All I know about Grandpa Klaus was that he was a big fan of wordplay and managed to turn my mother into an expert at it. Not only could she recite tongue twisters with fiendish speed, but she was thrilled to discover words that were palindromes or talk without one of the vowels. Her list of passions also included anemones, potato fritters, the color yellow, and solitaire. Or that was what my father told me. Actually, it’s a shame that someone’s life can be reduced to such an arbitrary collection of isolated and imprecise details. Without any balance between the whole and the parts.
It’s not exactly the same thing with Erika because, even though I lived with her for almost twelve years, I often feel I never knew her very well. No matter how much I turn it over and over in my mind, I can’t understand why I decided to marry her. Or how I could allow the friction between us to go so far. My father only told me once that she wasn’t for me. And he was right. But I fell for her hard and I jumped in without thinking twice. On the face of it, Erika was everything I wasn’t. She gave off a contagious vitality. She was daring, and it seemed nothing could stand in her way. Over time though, I realized that she never followed through on anything and her enthusiasm was just a façade to hide her disappointment over her lack of discipline and talent. I don’t know. And the most disconcerting thing is that the anxiety ruling her life never turned into exasperation or dejection, but instead into a renewed need to search and move, which would eventually cool off and cause a new restlessness that pushed her to try her luck in another direction. Time and time again. And she always had her father’s money and unlimited encouragement to buttress her. And then came the excuses. . Erika was a virtuoso of frustrated impulses and excuses to justify her failures. I never did understand the real reason behind her dissatisfaction. I only suffered the consequences.
It would be perfect if life were as easy to correct as a drawing. Perhaps we’d miss out on valuable lessons if we made fewer errors, but it would be a good way to save ourselves headaches. Despite everything, I’d like to remember Erika without reproaching myself for all the things I didn’t say or do when I should have, and without being angry with her for the pain she caused me. Perhaps then I could recover the good moments without tarnishing them with hatred. But it’s too difficult for me. Especially when I think about Konrad. I imagine that without him everything would have been simpler. We would have just been two people at odds, unable to understand each other, and we could have resolved it fairly easily, but shortly after Konrad was born, looking into his eyes for the first time, I discovered that the ties that bound me to him were too strong and inexorable.
Everyone said that he looked like me. My father was even convinced that he had a resemblance to my mother. I never saw it, but I didn’t argue with him. As a boy, Konrad was curiosity incarnate. He rummaged through everything. He would open up drawers and empty them. Or pull books off their shelves. Even still, I enjoyed bringing him to my studio. Sometimes he would stare at the paintings with a serious expression, as if he were a critic about to give his assessment. But his favorite form of entertainment was the zoetrope. Watching it spin, he would shriek and laugh like crazy. “More ‘tozotope,’ more ‘tozotope,’” he would say over and over as he imitated the sheep jumping over the wooden fence. He also loved to muck up in the paints, especially if he could mix them with the sand from the courtyard and dirty himself up to the elbows. And he adored dogs, but Erika never let him have one. She was afraid of them, even though she wouldn’t admit it. At night, after reading him one of his favorite stories, like The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids or The Elves and the Shoemaker, or when I came home late and he was already sound asleep, I would sit on his bed and just look at him. Hearing his breathing, free from worries and suspicions, calmed me.
I so wish he were here. Not only would I not have to die alone, but maybe he would be curious about my stories, and I could tell him about my memories of his grandparents, and Alma, or Sergeant Forkel and Professor Müller and, that way, my life wouldn’t completely slip through the cracks into oblivion. It’s a consolation like any other. I often try to imagine what he would look like if he hadn’t died, but the passage of time doesn’t make that easy for me. It’s become harder and harder to conjure up his image. But that’s how memory works. It’s a mystery. I can’t understand why it clings to memories that, given the choice, I would forget in the blink of an eye and yet doesn’t allow me to retain others, ones I would give anything to keep close.
Of course, Hofer didn’t forget about me. On his next visit, he left the soldiers downstairs and came up on his own. Since I saw his car entering the alley, I had enough time to hide the watercolor I was working on. Without a word, Hofer planted himself in front of the Cranach again.“So, have you made your decision yet?” he asked. “No,” I replied. “Not yet. It’s that. .” “Well, Göring is tired of waiting,” he interrupted. “And so am I.” Then he turned slowly to pierce me with his gaze.“I don’t suppose you’re thinking about trying to trick me, right?” I wanted to say yes, and that I was fed up too, of all of it, but sometimes, as my father would have said,“what’s kept quiet is worth more than what’s said.” I shook my head. Hofer smiled with satisfaction. “That’s a good boy.” Then he came over and gave me a couple of pats on the arm.“Since you are having such a hard time deciding, I’ll do it for you. Tomorrow I’ll come for the Cranach and I’ll give you back all your junk. How does that sound?” he added. Without waiting for a reply, he backed up towards the door he had left open.“Until tomorrow.” Also two words. Like “You decide,” but more forceful, with the weight of his threat spreading through the studio like a cloud of poison gas.
Even though I was nearly done, knowing that I had to finish that night was upsetting, because I never could stand being rushed. But, at the same time, I was calmed by the idea that I was only a few hours from the end. Like so many other times, the first light of day found me working, my back aching and my eyes red, but feeling the pleasant weariness that comes with finishing a job. If I had been living in Hauterive at that time, it would have been the moment to take a good long walk to shake off the stiffness and whet my appetite for wolfing down one of Alma’s lavish breakfasts. That’s why it was my favorite place to work. Because there is nothing like a landscape in the early dawn, with all its colors just about to burst forth again, to recover from a night of work. And it was the only workspace I tailored to my needs. When I happened upon that mill on the outskirts of town, I didn’t think twice. I had been searching high and low, and I’d almost given up on finding the perfect place. Isolated, but close enough to Paris to be able to go there whenever I wanted. With lots of trees. And a river. And enough space to build a studio away from the house, taking advantage of a clearing in the forest. Paul Nelson, whom I met thanks to Braque, took on the project, a mix of greenhouse and woodcutter’s cabin. Alma was taken with the place from her first stay there, shortly after we met. She was happy taking long walks and caring for the garden. She could spend hours there. I liked to watch her work, focused on her tinkering like a scientist puttering over test tubes.
Alma wasn’t particularly pretty. She had very hard, sharp features, with sunken eyes and a slightly large mouth, but her beauty came, when least expected, from the small details. From the way she pushed her hair out of her face; from the subtle shift — as if she weren’t entirely convinced — from smile to laugh; from the way she wrinkled her nose in distaste; from her voice with its many registers and tones; from the movement of her hands, which she used to reach those places she couldn’t reach with words. I think she would have made a good model, but she never let me try. She didn’t want me to paint her portrait. She couldn’t bear the thought. All I have left are some photographs. And that recording of The Human Voice where, at one point, she complains about the distance that separates her from her absent lover. When I hear it, I have to struggle not to think about the years without her, maybe not entirely extraneous years but definitely ones lived without much conviction.