The man said, “Where did you paint this, Mein Herr?”
Addie doesn’t usually give his pictures titles.
“In poverty,” Addie said.
The man smiled. “So it is an imaginary scene?”
Addie looked down at his broken shoes. I was worried what he might say.
He said, “Of course. Everything that is truly good is imaginary.”
The man nodded, as if he agreed. But then he leaned down and touched Addie on the shoulder. Addie flinched. He doesn’t like to be touched.
The man said, “You paint well, but I happen to disagree with you. Imagination is highly suspect. Reality is what is beautiful. But we are blind to it because it is familiar. Don’t you think it is the task, the duty, of the artist to make reality strange? To refresh the way we see it?”
Addie shrugged. He looked uncomfortable. He has strong views about art, and they differed from this man’s. But he was reluctant to argue with a potential buyer.
He said, “The task of the artist is to pay the damned rent.”
The man smiled again. “True. But the artist volunteers for other responsibilities, does he not? He shows his work and says, ‘Here, see through new eyes.’ For example, the trees in your painting are silver birches. But you have given their bark a lilac colour. Now, when I look at birches in the evening, I shall perhaps find that colour in them. Thus, you will have made a change in my way of seeing, which is a change to my life. A small one, perhaps, but a change nonetheless.”
Addie, for the first time since I’d known him, was stuck for words.
He was saved by a commotion. An outbreak of shouting and cheering, a crush of people onto the pavement. I was shoved back against the railings by the throng and I only just managed to save my hat. A troop of the Imperial Cavalry had clattered onto the Heldenplatz. My view was blocked by the press of bodies. All I could see, in glimpses between heads and shoulders, was the faces of the troopers, stern and identical below the peaks of their crested helmets, the pennants flying from their lances, the heads of their horses tossing. I found it hard to breathe. Not because of the crowding. It was as if the air had all been sucked away, as if the people all around had inhaled at once and left nothing for me. I could feel their excitement drowning me as real as water.
There is a desire for war, which I share but do not understand.
Addie had climbed onto his little stool so as to see over the crowd. He won’t admit it, but he is shorter than I am. I looked up at his face and saw the thrill in it. His blue eyes bright as stars.
When the cavalry had passed by, the man who had perhaps considered buying Addie’s painting had disappeared.
“Where’d he go?” I said.
“Who?”
“That man. The one who liked your painting.”
Addie looked at me as though I was speaking a foreign language.
He shrugged. “To hell with him,” he said. “Did you see the Imperials? Weren’t they magnificent?”
Werner’s twenty schillings didn’t last long. By the end of June we were hard up once again. Addie couldn’t find much work. Besides, he’s been spending more and more time at meetings of what he calls “the group”. When he comes home he spends hours, sometimes half the night, writing furiously in the cheap notebooks he used to do sketches in. When he’s writing he talks and argues with himself as if I’m not there.
I’m sure that he is a genius. I’m sure that one day he will be really famous. But, in the meantime, we have to eat.
So, two days ago, in the afternoon, while Addie was out, I tidied myself up a bit and went down to the cafe quarter. A man propositioned me and I went with him into the little alleyway behind Schwartzer’s. With the money he gave me I bought a thick slice of pork belly and some potatoes. I came home and was peeling the spuds when someone knocked on the door. The only person who knocks on our door is the landlord when he wants the rent. I stayed silent, hoping he would go away, but I knew he wouldn’t. So I dried my hands and arranged my face and opened up.
It wasn’t the landlord. It was a smiling man in a beautiful pale grey suit. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. He took his hat off and I saw that it was the man from the park, the one who had talked to Addie about his picture before the cavalry came by and I’d lost my breath.
He didn’t seem to recognize me, though, because he said, “I was told that Herr Hitler lives here. Is that correct?”
I told him yes, it was, but that Addie wasn’t in. He seemed very disappointed. It was awkward, this stranger standing there. I didn’t know what else to say. Then the stairs began to creak and someone coughed, climbing up. The visitor looked over his shoulder. “Might I come in for a moment?”
I could hardly refuse, could I?
In our wretched little flat he was like a fallen angel or something. But he looked around as though he was pleased with everything. He went over to where Addie’s finished or abandoned paintings were propped against the wall and leaned to study them. I had nothing to offer him. Nothing that he would have wanted, anyway.
He straightened up and took a little silver case from his waistcoat pocket. It flipped open as if by magic and he took out a card.
He gave it to me and said, “I should be grateful if you would give Herr Hitler my compliments and ask if he would be so kind as to call upon me at this address. Any morning this week would be suitable. Or next week, if he is busy.”
I nodded and said, “Thank you,” which was stupid. He smiled.
At the door he turned. “Oh, and ask him if he would bring with him his charming little landscape with the lilac birches. You know the one I mean?”
When Addie came home, I told him about the visit and gave him Doctor Solomon Etzmann’s card. He looked at it for a whole minute.
“This man was here? A rich Jew was here? You let him in?”
“I didn’t know he was a Jew, Addie. He was just the man who talked to you at the Volksgarten. He seemed very nice.”
“God in heaven. What the hell did he want?”
He wanted to save us. He really was an angel. So much has happened! I hardly know where to start.
Addie refused to go at first. It took me almost a week to persuade him. He can be very stubborn. But poverty wins all arguments, as my mother used to say. So he went, and when he came back he was glowing.
“He bought the picture! Look!”
Addie put the banknotes on the table like a miracle. I think I cried, I can’t remember. And then he told me that Doctor Etzmann had commissioned him – commissioned him! – to do a painting of his country house. Addie is really good at houses. Did I say that already? Anyway, Doctor Etzmann’s house was near Waidhofen something-or-other. Addie had to wait until September, because that was when the trees had the best colour. That was all right, though, because the money for the birches painting kept us going until then.
So off Addie went with his palette and brushes as soon as the leaves started to turn. I thought he might ask me to go with him, but I suppose he decided I might be a distraction. He was gone a whole month. The money ran out – Addie had spent a lot of it on paint – and it was hard for me to make ends meet.
Anyway, he came back looking really well. A bit sunburned. And he’d put a bit of weight on, which suited him. Doctor Etzmann had really liked the painting, and had invited his neighbours to look at it, and three of them had asked Addie to paint their houses, too. Herr Steiner’s in the spring, and Herr Popper’s and someone else’s in the summer. But they’d all given Addie what he called “a retainer”, and Herr Steiner had bought a small landscape, so we had lots of money!