by Clare Clark
In the bottom right-hand corner of the paper there was an arrow drawn in pencil. Julius turned the page. Under her address in Switzerland, Fräulein Eberhardt had scrawled a message in pencil.
I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m vile. I wish I wasn’t but I can’t seem to help it.
Write to me, Won’t you? Just so I know you forgive me.
I shake your hand, EE
I shake your hand, Vincent’s characteristic farewell when he wrote to his brother Theo. Julius’s yearning for the Self-Portrait came so suddenly that it winded him. He leaned on the bridge’s parapet, the paper trembling in his hand. In the asylum at Saint-Rémy the doctors had forbidden Vincent to paint. They said it was painting that brought on the seizures, but for Vincent the not-painting was worse, a kind of torture. Julius did not know if the girls at Fräulein Eberhardt’s finishing school were given lessons in drawing and painting or if they were taught only to smile and nod and sing the songs of Schiller, their hands neatly folded in their laps. He tried to imagine Fräulein Eberhardt arranging flowers and discussing menus but he could not do it. He thought instead of Vincent who, confined to his room without brushes or canvas, had eaten his paints, scooping them from the palette with his fingers.
The afternoon was growing dark. The streetlamps came on. On the far bank a heavy-set man stopped, looking over the black water towards Julius. His heart thudding, Julius hurried home.
That night he wrote to Fräulein Eberhardt. An apology like that deserved acknowledgement, even several months after the fact. He wondered if she had been waiting for his absolution all this time, her hopes flaring like a match with each morning’s post. He rather hoped so. Remorse was worth nothing if it did not sting.
It was possible, in Berlin, to forget that parts of Germany were still under enemy occupation. At Versailles the French had insisted on a buffer zone, a demilitarised Rhineland to protect themselves against German aggression, and the Allies had carved up the territory like greedy boys at a tea table. A few miles outside Cologne, a troop of British soldiers boarded Julius’s train and made their way through the carriages, checking the passengers’ papers. There were military checkpoints at the bridges, army lorries in the streets. At the crowded museum reception, British officers mingled with the bigwigs and bankers and bootlicking artists who made up the city’s crème de la crème.
The breezy normality of it made Julius feel nauseous. Further south, in the Palatinate, the occupying French army was known to be encouraging the separatists, actively supporting the creation of an independent Rhenish state. Five years after the armistice the war was not over, far from it. Having humiliated Germany and forced her into bankruptcy, Clemenceau and his like now sought to break her into pieces.
The new director of the museum had done his homework. Sidling up to Julius before the speeches, he suggested they slip down to the exhibition before the other guests. A critic of Julius’s eminence, he murmured, should not have to fight for a front-row seat. He led Julius directly into the main gallery. A heavy velvet curtain some twelve feet wide hung from ceiling to floor, obscuring most of the far wall, a theatre awaiting an audience. With a bow, the director gestured for him to go first. Julius felt a thrill of anticipation run through him: he could almost see it through the velvet, Vincent’s Sunflowers, primitive and exalted, blazing with faith and the fiery dazzle of the Provencal sun.
He stepped behind the curtain. A single painting hung on the wall, lit by a row of electric lights set into the ceiling, but it was not the Sunflowers. Vast, violently coloured, it was perhaps the most nightmarish painting that Julius had ever seen. A trench in a shattered landscape, a bloody sprawl of slaughtered soldiers, their limbs blown off, their heads smashed open, their bellies spilling fresh snarls of intestine. Around them, the decomposing remains of corpses exhumed by the explosion. Rotting flesh, alive with maggots. A pair of putrid hands pushing up from the mud in supplication. And above the carnage, a uniformed corpse impaled on twisted wooden stakes, his wounds gaping, his sightless eyes staring at the sky, and between his legs, obscenely, the jut of a bayonet blade, the handle of a knife.
Julius closed his eyes, pretending to look for his spectacles. He dreamed of it still, the shells exploding round his ambulance, the soldier who disappeared in a fountain of blood. The bodies piled three deep in a ditch, the springiness of flesh beneath his boots as they searched for the living, the crack of bones like breaking sticks. He swallowed, steeling himself. Then, putting on his spectacles, he moved closer to the canvas until the maggots resolved into marks of paint.
‘Devastating, isn’t it?’ the director said. ‘A vision of suffering to rival Grunewald.’
‘On the contrary,’ Julius snapped. ‘Grunewald finds beauty in anguish. This painting is a sickening mess.’
‘It tears the scales from our eyes. Otto Dix was a war hero, he won the Iron Cross, but this painting tells the terrible truth. War is not heroic. War is unutterable hell.’
Julius thought of the red-faced British officers upstairs, with their polished buttons and their perfect German. Until the occupation, the citizens of Cologne had never in their history been required to carry identity papers.
‘You have to take it down,’ he said.
The director raised an eyebrow. ‘Because you dislike it?’
‘Because it isn’t art, it’s propaganda. For God’s sake, man, do you think when they see this the British aren’t going to be rubbing their hands with glee? A painting like this, at this moment, isn’t just a blow to German morale, it’s a pistol against our country’s head. An invitation to let them help themselves.’
‘I’m interested you see it that way. For me it’s a cry of pain from a decorated military hero determined to show us the truth about war. Would you prefer him to lie?’
‘I don’t give a damn if he paints himself blue and hangs upside down from the rafters. History will not remember him. But you, Herr Direktor, have a responsibility to your country. Yes, war is brutal. It is also sometimes necessary if we are to protect ourselves against those who would destroy us.’
The director smiled serenely. ‘I would not censor Otto Dix, Herr Köhler-Schultz, any more than I would seek to censor you. I shall read your column with interest.’
People were coming. Julius could hear the surge of voices as guests moved through the first room. Without a word he turned and marched out of the room. He would not be a part of this repulsive circus. In the crowded foyer he waited impatiently for his coat. He wanted to be alone, in the darkness, scoured by the frozen Cologne air. When the attendant held up his coat for him to put on Julius snatched it and, bundling it into his arms, forced his way towards the exit. It was only by chance that he saw two men standing near the staircase. One wore a dark beard and a frogged evening coat of plum velvet. The other was Matthias.
Julius felt a stab of gratitude so sharp it stopped his throat. He called Matthias’s name but the hall was noisy, it swallowed the words. As he pushed through the crowd towards him, Matthias leaned close to his companion and murmured in his ear.
‘Matthias!’ Julius called again and this time Matthias looked round. Julius smiled, his heart full, but Matthias only frowned at him furiously, shaking his head.
‘Don’t,’ he said, or at least that was what Julius thought he said, because before he could be certain Matthias was gone, swallowed up by the throng.
Julius returned to Berlin on the dawn train. He cabled Geisheim from the station, three words: NOT THE SUNFLOWERS. Back at Meierstrasse he told Fräulein Grüber to telephone the editor’s assistant. His piece would be ready for collection at four o’clock. Till then he was not to be disturbed. An hour later the typist knocked softly at the door.
‘What is it?’ he demanded angrily.
‘I’m sorry, but Herr Rachmann is on the telephone. I said you were busy but he insisted. He says it’s urgent.’
Julius looked down at the sheet of paper in front of him. WHAT IS BAD ART? was written in heavy capital letters at the top
. Everything else on the page was crossed out. ‘Not now,’ he snapped.
Fräulein Grüber closed the door. Julius glared at the page, then crumpling it into a ball, hurled it towards the fire. In all his years on the newspaper he had never once faltered over a column. He had known always what he wished to say and how best to say it, how to balance erudition and accessibility, the superficial shimmer of the surface with the depth of the long view. The sentences spooled from him like spider’s silk, reflexively, their patterns preordained. Not this time. This time words were tangles of sticky hair, clumping and clotting in his head. He closed his eyes to try to see them better, but all he saw was Vincent, green-faced and gaunt, and, reflected in his relentless stare, the corpse of Dix’s crucified soldier.
All afternoon Julius wrote words down and crossed them out. When the messenger from the Tribüne came at four o’clock, he sent him away. Geisheim telephoned. Julius did not take the call. It grew dark. Fräulein Grüber tapped on the door and asked cautiously if he had anything for her to type. He told her to go home. He heard her leave a few minutes later, the brisk tap of her heels on the parquet, the heavy clunk of the front door as it closed behind her. Rising from his chair, he stood in front of the fire. Balled-up sheets of paper littered the grate. Tomorrow he would go and see Geisheim and tell him it was not the business of German newspapers to promote the imperial ambitions of their enemies. He turned his head, looking at the nail in the wall, the ghostly shadow nail beneath it. Böhm had left a message while he was in Cologne. It was almost over. The courts had given Luisa’s lawyers two weeks to submit their counterpetition. If, as he suspected, they had nothing, Böhm would push the courts for a hearing. He would have his divorce, his painting and his son.
Wearily Julius rubbed his neck. He supposed Matthias had telephoned to explain but he was no longer sure he cared for his explanations. He did not have time for childish histrionics, not if they unsettled him like this and distracted him from his work. He had had enough of that with Luisa. Sighing, he touched his finger to the empty nail. Vincent had written once to Theo that there was nothing more artistic than to love people. It was nonsense, of course, at least for him. Van Gogh’s work drew its power from his loneliness. His genius lay in his longing, in his terrible inexhaustible hope. He painted pictures because they were the best substitute for human beings that he could find.
Suddenly Julius could not stand to be sealed up a second longer. He flung open the study door, shouting for Frau Lang to bring his coat. Then he stopped. Fräulein Grüber stood in the hall, clutching her handbag. Next to her, cold-pinched and coatless, stood Matthias. ‘It’s not Fräulein Grüber’s fault,’ he said. ‘She just opened the door.’
Julius shook his head. He felt old suddenly, and very tired. ‘I was just going out.’
‘Of course, I understand, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have come, only I—I wondered if you might let me have my coat. It’s the only one I have.’
His coat. Nothing else. He sounded even wearier than Julius. Julius nodded heavily. ‘Frau Lang will fetch it for you.’
‘Or I can get it?’ Fräulein Grüber offered. ‘It won’t take a minute.’
‘That would be kind. Thank you.’
There was an awkward silence as she hurried away, the door banging shut behind her. Then Matthias sighed. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Fräulein Grüber is happy to help.’
‘Not the coat. The other night, when I left—’
‘Forget it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Look, it’s my fault, I was rude.’
‘No, you were honest,’ Matthias said quietly. ‘I wasn’t. I wanted to tell you, I tried to, but I couldn’t. I was afraid, if you knew—’
‘If I knew what?’
The servants’ door swung open and Frau Lang bustled into the hall, Fräulein Grüber in her wake. She eyed Matthias warily. ‘Did you call for me?’ she asked Julius. ‘Only Fräulein Grüber seems to think you’re going out.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Julius said. ‘Maybe later,’ but Matthias shook his head. Taking his coat from Fräulein Grüber, he put it on.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Then I’ll need my coat too,’ Julius said to Frau Lang.
They walked together along the canal. Below them the dark water gleamed, gilded by streetlamps. It took a long time for Matthias to find the right words. That night, he said, when Julius had challenged him to tell his secrets, he had wanted to speak out but his courage had failed him. He had fled because he was afraid, afraid of Julius’s disapproval or, worse, his disgust, afraid that the truth would change everything and destroy what for Matthias had always been precious and pure. It was only in Cologne that he had understood it was lies that destroyed things, even if they were never spoken out loud. He did not want to lie any more.
‘You asked me if I had a girl, do you remember?’ he said. ‘I said no, but it was not the whole truth. There is someone.’
Suddenly, irrationally, Julius thought of Luisa. ‘So who is she? Do I know her?’
‘Not her. Him.’
Julius was silent. Perhaps he should be shocked, scandalised even, but instead it was like a lamp coming on in a familiar room; he saw that he had known it all the time.
‘I can’t tell you who he is,’ Matthias said. ‘I gave him my word. He’s afraid of trouble, the police, his family knows nothing, that’s why I couldn’t speak to you in Cologne. He was with me.’
‘The man in the velvet coat.’
‘I told him it was safe, that no one would know us. I wanted him to see the sunflowers. We’d talked about it so much. Sunflowers on sunflowers in the full light of the sun. And it wasn’t even there. There was only that—that horrible—’
‘I know,’ Julius said gently. And then, ‘Do you love him?’
Matthias did not answer. It was only when he stopped and buried his face in his hands that Julius realised he was crying. Tentatively he touched Matthias’s back. It was a long time since he had felt such deep and simple tenderness.
‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
A shudder ran through Matthias’s shoulders and into Julius’s hand. Without thinking Julius slid his arm around the young man and pulled him close. Despite Matthias’s confession there was no awkwardness in it, no suggestion of sexual charge. Wherever it had come from, the restless yearning that had drawn Julius to the Jungfern bridge was gone, and in its place a wordless intimacy that warmed his chest like cognac, a sweep of honeyed fire.
X
Julius’s condemnation of Dix’s painting was public and unflinching. In the horror of war, he wrote in the Tribüne, great art found humanity and hope. But the Dix was not great art. It was its opposite, an ill-painted, ill-conceived obscenity. Corpse pornography, he called it, an orgy of the grotesque. It made him want to puke.
The day they published his column he wrote to the board of the Wallraf-Richartz, holding each and every one of them responsible, then sent his letter to the editor of the Kölnische Zeitung, calling for a citywide boycott of the museum. He lobbied the directors of all the major art museums across Germany, urging a combined effort to compel Cologne to take the picture down. He despatched furious articles to influential newspapers and art magazines. He even wrote to Dix, lambasting him for his horrifying failure of judgement and demanding that he withdraw the picture and provide another in exchange.
It was Matthias he wrote for, Matthias who spurred him on. The painting had reawakened the terrors that tormented Matthias during the war; suddenly he was afraid to sleep, afraid even to close his eyes. Hour after hour he woke bolt upright and pouring with sweat, roused by his own screaming. Sometimes he soiled himself. He told Julius everything, there were no longer any secrets between them. Julius had only to think of Matthias and the words poured from his pen.
But, despite his efforts, the painting was not taken down. A few critics supported Julius’s position, Ruthe
nberg among them, but many more took the museum’s side. The assaults were vicious and personal. Julius was mocked for his snobbery, his bigotry, for being small-minded and old-fashioned and old. His opponents pointed to his lifelong advocacy of French Impressionism, his disdainful denunciations of the great painters of Germany, and accused him of a plot against German art. One or two even exhumed the ancient Langbehn line that a Jew could no more become a German than an apple become a plum. Julius had been raised a Protestant and his antipathy to Dix was surely the opposite of unGerman but that was the thing about stories, the more they were told, the more true they became. Julius was dragged into lecture halls and radio broadcasts. He spoke to newspaper reporters, gave interviews for the newsreel.
It changed nothing. At the Wallraf-Richartz the queues stretched round the block. It was, the director acknowledged, the most successful show in the museum’s history.
Julius did not know how he would have survived those turbulent weeks without Matthias. It was bad enough when the painting was in Cologne, but when Gustav Stemler at the Nationalgalerie announced that they would be bringing the Dix to Berlin the controversy reached a new, more vitriolic climax. Overjoyed at the opportunity to slam their long-time detractor, the artists of Germany came out against Julius in force. They ignored his careful arguments. Instead they lumped him in with the octogenarian Prussian generals, the National Socialist thugs who smashed shop windows for fun and claimed it would make Germany great again. In public Julius shrugged off the criticism, but at night, alone and exhausted, his certainties crumbled. Their gibes echoed in the darkness: Yesterday’s man. A dinosaur. Perhaps once a critic of consequence but now little more than a peddler of fatuous pseudo-biography for the masses. Would this be how he was remembered, not as the iconoclastic enfant terrible he had been for so long, but as one of the die-hard reactionaries Dix parodied so savagely? He was almost sixty. He was running out of time.
