by Clare Clark
‘Relics,’ his friend Bruno had said to him last time they met. ‘That’s what we are. The more or less insignificant remains of a culture that no longer exists.’
Julius had ignored him, putting the remark down to an excess of whisky and self-pity. Now it haunted him. When his publishers informed him that they were postponing the third edition of The Making of Art he reacted furiously, even though it was he who had failed to meet their deadline. Luisa’s lawyers still had not submitted their counter-petition. Böhm said that he was pushing to have their application to postpone overturned but that it might still be months before they got to court. He asked if Julius might be willing to consider a negotiation. There was the boy to think of and the painting. Perhaps it was time to settle.
Julius might have considered it. It was Matthias who urged him to hold steady. He could not let Luisa blackmail him, he could not let her win. Besides, he had enough to worry about with the Dix. Julius knew he was right. The interruptions were ceaseless. Even on those days that the telephone did not ring off the hook he found it hard to concentrate. Sleeplessness upset his digestion. He suffered from headaches, a faint persistent feeling of nausea. When a dealer acquaintance of Matthias’s brought him a Friedrich for authentication he could hardly make sense of what he was looking at. I put my heart and soul into my work, Vincent wrote to Theo, and I have lost my mind in the process. It terrified him.
‘I looked and I didn’t know,’ he confessed afterwards to Matthias. ‘It was like there was a fog inside me, noises with no meaning. I couldn’t feel it, I didn’t know. Friedrich, for God’s sake! How could I not know Friedrich? I’ve been looking at his work for forty years.’
‘You’re tired, that’s all.’
‘I’m exhausted and it’s killing me! Do you have any idea what this is doing to me, to my reputation? They want to finish me, Matthias, and they’re winning. Perhaps I should let them win.’
‘No!’ Matthias grasped his arm, digging in his fingers. ‘We can’t stop now. We’re going to fight with everything we have and for as long as it takes. There’ll be time enough for Friedrich when this is over. This is what matters now.’
Only Matthias’s conviction kept him from giving up. He was Julius’s confessor and his consolation, his younger, surer, bolder self. He fortified Julius’s failing courage, urged him to greater efforts when he flagged. When Julius was shouted down, it was Matthias who pushed him to shout back. Forced on to the defensive, he urged him to attack, audaciously, aggressively.
Worn out, Julius fell ill. He developed a persistent cough, some days it was all he could manage to get out of bed, but Matthias came every day, urging him to hold steady. When Julius heard a rumour that Stemler had spoken to Geisheim about replacing him with a younger critic, it was Matthias who proposed that Julius use his column in the Tribüne to denounce Stemler’s erratic record in championing modern art, his weakness for cheap publicity, his tendency to run the public Nationalgalerie as though it were his own private fiefdom, and demand his dismissal.
‘Surely it will only fan the flames?’ Julius protested but Matthias was adamant.
‘If it runs in the Tribüne it will look like Geisheim’s idea,’ he insisted. ‘Like he’s taking your side.’
Julius was right, his piece did fan the flames, articles appearing in rival newspapers as an enraged Stemler did his best to smear Julius in return, but, as Matthias pointed out, by then it was too late. A man defending himself always looked defensive. There were times, Julius thought, when Matthias sounded just like a divorce lawyer.
No one had ever shared themselves with him as Matthias did then. As the months passed, the intimacies ran between them like a thread, stitching them together. Matthias told Julius about his estrangement from his violent father, the lingering war hysteria that ran through his veins like mercury, his brief career as a dancer in Paris and Amsterdam and Vienna. He spoke of his lover, who was Russian and could not stay in Berlin, not now Lenin was gone and the city was full of spies. Soon he would leave for Switzerland. Matthias wanted him to go, he was afraid for his safety, but he was also afraid for himself, afraid the man would not come back, that he would forget him.
‘You love him,’ Julius said and this time it was not a question.
‘Perhaps I do,’ Matthias replied, and Julius felt his own heart open like a hand.
As for Julius, he told Matthias things he had never before said aloud. He talked of the gnawing dread of getting old and dullheaded and obsolete, of being discarded and forgotten by a world that had once held him in such great esteem; he confided his fears about not writing, the sudden pressures of money, his terror that he might have to sell his art to meet his debts; he spoke of the wretched unhappiness of his marriage, the painting whose loss tormented him every day, the child he had not wanted and feared he would never know.
‘She was so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I thought I would never tire of looking at her. That I would forgive her anything.’
‘I’m boring you,’ Julius said sometimes but Matthias shook his head.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘I want to know everything.’
And so Julius told him everything or nearly everything. He did not tell him about Harald Baeck, a man who could be blackmailed because his desires broke the law. A man like Matthias.
XI
On a rainy Sunday afternoon in May, Julius walked to the polling station on Budapester Strasse and cast his vote in the federal elections. The main streets were noisy with lorries, supporters hanging over the sides, throwing pamphlets and jeering at one another like opposing sides at a football match. Squares of discarded paper littered the wet pavements. Flags flapped from tailgates. Amongst the black-white-red stripes of the Second Reich Julius glimpsed the occasional blank black frown of the swastika. The extremist parties were set to do well. The inflation might be over, but most Germans failed to see bankruptcy as a notable improvement.
Luisa had withdrawn her cross-petition. After interminable obstructions and postponements a court date for the divorce hearing had finally been confirmed. In less than a month the court would grant his petition and he would be free of her. The courts would mandate the return of his painting and the future custody of his son. He could begin again. It was weariness, he told himself, the terrible grind of it, that lowered his spirits. He had expected exhilaration.
A truck lurched through a puddle, flinging up an arc of water that hit Julius full on the legs. He gesticulated furiously, pointlessly. The truck roared on, impervious. Julius squelched home. He was exhausted and, though he could hardly bring himself to admit it, afraid. The previous week, he had lunched with Helmut Werner and outlined his proposal for his next book. Werner had nodded politely, but the next morning he received a summons from Otto Metz. They met that evening at his publisher’s club.
‘Tell me they’ve made a mistake,’ Metz said, gulping whisky and soda. ‘Seriously, Ju, Dostoevsky?’
‘Absolutely Dostoevsky,’ Julius said firmly. He told Metz about Dostoevsky’s arrest for revolutionary activities, the execution by firing squad that was commuted to hard labour only as Dostoevsky stood blindfolded in front of the guns, the convulsive fits he suffered ever after. ‘You wanted another tortured genius, didn’t you? Well, here he is.’
‘No, Ju. What we want is another Vincent. Do you know why your book was a bestseller? Because, for all the ear-cutting craziness, van Gogh was essentially a child and the public like children. They like van Gogh’s paintings. They’re cheerful and easy to understand. A field is a field, even if the sky is green and the sun is spinning in circles. But a Russian novel? How many people do you think have ever actually finished a Russian novel? Crime and Punishment—the clue is in the title.’
Metz had a dinner and could not stay. He told Julius to come and visit, that Nadine would love to see him. He did not mention Werner’s advance, but Julius knew he had not forgotten. If he chose to write the Dostoevsky book Julius would have to pay the money back. The only problem was he no
longer had it.
‘You mustn’t listen to them,’ Matthias said. ‘What does the money matter in the end? You are a visionary, you must write what springs from your soul,’ and the words were a rallying cry, driving Julius onward, but he could not stop the panic rising in him like vomit, the sour terror that he was finished, that he would never write another word.
Back at Meierstrasse Frau Lang fetched him a towel and dry socks and shoes. She wanted him to change out of his wet trousers but he told her not to fuss.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought it peculiar you hadn’t mentioned it, but she said it was all agreed. I put her in the morning room. I didn’t know what else to do with her.’
The girl was curled in a chair in front of the fire, her shoes kicked off and her knees pulled up against her chest. She was drawing. Her possessions were strewn across the floor and over the fender stool. On the side table, amidst a scatter of pencil shavings, a half-eaten apple lay discarded, its pale flesh shadowed with brown. When he cleared his throat she twisted round, throwing down her sketchbook and tugging the sleeves of her high-necked sweater down over her hands. Her expression was wary, defensive. She did not stand up.
‘Fräulein Eberhardt,’ Julius said coldly. ‘What a surprise.’
‘I should have written, I know, and I was going to, only . . .’ She broke off. ‘You said if I was in Berlin. In your letter. I thought—they took my pencils away. I didn’t know where else to go.’
‘Why are you here at all? Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’
‘I left.’
‘Left or ran away?’
She chewed her thumb and did not answer. Her nails were still a disgrace.
‘Does your mother know where you are?’ he demanded. When she still did not answer he turned and crossed the room towards the telephone.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Please?’
‘She must be out of her mind with worry.’
‘Then she shouldn’t have sent me back there. You don’t know what it’s like, it’s like prison. Like a long slow death. I couldn’t breathe.’ When Julius lifted the receiver she leapt up, tugging his sleeve. ‘Don’t, please, I beg you. She’ll make me go back.’
‘Of course she will. What else do you expect her to do? Yes, a Munich number—’
Furiously Fräulein Eberhardt jammed her finger on the cradle, cutting him off.
‘You lied to me,’ she hissed. ‘You said you understood, but you lied.’
‘Now listen to me, young lady—’
‘No, you listen to me! In The Making of Art you wrote about going to see a famous art collection, thousands of paintings, only not one of them was hung, they were just stacked in a warehouse above a railway station with men there whose only job was to hold them up for you to look at, only you didn’t look at them, you couldn’t because all you could think of was the madness of it, all those treasures hidden away in that silent, suffocated place with trains screaming in and out, and you were so angry, so blindly angry, that all you wanted was to destroy it, to burn it to the ground. You can’t write that and then tell me I have to go back, don’t you see? That’s what it’s like for me every day. A part of me dies in that place every single day.’
‘Really, child, these histrionics—’
‘I was wrong. I should never have come here. I thought—but what does it matter? It was all just words, stupid, empty words.’ Digging in her pocket she pulled out a crumpled letter and thrust it at him. His own handwriting. She jabbed at a line. ‘You have something. Don’t waste it. You should have been more specific. Don’t waste it by expecting anything of me. I write pretty sentences but surely you’re not so naïve you believe I mean what I write? All I care about is flogging books and getting fat on the proceeds. With respect, child, the rest of it is hardly my concern.’ She glowered at him, furious spots of pink flaring in her cheeks, as he burst into laughter. He could not help himself, she caught him exactly.
‘Don’t you dare laugh at me,’ she said.
‘I’m not. I’m laughing at myself.’
Unmollified, Fräulein Eberhardt scowled at the fender stool. Then, shoving her feet into her battered ballet slippers, she snatched up her bag and began to stuff things inside. She was half caterpillar, half butterfly, Julius thought as she scrabbled on the floor, caught between cocooned self-involvement and the first damp-winged intimations of sexual power. He wondered how long it would be until she bobbed her hair and bound her chest, until she looked like the other girls in their drop-waisted dresses and their cloche hats and their strings of pearls, their lipsticked mouths all stretched in the same empty O of delight. He supposed it must come, though he could not imagine it, the lipstick or the emptiness.
‘Where will you go?’ he asked.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Your mother will doubtless feel differently. What am I to say to her?’
‘You’ll think of something,’ she said, already halfway to the door. ‘Making stuff up is what you do, isn’t it?’
Julius picked up her sketchbook from the table. ‘You’ve forgotten this.’
‘Keep it. It’s all used up anyway.’
‘As you wish.’
‘You can look at it if you want, I don’t mind.’
‘Is it any good?’
‘You’re the critic, aren’t you?’ She glared at him. Julius regarded her evenly. Fishing his spectacles from his pocket, he opened the sketchbook. The pages were a jumble of drawings and studies: hands and heads, household objects, house flies and beetles. In words strung together like a necklace, A DRAWING IS A LINE GOING FOR A WALK.
Fräulein Eberhardt sidled closer. ‘The real stuff’s at the back.’
Julius turned to the back of the book. A pen-and-ink portrait of Elvira, harsh lines, a harsh likeness.
‘She’s getting married again, did you hear?’ Fräulein Eberhardt said. ‘He’s in the government. Hordes of screaming children and the most disgustingly hairy ears. Truly, like he’s stuffed them with spiders.’
Julius had heard that Elvira Eberhardt was to remarry. Jacob Vidler was a widower, a distinguished diplomat and a decent man, but Fräulein Eberhardt was right, his ears were disconcertingly hairy. Swallowing his smile, Julius turned the page. Some pencil drawings, a handful of hastily executed watercolours, landscapes mostly, jammed between the pages, more or less successful, more or less ordinary.
The nude took him by surprise. It sprawled over the page, knees angled, back arched and head thrown back, one hand between the legs, the other on the belly. A spent, surrendered body, but one undone by sexual release or simply used and abandoned? It was not clear. The graphic composition drew the observer inside the image, made him complicit, but was he lover or predator, intimate or paying client? The ambiguity was unsettling and unsettlingly erotic. He supposed she must have copied it from somewhere. There was something of Schiele about it, the late work when the Austrian finally abandoned his pose of pornographer, and after all, what finishing school would give its girls the chance to draw like this from life?
And then he saw it. The nude was her. She had drawn herself. Hurriedly he shut the book and put it on the table.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Is it any good?’
‘Some of it has—something, yes.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I do, yes,’ Julius conceded. ‘You’re untutored, of course, but—’
‘That’s why I’m here. I want to go to art school. Here, in Berlin.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She’d listen if you told her. We could telephone her now, tell her I’m here, that you think I have something. Something worth something. Will you tell her?’
Her excitement reminded Julius of Matthias, the night that he announced he was opening his own gallery. He sighed. Then he nodded. ‘All right. Yes, I’ll tell her.’
‘Thank you!’ she cried, flinging her arms around his neck. Her hair smelled of trains. ‘Thank you, thank
you, thank you, thank you.’
Julius disentangled himself. ‘I can’t promise it will make any difference.’
‘She’ll listen to you, I know she will.’ Laughing exultantly, Fräulein Eberhardt turned a wild pirouette. ‘I knew you were a good man, Herr Köhler-Schultz. I knew it from the first moment I saw you.’
Elvira Eberhardt was adamant. Art school was out of the question. Emmeline was to complete her education in Switzerland. She asked that Julius arrange for her to take a train to Bern, where a member of the school staff would collect her.
‘I should be grateful if, in future, you could desist from encouraging my daughter in such foolishness,’ she said coldly. She did not thank him for telephoning. Perhaps, Julius thought as he hung up, Fräulein Eberhardt had been right about her mother all along.
She had no luggage, only her satchel and a dog-eared portfolio. As the taxi driver stowed them in the boot she pleaded with Julius, begging him to change his mind, but he only shrugged. Without her mother’s authority there was nothing he could do. She stared at him through the rain-spattered window as the cab pulled away, its red tail lights smeared like paint on the wet tarmac.
An hour later the doorbell rang. A sodden Fräulein Eberhardt stood on the doorstep, her portfolio in her arms, tails of hair plastered across her forehead.
‘You can’t make me go back there,’ she said.
He made her speak to her mother. He could hear her shouting through the wall of his study. When she called him to the telephone he took the receiver reluctantly. Elvira Eberhardt apologised. Her voice was strained. With the elections, she said, there was no possibility that she could be in Berlin before Wednesday. It was an imposition, she knew, but might Emmeline be able to stay with him until then? Startled, Julius reminded her that Luisa was with her parents, that aside from the servants he lived alone, but she only laughed a little too loudly and said something about the old proprieties seeming so silly these days. He could hear the rumble of voices in the background, the clink of glasses.
