Occupied Paris was a fusion of the grotesque and the abominable with the commonplace business of getting along. Life as usual, business as usual was what most people craved, and considerable sacrifices were in order for the sake of that illusion. But dire departures from the usual became daily routine all too quickly.
Alberto had managed perfectly well without his cane while the war was before his eyes. As soon as he returned to Paris, however, he took it up again. And then he went on working, at heads no larger than a pea and figures the size of a pin, and night after night he destroyed most of what he had done during the day.
The war had made a hiatus in Diego’s customary activities, and Alberto urged him to enroll at an academy for practical instruction in sculpture. It seemed a plausible step. One cannot help wondering, though, whether Alberto actually believed that his brother might someday turn out to be an artist in the same sense that he was. No misconception concerning the differences between artisan and artist can have clouded Alberto’s vision, or his expectations. Genius had its way with him as a brother no less than as a man. It is marvelous, though, to contemplate the determinism by which art finally did make a true artist of the one who humbly let it do with him as it would.
Diego enrolled in the beginner’s course at the Académie Scandinave, where he was required to make studies from life. The results were unpromising, as the human figure did not appeal to him. The only subjects for which he felt a true affinity were animals. Nonetheless, he continued going to the academy, partly to please Alberto but also for his own satisfaction: pleasing Alberto had become second nature to him.
Annetta worried about her sons in Paris. Two years had passed since she had seen either of them, and letters were a poor substitute for the regular visits to which she had become accustomed. The sons also missed their mother, especially Alberto. Swiss nationals with papers in order were entitled to travel permits. There can never have been much question about which son would go. Practical considerations, too, made Alberto the natural choice. Diego could not leave Nelly to fend for herself in circumstances so uncertain, whereas Alberto had no obligation to remain in Paris. The work he was doing could be done wherever he had a sack of plaster. Diego felt that the privations of life in occupied Paris, with its curfew and severe rationing, were less trying for him than for his brother, who was in the habit of prowling about the city late at night and of consuming large quantities of coffee along with innumerable cigarettes. Alberto, however, was not concerned to evade hardship. Paris had been his home all his adult life and he did not like the idea of leaving it in time of trial.
But there was his mother. Her peace of mind was essential to his own. Though in excellent health, she was seventy-one years old. No one could tell how long the war might last, or how it would turn out. Alberto applied for the necessary permit. Valid for departure within twenty-one days, it was delivered on December 10, 1941. He planned to be away for two months, perhaps three, in Geneva, where Annetta helped with the upbringing of her motherless grandson, Silvio Berthoud. As travel plans for Alberto were always subject to last-minute revision, it was only on the last day of his permit’s validity, December 31, 1941, that he reluctantly left occupied Paris, promising Diego and Francis Gruber that he would try to bring back with him some sculptures “of less ridiculous size.”