The Art Lover Read online

  “He said that if you came, I should give you this.”

  When I hesitated, she asked in a tremulous voice, “Don’t you want it? At least he’s given you something. He didn’t give me anything—not even what he owed.”

  “Yes, of course.” I fumbled for some Reichsmarks in my pocket and handed them to her before taking the book and sliding it under my jacket, out of the rain.

  Our Sonderprojekt department, where I had been part of the art curatorial staff for just under two years, was located in the basement at 45 Brienner Strasse. Yes—that address; that’s how important art was in those days, to the people at the very top. The Third Reich’s very first architectural project was not a diplomatic building or some other temple of power but the House of German Art, a new museum completed in 1937. Sonderprojekt looked beyond that museum and beyond Germany to a larger vision, both artistically and geographically speaking. To what precisely, I did not yet know or need to know. My job was only to catalog the world’s obtainable art objects and to add more items to the master acquisition list—a list based not on finite resources or some scholarly criteria but only on taste, and symbolic significance, and that least definable thing: desire. Whose desire? Usually our leader’s, of course. But each of us also had objects we personally admired and longed to see or have a hand in collecting, for reasons as difficult to explain as the deepest merits of fine art itself.

  The day after visiting Gerhard’s house, I spent as much time as possible in the dark stacks and near the corner filing cabinets, pulling out and replacing one unread catalog card after another, trying to look busy while I puzzled over Gerhard’s predicament—which, in his absence, had become my predicament as well. Section B of the master art acquisition list I was researching featured only sculptures; another researcher was assigned to paintings; a third to the special problem of avoiding counterfeits. Anyone watching me closely, as I fumbled in the wrong drawers, might have guessed that I was upset. But that was no crime, to be upset.

  Neither was it a crime to laugh, and Gerhard had laughed—especially whenever an unimpressive item made its way into our hands: a statuette of a ballerina no more finely crafted or interesting than a child’s music-box figurine, or a muscular male nude with a caveman’s brow, or some other example of questionable art, hastily collected. He was supposed to have expertise in these matters. He was also supposed to find a way to share that expertise without humiliating others whose taste was not as refined as his own, especially others of high rank. But that kind of prudence had never been his strength.

  Back at my gunmetal-gray desk, I was surprised to see Leonie waiting with a worn and bulging paper bag in her hands—a peace offering, perhaps, to make up for her recent avoidance of me. When I sat down, she pushed it across the desk blotter.

  “Is it a sandwich?”

  She laughed nervously. “No, silly. Candles—twelve of them. For you.”

  “I nearly forgot,” I said, taking the bag gratefully. “I suppose they’re sold out everywhere.”

  The natural blush on her cheeks showed, even from behind the stain of applied rouge. “I thought ahead and bought extras a month ago.”

  That night marked the start of the second annual German Day of Art, celebrating new displays of all-German art that turned away from modernism and harked back to the greater clarity and tradition of the past: images of peasants and working folk, landscapes, cows and horses (but only very strong ones), and the ideal and healthy human form. The art of the post-degenerate era. This focus was the cornerstone of our entire national cultural policy. It meant so much to our leader that he had funded many artistic activities from the profits of his Mein Kampf sales. His “struggle” had become the direct sponsor of art in Germany—the two things inextricably intertwined.

  On this weekend-long “day of art” there was an exhibition of German works for sale, overseen by the Führer himself, who not only had rejected at the last minute eighty already-approved works but would go on to purchase over two hundred works that did please him. These purchases were separate from the more ambitious and distinctly more international Sonderprojekt collection that we basement experts were cataloging and beginning to acquire. The Führer’s insatiable appetite for art objects was the reason we called him (always discreetly, for though it was not an insult, it still suggested an inappropriate familiarity) Der Kunstsammler—“The Collector.” If we were not aware in 1938, we would soon become aware that Der Kunstsammler had the power to collect just about anything—or anyone—of interest to him. And the power to dispose of the same. How could it have been otherwise? But that isn’t the voice of the twenty-four-year-old still learning his place in a new office, in a new profession. That is only middle-aged hindsight, which can be just as dishonest as the blinkered presentism of youth.

  During the opening procession of the German Day of Art activities, all residents were required to display three candles in every one of our apartment windows. If anyone was expected to remember and comply, we members of Sonderprojekt were. There were dozens of ways to reveal your incompetence or disloyalty, and new ways were being invented all the time.

  “Thank you, Leonie,” I said, opening the bag of candles, realizing even as I said it that she had not only anticipated my faltering memory, but had remembered how many windows my lonely apartment had, despite having peered through them only a few times. She might have assumed, over the awkward winter months following our final date, that she had shown me too much, given too much away for free as the saying goes, and that’s why I’d lost interest. But in truth, she hadn’t shown enough. I didn’t need a girlfriend who would change clothes only in the water closet and make love only in the dark, who would pretend not to notice the alarming changes in our departmental staffing just as she pretended not to notice the pink scar on my rib cage.

  Still, one doesn’t like to appear ungrateful.

  “Leonie,” I started to say, but she could see the question coming and looked down quickly so that I could see only the impenetrably thick spikes of her painted lashes. “At least look at me, Leonie. Please?”

  But she would not. Someday, I would no longer be in that basement office, but she would be there still, typing without a sheet of paper in the roller, cradling the heavy phone to her soft cheek even after the lines had been cut—not because she lacked competence or intelligence, but because she knew walking away was no answer either. Perhaps she was smarter than all of us.

  “It’s a lucky day,” she said quickly. “I think Herr Mueller is planning to call you into his office.”

  “Lucky? I doubt it.” I tried one last time, my voice lower yet. “Leonie, I know you have a good heart. I know you liked Gerhard well enough . . .”

  She whispered, “I know he was opinionated.”

  “But isn’t that our job here? How can one curate art without having opinions?”

  When she didn’t answer, I pleaded, “You see the correspondence that comes through. You must have an idea . . .” But she was still looking down, studying her shoes. “Never mind. When I see Herr Mueller, I’ll ask him.”

  Mueller was in an effusive mood on that Friday afternoon with a weekend of festivities ahead, including at least one event where he would spend time with topmost officials of the Reich, including Der Kunstsammler himself. (The rest of our small staff avoided such anxiety-producing “opportunities” whenever possible, coming and going by our own entrance, often forgotten in our subterranean lair.) Mueller asked me to sit but couldn’t contain his own nervous energy and proceeded to pace in the windowless room. There was small talk about my family, cut short when I reminded him that my own parents had passed away—my father just the previous winter. The awkwardness didn’t seem to bother him.

  I was preparing to ask my question—to make a principled stand by asking the question—when Mueller sat down and slapped a file onto the desk and opened it, showing me the photograph clipped to the inside corner of the folder. “You know this statue, of course?”

  I paused, to
ngue sticky against the ridged roof of my mouth, admiring the recognizable figure of Myron’s ancient Athenian Discus Thrower: an image of the perfect male specimen, captured in a sporting posture of dynamic tension. “Yes, of course.”

  Mueller turned the file around, looked at the photo again. “He wants it. And he will have it, no matter the considerable expense.”

  I didn’t say anything at first—not because I was too junior a staff member, or too inexperienced in this particular area to comment. On the contrary, I knew this statue well, better than anyone in the department. Gerhard’s taste had favored the Italian Renaissance, especially Bernini. My taste, my self-education, my training, my fixations favored this: controlled, classical, iconic excellence.

  I fell into a momentary trance, staring at the photo and imagining all that the photo itself could not capture. I loved this object as one always loves the most perfect example of an artistic period, the most realized projection of a cultural virtue. But “love” does not explain the feeling entirely. For what I felt most about the Discus Thrower was a driving curiosity: a certainty, guided or misguided, that beholding this ancient statue in person, at close range, would answer an obsessive question and a personal need that had led me into the study of classical art in the first place.

  I didn’t like to see the folder shut, even though I knew exactly where to find a larger and better image: di Luca, vol. 2, p. 227—or any other classical art reference book in the extensive Sonderprojekt collection.

  Mueller tapped the closed folder: “Herr Vogler . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t have any questions about what we do here, do you?”

  Questions? Those had been the specialty of my former mentor. Hard questions as well as soft, teasing ones. Rhetorical questions; questions posed over the smudged tops of wine glasses at parties; questions asked under the stark lighting of modern museums; questions asked with a flourish of Gerhard’s blue-veined, aristocratic hands: “What are the foundations of civilized society?” And: “What purpose do these artistic images serve?” And: “Should all these European masterpieces really be gathered up by one people, in just one place?”

  He had said the truth was a private matter, but in his own pointed questioning, he forced the truth where it did not fit or easily belong and so he had brought his own problems upon himself. Or so it would have been convenient to think, as one more way to avoid thinking.

  Still, until I’d seen the picture of the statue, I’d been ready. Now, I discovered that the question I had prepared carefully and brought to Mueller’s office had withered in my dry mouth.

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  “Do you speak Italian?”

  “I am . . . moderately capable.”

  “What do you think about going to Italy?”

  That would have been Gerhard’s assignment. He had not explained the particulars, but I recalled the elliptical conversations, beginning when Der Kunstsammler had met with Mussolini for the first time, in May. Presuming he’d be tapped to return there at the behest of our culturally acquisitive leadership, my mentor had begun to revive his own memories of that fabled, sunny country: The hill towns and piazzas. The ruins and vistas. The frescoes and fountains. And a certain woman he had met somewhere—I think it was a town called Perugia, or maybe Pisa. The relationship had lasted no more than a few days but had meant the world to him, and I had been bold enough in my naïve youth to ask, “But how can something like that matter if it only lasted a few days?” He had grabbed my hands in his own lilac-scented ones and told me that, in his life, some of the times that stood out the most had been only a matter of hours, not days, and if I had never experienced that, then I needed Italy far more than he did.

  At best I could say to Mueller: “I’m not sure I’m the most suited to the task, intellectually and artistically speaking. And—how do I say this?—I’m not much of a traveler.”

  Herr Mueller started laughing. I couldn’t understand why.

  “That’s fine,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “We don’t need an expert traveler. We just need someone who won’t screw up.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The train stopped for an unexpectedly long time at Bolzano. It nearly lost heart altogether at Chiusi. It gathered for a final burst of effort before it delivered us, grimy and gritty from the trip, through the tight pelvis of girdling roads, and finally, with a squall of brakes and a sob of steam, into hectic Rome.

  As it turned out, despite what the local Fascisti claimed, the trains didn’t run on time, after all.

  It was nearly bedtime when I checked into my pensione, where the resident signora invited me to dine, despite the questionable hour, with her other European guests. When I declined, she must have decided I wouldn’t need breakfast either because the next morning, following a night of fitful sleep, none was provided.

  I made my displeasure as plain as I was able, given some conjugating difficulties, and returned to my room, where I took a position in front of the rust-spotted mirror, distracted by the discovery of a small stain on my shirtfront. Another inconvenience. But given that I planned to be in Italy for such a limited time—a single day in Rome, another long day returning—I assumed my second dress shirt would suffice. Perhaps I would give the signora my first to wash, but perhaps not. I would evaluate her competence only after she delivered a suitable breakfast. Putting her in the position of the one to be tested made me feel momentarily better, as I was out of the pupil’s examination chair for a moment myself, on a day when I expected the tests to be challenging and the examiners unforgiving.

  It was while I was most vulnerable, half-dressed and fighting the temptation of further ruminations, that the incident occurred. There was a quick knock—no calling out, no request for permission to enter—and the bronze knob turned. In shuffled the bowlegged signora with a small wooden tray in one hand, catching me standing in front of the mirror, unclothed above the waist. My clean shirt was just beyond my reach, laid out on the sagging bed. Our eyes met, her chin dropped, and there—on my bare rib cage—her gaze rested and stubbornly remained.

  She lowered the tray onto my nightstand, refusing to look away, chattering insistently, without any comprehension of my distress. I reached for the clean shirt and struggled to push each fist through the tight sleeves in an effort to shield myself. But even through the fabric, I continued to feel the heat of her curious gaze on that jagged, pink scar.

  Artists are careful with raw materials because they know no amount of technical ability can make up for faulty marble or poorly mixed paint. The raw material of the moment was my own psychic equilibrium, not to be regained.

  Of course, how much easier it was to blame a flash of insecurity than anything that had preceded it; how much easier to focus on a stranger’s indiscretion, rather than any personal complicity or weakness in days prior. But it was all wrapped into that moment, somehow. And why shouldn’t it have been? The question of a body’s classic beauty—or its deep flaws—was integral to my artistic training, related to the item I had come to see and transport, and was in all other ways inseparable from why I had come to Rome. In any case, I did not appreciate her staring and reminding me—least of all on that day.

  As soon as the signora backed out of the room, I finished dressing, left the breakfast roll untouched, and grabbed my essential materials, including my sketchbook and the di Luca volume two—but not the dictionary, which I left behind in regrettable haste.

  My interests in Greco-Roman statuary, interests born humbly but cultivated with great sincerity, predated even the beginning of Sonderprojekt by seven years. Yet it would be made evident in just a few hours that I was to be treated here in Rome not as an art expert, not as an authority working on behalf of Der Kunstsammler, but as a courier. A mere courier.

  But I didn’t know that yet, so you can imagine my pride and carefully contained excitement as I climbed the time-worn steps to the side entrance of the museum where I had been scheduled to me
et with the minister of Foreign Affairs and my own German Cultural Affairs contact, Herr Rudolf Keller, at 8:30 A.M. The seller himself—perhaps dispirited by local criticism over the controversial sale—had declined to take part.

  I waited in front of a security desk, where a heavy, untidy man with slicked-back hair attempted to convey a message.

  “Dieci,” he told me. My watch read 8:15.

  “Dieci,” the guard repeated, grinning obsequiously as he held up all ten sausage-shaped fingers. Yes, even without the dictionary, I understood that. I had been warned about Italian manners. The meeting had been delayed an hour and a half, until 10:00 a.m.

  “Dieci,” I parroted back, and the man’s smile cracked wider yet. He pointed to a bench and held open a cigarette case, but I shook my head and made for the open door.

  Four blocks away I found a pavement café and waited in line for a table, or attempted to wait. The two bustling waiters were following no procedure that I could understand. An elderly man arrived several minutes after me and was ushered toward an empty chair in front of a dirty table. Pigeons darted between people’s feet. The ground was strewn with crumbs and mottled with sticky patches. The warm air carried the strong smell of coffee—well, that was good, at least. It only made me wish I were somewhere more familiar, so that I could make my own needs clear.

  Finally, an apron-clad waiter exhaled a string of musical syllables, barely waiting for my reply. Where had my week of language cramming gone? Prego . . . grazie . . . per favore . . . Damn that forgotten dictionary, even if I would have looked like a tourist carrying an entire library in my arms. I pointed at a square-shaped pastry on a man’s plate nearby and then jabbed at my own palm and jiggled the change in my pocket, walking away a minute later with a sorry breakfast to eat on the hoof.