On my way to my study I pass the open door to the salon. Ligurna, our Lithuanian maid, greets me looking tragic. I nod to her and hurry on past. A year ago in a moment of weakness I slept with her. Unfortunately it happened not in the kitchen or on my desk but in the master bedroom in our marriage bed. Afterward Ligurna searched carpet and bedside table like a skilled detective for hairs, eyelashes, any other traces: nonetheless I was afraid for weeks that she could have overlooked something. Since then I’ve only spoken to her when it’s unavoidable. I can’t throw her out, she could blackmail me.
I sit behind the desk, swallow two tranquilizers without water, look at the Paul Klee, look at the Eulenboeck on the opposite wall: a canvas covered with a collage of newspaper cuttings, with a crushed Coca-Cola can and a teddy bear glued in the middle. You have to go right up close to realize that it’s all trompe l’oeil. The bear and the can aren’t real, nor are the bits of newspaper; it’s all painted in oils. If you examine the cuttings with a magnifying glass, you see they’re all art criticism about collages.
The painting is from Eulenboeck’s later period, his most valuable. I got to know the old poseur, he was very condescending, very white-haired, and never stopped making really stupid jokes about Ivan and me and how uncannily alike we were. Obviously he thought he knew me well, because he knew Ivan well. It cost one hundred and seventy thousand, supposedly a discounted price for a friend. But all the same it’s got that teddy bear. He gives me joy. I know it’s all a parody of something and nothing in it means what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t care. On the short list of things that aren’t horrible in my life, that bear is right up there.
What luck that these days you can order every medication on the Internet. How would someone like me have coped fifteen years ago? I cross my arms and lean back. I would like to work in order to relax a bit, but I have nothing to do. Without hope, there’s leisure.
There’s a knock. Laura looks in. “Do you have a moment?”
“Unfortunately not.”
She sits down, crosses her legs, and looks first at the Paul Klee, then at me.
“Is it about Marie?”
“It’s about me.”
“You?”
“Imagine, Eric. It’s about me.”
This I needed. Is she going to tell me another dream? Or has someone offered her a role? That would be truly bad news.
“I’ve had an offer. A role.”
“But that’s wonderful!”
“Nothing big, but at least it’s a start. It’s not easy going back again after fifteen years.”
“You’re even more beautiful than you were then!”
Not bad. It didn’t take me half a second to come up with that, the sentence is all prepared and always at hand. Of course she isn’t more beautiful than she used to be, why should she be, but she’s slimmer and the exercise has paid off, and fine mature lines around her eyes look good on her. She could certainly have a career in movies. I have to stop it.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“I must concentrate on myself.”
She stops, evidently to give me the chance to reply. But what do I say?
“It’s only for a while, Eric. To begin with. We’re not separating yet. Everything will sort itself out.”
She looks at me. I look at her.
“Eric, what is it?”
She pushes her hair off her face and waits. Apparently it’s up to me to say something, but what does she want to hear, what’s she talking about?
“I would move out, but it’s impractical. I have to look after Marie, and I also need Ligurna. It’s better if you look and find somewhere else. Then you wouldn’t have such a long journey to the office.”
“To the office?”
“Besides which the house is close to school. I won’t be able to be home much while they’re shooting. Of course you can see Marie whenever you want.”
I nod, because now I understand what she’s saying, even if it makes no sense. The words have a meaning, apparently the sentences do too, but when you put them together, they’re so empty that she could be talking pure nonsense.
“Eric, I can’t get caught up in your games right now.”
I nod as if I understand. Luckily I don’t have to say anything at first, for she stands up and keeps talking. Through a fog I hear her voice speaking about long, lonely hours and how I’m perpetually busy and how money and cold rationality don’t take precedence over everything else. After a while she stops, sits down again, and waits. I look at her helplessly.
“Don’t try that with me,” she says. “Your tricks. Your negotiating tricks. All your tricks. I know you. It doesn’t work with me.”
I open my mouth, take a breath, shut it again.
She talks on. Her arms are so fine, her hands delicate and elegant, again and again the desk lamp catches the diamond ring on her middle finger so that it flashes sparks. Now she’s saying I mustn’t think that it has anything to do with another man, there is no other man, if I thought any such thing I’d be wrong, because there most certainly isn’t another man and I shouldn’t think anything else.
I concentrate on continuing to look at her attentively, and not letting myself get distressed by the fact that the color has drained out of everything and my face feels as if it’s made of cotton wool.
“Answer me, Eric! Stop it! Say something!”
But when I try to search for a reply, everything just retreats still further. I’m back in the cellar, way down, even deeper than I was, and something is coming up the stairs, someone is speaking. Words put themselves together, it’s dark, and there’s a hundredweight pressing down on me. The voice seems somehow not unfamiliar, and from somewhere a crack of light comes in. The window by the desk. I feel as if much time has passed, but Laura is still sitting there talking.
“To begin with everything can go on like normal,” she says. “We can behave as if nothing had happened. We’d fly to Sicily. Next week we’ll go together to the party at the Lohnenkovens’. In the meantime you can look for an apartment. We don’t have to make it hard for ourselves.”
I clear my throat. Did I really pass out here at my desk in front of her eyes, without noticing? Who the hell are the Lohnenkovens?
“I’m not talking about a divorce just yet. It doesn’t have to go that far. But if it does, we have to be sensible. Of course you have good lawyers. That’s the same for me. I spoke to Papa. He’s behind me.”
I nod. But who are they, who are the Lohnenkovens?
“Okay.” She gets to her feet, pushes her hair back off her face, and leaves.
I open the drawer and pick three, four, five pills out of the plastic packet. As I leave the room, my legs seem to belong to someone else, as if I were a marionette, being manipulated by a not-very-skilled puppet master.
In the dining room, they’re all still sitting at the table.
“All done, your call?” My father-in-law smiles at me.
Next to him, Laura smiles too. Her mother smiles, her sister smiles, her daughters smile, only Marie yawns. I have no idea what call he’s talking about.
“Laura,” I say slowly, “did we just … have you …” It could be the effect of the pills. They’re strong, and I took a lot of them. I could have imagined the whole thing.
Or? I took the pills precisely because of Laura. If she hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have swallowed so many. So the pills can’t be the reason that I’m imagining Laura said things that made me take the pills. Or?
“Bad news?” My father-in-law is still smiling.
“You should lie down,” says Laura.
“Yes,” says my mother-in-law. “You’re pale. Better go to bed.”
I wait, but no one says anything more. They all smile. I leave the room unsteadily.
Right foot down the first step. I avoid looking in the direction of the cellar door, because I know that if the bolt isn’t fully closed or the door is actually open, my heart will stop. I go thro
ugh the hall and open the front door.
It’s dark, but the air is still very hot. To my right, pressed against the wall, crouches a shaggy-coated creature that stares at me. Its smell is acrid and biting. As I stop, it bounds away on cloven feet and disappears into the blackness of the hedge.
I haul up the garage door. Knut is already off duty, I have to drive myself. Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this, given the state I’m in, but I’ll manage it somehow. The engine rumbles into life and the car rolls onto the street. I see my house in the rearview mirror. A pale glow of light is emanating from the attic. Who could be up there?
But I’ve already rounded the corner.
Please no accident now, not after all the pills. This time I’m not calling Sibylle, I want to surprise her.
And if she isn’t alone?
The thought cuts through my daze. The car swerves into the middle of the street, horns blare, but I get it under control again. If there’s a man with her, I’ll have to kill him! I turn the steering wheel and a yellow plastic garbage container gets in my way. I dodge, but it hits the right side of the car so hard that the lid flies off and cardboard boxes go sailing all over the street. I brake, and the car stops. Pedestrians are staring at me. A car stops on the other side of the street; two men get out and come toward me.
I’m ready to step on the gas and run them over, but that’s what they intend: I’m supposed to lose control of myself. I get out, fists clenched.
“Do you need help?” one of them asks.
“Are you hurt?” asks the other.
I start to run. I run through a narrow alley, jump over the fence surrounding a building site, clamber over an excavator shovel and another fence, and keep running until I lose my breath and look around with a pounding heart. No one seems to be following me. But how can I be sure? They’re so cunning.
A pedestrian zone. I detour around two women, a policeman, and two youths, Adolf Kluessen, and two more women. Kluessen? Yes, I saw him quite clearly, either it was Kluessen himself or they sent someone who looks just like him. For a moment Maria Gudschmid’s face surfaces under a streetlight, but this at least means nothing, because all sorts of women look just like her. I leave the pedestrian zone, cross a street, walk up a narrow ramp, and reach the front door of Sibylle’s building. It’s locked. I press the buzzer.
“Yes?” It’s her voice in the loudspeaker, and it comes so quickly that she must have been waiting at the door—but not for me, she didn’t know I’m coming, so who’s she waiting for?
“It’s me,” I say into the microphone.
“Who?”
If she doesn’t let me in now, if she doesn’t open the door at once, if she makes me stand out here on the street, it’s over.
“Eric?”
I don’t reply. The door opens with a hum.
Someone touches my arm. Behind me there’s a thin man with a long nose and a narrow chin. In one hand he’s holding the handlebars of a bicycle, and in the other he has a well-worn plastic shopping bag.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he says. “You should have left the three of them alone. It was none of your business.”
I slam the door behind me and run up the stairs. If she has a man with her, if there’s a man, if she, if … her floor. She’s standing in the doorway.
“So what’s wrong?” she asks.
“The thing with the car should never have happened. Just left standing like that. What will people think!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I must report it stolen.”
I walk past her into the apartment. There’s no one here. She’s alone. I sink down onto the nearest chair and switch on my cell phone. Nine calls, three from my office, six from home, three text messages. I switch it off again.
“What’s happened, Eric?”
I want to answer that absolutely nothing has happened, that everything has simply become too much for me. I want to answer that I’m just stuck. But all I say is “It’s been a hard day.” And as I’m looking at her, I realize I don’t even want to be here with her. I want to go home.
“I wanted to be with you,” I say.
She comes closer, I stand up and manage to do everything necessary. My hands go where they’re supposed to, my movements are the right ones, and I even succeed in enjoying the fact that this is what she wants so much, and that she’s soft and smells good and maybe even loves me a little.
“Me too,” she whispers, and I ask myself what I’ve gone and said again now.
Afterward I lie there awake, listening to her breathing and looking up at the dark expanse of ceiling. I mustn’t go to sleep, I have to be home before dawn comes and Laura wants to tell me her dream.
I get up silently and put on my clothes. Sibylle doesn’t wake up. I slide out of the room on tiptoe.
Beauty
“Have you seen Carrière’s new exhibition?”
“Yes, and I’m a bit stumped.”
“Oh?”
“People say he challenges our usual ways of seeing. He says it too. In every art magazine right now. But basically what it boils down to is him admitting that pictures are only pictures, not reality. He’s as proud of this as a child who’s just discovered there is no Easter Bunny.”
“That’s mean.”
“But I really admire him.”
“Quite right, too.”
We both smile. The situation is complicated. In my profession it’s not just a matter of selling paintings—you also have to sell them to the right people. Naturally I have to convince Eliza that her collection needs another Eulenboeck, but at the same time Eliza has to convince me that her collection is the right home for Eulenboeck. There won’t be many more Eulenboecks coming onto the market, and meanwhile the museums have become interested in him, and granted, they pay less, but they can raise the reputation of an artist enormously, which in turn causes auction prices in the secondary market to soar. You have to be careful: if prices rise too precipitously, they soon collapse again, and the result is all the art magazines pronouncing that the market has delivered its verdict, and the name of the artist never recovers. So Eliza has to convince me that she won’t dispose of the painting I’m going to sell her as soon as she can turn a profit on it; she has to convince me that she’s a serious collector, just as I have to convince her that Eulenboeck’s value will not decline in the long run.
But we don’t talk about any of this. We each sit in front of a plate of salad, sip our mineral water, smile a lot, and talk about anything and everything except what it’s actually all about. I’m a good artist’s executor, she’s a good collector, and we both know the game.
So we talk about the terraces in Venice. Eliza has an apartment in Venice with a view of the Grand Canal. I went to visit once and it never stopped raining; mist crawled over the water and the city seemed lethargic, dark, and stagnant. We laugh about the parties at the Biennale, we both think that they’re exhausting and loud and a big effort, but you still have to go, you have no choice. We agree that great beauty makes too many demands: you are helpless in front of it, it’s as if you have to react in some way, do something, respond to it, but it remains mute, and rejects you with sovereign equanimity. This of course leads to Rilke. We talk about his time with Rodin, we talk briefly about Rodin himself, then, it’s unavoidable, we talk about Nietzsche. We order coffee, neither of us has touched our salad, who has an appetite on a day as hot as this? And now, because time is running out, we get around to talking briefly about Eulenboeck.
Difficult, I say. There’s a lot of interest.
She can well imagine, says Eliza, but if you’re going to give a painting a home, it comes down to what neighborhood it will find itself in, and what company it will be keeping. She already has a number of Eulenboecks. Back home in Ghent she has works by Richter, Demand, and Dean, she has a few things by Kentridge and Wallinger, she has a Borremans, whose style is somewhat similar to Eulenboeck’s, and she has a John Currin. In addition to which
she was lucky enough to know the master personally—not as well as I did, of course, but well enough all the same to know that he was no friend of the museum world. His work, she feels, belongs at the heart of the here-and-now, not in the storage rooms of galleries.
I nod vaguely.
Oh this heat, she says.
She fans air toward her, and although the restaurant has soundless ventilators, the gesture doesn’t look silly, coming from her. She has an effortless elegance. If women were my thing, I’d be in love with her.
Weather like this, she says, gives you a whole new respect for Moorish culture. How is it possible to build an Alhambra while exposed to such deadly heat?
In previous eras, I tell her, our species was more robust. Man’s constitution is not fixed, it develops over time. The road marches of the Roman legions achieved distances our world could only attribute to Olympic athletes.
A thought, she observes, that would have pleased Nietzsche.
But one, I reply, that only a healthy person should even formulate. The moment a tooth hurts, you are infinitely grateful for modernity and its alienations.
We stand up and embrace quickly with air kisses on both cheeks. She leaves, I stay and pay the bill. We’ll meet again, first at a dinner party, then perhaps a breakfast, then she’ll visit me in Heinrich’s studio, and then maybe the moment will come to actually talk about money.
I don’t have far to go to get home, I live next to the restaurant. In the hallway of my apartment, as always, I pause in front of the little Tiepolo drawing, happy to be able to call such a piece of perfection mine. Then I listen to the messages on my answering machine.
There’s only one. Weselbach, the auction house, informing me that a dealer from Paris has put up an Eulenboeck for auction the week after next. Old Death in Flanders, luckily a more or less minor work. No inquiries from potential buyers yet, but the dealer doesn’t want to withdraw the painting.
Not good! No inquiries up-front means that the interest driving the auction will be limited, and I’ll probably have to buy the picture myself to support Eulenboeck’s value. The opening bid is set at four hundred and twenty thousand—a lot of money, and all I’ll get for it is a painting I myself sold six years ago for two hundred and fifty. I’ve already had to buy three Eulenboecks this year, and it’s only August. I have to do something.