All Days Are Night (11 page)

Because I’ve got nothing to show, he said.

It doesn’t get any easier, she said. Sometime you’ll need to start working again. The scenery up there is beautiful.

Beautiful landscapes are no use for good paintings.

There are lots of radionic power places around there.

That’s more your thing. Are you trying to get rid of me, by any chance?

Astrid got up and called Lukas. Her voice sounded strangely rough when she told him to come home right away. Ten minutes later, she came out into the garden and said Lukas wanted his good night kiss from his father.

It was cool inside, all the blinds were down. Lukas lay perfectly still in his bed, waiting. At such times Hubert thought of him as a strange creature whose world was so much bigger and darker than his own. Hubert bent down, only for Lukas to grab him around the neck and start kissing him frantically on both cheeks.

Enough, enough, said Hubert. You go to sleep now.

As he walked over to the stairs, he remembered an early cycle of pictures, little colored pencil drawings of kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. There were no people in them, but you could sense that someone had either just left or was just about to arrive. He stopped on the top step. From the kitchen he could hear the clatter of dishes. Then he saw Astrid walking through the dark corridor, without noticing him up on the stair. She was carrying a wine bottle and two glasses. Her walk looked as though she was trying not to be noticed. Hubert went softly down the stairs and saw that Astrid had stopped at the glass door that led out into the garden. She was hesitating, perhaps she had heard something or seen something. He took a couple of rapid steps toward her, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her neck. She turned to face him. When he made to kiss her again, she freed herself.

I need to talk to you.

Hubert could only dimly remember the conversation. On the next-door property a halogen beam had come on every other minute or so, because some animal had triggered the motion sensor. In the distance, there was the quiet drone of traffic on the Autobahn. It had gotten colder. Astrid had long since bundled herself up in a blanket. When they finally went in at around midnight, Hubert had trouble walking in a straight line. He carried in two empty wine bottles, set them on the dining table, and lay down on the sofa. Astrid went up to bed without a word.

It was the first of many conversations that always took the same course. Astrid said she felt trapped in their relationship. It was so different with Rolf. He opened up to her. Ever since she had started moving in the therapy scene, she spoke a new language.

Each time, she calmly explained her view of things to Hubert and reacted understandingly to his rage, which only made him still more furious. It all had nothing to do with him. Her decision had been made. In the end, Hubert had no alternative but to agree to a trial separation. Astrid was to stay in the house with Lukas, while he found a small apartment for himself.

Now that Hubert knew about Astrid’s lover, she had no more reason to meet him clandestinely. Every second or third evening she went out. Then Hubert would sit at home all evening and watch Lukas, who had trouble sleeping and had awful nightmares when he did. When Astrid got back at one or whenever, Hubert was sitting in front of the TV, and she vanished upstairs without a word.

The semester was over in the middle of June, but Hubert still went in every day. He had taken a one-bedroom apartment near the lake. He had forgotten all about the invitation to the mountains when Arno sent him a reminder.

What do I have to do to convince you? he wrote. After lunch Hubert had coffee with the head of his department. She knew about his separation from Astrid and urged him to accept the invitation. It was almost twelve
months off, in all that time he would surely think of something. Perhaps the pressure of a deadline was just what he needed.

After lunch, Hubert replied to Arno: He’d be happy to come.

In July he went away on vacation with Astrid and Lukas. They had rented the house just after Christmas. Hubert had offered to step down in place of Rolf, but Astrid said they weren’t that far along yet. She had no problem going on holiday with Hubert anyway.

During their two weeks in Denmark, the weather stayed cool and rainy. Lukas was bored. They did all sorts of activities, visited a safari park, a maritime museum on a restored three-master, and a glassworks, where Lukas made a glass mold of his hand. At least by day Hubert could give himself to the illusion that they were still a family. Lukas too seemed to appreciate that they were all together again. Astrid received a string of text messages and at least once a day a phone call. Then she would go into another room or, if they were outside, take a few steps away. Hubert watched her in the distance. She was serious and if anything more irritable after these conversations than before.

When Lukas was tucked up in bed, he and Astrid would sit in the living room drinking wine and reading. Eventually Astrid would say she was tired and head for the bathroom. Hubert put his book down and listened to the unfamiliar noises of the strange house, the creaking of the steps, the whooshing of the pipes, and the wind that was always blowing here. He waited for half an hour,
then he would go to the bathroom himself. They slept in separate rooms, except once, when Astrid got up to go to bed and she whispered to him: Are you coming? He followed her up the stairs. On the landing she took him by the hand and led him into her room.

The next morning, neither of them talked about what had happened in the night, but for the rest of the vacation, Hubert noticed that Astrid would link arms with him when they walked, or kiss him when he bought ice cream for her and Lukas. Sometimes he would shock himself by thinking that this was the last holiday they would have together.

Their closeness during the two-week vacation only served to distance them further from one another. Their relationship became increasingly pally, they barely quarreled anymore when they met. They compared schedules and talked about who would collect Lukas from school or day care, and who would have him over what weekend. Astrid asked if Hubert knew where the warranty for the coffee machine was or if he would fix the puncture in Lukas’s bike tire. They talked about their work, and sometimes Astrid even talked about Rolf, and Hubert listened without interrupting.

There was plenty to do in the garden, and Hubert took it on. He avoided going into the house. Only when he needed some tools from the basement did he go inside. Lukas often came out, played in his vicinity and kept half an eye on him all the time. Sometimes Hubert asked him to fetch something, and he would jump up and run and
get it, as if he too preferred that his father didn’t set foot in the house.

Hubert increasingly got used to the new situation, but he still refused all contact with Rolf. As if to punish him for it, Astrid talked about her friend all the time. He had started his own career advice business. That was what he called it, but in actual fact it went far beyond that.

He works according to holistic principles, he intuits his way into his opposite number, and then he can practically go backward and forward on the temporal axis and give advice, very concrete advice.

Is he your lover or your guru? asked Hubert.

Neither, she said. When he spends the night here, he stays in the guest room.

After the beginning of the new semester, Hubert had hardly any time to think about the invitation to the mountains. There was less to do in the garden, and the only times he went by the house were to pick Lukas up for the weekend or to bring him back. He tried to find out from him what was going on between Rolf and his mother, asked what they talked about, what they did together, but Lukas didn’t like to talk about that.

In the fall, Hubert organized an exhibition for his students, and no sooner was that over than the planning started for an artists’ ball at the end of the semester. The work wasn’t unwelcome to him. Since he was living on his own, he had a lot of time on his hands, especially in the evenings. Sometimes he went to the cinema or the theater. He rarely saw friends. After Lukas’s birth he had lost contact with most people anyway.

In January, in the course of a weekend skiing with the department, he started an affair with one of his students. Nina was in her final semester, she was attractive and energetic. For two months they met once a week. They slept together, and then they would discuss their work. At Easter, Nina wanted to go into the mountains with him, but Hubert said no, he was spending the holiday with his son.

Then bring him, she said. I’ve got nothing against animals and children.

The idea of spending a weekend with Lukas and Nina seemed absurd to Hubert, and he said as much. There followed their first and only quarrel, at the end of which they went their separate ways.

One reason is always lots of reasons, said Nina before she left. The fact that he oversaw her work was something she could deal with apparently better than he could. I’m not angry with you, she said. We had a good time.

Hubert thought more and more about the show. When he accepted the invitation, he had thought he would come up with an idea in plenty of time. Now, with the deadline looming ever larger, he didn’t feel so sure anymore. His head of department asked him once or twice what he had planned. He shrugged.

I might do something with youngsters, he said, or something about mountains or water.

Maybe being up there will turn you into a landscape painter. When do you go?

End of May, he said. For a month.

When he was half out the door, she called after him to say he should put some of his newer work up on his home page. He discussed the exhibition with Nina as well. They were sitting in a bar drinking beer.

There’s a bear on the loose up there, isn’t there? she said. Did you read about it? You could do something with teddy bears. Or with bear poop. Like that African guy who works with elephant dung.

Chris Ofili, said Hubert. And he’s British. To hear you, everything sounds so easy.

You just think my ideas are crap, admit it, she said, and laughed.

Sometimes Hubert asked himself when his creative crisis had started. It hadn’t happened suddenly, at some point he had noticed that he no longer got a kick out of painting and that he hadn’t started anything new for months. Maybe it had something to do with Lukas. He and Astrid hadn’t planned on having a kid, and he was in the middle of the preparations for his first solo show when he learned about the pregnancy. It was the first time his work had gotten any serious attention, an art magazine ran some of the pictures, there was even a report about him on TV. A few days after the opening, a lot of the pictures had been sold, even though his gallerist had set the prices far too high. At that time, he was spending more time in the studio than at home. The gallerist had said he could paint as many naked housewives as he wanted, he would sell them all. Hubert didn’t like it when his
gallerist called his paintings that. So that was a no go. And the pictures were starting to bore him as well. Technically they were no longer a challenge, maybe the newer ones were a little bit better than their predecessors, but they still lacked oomph.

Then the first e-mail came from Miss Julie. Hubert had set up his home page a couple of years previously, but no one had ever written to him there. Her praise flattered him. She asked him about his influences, his methods, why he always painted naked women. He wrote back that he wasn’t obsessed with women, it was just a subject cycle. Basically his pictures of women were a logical continuation of his empty room series before. Julie didn’t believe him.

He didn’t tell her about his girlfriend, or the child they were expecting. He didn’t ask her about her circumstances either. Their e-mails were never entirely serious, Julie’s especially were more playful than inquisitive. Hubert got a clearer sense of her, he was almost certain he would recognize her if they ever met.

When Julie asked him if he would paint her, his first thought was that she was just playing games again. He hesitated and asked her for a photo, but he wasn’t unhappy when she didn’t send him one. He had noticed he was spending all his energy on the exchange and thought perhaps he could invest that concentration in his work and get over the apathy that had been bothering him for months. No one else interested him.

A couple of days later he and Julie had met. When he saw Gillian sitting in the café, he wasn’t surprised. He
had been familiar with her face from her television show for a long time, but it was only when they met in the studio that he had felt her uncertainty and curiosity, which weren’t so evident on the screen. He invited her back to his studio. While he was showing her his pictures, Gillian touched his hand, and he was this close to throwing his arm around her shoulder. He offered her a beer and watched her drink it. He saw the possibilities of her face, not so much its beauty as its variety, the many faces that were contained in it.

After Gillian had left, Hubert looked at the pictures he had taken of Astrid in the south of France again. He could remember their excitement when he stopped the car in the middle of the country road. Astrid got undressed in the car, while he looked around nervously. She tiptoed out on the pebbly ground, he framed the picture and took a shot. Once they were chased off by a farmer, another time Astrid got a thorn in her foot and they had to go to see a doctor. Astrid’s poses were classical, and in their stiffness there was almost something cubist about the pictures. In drawing from the photographs, he had given more care to the landscape than to her body. After that she hadn’t wanted to model for him anymore. One of the pictures had hung in their apartment for a while. Only when Hubert noticed how many of their visitors were embarrassed by it had he taken it down. Astrid hadn’t said anything. Then he had started painting the small-format interiors. The fact that there were no people in them wasn’t a concept, just lack of proficiency on his part.

The idea with the female passersby had occurred to
him long before he ever told Astrid about it. You’d never get anyone to go along with that anyway, she said.