,’ he said coolly. ‘Is something the matter?
‘You left without saying goodbye.’
She was much smaller than he had realised, her head barely reaching his shoulder. She wore a necklace that dipped over her collarbones, a thread of gold hung with a tiny golden key.
‘You should go inside,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold to be out without a coat.’
‘You sound like my mother.’
‘Do I? Then perhaps you should listen to her.’ Nodding at the chauffeur, he climbed into the car. ‘Good day, Fräulein.’
‘Wait,’ she said, and she put a hand on the door. ‘You don’t have to go, you know.’
‘Actually I do. In fact, I’m already late.’
