by Clare Clark
‘Forgive me, I have to go,’ she said. ‘You’ll keep her, then?’ and when, against his better judgement, he agreed, she thanked him briskly and hung up.
At breakfast the next morning he found an envelope propped against his coffee cup. Inside he found a sketch of a glowering Frau Lang and, underneath, in heavy capitals, WHAT IS IT NOW? This is it, Fräulein Eberhardt had written on the back. Wish me luck. I shake your hand, EE
She returned in the late afternoon. Julius told Frau Lang to send her down to his study when she had changed. She would dine with him and Herr Rachmann.
‘Changed into what, exactly?’ the housekeeper huffed. ‘She’s not brought a stitch with her, nothing but the clothes on her back and those hardly respectable.’
‘Then find her something. There must be something of Luisa’s that would do.’
Matthias was in high spirits. ‘A mystery woman,’ he teased. ‘What a dark horse you are, Julius!’
‘Please, she’s a schoolgirl,’ Julius protested. ‘And frankly nothing but a nuisance. I’m only helping the child because I feel sorry for her.’ He told Matthias that he had spoken to the painter Lovis Corinth, who ran a prestigious private art school for women, and that Corinth had agreed to look at Fräulein Eberhardt’s portfolio. ‘After that I can send her back to her cold-hearted mother with a clear conscience.’
‘Knowing that same cold-hearted mother will never forgive you.’
‘There is that consolation,’ Julius admitted, and Matthias laughed.
‘What’s funny?’ Fräulein Eberhardt asked.
Julius turned. She stood in the doorway, the evening sun slanting behind her. She wore a coral silk-chiffon dress that Luisa had bought on impulse and never worn. The sunlight lit the fabric like a candle flame, imprinting it with the outline of her slender body. Julius thought of Rembrandt’s half-clothed woman bathing in a stream, her chemise hitched up over her thighs, and he felt a reflexive shimmer of desire.
‘Fräulein Eberhardt,’ he said. ‘Come in. Have a drink.’
She stepped into the room, awkward in her borrowed heels, and immediately the spell was broken. She had put on make-up, rouge and powder, bright coral lipstick. The result was lurid, cartoonish. Julius frowned. He had wanted Matthias to see her as he had seen her the first time, bare-footed and bare-faced. He almost sent her back upstairs to wash. Instead he handed her a drink.
‘Gin sling all right?’ he asked. ‘How was your day?’
Fräulein Eberhardt shrugged, twisting the glass in her fingers. ‘I’m not sure. Hopefully it was all right.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Julius said drily.
‘I won’t know for sure till they’ve seen everyone. But they said they liked it.’
‘Am I allowed to know what you’re talking about?’ Matthias interjected.
‘The Berlin Academy.’ Fräulein Eberhardt gulped her drink. ‘That’s why I’m here. I had an interview there today.’
Julius blinked. ‘You never said you’d applied to the Academy.’
‘You never asked.’
There was a silence. Matthias looked from Julius to Fräulein Eberhardt and a smile spread across his face. ‘In that case, I think you’d better start at the beginning.’
XII
Mattias could argue again and again that theirs was the side of righteousness, but he did not have to live with the consequences. On the day that the Dix was unveiled in Berlin Julius lunched with Geisheim. Outside the restaurant the road was being dug up. Every few moments the hum of conversation was broken by the angry shriek of hammer drills. They did not talk about Stemler. Perhaps over coffee, Julius thought, but as soon as their plates were cleared Geisheim signalled for the bill.
‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to run. Summons from management.’ He signed the chit the waiter brought him and shook his head at Julius. ‘Our generation was idiotic enough to believe that the primary purpose of newspapers was to report news. I am now reliably informed that the Tribüne is an advertising hoarding. The stories are just there to fill in the gaps.’
‘It’s not that bad, surely.’
‘It’s every bit as bad. I’ve tried to fight it but it’s a losing game. Our costs are too high, we don’t turn in the profits. If we don’t modernise they’ll fold us.’
‘Modernise how?’
‘Younger readers. Younger writers. Less serious analysis and more of what those on high nauseatingly insist on calling zing. Less serious anything. Less art.’
Julius stared at him. ‘You’re sacking me.’
‘I’m telling you how things are. You’re the one who’s been kicking up a fuss all year. And weren’t you just telling me you’ve no time for the new book? Well then. Perhaps this is the perfect moment to spring your bonds.’
It was Stemler. Julius knew it. He had known it when Munich’s Neue Pinakotek withdrew their invitation to write the catalogue for their new exhibition of Impressionists, just as he had known it when the chairman of the most illustrious art prize in Germany suggested that it might be time for both of them to step down. The same chairman had just accepted a seat on the board of the Nationalgalerie.
When Frau Lang greeted him on his return home with the news that a pipe in Julius’s bathroom had burst, causing water to come through the morning-room ceiling, he had to fight the impulse to summon the police and lodge a charge against Gustav Stemler for malicious criminal damage.
The water brought down a section of the plaster, smashing a side table and ruining the smaller of the two sofas. When Matthias saw it he whistled. ‘It must have taken quite a performance to bring down the house like that,’ he joked.
His flippancy infuriated Julius. ‘Do you think this is funny?’ he snapped, and felt a twinge of remorse as Matthias winced. He was being unfair, he knew it, but the chaos drove him to distraction. With the morning room out of bounds, Fräulein Grüber had moved her desk and the telephone into the hall. All day long the not-so-muffled bell shrilled and the clattering typewriter played a counter-melody to the thump-whine of hammers and saws. There were days when, unable to work, unable even to think, Julius was certain he would lose his mind.
Upstairs, meanwhile, the floors were taken up to repair the pipes. Julius had no choice but to move into Luisa’s rooms. Her dressing room was still full of her clothes.
Sometimes, late at night, Julius opened the wardrobes and ran his hand over the soft furs, the brightly coloured silks. Most of them he had chosen himself. He had a good eye and was willing to spend a great deal, almost as much as she would have spent on her own. Luisa adored it at first, their trips to Paris had been among the happiest times they had shared, but, as things soured between them, she accused him of controlling her. He did not want a wife, she said, only a mannequin, a clothes hanger to show off his impeccable taste. Julius had retorted that she should be glad, that it was only because of her beauty that he could forgive her banality, the intolerable emptiness of her head. There was nothing but hate in him by then, hate for the impossible hope she had fired in him, for her failure to heal him, to make him the man he had always hoped to be. Hate for his inability to stop falling, helplessly and hopelessly and again and again, in love with beautiful, intoxicating things. Pitiless and precise, he hurled his pain at her like rocks. It had not occurred to him that she might hate him for precisely the same reasons.
It was evening when the telephone rang. Fräulein Grüber had gone home and Julius sat in his study beside the open window, looking out over the garden. The blaze of the day had burned down to a molten pinkish-gold and the air was sweet with lilac. Only Matthias would call at such an hour. Smiling, Julius rose and went into the hall, picking up the receiver just as Frau Lang opened the door from the kitchen. He waved her away. ‘Hello?’
‘Ju?’
‘Luisa,’ he said stupidly. He had the disorienting sense that he had summoned her, that, by thinking of her, he had somehow imagined her into being.
‘I hope I didn’t disturb you. You weren’t still
working, were you?’
‘Actually I was.’
‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I should try again later?’
‘What is it you want, Luisa?’
She hesitated. ‘I know this is out of the blue, but I have to be in Berlin in a few days’ time. I thought we might—I wondered if we could meet.’ Her voice was husky, uncertain. You love me, she had once said to him in the same voice. A lifetime ago when neither of them had been able to believe their luck.
‘Why?’ Julius said tersely. ‘Will you have the painting?’
‘Don’t be like that. Half an hour, that’s all. We need to talk.’
‘Will you bring Konstantin?’
‘Konnie? No, of course not.’
‘Then the answer’s no. There’s nothing left to say.’
Another silence.
‘Please, Julius. Aren’t you tired of us always being our worst selves?’
Julius hesitated. He could feel the downward tug of it like a weight in his chest, the lure of letting go, of finally telling the truth. Then he thought of the empty wall, the empty crib in the nursery, and he shook his head at Luisa’s nerve, at his own suggestibility. When, in all the years he had known her, had Luisa ever wanted to make peace? This was not an olive branch. It was her last desperate throw of the dice.
‘Talk to your lawyer, Luisa,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ll see you in court.’
Matthias’s apology was half-hearted at best. ‘It’s not so terrible, surely. Of course if you really can’t bear it you could always emigrate. Or I could fake my own death.’
Julius sighed. He knew Matthias intended it as a kindness, a distraction from Luisa, from Geisheim, from the Dix dogfight that refused to die, but, grateful as he was, there was little Julius wanted less than to dine with Fräulein Eberhardt.
‘I’m just not sure why you thought of it,’ Julius said. ‘Why you’ve been writing to her at all. She isn’t your problem.’
‘You don’t think a girl like her becomes everyone’s problem in the end?’
Julius could not deny that Matthias had a point. Fräulein Eberhardt had written to him several times, first to tell him that the Academy had offered her a place and after that seemingly just to let off steam. Chaotic and exuberant, crammed with sketches and sharp asides, her letters reminded Julius of Vincent’s letters to Theo, and not only because she always signed off in his style: I shake your hand, EE. Like Vincent, she wrote with a blend of acuity and self-absorption. Like Vincent, she seemed incapable of feeling something without saying it. She raged about the dullness of her lessons, the inedible meals, the unbearable tediousness of her classmates.
We speak the same language and yet I swear I don’t understand a word of what they say. Who cares about bloody raccoon coats and Rudolf Valentino? I bite my cheeks to keep myself from screaming & say it over and over: Berlin.
Her fourth letter was a torrent of fury and distress. Her mother had changed her mind. She was forbidden to attend the Academy. Her life was over. Julius thought of his own father’s unyielding autocracy, the grim years he wasted studying engineering before he escaped to Berlin, and he was suddenly furious. His letter to Frau Eberhardt was icily civil and concluded with Schiller: No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart. A fifth letter from her daughter arrived two days later. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ran across a whole page, the words strung with bunting and balloons. A barrage of fireworks lit the margins.
They release us from this hellhole on Friday and we come straight to Berlin. I’m coming to Berlin! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Elvira says that if I come to any harm she will hold you personally responsible (I hope you’re afraid!) but what harm could I possibly come to in BERLIN?! I will never forget this, NEVER. You are my saviour. You have literally SAVED MY LIFE.
‘What does she mean, she’ll hold me personally responsible?’ Julius asked, but Matthias only laughed.
‘Now you see why I had to ask her to dinner,’ he said. ‘She worships the ground you walk on. We have to stick together, your little band of protégés.’
They ate in the dining room, the candle flames like feathers in the fading light. To Julius’s relief Matthias was the perfect host, pouring wine, putting Fräulein Eberhardt at her ease. Within an hour they were all on first-name terms. Matthias talked about art, about a new exhibition of paintings at Fleicheim’s by the Spanish artist Picasso.
‘We should go together,’ he said to Emmeline. ‘There’s no point in asking Julius to come, he considers Picasso a charlatan, but we must do our best to like some things that Julius does not like, don’t you agree? We are not entirely his creations, after all.’
He told stories too, stories Julius knew but some too that he had not heard before, of Matthias’s years as a dancer, when he called himself Rodrigo Villalba and danced bullfights and ghost stories and unrequited love and the fierce, lonely life of the gaucho on the Argentine pampas.
‘And still I’ve never set a toe in Spain,’ he admitted. ‘Let alone Argentina.’
Emmeline laughed and drank more wine. Whatever the finishing school had managed to teach her, it was not how to dress for dinner. In her draped velvet jacket and wide-legged silk trousers she looked as though she was wearing her pyjamas. Julius wondered what her mother would say if she could see her, but he had to admit that in the candlelight she and Matthias made a striking pair, her with her hair loose and kohl smudged around her eyes, him with his pale cheeks flushed with wine. Looking at them Julius felt old, suddenly, and excluded, not by them—already they were talking about him, Matthias remembering something Julius had said to him the very first time they met—but by the gulf of years that separated them. The world looked quite different when everything one wanted was still to come.
‘Do you still dance?’ Emmeline asked Matthias when dinner was almost over. She sat on her chair with her feet tucked up under her like a fakir, her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her clasped hands. Julius wondered if she was not a little drunk.
‘I don’t perform any more, if that’s what you mean,’ Matthias said.
‘I bet you were wonderful. Was he wonderful, Julius?’
‘Sadly I never had the opportunity to see him,’ Julius said. ‘I wish I had.’ He smiled at Matthias, who smiled back, raising his glass in a silent toast.
‘Dance for us tonight,’ Emmeline said suddenly, untangling her legs. ‘In the hall: wouldn’t that be something? Under that beautiful chandelier?’ Matthias shook his head, amused, but she had already turned to Julius, one hand on his arm. ‘Wouldn’t that be perfect? Rodrigo Villalba in a special performance just for us? Oh, please, Matthias, say you will.’
‘Fräulein Eberhardt, Emmeline, I hardly think . . .’ Julius protested but Matthias smiled, his head on one side. He looked towards Julius, then back at Emmeline.
‘Very well,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll dance. But only if you dance with me.’
Emmeline laughed. ‘But that’s ridiculous. I can’t dance to save my life.’
‘Of course you can,’ Matthias said. ‘Everyone can dance. You just need the right music. Julius, I hate to ask, but since this is a very special occasion, do you suppose we could persuade you to unlock your gramophone?’
Julius glanced at him, startled he would ask, but Matthias only went on smiling at him as though it was a perfectly ordinary request. Perhaps it was. Matthias who knew everything and would never do anything to hurt him. Slowly he rose, gesturing for the others to follow.
Julius had had the drawing-room light switches moved out to the landing when he first took the house. He did not want anything to mar the perfect plainness of the room. He flicked them on. Then, turning the key, he pushed open the double doors. Huge and high-ceilinged, the room was austere, softened only by three sets of French doors opening on to narrow balconies. A pair of enormous mirrors hung on either side of the fireplace, reflecting a pair of simple grey Rietveld sofas, a low glass table. There were no paintings. Instead a row of white plinths displayed
sculptures by de Fiori and Maillol. Emmeline stared.
‘Julius, my God,’ Matthias gasped, laughing in disbelief, and the pleasure tasted sharp and hard in Julius’s mouth, like an unripe fruit. He followed as they walked slowly through the room, gazing around them. The gramophone squatted in a corner, its overwrought marquetry an affront to the spare beauty of the space. A leather box of discs stood beside it. Matthias bent down to look through them, then slipped one from its paper sleeve and placed it on the turntable.
‘You’re not really going to make me do this, are you?’ Emmeline asked. Matthias smiled and lowered the needle. In the empty crackle that followed he held out his hand. Helplessly she took it and he pulled her towards him, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow, taking her other hand in his.
Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor, arranged for orchestra. The first of only a handful of records Julius had given to Luisa, back when he wanted her to love what he loved. As the first delicate bars spooled from the gramophone’s horn, Matthias drew Emmeline close, then as the orchestra took up the melody he began to dance, taking Emmeline with him. He danced with a fluid, effortless grace, the music shaping itself to him and he to it, one completing the other. A sculpture, Julius thought, and he thought of Rodin, his hands caressing the soft flesh of his models, memorising them with his fingers. Matthias danced and in his arms Emmeline softened, her body melting against his until there was no space between them, their bodies moving as one, and, as with Rodin, there was beauty not only in the perfection of form but in the charge of the moment, the raptness of erotic desire.
