22

A week went by. Thomas lost himself in his routines, the back and forth to work, the rhythms of the city. As for Käthe, he heard nothing from her, and in that silence he began to feel a kind of reprieve. It was impossible to untangle his feelings for her from the fear of what had happened to her brother. To stay away from her, therefore, was turning into a comfort.

By the weekend he’d reached a new decision. He went back to Jana Constein’s studio in Wilmersdorf where he intended to inform her that he no longer wished to be in her painting. The artist would have to find another model to replace him. That was his decision and he was determined he see it through. And if Jana, or Erich, or anybody else didn’t like it, so they would have to accept it anyway.

He climbed the stairwell up to the fourth floor, then up a smaller flight of wooden steps to the studio in the attic. With a sudden reluctance in his step, he knocked on the door. After knocking three times more and still receiving no answer, he pushed on the door and found it open. He didn’t have an appointment.

He entered into a lively and hectic scene. The room appeared all at once like a trove, with artists’ brushes and tubes of paint everywhere, gleaming with the lustre of an altogether distinctive and somewhat intimidating occupation.

Then Jana appeared. ‘Thomas? We haven’t arranged a sitting, have we? I wasn’t expecting you.’ She was wearing a painter’s smock and held several brushes in her hand at once. Thomas noticed her hair had grown longer. Around her neck she wore a knotted red neckerchief made of silk. Behind her, he could see the studio area lit generously with sunlight that spread evenly and pleasingly throughout.

‘No, we haven’t arranged a sitting,’ he said. ‘But do you have a few minutes to spare?’

‘Of course. Please come in.’

He crossed the room, only vaguely alert to the possibility that he was interrupting. He walked a circular route around the room, stepping over boxes and props, careful not to disturb something of unidentified significance. A bottle of distilled turpentine sweetened the air with a sugary, petroleum-like smell. The same scent lurked over a large box of oil paints in tubes, all of them squeezed, disfigured, seeping the same yellow sap from their cracks and creases. The smells were warm and engaging, like food being cooked. Thomas thought of bread being baked, then later he had in mind the scent of warm walnuts.

A pile of canvases stacked up against the wall attracted his attention, their faces turned away from prying eyes. Next to them, three or four wooden frames, over which canvas material would one day be stretched, acted like cages or custodians over the secret pictures. Thomas tilted the works away from the wall and peaked at the first painting in the row. He saw a nude woman lying back on a white bed, the bowl of her pelvis tipped towards the viewer unambiguously. He quickly put the painting back into place.

Across the room, the painter’s easel stood centre-stage. It was a large wooden structure with adjustable batons and legs that splayed in a pyramid shape. Paint freckled the wooden legs. On the easel was the large canvas – Thomas recognised its shape from the Potsdam trip – covered over in a white sheet. Next to the easel, a number of cotton rags lay over a small knee-high table. These humble scraps, soiled by old paint cleaned from brushes, looked as though they had been used to mop-up a particularly vicious, multi-coloured nosebleed. Now they had dried hard and were left strewn about so to be always at hand.

Jana followed him as he wandered through the space. She was calm. Her face was plump and fresh, attractive for being free of makeup. Her eyes were clear, sharp. Her mouth was equally clear-cut; her upper lip protruded over the lower lip in the way that a cake overhangs its baking tin. Thomas had found her to be an appealing figure on that day in Potsdam, and he agreed with that opinion today, for she carried an aura of thoughtfulness, patience and hesitancy – qualities he couldn’t help but admire.

‘I hope you like the surroundings,’ she said, casting a self-conscious glance around the room. She came forward and shook his hand. ‘You probably think it’s something of a mess. I apologise for that.’

By way of an introduction to her studio, she explained how an artist who paints portraits must contend with two unruly elements. The first is a shifting source of light, since this leads to creeping shadows and faces that change their expression. It’s for this reason that a well thought-out studio has its main window facing north. The second is a shifting sitter. For this affliction the foremost remedy is alcohol. She had adopted this trick after once lacing a dish of cat’s milk with liquor in order that the animal might stay still long enough for her to paint it.

After this introduction, she offered Thomas a drink. He accepted, smiling at her gentle joke. He was beginning to find the studio surroundings more than a touch convivial.

‘You wanted to talk to me? Is it about the painting?’

He paused. ‘Actually,’ he said, deciding to take a different approach, ‘I was hoping to see it. Is it ready?’

She glanced towards the object under the sheet and gave a nervous chuckle. ‘No, it’s not ready yet.’

Now he was there, he felt desperate to see how he and Käthe looked in the picture. ‘Can’t I see it?’ he said.

‘Perhaps you’d like to sit for me now,’ she asked.

Thomas shook his head. He was about to tell her he intended to drop-out of the work. Then, surprising himself, he completely changed his mind.

‘How long will it take?’

‘Let’s try an hour and see how we get on? Have you got that long?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

She brought a chair over and asked him to sit down. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. Jana gave a smile.

‘You are not very relaxed are you?’

He tried to laugh. With Jana’s help, he adjusted his pose to match the one he had held in Potsdam. She directed him to a small shelf behind his shoulder, on which he propped his elbow so that his hand dangled beneath. He remembered the roof terrace and how he’d put his arm onto the railings and linked the fingers of this hand with the fingers of the other. He could see the scene now, sat with a table in front of him and Erich opposite. In his imagination, the roof patio began to assemble all about him.

Once he was ready, Jana retreated to behind her canvas.

‘What is this painting for?’ Thomas asked after about ten minutes, beginning to feel relaxed. He realised he was actually enjoying the sensation of being looked at and painted.

‘For?’ Jana replied, only half-listening.

‘Yes. Is it for an exhibition?’

‘Yes, probably. Later this year, I should think.’

‘Right.’ Thomas recognised she wasn’t saying much so he tried a different tack. ‘And what is the meaning of the painting?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Will it represent anything?’

Jana continued to dab away with her brush, finally saying, ‘Why don’t you take a guess? I’d like to hear your ideas.’

‘A guess? But I have no clue.’

She continued to paint.

‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe is it about… I don’t know. Is it about Berlin? Or people like us, living in Berlin?’

The artist didn’t respond.

‘Perhaps it’s about all of us,’ he started again. ‘Am I getting warm? A million different people in this city, a million ideas, a million disagreements. These are troubled times, don’t you think? Everyone has to accept that, yet they are exhilarating times too. We live in a city where many rivers meet. It is exciting! But I have no money to explore it. I have few friends. And I am not sure if I can tell truth from lies. So I wonder, am I living the best life I can?’ He paused. ‘Am I at all close? You know, I don’t know much about art.’

Jana looked up. ‘Yes, I believe you are close,’ she said.

He fell quiet. For the next hour, he held his pose whilst she worked on her painting. A deep, satisfied silence lay brooding over the room. After an hour, she asked if he was happy to continue. He agreed. Then after a further forty-five minutes, as she began to clean her brushes, squeezing them through a cloth rag and then dropping them into a jar of turpentine, he realised the session was finished.

He stood up and stretched. He said, ‘Can I see the painting now?’

She smiled pityingly, as if to deny by kindness, shaking her head.

‘Just a quick look,’ he said. He was determined to see what lay on the other side of that great rectangle.

‘You may jinx it,’ she said. ‘But I have to say, it’s going very well.’

‘Even more reason for me to see it. The masterpiece needs an audience!’

Finally the artist relented, gesturing for him to come round to her side of the canvas.

Now he could see the full expanse of the work, the array of figures – characters frozen in paint, situated across the seven-foot stretch. There was the terrace and the rooftop skyline behind. He saw his own figure first, which was mostly painted in except for a few square inches of raincoat. What seemed remarkable to him was the likeness that she had achieved, for he recognised himself entirely and without any misgivings. On close-up inspection he saw that the paint was applied somewhat sparingly, that is, not infinitely detailed but loosely dabbed on. He considered that not a single brushstroke could have been different to how it was, not without upsetting the accuracy and balance of the picture. For that moment he thought the strength of the painting lay in precisely this, that every individual element seemed held exactly in place by what they collectively depicted.

Then he noticed another result of these brushstrokes: if they were to work most effectively then they were best viewed from a certain distance. He understood this when he stepped back and, upon finding the optimum place to stand, found he was in possession of the full panoramic scope of the painting. For it must have been Jana’s intention to use the brushstroke to ‘locate’ the viewer at a certain distance from the canvas.

He saw himself now as part of the wider scheme, looking across the big white tablecloth, past Ingrid towards Erich and Käthe at the other end of the patio. His dark hair was swept across like a tilted cap, his raincoat looked worn, world-weary, charismatic. He was surprised at how elegant his hands appeared, large and dexterous, his fingers intermingled. On first reading, he saw his complex pose as the fulcrum of the painting, but it was not long before that opinion was displaced by several corrections. At either end of the canvas the two standing figures were positioned. On the left was Käthe, her hair short, the line of her back serpentine; on the right, Jana had painted her own image into the work: she was stood pouring cider from a jug. Both figures were dressed in dark colours and occupied the whole height of the canvas at either side, acting like bookends or columns of a building. They were the architectural elements that gave the work its firm, symmetrical quality.

Thomas began to remember that day in Postdam. He recalled Käthe unpicking the creases and ruffles of the white cloth across the table. Others arranged the chairs; Erich was busy drinking and telling stories. The models held onto their poses until the painter’s light failed her, then the wind came and the night drew in.

Next to Käthe was Erich’s figure, the scallywag drunk peering up at the sky in contented disregard. Circumstances had captured him wearing a pursed smile, a self-satisfied though not entirely self-conscious smirk. Such a glimmer allowed a chink of light into the work, breathed humour into the image, though it was perhaps the most troubling aspect, for his demeanour was at odds with the rest: he looked different, cut through with irreverence as he sat askew at the table with his leg outstretched and his body slung to one side. All this gave him a rather inscrutable air – he had been captured perfectly.

At the very centre of the painting was Ingrid. It was her representation above all that attracted his attention, for the likeness was most striking and most touching. It was obvious that she was the main focus of the work. Her head was hung slightly to one side, her white arms resting on the table with one hand on top of the other. In this pose, sat directly behind the table, she concealed all evidence of her pregnancy. Meanwhile her gaze was distant, her breath drawn and held. She seemed far beyond the inquiries one might make of the other figures. This image of Ingrid filled Thomas with a terrible despair, and in equal measure, a sense of dread. Now he could see the loneliness she must be feeling – perhaps she had shared all this with Jana, which is how the artist knew how to paint her so well. And yet Ingrid’s place in the painting was fixed, held in place by the harmony of the composition, a harmony that kept in check every character’s silence across the work. Though they were individuals, enduring the pain of silent existence, they were silent altogether. They were enduring together, and indeed what caused their pain was very much to do with that togetherness, each rubbing up against the other as friends and lovers do, the pain caused by the friction of living amongst other people, each in orbit around a shared predicament given by time, place and circumstance. No one could break the trajectory, though surely the passage of time would bring with it inevitable changes. And this was what the painting showed most clearly of all, how changes would come, had already come, for having understood how it was produced – the trip to Potsdam, the numerous sittings – Thomas saw that the painting’s execution was fraught with potential failure. He knew of the fragility of those few weeks, because he had lived them, had suffered through them. He knew too of the changes that had taken place, and the changes that were still to come, and therefore, he knew how life would soon leave art behind.

He gained his senses again and found himself back in the studio. Yes, the painting was fine and brilliant. Noble even. He looked at it with a sedated pleasure, as if some great tension had been released by seeing it. It was truthful somehow; a new thought came to him, that its immobility had translated the flux of life into something permanent and therefore less of a threat.

Then he noticed something else. Something he didn’t see before. It was Erich. Something about him didn’t look right. He was wearing glasses. He never wore glasses, but in the painting he was wearing a pair of round, wire-framed glasses.

Thomas recognised them immediately – they didn’t belong to Erich. They were Arno’s glasses.

‘Why is Erich wearing glasses?’ he asked lightly, trying to hide his rising concern. He felt his heart beating harder.

‘How do you mean?’ Jana replied.

‘Here. Erich is wearing a pair of glasses. He doesn’t wear them normally.’

‘Yes, just a little touch that I thought worked.’

He looked closer at the painting, not quite believing what he saw. ‘So they were something you added yourself? Is that what you mean?’

‘No, he had them with him that day in Potsdam. They were in his pocket as I remember. I suggested he put them on. He’s lost them since, apparently, but I have my sketches from the day.’

‘He had them in his pocket?’

‘As I remember. Or he was playing with them in his hands. He put them on for a few minutes. I liked the effect.’

‘But if he had the glasses?’ – Thomas considered the chain of possible events – ‘Then he must have seen Arno. Before we even got to the roof terrace. He must have seen Arno before we all met. Do you see?’

‘Arno?’ Jana asked, returning to her brushes.

‘That’s Käthe younger brother. The glasses don’t belong to Erich, they belong to him.’

‘Why does it matter?’

Thomas felt his resolve hardening. ‘It matters because Erich told me he’d never met Arno before.’

‘Thomas, I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘I don’t know either, except that Arno and Erich – they’re connected. That’s all. I don’t know how, but they are.’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘I will.’

‘Today?’

‘Today? Why do you say that?’

‘Because he’ll be here at any moment. He’s coming for a sitting.’

‘Here? Right now?’

She looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘Right now.’

Then, as if listening for his cue, the studio door rattled with three heavy knocks and from behind it Erich’s voice rang out true and unmistakable.