2

One day earlier

 

A blue locomotive arrived at Potsdam station from Berlin. Inside the fourth carriage from the front, a group of friends stood rocking with the rhythm of the train, peering out of the windows for Potsdam city to come into view. They might have taken the steamboat service that ran through the lakes, a journey that made for a sedate afternoon in the summer months, but the train was altogether faster and more exciting. Besides which, there was work to be done.

As the locomotive slowed along the final stretch, a station guard, who had been made aware of the day-trippers’ arrival, followed the carriage along the platform on foot. He swung open the carriage door and with a gloved hand gestured for the group to come forward.

The reason for their special attention focused on the unique cargo they were transporting. A seven-foot-long artist’s canvas draped in a white sheet.

Thomas was at the front of the object; two of the other travellers held onto the rear corner, and alongside them, the artist, acting as chaperone and foreman.

The station guard led the group through the platform, using his gloved hand to part the crowds ahead of him. Thomas watched on as this petty-official carried out his important job. The way he escorted the canvas through the dispersing crowds of passengers with great theatrical gestures, stepping over luggage and dogs-on-leashes beneath his feet, all the time fluttering his white gloved hand ahead of him, made Thomas laugh.

For now, the canvas was unmarked. It was a huge piece of material stretched taut over a wooden frame, an empty space, a decision not yet taken. The artist, a young woman by the name of Jana Constein, treated it with detached indifference, save for the practicalities of moving it between locations, as if its value was yet to be determined. Yet for Thomas it was an object of fascination, an intriguing promise of things to come.

Apparently, Jana Constein was one of the rising stars of the Berlin art scene, a portrait painter who had studied under the much-admired Herr Wolfsfeld at the Berlin Academy. She later became his star pupil, and for her final two years of study was given a studio of her own as the prize. As a painter, she kept to enough rules of perspective and realism to win the admiration of traditional art-lovers, whilst with her nudes and portraits of ‘new’ women, she also broke enough rules of social decorum to appeal to the avant-garde too.

Out on the street, Potsdam seemed as attractive as ever. Thomas allowed a smile onto his face, thinking with sweet regret how infrequently he had cause to visit the old city. As he looked around the open space doused in sunlight, he saw hats and feathers, fur stoles and walking canes, and all the other expensive garments suggestive of a well-heeled town. It was the city of palaces and fountains, the Sanssouci Park with its Greek allegory frozen in stone, headlands of Rococo architecture and banks of Italianate staircases lined with corals and shells rising from the park floor.

He remembered the events of that morning, how he had washed in a hurry, dressed excitedly and ran down to the street with no reason to question how it was he had fallen into this unusual arrangement. A man like him, having his portrait painted! By a real painter! He had never heard of the artist, this Fräulein Constein, though it was said by certain circles that she had great prospects. It was really unthinkable! A man like him! To become a work of art!

Around the station the scene was vital and energetic. People moved in a hurry. A bearded organ-grinder rolled up, wheeling his music-making contraption onto the middle of the street. He began swinging the machine’s handle so that a wheezing melody filled the air. A few moments later, a young girl, who was wrapped in a dark coat and an Arabian shawl, began dancing to the melody and singing in a shrill voice that hardly matched the eerie syncopations of the organ.

The friends lifted the canvas onto a horse-and-cart and placed rolled-up tarpaulin bundles beneath it to act as cushions. The driver of the vehicle, who wore a cape and had white slicked-back hair like a peeled onion, climbed onto the cart and occupied himself with the job of unknotting the tangled reins. Thomas walked at the front of the procession alongside his old friend Erich. As always, Erich seemed to take the lead in the day’s proceedings.

‘Are you ready for this?’ Erich asked.

‘For the painting?’ Thomas replied.

‘No, I mean for the girl. You’ll meet her today. Remember, try to impress her.’

‘Käthe? Oh, I almost forgot about her.’

‘Please, none of your usual sombre brooding today. I’m sure the two of you will get along famously.’

Thomas was not altogether comfortable about being set up with a stranger. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a frown. ‘We haven’t set eyes on each other yet.’

‘Just try your best. Only, when you are both deeply in love, don’t forget who brought you together.’

Erich winked and brought a smile to Thomas’ face.

As always, Erich wore expensively tailored clothes, the colours carefully chosen to match the gush of dark auburn hair that fell back in waves from his forehead. As they walked, taking the city street by street, church bells constantly clanging and horses hooves clopping in front of them, the two friends remarked that it was a bit like walking ahead of a funeral cart.

Their destination was an apartment with a roof terrace that overlooked the city. On arrival, after carrying the canvas up endless flights of stairs, the group explored the rooftop in admiration and relief. Thomas led the chorus: ‘It’s perfect,’ he said, stepping up to the iron balustrade, suddenly feeling like he had the right to say something grandiose. ‘What a painting this will turn out to be!’

The terrace was set high above the rooftops of the old town, stationed between the bell-towers of several handsome churches, whose beating chimes met the terrace like waves lapping against the hull of a ship. Its floor was tiled in terracotta, and around the edges there were flowerpots with geraniums and petunias in bloom.

Then he looked over and saw Käthe. It was her apartment they had overrun for the afternoon. She had long dark hair with a ribbon tied through it. She was helping the artist arrange things: a long table with a white tablecloth spread over it, with fruit and pieces of broken-up bread across the top, and a knife and some half-filled glasses of beer.

Then it was time for the rest of the models to position themselves around the table’s edge in the manner of luncheon guests who had just finished a meal. To begin with, the artist instructed everyone to approach the table in a spontaneous spirit, to find a place to stand or sit of their own choosing. Then, for the next ten minutes, she went between each model and made adjustments to their posture, a wrist here, a shoulder there, the upturn of an eyebrow, the downturn of a gaze. When everyone was ready, she insisted that all must remember their poses for future sittings.

Presently, the bells of the city struck midday. Thomas glanced across the sea of buildings that made up Potsdam, coloured in the northern palette, of warm greys, shades of tawny-brown and khaki, soft-purple and terracotta, and for a moment felt touched with contentment. These were the colours the artist would use in her painting – he understood that.

He decided then and there that he loved that rooftop, and all the rooftops out there. He let his eyes move steadily along the jagged horizon pierced with church spires to the very limits of the city. Here was a view he could really enjoy, honest as the air floating above them. He tried to catch Käthe’s eye, to pass on a smile onto her, to infect her with his contentment. But she was gazing out into the city too, submerging herself in the same view as he was.

‘Thomas! Hold still please!’ Jana called out from beside her canvas. Promptly he returned to the posture he had drifted from. ‘Everybody? I’m painting now,’ she said, ‘so you must hold perfectly still!’

And hold still they did, inert like shop-front mannequins. There seemed to be something valuable in the endeavour, something ineffably pure in the act of staying motionless on this cool spring afternoon.

Until at once a fierce gust of wind came thrusting across the terrace, thowing everything into disarray: tablecloth and canvas, scarfs and hats. From Käthe it plucked the ribbon tied around her hair. The ribbon fluttered on the breeze, weaving through the air like a bat at dusk. Immediately, Thomas leapt to his feet and reached over the side of the railings, catching the garment with the tips of his fingers before it snaked away into the deep chasm below.

He handed the ribbon back, bashful at his minor heroics. Käthe smiled; Erich leaned over and whispered, ‘Every girl loves a hero. She is hungry for you.’

It was from that moment on, with the unsettling wind and Erich’s sly comment, that something changed that day. Looking back, it was so subtle, so unbecoming of that happy moment, there could have been no way of foretelling the dark events that would append that sanguine afternoon.