Daniel James
Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth78
Time passed differently when you were working on a book. How long had it been since the back of the car and the phone call that set everything in motion? I had stopped marking the weeks and months with units of time, I began to count in words instead. It took less than a thousand words for things to start falling apart. I kept moving, even though every instinct told me that something was wrong; the pieces of the puzzle I was trying to put together just didn’t fit.
How many words did it take to get from St Pancras to the Gare du Nord? What was the word count when I reached Bruxelles-Midi, or the Gare de Genève-Aéroport?79 I wrote 50,000 in the first three months, interviewing people in cafés and bars, galleries and museums, writing into the early hours; coffee in the mornings, wine and beer in the afternoon, bourbon at night. I was staying at the Cité Internationale des Arts,80 a complex of ateliers for artists in the 4th arrondissement neighbourhood of the Marais. My notebook never left my hands, regardless of the time of day. It was with me as I drank on the Left Bank in Montparnasse where Ezra had lived in the 1970s, it was in my hand a week later in the Groeninge Museum81 as I stood looking up at The Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch with a painter who had known Maas, and it was with me in the office at the European Graduate School at Saas-Fee82 with a lecturer who claimed to have had an affair with him. The notebook lay on the table, safely within reach, as I drank coffee at Teecafé Schwarzenbach on Münstergasse, and again during breakfast at a café opposite the De Pont Museum, Tilburg.83 It was with me when I sat across from a music journalist, drinking cocktails in deck chairs on the Oststrand,84 it accompanied me on my walk past the graffiti and murals leading toward the artists’ collective along the Oranienburger Straße. It was with me as I danced at a 24-hour party at Berghain,85 and as I entered the East Side Gallery.86 It was there when I discussed Absence87 with film students at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography,88 and as I explored the State Hermitage89 on the banks of St Petersburg’s Neva River. It was with me as I interviewed the musical director at The Gran Teatre del Liceu,90 and when I ate guisante lágrima with ‘txipiron’ juice and Zurrukutuna,91 with a sculptor in Nerua Guggenheim Bilbao.92 I almost lost it as I escaped through the crowds in Djemaa el Fna square, Marrakech, evading a group of men who were following me. I had to retrace my steps after I realised the notebook was missing, but I was able to retrieve it from the ground before escaping in a cab. It was my constant companion through all of this.
I wrote on the train, in the back of cabs, on the bus, everywhere. I would go to sleep with words swirling in my mind, wake up mid-sentence and reach over whoever lay next to me to continue writing. For months I lived and breathed the book, moving from city to city, country to country. I couldn’t stop. There was always another person to interview, another lead to follow up, another location, where Maas had lived or worked, for me to experience and absorb into the book. I climbed into another car, another flight, another train carriage. I didn’t know where it would take me. Everything was uncertain0.
* * *
The rural landscape was bathed in a hazy, washed out light. As the train moved slowly through the country, the horizon was undefined, blurred at the edges. The skeletal trees and the red-tiled rooftops of farm houses emerged from the fog slowly, as if they were coming into existence just for us. Bruges itself was a different kind of dream to the Belgian countryside. A night-time place of tightly-packed cobbled streets that twisted and turned, ornate doorways and narrow townhouses, medieval footbridges and gloomy waterways that snaked through and around the old city. After arriving at the station, I headed through the Minnewaterpark, past weeping willow trees, and swans drifting along the water, and into the old city centre. After I dropped my bags at the apartment, I planned to have dinner at Restaurant ‘t Gulden Vlies93 where Maas allegedly ate during his years in the city.
It was a small, eclectic restaurant on Mallebergplaats, which had been run by the same husband and wife for almost 40 years. It was like having dinner in your eccentric aunt’s living room, cluttered and overflowing with decades of ornaments and memorabilia, mismatched furniture, dolls, statuettes, vases, photographs, bottles, and candles. It appeared that the owners had thrown nothing away in the four decades they had owned the place. The restaurant had previously been an art café and gallery, and Maas had supposedly visited here while working with a group of Belgian artists in the 1970s. I ordered the Flemish beef stew with spiced apple, and two bottles of Papegaei.94
The restaurant owner was a tough-looking, sinewy woman with dark, heavily-dyed hair and garish jewellery, called Suzanne. Her husband, tall, gruff and moustachioed, was the chef. They were the only staff. After complimenting the quality of the food, and ordering another beer, I called her over.
‘Back when this was a café, an artist named Ezra Maas was a regular here. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Do you remember him at all?’
‘Who?’ Her dark eyes narrowed.
‘Ezra Maas.’
Suzanne’s body seemed to tense for a split second before she composed herself again. She began to adjust the table-setting next to mine, as if something more important than our conversation had come up.
‘You knew him?’ I added.
‘A lot of artists passed through here back then,’ she said, with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. ‘I can’t remember every single one.’
‘He was very famous at the time. You’d remember if Andy Warhol came in here, wouldn’t you?’
I had meant it light-heartedly, but it sounded like a challenge to her memory, an insult at worst. She looked bemused for a moment and then smiled, almost despite herself.
‘I never met Warhol,’ she said simply. ‘But Maas…yes, he did come here, a very long time ago. I heard he was dead.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ I said. ‘Do you think it’s true?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she replied flatly. ‘Why are you looking for him?’
‘I’m not,’ I replied. ‘Not exactly. I’m researching a book about his life.’
‘A biography?’
‘Yes, that’s right. What do you remember about him? I might be able to arrange for you to be paid, if anything you tell me makes it into the book.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be in a book,’ she said. ‘Besides, I don’t have much to tell you.’
‘But you do remember him?’
‘Yes, he was part of a group – artists and their friends – who used to come in here back in the Seventies.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Maas? He…I…Ha. You know, I can’t really recall his face, now you’ve asked. Not exactly. I remember he had dark hair, and his eyes…there was something about his eyes…I’m usually good with faces, but his…it’s a blur if I’m honest…I’m sorry. It’s been 40 years since he was in here, and I’m not as young as I used to be.’
‘None of us are,’ I smiled. ‘What else can you tell me?’
‘He dressed well, and he was always very polite…didn’t talk much. At least not to me. His friends were always in deep conversation. It all gravitated around him. I remember that much. He was the star.’
‘Do you remember any of these friends?’
‘I’m not sure…’ She paused and looked past me at the wall. ‘But you might find them over there if you want to take a look?’
She gestured in the direction of a wall covered in photographs.
‘You have a photograph of them?’
‘It’s possible,’ she replied. ‘I used to take photographs of all the regulars. You’ll have to take a look.’
Her manner was so casual that I almost didn’t register the significance of what she was telling me. Did she just say she might have a photograph of Ezra Maas and his entourage on her wall? She left me for a second to see to another customer. I stood up too fast, nearly knocking my cutlery onto the floor, and clumsily made my way between the tables to the wall of photographs.
There were dozens of faded pictures, some behind glass in a gaudy frame, others simply pinned to the wall. After a couple of minutes Suzanne re-appeared at my shoulder. She moved a bony finger over the wall as if she was divining for water, and finally pointed to a small black and white photograph.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Those were his friends. They worked out of a little gallery on Korte Vuldersstraat.’
I studied the photo. It was a crowded shot of the restaurant from the mid-1970s. There was a group of people sat at a long table, with one or two others standing on the fringes. The composition of the shot had an eerie resemblance to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, albeit with 1970s fashions.
‘Is Maas in this photo?’ I asked.
‘Let me take a look,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think he is…’
I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my face. She saw this and pointed to a couple of men in the picture whose faces were obscured.
‘One of those could be Maas,’ she said. ‘But it’s difficult to tell without seeing their faces, and looking at this picture doesn’t bring back any memories of him. I’m sorry.’
Suzanne took me through what she could remember about the other people in the photo. A young Belgian woman called Marianne who worked at a wine bar around the corner. An American student from Columbia University who wanted to be a writer. And, finally, a German painter who was part of the Fluxus95 movement, but who died a few years later in a car accident. The others she didn’t know. One of the men at the table might have been Maas, but she couldn’t say for sure. Even so, she had been more helpful than she realised.
Although Maas had never been formally connected to Fluxus, the group had come up in my research before. I searched my memory for the other names she had mentioned, cross-referencing against people who had come up in my previous interviews. Her mention of a student from Columbia matched a story I’d been told in Paris about a young writer who had travelled to Paris to meet Beckett before setting off for the rest of Europe. If it was the same man, then I was due to speak to him when I arrived in New York in a few weeks. And it would be easy enough to check if Marianne was still working at the wine bar nearby. It felt like a couple of puzzle pieces were beginning to fit together.
‘Can I borrow this?’ I said, gesturing to the photograph. ‘I’d love to include it in the book.’
‘No…No. These are my personal photographs. They belong here in the restaurant.’
‘I would only need it long enough to make a copy and then you can have it back, I promise.’ I took 250 Euros out of my pocket. ‘Call it a down payment. I’ll pay you another 250 when I return the photo.’
She looked at the money and back at me.
‘I need to think about it,’ she replied. ‘Take a seat and I’ll be back in a few minutes.’ Suzanne walked through into the kitchen. I looked back at the photo wall. It was hard to believe I could be looking at Ezra Maas, but it was somehow in keeping that I couldn’t identify which of the men was him. His control over his own image extended even into the past.
‘Monsieur?’ Suzanne called from behind me.
I turned around at the sound of her voice, and blinked as an old-fashioned flash went off. Suzanne stood a few feet away from me with a large Polaroid camera in her hands. She took the square photograph out and shook it until my image slowly appeared inside the white frame. My thick dark hair and blue eyes looked back at me. Suzanne unpinned the black and white photograph of Maas’s last supper from the wall and handed it to me.
‘What was that about?’ I asked.
‘Now we have a deal,’ she said, as she pinned my photo to the wall. ‘You have my photograph and I have your soul. You’ll get it back when you return my picture – and the rest of my money.’
With the picture in my bag, I headed straight for the wine bar on Braambergstraat, which Suzanne had mentioned. It was set in a narrow red-brick building that dated back to 1637, with leaded windows and dark wooden beams. Inside, the bar was dimly lit and heavy on atmosphere. The owner, a small woman in her late ’60s, treated me like her long-lost son and kissed me on both cheeks after I walked through the door. There was live jazz and blues upstairs that night on the mezzanine, and both floors were crowded. I took a seat at the bar and ordered a glass of Gewürztraminer96 from the extensive wine menu, while the owner proceeded to greet every new arrival in her customary manner. A few glasses of wine later the musicians wrapped up their set with the Charlie Haden’s Quartet West rendition of Lonely Town.97 The bar began to empty out, the owner personally seeing each customer to the door. I took the photograph out of my pocket and placed it on the bar.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to her. ‘Does a Marianne Dubois work here?’
‘How do you know that name?’
I relayed the story I had been told by the restaurant owner and explained I was looking for a man who Marianne used to know.
‘She did work here…but she moved away. What is this about?’
‘Ezra Maas.’
Her eyes grew dark.
‘I don’t know anyone by that name,’ she said, her voice cold.
‘Are you sure? This photo…it looks an awful lot like you.’ I smiled, trying to charm her, but she wouldn’t even look at the photo, or me. Her eyes darted sideways. She was afraid.
‘I think you should leave,’ she said. ‘Marianne doesn’t work here anymore, and I can’t help you.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said. ‘I’m writing a book about Maas, that’s all. I’m looking to speak to people who knew him.’
‘Please go,’ she repeated. A couple of her staff, a young waitress and a muscular kitchen hand, had started to take notice of our exchange and were now looking over, concerned. I decided not to cause a scene. Standing up, I put the photograph back into my bag and placed a business card on the bar.
‘If you change your mind, my number is on the card.’
I waited in an alcove along the street, watching the wine bar, and the activity inside, through the leaded window. While her staff closed up, the owner made a phone call. She looked upset and agitated, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was connected to my visit. About ten minutes later she came out to meet a man who had arrived to collect her, and the pair walked off into the night. The entire city appeared to be empty as I followed them through the streets at a distance. There were no sounds, no voices, no cars, nothing at all. I walked across the square and over one of the small, arched footbridges. The surface of the water was so still and unmoving below that it became a perfect mirror of the flood-lit buildings and pitch-black sky above it; a city doubled. I felt like I had stepped back into a time when the city was under curfew. The streetlamps seemed only to illuminate themselves, the orange light keeping its distance from the shadows of the buildings. Even my footsteps seemed to generate the wrong kind of noise. It was as if the city’s Gothic architecture separated sound and light from their sources, to create a maze in which your eyes and ears were perpetually deceived.
I hung back as they crossed the Burg Square, to prevent being spotted in the open, but I knew I was at risk of losing them in the side streets leading off Grote Markt. As I waited in the darkness I sensed something on my periphery. I turned quickly and saw a figure step back into the shadows. There was someone following me. I had to move. As soon as the owner of the wine bar and her companion were out of sight, I sprinted across the Burg and took the first left on Wollestraat, followed by another left across the river onto Braambergstraat in an effort to double back on myself. I had lost the owner of the wine bar, but in that moment I was more concerned about the man on my tail. I glanced back and saw that he was still in pursuit, walking quickly and purposefully in my direction.
The only signs of life came from flickering candlelight behind the steamed-up windows of a shop front on Jozef Suvéestraat. At first glance, it looked like a kitchen showroom, but there were people inside having drinks, like a private party. I took a chance and went in. On closer inspection, the showroom turned out to be an unusual, minimalist bar designed with a kitchen style worktop as a focal point, covered with hundreds of bottles of gin from around the world. There were only two or three tables and a solitary barman, who was dressed like he had just wandered downstairs in his pyjamas to serve drinks to friends. I kept my eyes on the door while pretending to look at the menu. After a minute, my pursuer walked past the window without glancing inside, his features obscured by the condensation covering the glass.
I ordered a gin and tonic, but the barman insisted I have it on the rocks, muttering something about tonic being sacrilege as he did so. I opted for a sophisticated-looking bottle with the emblem of a golden tiger.98 After battling through a glass that tasted like pure alcohol, I found myself wishing I had discovered a late-night bourbon bar instead. Still, the place had served its purpose. I tipped the barman a 20 and asked if I could leave by the back door.
I wasn’t far away from the apartment I had rented near Koningin Astridpark,99 a former monastery garden turned into a public park, with a wooden bandstand and water fountain. It was a picturesque little neighbourhood, with a patisserie100 on the corner and a boucherie101 across the road; the kind of place I could happily have retired to in another life. The apartment had formerly been a fishmongers and had been converted into a tiny flat some years ago, spread over several levels with seemingly no attempt to adapt the layout. As such, the living space was a strange mismatch of oddly-shaped rooms, stacked one above the other, connected by a series of steep spiral staircases that I had noted would be deadly after a few drinks. The bedroom was in the attic, with a walk-in wet room and views above the city’s uneven rooftops and spires, including the famous belfry in the Market Square. As I climbed the first flight of steps I heard the floorboards above me creak. There was someone upstairs. I continued up, step by step, my heart pounding, and found a familiar face waiting for me in the darkness.
Notes
78. “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” Pablo Picasso, speaking in a 1923 interview.
79. Daniel’s narrative begins in transit. The first chapter describing his work on the biography is presented as a literal search. He is seen as a man of action, permanently on the move, from city to city and country to country; following in Maas’s footsteps and evading those who would prevent him from finding the truth. This is no accident of course and it is interesting Daniel chooses to begin his narrative this way. Perhaps even more revealing is what Daniel omits – and why – which can be discovered by consulting his private notes. Daniel’s description of his time spent researching the life of Ezra Maas, in this and later chapters, would suggest he left London for Paris almost immediately after receiving the phone call that sets the story in motion. He depicts his search for the truth about Maas as a breathless race against time, from one atmospheric location to the next. This portrayal was, of course, a conscious choice on his part. In truth, Daniel spent more than three months conducting research and interviews in the UK before he ever set foot on the Eurostar to Paris. Part of this time was spent carefully planning his European and US itinerary, including exactly who he would interview, where and when, every location he would visit and why, with the rest of his time spent poring over letters and newspaper clippings, financial, medical, and property records, academic books and research papers, photographs, interviews, and more. He was far more organised, systematic, and professional than he chooses to show. In the novel, he skips over much of this research and instead chooses to portray this period of research as a kind of detective story, and his method as largely intuitive, almost like improvised jazz. He depicts himself throughout as a neo-noir literary detective, when in reality he was a post-DeLillo art journalist, who engaged with subjects intellectually as well as personally. He could explore the space between critical theory and personal reflection seamlessly, and was all too aware of his position as the ‘detective’ on more than one level, allowing his roles to merge and co-exist in parallel – Anonymous.
80. In Paris, France.
81. In Bruges, Belgium.
82. In Switzerland.
83. In the Netherlands.
84. On the banks of the river Spree, Berlin.
85. The Guardian: “Berlin's Berghain club is known for many things: its hardcore opening hours (no one arrives before 4am, and most stay until well past teatime), its DJs (who play some of the best techno in Europe), and its relaxed attitude towards sex in public.”
86. A 1316m long section of the Berlin Wall located near the centre of Berlin on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
87. The short film allegedly directed by Ezra Maas.
88. Formerly the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, Moscow.
89. The Hermitage museum occupies six buildings along the Neva River, including the Winter Palace, the former residence of the czars.
90. The opera house on La Rambla, Barcelona.
91. Sometimes described as Spain’s ‘green caviar’, the guisante lágrima or ‘tear pea’ is a highly prized vegetable from the Basque country, grown by Spain’s local farmers for its country’s leading chefs. Zurrukutuna is a rustic garlic soup, made with day-old pan Sopako bread and salt cod.
92. Nerua is a Michelin Star rated restaurant, within the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, offering visitors a taste of Basque country. Nerua takes its name from the Nervión River, the backbone of Bilbao.
93. The restaurant’s name is a reference to a Roman Catholic order of chivalry founded in Bruges by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1430, to celebrate his marriage to the Portuguese Infanta Isabella. It continues to be one of the most prestigious Orders in Europe.
94. A strong Belgian pale ale named after the word for ‘Parrot’ with a distinctive pale blue label and parrot logo.
95. Fluxus was an international and interdisciplinary group of artists, composers, designers, and poets that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. George Maciunas is considered the primary founder and organiser of this loosely organised movement. Fluxus sought to change the history of the world, not just the history of art.
96. A flowery, heady-scented German white wine.
97. Written by Leonard Bernstein and recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1954 – Anonymous.
98. Blind Tiger Liquid Gold.
99. The English translation is ‘Queen Astrid Park’. This former Franciscan garden was named after Queen Astrid, who died in 1935.
100. Patisserie Schaeverbeke.
101. Butchery Maertens Brugge.