I’ve always been curious about how people transform over the years. Sometimes I’ve even felt a little envious. Perhaps because I often have the feeling that I’ve settled for what I’ve been given from the start, that I’ve been unable to change. I think that, in broad strokes, I’m the same person I’ve always been: insecure, reserved, prudent. Standing motionless on the edges of the path. Only visible to those who insist on taking notice.
Hofer came back two weeks later. This time with two Luftwaffe soldiers. I don’t suppose it was hard for him to get them as backup because, after all, Göring was their commander-in-chief. A couple of extra heavies on loan to intimidate me. As if Hofer’s gaze wasn’t enough. Or his voice, considerably more imperious that time than the first. “I see you’re having trouble deciding,” he said. And, standing in front of an unfinished canvas, he grabbed a brush and made a few inept strokes.“Don’t you think that looks better?” Then all it took was a movement of his head. The two soldiers, as if it had been rehearsed, began to take everything — all my canvases, easels, stretchers, tubes of oil paint — out of my studio. I didn’t react. I was paralyzed by fear. I could barely stammer out a question: “Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?” Hofer rammed the brush into my chest. “Isn’t it obvious? Helping you out. .” All they left me was the painting Hofer had scrawled on. “Maybe if you aren’t distracted by all this crap, you’ll have more time to think over my offer.” Before he left, as the two soldiers hauled my supplies down the stairs, he went over to the Cranach and contemplated it in silence for a good long while. “It’s magnificent.” “Why don’t you just take it with you then?” I asked. Hofer turned, his face aflame. “Do you take us for simple thieves? I’m offering you a deaclass="underline" the paintings from the gallery and now all this junk in exchange for the Cranach.” And with a sardonic smile, he stuck the dirty brush into my shirt pocket.“You decide, remember? See you soon.”
I spent all night weighing Hofer’s words, along with — when it rains it pours — the little bits of very discouraging news I had about the fate of some of my colleagues. The regime had been purging and purifying left and right. Oskar Schlemmer explained in one of his letters that, in order to earn a living after he was removed from his teaching post, he had to paint advertising murals and camouflage factories and military buildings. His desperation stayed with me, like a constant murmur in the background. At daybreak, compelled by a visceral conviction sprung from who knows where, I dug out a box of watercolors from the bottom of a drawer and, with the only brush they’d left me, I repainted the first painting on the list. Small, more or less the size of a postcard, so I could hide it easily. Dusk Beside The River. I only had to close my eyes and all the details came back to me. The reflections on the water, the row of trees to the right of the bridge, the three buildings on the left, the reddish façade of the Melanchton church.
Finally I had a concrete impulse, a certainty. For days, the paintings gushed out of me, ceaselessly. One after the other. I barely stopped for a bite to eat and a few hours of sleep. My only concern was that Hofer would show up again before I got to the end of the list. I was anxious, knowing he could return any moment. For the first time, my studio was no longer a refuge. Up until then, I could shut myself up there, often for weeks at a time, to work without interruptions, just as I’d done in Dresden and Berlin. Calmly enough to let each painting follow its own path. Without pressure from anyone. Even though I kept telling myself they were unlikely to catch me painting because I could keep an eye on the movements in the alley, and I had found a good hiding spot for the finished watercolors, I felt too vulnerable. The objects surrounding me were the same as always — Mother’s empty sewing box, the zoetrope, the photographs, my grandmother’s rocking chair, the illustration from the medieval bestiary, the books — but the presence of the defaced painting was so intimidating that they barely seemed to protect me from it. I could have turned it towards the wall, or even thrown it away, but, I don’t know why, I didn’t. And, gradually, almost against my will, it became a stalwart. It kept me from getting disheartened when the painting wasn’t flowing or when the weight of everything I’d lost was too much for me to bear. The hardest part wasn’t switching to watercolors at a time when, given the choice, I never would have. It wasn’t accepting that my routine was dependent on the whims of someone else. The hardest part was facing up to the rush of emotions that, brushstroke after brushstroke, the paintings on the list brought back to life. As the blank pages filled with shapes and colors, I reexperienced the streets of Dresden, the cold of a night sleeping beneath star shells, the cliffs of Rügen Island, the nude body of a model, the blue landscape described by Marco Polo. .
With the passage of time, our memories smooth over pain’s rough edges, lighten the burden of grief, smudge the edges of longing. But death’s proximity makes the memories that survive oblivion’s ambushes unusually vivid. Perhaps the imminence of the void compels them to make a last attempt to grab my attention. Which one will be my last thought? If I’m allowed to choose, I would prefer to die with an image of dusk as seen from our garden in Hauterive. Or Konrad’s eyes shortly after he was born. Very wide open. As if he wanted to decipher the mystery of the figures surrounding him. Given the option, I would choose to meet death with a gaze that pure. To fully perceive, even if just for an instant, the color I’ve spent weeks searching for. Or the lapis lazuli quarries in Badakhshan, because gathered there, under their protection, are father’s voice, Cranach’s Madonna, Alma’s gaze, and the soft murmur of my river. I earnestly hope, whatever my final image is, that fear doesn’t keep me from being clear-headed enough to enjoy it one last time.
When it wasn’t so cold and I could open up the studio windows, what I most enjoyed over the long dark nights was hearing the owls, while I waited for dawn so I could continue painting. I tried to locate them by staring into the blackness, but always failed. Then, as if his voice came to me from those days when we would collect materials to make our own colors, I imagined one of my father’s explanations, which I often found quite cryptic: “They hide so you can’t take what they know from them.” And he would scratch his chin. As if giving obvious answers to a curious kid made him itchy. As we walked, he showed me all kinds of things I never would have discovered on my own. It would be nice to always have someone beside us who helps us to see and understand the world. Particularly when confusion and terror push us into the depths of ourselves. Even though it was hard for me to comprehend that a squirrel symbolized evil or that a tulip represented the transient nature of earthly goods, I longed to hear his stories. He spoke without rushing, savoring the details, as if the evening would stop to allow us to return home in the light of day. He was the same with paintings. Sometimes, when we were visiting a museum, strangers would even stop to listen to him. A dog by Van Eyck, a tiger by Rubens, a sprig of lily of the valley by Dürer, or a strawberry by Baldung would lead him from Ovid to the Song of Songs, or from Pliny the Elder to the New Testament. I never understood how he knew so many things. I suppose paintings and books offered him what he was unable to find in life.