The American Ambassador (40 page)

 

On Tuesday he and Elinor went to the exhibit at the Kunsthalle. The great rooms were nearly empty. The tourist season, such as it was, was long gone. Hamburgers were busy in their offices and factories. The artist on exhibit was a young Berliner, a sensation. She was not yet twenty, and she painted on a grand scale; none of the canvases was less than fifteen feet wide. Elinor stepped close up, then moved back, careful to be convincing in her role as tourist and art connoisseur. It was logical that Bill would be bored, always looking around, as if seeking a means of escape.

The Berliner worked with pen and ink, an excellent draftsman, though her figures were grotesque in the German manner. They were pictures of animals, but the animals—an ox, a crocodile, an elephant, a wolf, a bear—were not flesh and blood. She had drawn them as if they were made of building materials, steel girders, concrete, glass. Close up, they looked like structures, animals assembled by a modern architect, not ominous or threatening, but not benign either. In black and white they presented the sterile face of a German skyscraper, Bauhaus and then some.

“She has wonderful technique,” Elinor said.

Bill was noncommittal.

“I'm not so sure about the subjects,” Elinor said.

Bill was standing a little behind her, looking casually around. They were alone except for a guard and a well-dressed middle-aged man with a cane. They were standing on the spacious staircase leading to the second floor. The young Berliner's works were displayed on the high stone walls.

She stood quietly; the museum seemed enveloped in a kind of hush. “They're very public, these pictures,” she said, looking at them with her head cocked, her forefinger laid aside her nose. Her words echoed in the chill. “You wouldn't want them in the living room, or anywhere in your house. They belong in public places. Interesting impulse, to want to paint for a public place.”

The animals had the look of public buildings, city halls, central banks, embassies, or police headquarters. The animals were transparent, the viewer could see brains, entrails, hearts. The various body parts looked like rooms, here an office, there a conference room or corridor; the tail of the immense crocodile seemed a series of cells with bars on the windows. There were no prisoners, however,

“ ‘Witty and unique,' ” Bill read from the program. There was a picture of the artist, a buxom young woman with short black hair and one eyebrow. “These strike you as witty, El?”

“In a way,” she said. “In a way, they do. They're beguiling, thrilling in a way.”

“ ‘They demonstrate the Berliner's natural sense of isolation,' ” he said, translating from the German. This was apparently the artist's estimation of her work. “ ‘West Berlin is a cage inside a cage.' ” Not bad, he thought. In such an environment, even the animals became mechanical.

She said, “What do you think?”

“I'd rather read an essay on the subject.”

She looked at him, amused, shaking her head. “Philistine.” They were moving slowly up the stone steps, to the second floor.

He said, “No, I sort of like them. I like the boar.” The boar was constructed with steel girders, as if the artist had drawn an assemblage from a child's erector set. The boar had a metallic face, vaguely reminiscent of a German politician—Brandt, perhaps, or Helmut Schmidt. It was hard to tell who it was, the face also bore a resemblance to the famous jowly bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. He thought it was Brandt, but the program gave no clue.

“It's fresh,” Elinor said.

“Cheeky,” he agreed.

“No, fresh as in
new.”

“That, also,” he said.

She said, “Go along, I'll be a minute. I want to look at these some more. See what she's up to really, the girl in the cage.” Elinor often preferred looking at paintings alone. He ascended the stairs, glancing casually around him. The middle-aged man with the cane had walked past them, on his way to the second-floor galleries. He had paid them scant attention, but had paused to peer at a Degas at the top of the stairs, and then had strolled on, his cane going tap-tap-tap. He had the erect bearing of a retired military officer, perhaps on his way to meet a friend for lunch; he moved around the museum as if he owned it.

The Degas was a portrait of a young dancer, and Bill looked at it, and down the staircase to the mechanical animals. No connection that he could see, though there had to be one somewhere. There was a connection between the Congress of Vienna and SALT II, so there must be a connection between the young Berliner and her animals and Degas's young dancer. No painter could fail to be influenced by Degas, as no treaty was without its shadow of Vienna; every son had a father. He looked over the railing. Elinor was still below, moving forward and back in front of the crocodile, frowning; she was examining the work, one painter to another.

He watched her a moment, then followed the taps.

The middle-aged man was standing in front of one of Max Liebermann's self-portraits. There were three of them on one ornate wall: stern, sterner, sternest. Liebermann did himself in black and white; he was his own best subject. He was his own young dancer. The middle-aged man tapped his cane impatiently, and marched on to the next room. This was the introduction to Hitler's degenerates, Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Dix. Max Beckmann had a room all to himself. The middle-aged man seemed happier among the degenerates. He stood very still, a slight smile on his face, as if he were posing.

A sudden squeak caused Bill to turn. A line of schoolchildren entered the gallery, quiet as prisoners. They looked neither to the left nor to the right but continued through the gallery single file, turning into the hall containing the Flemish. Sneakers squeaked on the marble floors; the sound put his teeth on edge. Two male teachers, one at the head of the column, and the other at its rear, supervised the children. No doubt the children would be happier with Dutch burghers, pastoral scenes of canals, cattle, and tavern life. He felt a moment of vertigo in the large room with its creamy light.

The unnerving line of quiet children disappeared, and he and the middle-aged man were alone with the degenerates. Except he had slipped away, and was seated on the viewers' bench in the adjoining gallery, Beckmann's.

The moment of vertigo passed. He gave another look at the three Liebermanns, then stepped across the threshold. They were alone in the Beckmann room.

The middle-aged man said, “During the war, he went to Holland. And then to America.”

He nodded politely. “Is that right?”

“In America, there were patrons and he was able to paint again.” All this in slow, cultivated German. “In Holland he was able to do nothing, merely a few oils. But in America he regained himself. Yet his greatest period was before the war.”

“A great artist,” Bill said.

“I did not like the ones downstairs,” the middle-aged man said. “They're trash.”

“Political art,” Bill said.

“All great art is political, but that was trash.”

“I wouldn't say that Degas was political.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. He was staring at the Beckmanns on the wall fifteen feet away, and when he spoke it was to them. “I am afraid so. I am afraid that Degas is revolutionary.”

Bill smiled. “The dancer has a bomb in her tutu.”

“No,” he said gravely. “It is not the dancer. The dancer has nothing to do with it. It is
Degas.
It is what Degas does with the dancer, how he has chosen to present her. She is his creation. The dancer is just a dancer, nothing more. Look at the lift of the chin.”

It was not always successful to joke with a German, but this German was particularly solemn. Bill said, “Not the dancer, but the dance.”

The middle-aged man nodded decisively. “To be sure.” They were looking at one of Beckmann's triptychs, three stations of the cross; in the background was a daffy-looking snake. He gestured at the wall, sighing. “These are tormented. From his late, tormented period. Poor Max.”

Bill looked at him, startled. “You knew him?”

“Slightly,” he said.

“Here or in America?” He knew the other was lying. Beckmann died in 1950, and this man was about Bill's own age.

“In Berlin,” the man said. He looked at his wristwatch and stood, moving his shoulders, straightening, shooting his cuffs.

Beckmann had left Berlin for good in 1937. “You must have been very young,” he said.

“I used to see him in the zoo.”

Bill turned, seeing Elinor; he made a little warning gesture with his hand. But when he turned back, the middle-aged man was gone. He listened for the tapping of the cane, but heard nothing. His vertigo returned, and he sat down heavily on the bench. Beckmann's Gypsy woman, with her heavy thighs and bright yellow shift, seemed to revolve in front of him. She was staring into a hand mirror, arranging her hair. Elinor said, “Are you all right? You're sweating.”

He said, “Spooked.”

“Max Beckmann has a bad effect on you.”

“It wasn't Beckmann.”

“Who, then?”

“Where did he go?”

“The gent? Who was he?”

Bill looked at her and said in English, “I think he was one of Bill Jr.'s—people. Making contact.” She stared back at him but he said nothing more, for the obedient schoolchildren had returned, marching single file through the gallery. They were passing through the German Expressionists to view another period; their teacher was lecturing on the Quattrocento. The children were utterly silent, except for the squeak of their sneakers. Their discipline worried him. They were like little soldiers on parade. He rose heavily and took Elinor's hand, and they started back the way they had come. He paused in front of the Degas, looking over the balcony at the mechanical animals. The great staircase was empty. He said, “Darling, we're going to Berlin. That's where he is.”

“A
ND IT
didn't work out,” Wolf said, “any of it.”

Gert was playing extended solitaire, all the cards on the table. He was speaking to her, but she did not look up. She had a choice of kings to fill the empty first file. Her hands fluttered above the cards.

“You never know what will happen there,” Wolf went on. “Nothing is predictable.” He turned back to the middle-aged man, who sat stolidly watching him.

The middle-aged man said, “It was an action I never understood. Why it was necessary, what it could accomplish, and what the consequences would be.”

“A souvenir,” Wolf said.

“Of
what?”
the middle-aged man said.

Wolf smiled. He was watching Gert, whose hands still hovered above the cards like a magician's. “It was not necessary that you understand.”

The middle-aged man took out a notebook, wet his thumb, and turned pages. “I have had expenses.”

Wolf continued to look at Gert. “Did you see the account in the newspaper, then?”

“No. Someone told me.”

“What was in the newspaper was true.” Wolf shook his head. “For once.”

The middle-aged man consulted the notebook. “There was the train fare.”

“At five in the morning, a man was sleeping on the bench.”

“And the museum admission.”

“Blown to pieces, they can't identify him.”

“I think my meals should be included, also.”

“A homosexual affair. That is the thinking of the American police.”

“I am not interested,” the middle-aged man said.

“It's important, for your understanding.”

“I have no interest in the Americans. I know all I need to know.”

“That is apparently how the homosexuals in America settle their differences.”

“Meals, fifty Deutschmarks.”

“So they have made it into an affair that interests no one, although according to the paper, the neighborhood was alarmed.” He rose and stood behind Gert. “Take the king from the second file, darling. There is only one card under it, and if that plays, then you can use the other king. More than likely it will play.”

“The park. It was public?”

“Of course.”

“Dangerous,” the middle-aged man said.

“Homosexuals. Who would have thought of homosexuals?”

“You must always know your territory.”

“I have known this territory for twenty-five years. But I have not been back in a few years, so it changed. I was depending on my memory of things.”

“Unwise to depend on memory.”

“Yes,” Wolf said.

“And the taxi here, that was fifteen Deutschmarks.”

Wolf looked at him, and at the notebook, expensive, well-worn leather. The middle-aged man's expenses would be meticulously accounted for, not surprisingly. He was a professional with a clerk's mentality.

“How did they seem?”

“Who?”

“The man and the woman. Were they frightened, or nervous?”

“The woman has atrocious taste in art.”

Wolf nodded, smiling.

“The man is cultivated. His German was fluent, and of course that is not usual. Americans never speak German.”

“How did you know they were American?”

“It is obvious.”

Wolf wondered how it was obvious, but decided not to pursue it.

“I would say the man's German is even more fluent than yours.”

So it was the accent, of course, though he was wrong about the relative fluency. The ambassador's German was formal. He had no command of the vernacular.

“As to their behavior, it was normal.”

Wolf nodded.

“They were not followed,” the middle-aged man said.

“I told you they wouldn't be.”

“I decide that for myself.” He smiled and ripped the page from his notebook, and handed it across the table. “And the fee, of course. The stipend. That is at the bottom.”

“You have the retainer.”