by Clare Clark
Gerda sleeps beside me, her breath catching in soft snores at the back of her throat. I nudge her and for a moment she is silent, then the snores start up again. Sighing, I slide out of bed and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. Coming back I see a pale stripe of light under Mina’s door. Knocking softly I push it open. She lies curled like a prawn on one side, reading a book.
‘You should be asleep,’ I say.
‘So should you.’ She does not close her book.
‘Want to talk?’
Mina hesitates, then nods. I sit down on the bed beside her. When I got home yesterday she told me flatly that she was abandoning her project. We ate our supper in silence. Later Gerda told me that the restorer at the Nationalgalerie had been kind, enthusiastic even. He had spoken with passion about the potential of new scientific means of examination and analysis: microscopy, paint dating, infrared and ultraviolet radiography. But when Mina asked him, her eyes shining, how long he thought it would take before German science stamped out forgeries completely, he sighed. We never will, he said. All we can do is to make it harder to get away with it, to find better and better ways of proving that a painting is fake.
‘But one day surely there’ll be different science, science that can prove what’s real?’ she protested but the restorer only shook his head.
‘How?’ he asked. ‘The best forgers don’t make any mistakes.’
Gently I take the book from Mina’s hands and put it on the night table. It is one of the blue books she brought with her, Algebra IV.
‘Not exactly bedtime reading,’ I say but Mina picks it up again and opens it.
‘“It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life,”’ she reads and hands the book to me. Not algebra but White Fang. ‘Papa and I made the covers before I came. So I could bring it and not get you into trouble.’
‘White Fang was Anke’s favourite.’
‘Papa said. He said she knew whole parts of it by heart.’
I smile, my throat tight. Stefan is right, she did, but I didn’t know he knew. There is an inscription on the frontispiece, above the drawing of the sun rising like an explosion of fire over the frozen Yukon. In loving memory of Cousin Anke, your Papa.
I close the book. We look at the blue paper cover. Algebra IV.
‘Life is an effort,’ I say. ‘Often a great effort. But it isn’t futile.’
‘It is sometimes. When you try and you try and it makes no difference, nothing changes at all.’
‘But something does change, don’t you see? Not the things you want to change, maybe, but you. You change. You learn what it means to try.’
‘To try and fail.’
‘To try and fail and try again as all scientists must. To go on.’
‘But what’s the point? What’s the point of any of it when nothing’s for certain, when the only things we can prove are the things that aren’t true?’
‘Because it’s not the truth that undoes us.’
Mina is silent. Sleep is closing in on her, her eyes are heavy. I rise and, leaning down, kiss her lightly on the top of her head.
‘Sleep tight, darling girl,’ I murmur and I switch off the light.
Sunday 3 September
In the Tiergarten the leaves are starting to turn, there are splashes of orange in the green, and despite the glazed blue sky there is an edge of coolness in the air. Summer is nearly over. Nursemaids in starched caps push perambulators along the paths and stout ladies tug impatiently at little dogs on leads. In the woods horses glimmer between the trees like fish.
The Floraplatz is a large circular garden with flowerbeds and low privet hedges and a bronze statue in the middle of an Amazon astride her horse. I see Frau Dumier as I come out of the woods. She has the child with her, they are playing with a ball. On the lawn, a woman with a picnic basket is sitting on a rug watching them, her arms wrapped around her knees.
When Frau Dumier sees me she puts the ball down. I can hear the boy’s shrill protests, he tugs at her skirt, but she only murmurs something to him and takes his hand. There is something different about her, I can’t put my finger on it, and then I realise that she is wearing a dress, a green dress with a white collar and white buttons down the front. She is wearing stockings too and neat brown shoes with a heel. There is nothing remarkable about the outfit, I see scores of girls every morning setting off to work dressed just like she is, but on her the effect is disorienting, wrong somehow, like the cats in the picture book I used to read to Anke, trussed up in starched pinafores for tea. I have never seen Frau Dumier in anything but trousers. I’m glad when I see that there are still ink stains on her fingers.
‘Frau Dumier,’ I say and she sighs and shakes her head.
‘My name’s Emmeline,’ she says and, turning, she raises a hand to the woman on the rug who claps her hands and calls out Ivo’s name. The boy pays her no attention. He leans against Emmeline’s leg and stares at me, his face screwed up against the low afternoon sun.
‘What is it?’ I ask her. I look around me. It is not possible to be overheard here, there is no cover for thirty yards in any direction. I wonder if that’s why she asked me to come here. ‘Why did you need to see me?’
Emmeline strokes the boy’s head, then gives him a little push. ‘Go on, Ivo darling, go to Mama.’
‘No,’ Ivo says firmly and puts his thumb in his mouth, stopping it up like a bottle. Emmeline bends down and sweeps him into her arms. He squirms furiously, pushing at her with his dimpled hands.
‘We need to find the zookeeper,’ she says. ‘A monkey like you belongs in the monkey house, not at home with Mama and me.’ She moves towards the rug but the other woman is quicker, she comes forward, taking the wriggling child in her arms. ‘This is Ivo’s mother, Frau Keyserling. Herr Berszacki.’
‘Frank, please,’ I say quickly.
‘Hello, Frank. Dora.’ Smiling, Dora untangles the child’s fingers from the chain around her neck. From the chain hangs a little golden key. Then, shifting the boy round on to her back, she canters him back to the rug. ‘Come on then, Ivo, where do you think Mama might have hidden that gingerbread?’
Emmeline watches as the two of them upend the picnic basket on to the rug. ‘I’ve been wrong about so many things. When Dora met Ivo’s father, when she got pregnant, I was so sure it was the end of the world. That nothing good would ever happen again.’
‘He’s dead, your friend’s husband?’
‘He was never her husband, but no, not as far as we know. He doesn’t exactly stay in touch.’ She shrugs, biting the inside of her cheek, and twists her wedding ring on her finger. ‘It’s good of you to come.’
‘Is this about Anton?’
She stares at her ring, then slowly nods. ‘He’s gone. He asked me to tell you.’
‘What do you mean, gone? Gone where?’
‘After he was sacked, we thought that would be the end of it but it wasn’t. They came to the house, they said he was a Marxist spy, Anton who never had a political thought in his life. They didn’t find anything, there was nothing to find, but they took him anyway. When they finally let him go he knew it wasn’t over. He said they’d never give up, they’d just keep coming back and back until—he said if he stayed it would only make trouble for us, for Ivo. So he left. He didn’t say where he was going, just that he’d send a postcard when he got there.’
She’s crying. I put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Have you heard from him?’ I ask and she shakes her head. ‘You should have telephoned me when they took him in. I might have been able to do something.’
‘Like what?’ When I don’t answer she leans down. I hadn’t noticed the battered leather bag propped against the statue’s plinth. Unbuckling it, she pulls out a small folded envelope and hands it to me. ‘I want you to have this.’
The envelope has been opened, its edges are torn. ‘What is it?’
‘I was going to burn it. I burned the ot
hers. It didn’t change anything. It’s my fault, don’t you see? What happened to Anton—’
‘Is happening every day,’ I say. ‘It’s vile and vindictive but it’s not your fault.’
She shakes her head fiercely. ‘You’re wrong. When I—I never thought—I was a mess. I thought it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered any more.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She is silent. Then she looks at me, the bag cradled in her arms. ‘Nearly four years ago I screwed Gregor Rachmann. September 1929. It was stupid, meaningless, but Dora had just told me she was pregnant and I—he was in Berlin and, I don’t know, it happened, I let it happen. I barely remember it, it lasted a week, less, I was drunk the whole time, but after that he wouldn’t leave me alone. I changed my telephone number but he still wrote to me once or twice a month even though I never answered, right up until Anton and I got married. Then he stopped. I thought he’d finally given up. And then this came.’
‘From Rachmann?’
‘I thought I saw him, you know. A few weeks ago, outside our flat. Watching us. Only when I looked again he wasn’t there.’
I think of the man smoking in the doorway in the street beside our office. ‘He was following you?’
‘Em-em!’
Emmeline turns. The little boy is waving. The other woman, Dora, has her hands round his waist, she is trying to make him sit down.
‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Look, all this time I’ve wanted to forget the Rachmanns but that sketch, the grid, I can’t just let it go, not now, not any more. It’s too late for Anton but perhaps—I don’t know. Here, take it. And take this too.’ She pulls the sketchbook I returned to her out of the bag and holds it out. ‘You’re the lawyer. You decide.’
I take the sketchbook and the letter. I am not sure I want either. There is no address on the envelope and no stamp, just EMMELINE EBERHARDT scrawled in large capital letters. I turn it over.
‘Not here,’ she says quickly. ‘Later. When you’re alone.’
I want to give it back. Instead I put the envelope in my pocket. It’s all I have left to offer her. ‘You’ll let me know, won’t you, when you hear from Anton?’
‘If.’ She tries a smile. ‘He’s always been hopeless at keeping in touch.’
‘It’s better, you know, that he’s away from here,’ I say. ‘It’s a terrible burden, having to hide who you are.’
Emmeline is silent. She looks down at her green dress with its white buttons. There is a smear of mud on the skirt. She does not try to wipe it off. We stand there together in the bright afternoon sunshine. Then, holding out her hand, she smiles crookedly. ‘Goodbye, Frank. And thank you.’
I walk back to the path. When I reach the trees I stop and look back. The two women have the boy between them; he’s holding both their hands. They smile at each other, then swing him high into the air. His shrieks are giddy with delight.
At a café near the Reichstag I go to the lavatory. Locking myself into a cubicle I take the envelope from my pocket and slide out the letter. There is no address, just a place name. I know it, one of those once-villages at the end of the U-Bahn line where the fields are now planted with factories.
My dearest E
How many times have I taken up my pen to write to you & yet never with so sure a hope as I do today. Today the darkness & its demons have been cast out, there is light at last. The world sees clearly & the chains that bound you are broken. You are free.
I want you to know I forgive you. I have reason enough for anger, God knows, but I am not angry, not with you. How could I be? I love you today as I have loved you always, with all my heart. Remember what Vincent said, though I fall 99 times, the 100th time I shall stand? When he fell the 100th time he broke himself into pieces but I shall go on standing. We cannot fight what must be, any more than we can fight the rising & setting of the sun. I must not, will not, cannot live without you, as an artist or a man. You are my beginning & my end, the sky above me & the earth beneath my feet. You are my she and no other.
Come, my darling. Come to my Yellow House. Everything is ready.
Your G
Monday 4 September
I take the train to the end of the line. I know it may turn out to be a fool’s errand but, as we rattle past the factories and the bleached yellow fields, my spirits lift. I have the papers in my briefcase, I will knock on every door if I have to. The stationmaster shakes his head, he doesn’t know any Rachmann, but when I show him the drawing I’ve cut from Emmeline’s sketchbook he whistles through the gap in his teeth. He knows that face sure enough, though his man’s not Rachmann but goes by the name of Gelb. He points past the raw new houses scattered like boxes along the unpaved road. The old Schmidt house, he says, backs on to the woods. I nod. Gelb means yellow. The Yellow House.
Outside the station two skinny boys squat beside a patch of weeds, one of them is poking a dead bird with a stick. The other one stares at me without curiosity as I walk towards the woods. I wish I could say that I intend to confront Gregor Rachmann, that I will press him about his role in his brother’s frauds, that as Dumier’s lawyer I will demand to know his part in Dumier’s systematic harassment by the SA, but I know already that I won’t. The Rachmann case is over. Art, despite the proverb, does not hold fast. In Germany anyway, it is coming to an end. As for Dumier, Rachmann may have stirred the pot but it was still my client who broke the law. While Paragraph 175 stands, unnatural fornication remains a crime punishable by imprisonment. Provoking Rachmann will not change that.
No, my sole purpose is to have him sign the necessary papers that will authorise his crates to be returned. That is all that matters now, I tell myself, to execute my duty under the law, but still my soul squirms. Every day, across the country, these same accommodations, the same justifications for doing nothing. The politicians, the judges, the medical establishment, the professors, all of us with our fingers in our ears and our eyes squeezed shut. I tell myself I have to be careful because I am a Jew with a wife and a niece to think of, but I know I am a coward. Someone will do something, we have said it all along. But we are all of us too careful—too cowardly—to be the someone who does.
Where the new houses peter out there is a jumble of decrepit stone cottages. Most of them look abandoned. The one I take to be Rachmann’s is set back from the road behind a cluster of gnarled fruit trees choked with weeds and brambles. It is only as I lift the sagging gate that I see a kind of path has been trodden down. Thorns snag my trousers as I pick my way along it to the wooden porch that runs along the front of the house. The porch is rotten, soft and mossy with damp, and piled with empty bottles and rusting tin cans. A decomposing wicker chair slumps against the wall.
I bang on the door. When no one comes, I peer in through the dirty window and like a reflection another face looms back at me, pale, dark holes for eyes. I gasp and step backwards, sending bottles clattering across the porch. A bolt scrapes. The warped door creaks open.
‘Berszacki, well, well. You took your time.’ It’s Gregor Rachmann all right, beneath the unkempt hair and the thick black beard. He grins at me and, as I nod back, baffled, I catch the sharp smell of sweat and stale alcohol. Perhaps he is drunk. I fumble in my briefcase for the papers but he kicks the door wider and jerks his head. ‘Come on then, man, what are you waiting for? Come in.’
My dreams are like this, restless and unsettling, cleaving to a logic that I can’t grasp. Uneasily I follow him inside. There is no hallway, the door opens straight into the main room. The light is dim, the shutters are closed, but I can see it is crowded with junk. Bundles of cloth and old newspapers, broken bits of furniture, more empty bottles, rusted tools, a rickety table heaped with dirty plates and pots and pans, mountains of dog-eared books. It smells of unwashed clothes and turpentine and the sharp sweet smell of rotting rubbish.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long,’ I say feebly and I hold out the papers. Rachmann snatches them from me, ripping open the envelope. I take a breat
h, draw myself taller. ‘Herr Rachmann, I am here on behalf of the state in my capacity as guarantor for the safe transfer of items seized from your premises by police on 18th January 1929—’
Rachmann drops the papers on the floor. ‘Jesus, Berszacki, you and your legal bullshit. None of that matters now. Where’s my painting?’
The floor seems to tilt as I fumble the papers up. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Just as soon as I receive the necessary funds for—’
‘Funds? What the fuck?’
‘As detailed in the original confiscation order, the owner of any property seized is responsible for meeting the cost of its return.’ Rachmann’s eyes narrow. He takes a step towards me. Instinctively I step back. ‘You extorting little shit. You’re holding me to fucking ransom.’
‘Of course not. I’m simply asking you to meet your legal responsibilities.’
He leans closer, his breath hot on my face. ‘My legal responsibilities? Your business was with Matthias, Berszacki, not me. If you want funds, get my brother to settle his fucking bills. That painting is mine and you’ll give it to me, you hear me, or, I swear to God, I’ll break you in two.’
I am cringing, I can’t help myself, I’m afraid he will hit me. ‘That’s what I’m saying. Everything that was taken from your studio, it’s all there, every last item, just as it was. All I’m asking is that you meet the cost of the carter. Or make your own arrangements, I don’t care, as long as you sign. I’ve been trying to get them back to you for months but we had an address in Düsseldorf, then Matthias told me you were in Frankfurt, so when you never answered my letters—’
‘Why would Matthias tell you I was in Frankfurt?’
‘I don’t know. But he wrote it down, look.’ Tugging my notebook from my pocket I flip through the pages till I find it, a Frankfurt address in Matthias’s handwriting. Gregor’s face hardens. Then he laughs.
