Me and Kaminski Read online

  She frowned.

  “What did you have to do?”

  She took a step to one side, away from me. “You saw.”

  “And before that? That wasn’t all . . .”

  “Of course it was!” She looked at me in disbelief. “You can see how old he is. What’s your problem?”

  He must have imagined the perfume. I pulled up the only chair, sat down, felt insecure, stood up again. “All he did was talk? And you stroked his head?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “Not really.”

  “Where did he get your phone number?”

  “From Information, I think. He’s pretty sharp.” She pushed back her hair. “So who is he? There must have been a time when he . . . !” She smiled. “Well, you know. He’s not related to you, is he?”

  “Why do you say that?” I remembered that Karl Ludwig had said the same thing. “I mean, why not, why do you think that?”

  “Oh, it’s obvious! Can I go now . . .” She looked me in the eyes. “. . . or is there something you still want?”

  I went hot all over. “Why would you think we’re not related?”

  She looked at me for a few moments, then she came toward me, and I involuntarily took a step back. She reached out her arms, ran both hands over my head, took hold of me by the neck, and pulled me to her. I pulled away, I saw her eyes up close to mine, and didn’t know where to look, her hair was in my face, I tried to get loose, she laughed and stepped back, suddenly I felt crippled.

  “I’ve been paid,” she said. “Now what?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You see?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t make a big thing of it!” She laughed and went out.

  I rubbed my forehead. After a while my breathing went back to normal. Well, great! Once again I’d thrown money out the window; it couldn’t go on this way! I had to talk to Megelbach about expenses as soon as possible.

  I pulled out the sheet of paper I’d torn off the notebook. A web of straight—no, very slightly angled lines that spread out over the paper from the two bottom corners in a fine network of spaces that generated the outlines of a human figure. Or did it? Now I couldn’t see it anymore. Yes, there it was again! And then it was gone again. The pencil strokes were confident, unhesitating, each running from its starting point without a break. Could a blind man do this? Or had it been someone else, a previous guest, and the whole thing was an accident? I would have to show it to Komenev, I couldn’t clarify it on my own. I folded up the sheet of paper, stuck it back in my pocket, and asked myself why I’d let her go. I called Megelbach.

  Nice to talk to you, he said, and how was I getting on? Terrific, I said, better than expected, the old man had already said things to me I could never have hoped for, I could promise him a sensation, but I wasn’t going to give away anything more right now. It was just that I had unexpected expenses and . . . a hissing noise interrupted me. Expenses, I said again, that . . . the connection was terrible, said Megelbach, could I call back later? But it was important, I said, I urgently needed . . . not a good moment, said Megelbach, he was in the middle of a meeting and didn’t know why his secretary had put me through at all. It was only a small thing, I said, a . . . good luck! he cried, good luck, he was sure we were on to something great. Then he hung up. I called back, this time the secretary answered. She was sorry, but Mr. Megelbach was not in the office. No, no, I said, I had just been . . . did I wish, she said cattily, to leave a message? I said I would try again later.

  I went to Kaminski. A sweating waiter with a tray was just knocking at his door.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” I asked. “Nobody ordered this!”

  The waiter licked his lips and scowled at me. Sweat was pearling on his forehead. “Yes they did. Room three- oh- four. Just called. Daily special, double portion. We don’t actually have room service, but he said he’d pay extra.”

  “Finally!” Kaminski yelled from inside. “Bring it in, you’ll have to cut up the meat for me! Not now, Zollner!”

  I turned around and went back to my room.

  As I came in, the telephone was ringing. Probably Megelbach, wanting to apologize. I grabbed the receiver, but all I could hear was the dial tone. I had the wrong instrument, it was my cell phone.

  “Where are you?” screamed Miriam. “Is he with you?”

  I pressed the disconnect button.

  The phone rang again. I picked it up, set it aside, and thought. Then I took a deep breath and answered.

  “Hello!” I said. “How are you? And how did you get this number? I promise you . . .”

  I didn’t get to say any more. I walked slowly up and down, went to the window, leaned my forehead against the glass. I lowered the phone and breathed out: a fine mist spread over the pane. I put the thing back to my ear.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, “abduction? He’s in great shape, we’re just taking a trip together. You can join us if you’d like.”

  I had to yank the telephone away, my ear hurt. I rubbed my sleeve over the hazy window. Although I was holding the contraption almost two feet away from my head, I could understand every word.

  “Can I say something too?”

  I sat down on the bed. With my free hand I turned on the TV. A rider was galloping through a gulch in the desert; I changed channels, a housewife was gazing passionately at a hand towel, I changed channels, a female talking head was pontificating into a microphone, I switched it off.

  “Can I say something too?”

  This time it worked. She fell silent so suddenly that I was unprepared for it. For a few seconds we both were listening, startled, to each other’s silence.

  “First, I am not even going to respond to the word abduction, I will not sink to such a level. Your father asked me to accompany him. I had to change all my other appointments, but out of my deepest admiration and . . . friendship, I did it for him. I have our conversation about it on tape. So forget about the police, you’d just be making a fool of yourself. We’re in a first- class hotel, your father’s gone back to his room and doesn’t want to be disturbed, I’ll be bringing him back tomorrow evening. Second, I haven’t been rummaging through anything! Not your cellar and not any desk either. That’s a disgusting insinuation!” Now she must be realizing she’d picked the wrong person to go after. “And fourth . . .” I faltered. “Third, I’m not giving you any information about where we’re going. He can tell you that himself. I feel very . . . beholden to him.” I stood up, pleased with the way my voice sounded. “He’s visibly blossoming! Freedom does him good! If I told you what he just . . . it was high time somebody got him out of that prison.”

  What? I listened in amazement. Had I misheard? I bent forward and put the phone to my other ear. No, I hadn’t.

  “Do you find that funny?”

  I was in such a rage I banged my knee on the bedside table. “Yes, that’s what I said. Out of that prison.” I went to the window. The sun was low behind roofs, turrets, and antennae. “Prison! If you don’t stop laughing I’m going to hang up. Do you hear? If you don’t . . .”

  I hit the disconnect button.

  Throwing the phone away, I started pacing, so angry I could hardly breathe. I rubbed my knee. It wasn’t smart to have simply broken off the conversation like that. I thumped the table, bent over, and gradually felt my rage drain away. I waited. But to my surprise, she didn’t call back.

  Actually, it had gone well. She didn’t take me seriously, so she wouldn’t take any drastic measures. No matter what she’d found funny, I’d obviously said the right thing. Once again, I just had this gift for it.

  I looked in the mirror. Perhaps he’d been right. No bald spot, of course, but a barely perceptibly receding hairline, that made my face look rounder, older, and a little paler. I wasn’t so young anymore. I stood up. My jacket didn’t hang well, either. I raised my hand and let it drop again, my mirror image tentatively did the same. Or wasn’t it the
fault of the jacket? There was something off-balance in the way I held myself, that I’d never noticed before. Don’t make a big thing of it! Of what, for God’s sake? Maybe you still have a chance.

  No, I had spent too much time behind the steering wheel, I was simply overtired. What were they all implying? I shook my head, looked at myself in the mirror, then hastily looked away again. What in the world were they all implying?

  IX

  “PERSPECTIVE IS A TECHNIQUE of abstraction, a convention of the Quattrocento that we have accustomed ourselves to. Light has to pass through many lenses before we consider a picture to be realistic. Reality has never looked anything like a photograph.”

  “No?” I said, suppressing a yawn. We were sitting in the dining car of an express train. Kaminski was wearing his glasses, his stick was propped beside him, and the dressing gown was rolled up in a plastic bag in the luggage rack. The tape recorder was switched on, and lying on the table. He had eaten soup, two main courses, and a dessert, and was now on his coffee; I had cut up his meat for him and made a futile attempt to remind him of his diet. He was in an expansive mood and full of good cheer; he’d been talking for two hours straight.

  “Reality changes with every glance, at every second. Perspective is an assemblage of rules that tries to trap all this chaos onto one flat surface. No more, no less.”

  “Oh yes?” I was hungry: in contrast to him, all I’d eaten was an inedible salad, dry leaves in a greasy dressing, and when I’d complained, all the waiter did was sigh. The recorder clicked, the end of another tape, I put a new one in. He had really succeeded this whole time in saying absolutely nothing that was usable.

  “Truth is to be found, if anywhere, in atmosphere. That’s to say, in color rather than in drawing, and absolutely never in deep perspective. Did your professor never tell you that?”

  “No, no.” I hadn’t the foggiest idea. My memories of university were hazy at best: pointless discussions in seminar rooms, pale fellow students who were terrified of the lecturers, the smell of stale food in the cafeteria, and someone always asking you to sign a petition. Once I’d had to deliver an essay on Degas. Degas? I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so I copied it all out of the encyclopedia. After two semesters I got the job at the advertising agency, thanks to my uncle, shortly after that the job of art critic on the local newspaper came free, and my application was successful. I got things right from the start: some beginners tried to make a name for themselves by writing savage takedowns, but that wasn’t the way things worked. It was much better always and in everything to have exactly the same opinions as your colleagues and attend all the openings to network. It wasn’t long before I was writing for several magazines, which allowed me to give up my job.

  “Nobody has ever drawn better than Michelangelo, nobody could draw like him. But color didn’t mean much to him. Look at the Sistine Chapel: it really wasn’t clear to him that colors . . . tell us something about the world too. Are you taping this?”

  “Every word.”

  “You know that I experimented with the techniques of the Old Masters. There was a period when I even prepared all my own colors. I learned to distinguish pigments by their smell. If you practice, you can even mix them without making a mistake. So I could see better than my assistant with his two sharp eyes.”

  Two men sat down at the next table. “It comes down to the four Ps,” said one of them. “Price, Promotion, Positioning, Product.”

  “Look out the window!” said Kaminski. He leaned back and rubbed his forehead; again I was struck by how large his hands were. The skin was cracked, there were scarred welts around his knuckles: the hands of a laborer. “I take it there are hills and meadows and the occasional village. Am I right?”

  I smiled. “More or less.”

  “Is the sun shining?”

  “Yes.” It was raining cats and dogs. And for the last half hour I had seen nothing but crowded streets, warehouses, and factory chimneys. No hills or meadows, and not a village to be had.

  “I wondered once whether one could paint a train journey. The whole journey, not just a single snapshot.”

  “Our focus groups,” said the man at the next table loudly, “report that the texture has improved, as has the taste!” I took the precaution of pushing the tape recorder closer to Kaminski. If the guy over there didn’t quiet down, he’d be the only thing you could hear on the tape.

  “I often thought about it,” said Kaminski, “after I had to stop. How does a painting deal with time? Back then I was thinking about the journey between Paris and Lyon. You’d have to paint it the way you see it in your memory—compressed.”

  “We haven’t talked about your marriage yet, Manuel.”

  He frowned.

  “We haven’t . . .” I tried again.

  “Please do not address me by my first name. I am older than you are and I am accustomed to different manners.”

  “The million-dollar question,” brayed the man at the next table, “is, will the European markets react differently?”

  I turned around. He was in his early thirties, and his jacket hung badly. He was pale and his sparse hair was combed over his head. Exactly the kind of person I couldn’t stand.

  “The million-dollar question!” he brayed again, and then saw me looking at him. “What?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I said.

  “I am keeping it down!”

  “Then try a little further down!” I turned back again.

  “It would have to be a large canvas,” Kaminski was saying, “and although nothing seems to be clear, everyone who’s ever made that trip should be able to recognize it. Back then, I thought I could pull it off.”

  “And then there’s the question of location,” brayed the man at the next table. “I ask, what are the priorities? And they have no idea!”

  I turned around and looked at him.

  “Are you looking at me?” he asked.

  “No!” I said.

  “Arrogant bastard!”

  “Clown!”

  “I won’t take that,” he said and stood up.

  “Maybe you’ll have to.” I got to my feet too, and realized that he was a lot bigger than I was. Conversation in the carriage stopped.

  “Sit down,” said Kaminski in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  The man, suddenly unsure of himself, stepped forward and then back again. He looked at the other man at his table, then at Kaminski. He fingered his brow. Then he sat down.

  “Very good!” I said. “That was . . .”

  “You too!”

  I sat down at once. I stared at him, my heart thumping.

  He leaned back, stroking the coffee cup. “It’s exactly one o’clock and I have to lie down.”

  “I know.” I closed my eyes for a moment. What had frightened me so much? “We’ll be at the apartment very soon.”

  “I want a hotel.”

  Then pay for one, I wanted to say, but managed not to. This morning I’d had to pick up the hotel charges again, along with his room service. While I was giving Mr. Wegenfeld my credit card, I remembered Kaminski’s bank statement. This mean little old man who was traveling, sleeping, and eating at my expense still had more money than I would ever earn.

  “We’re staying privately, with a . . . with me. A large apartment, very comfortable. You’ll like it.”

  “I want a hotel.”

  “You’ll like it!” Elke wouldn’t be back till tomorrow afternoon, we’d be gone by then, she probably wouldn’t even notice. Pacified, I noticed that the ape at the next table was now talking quietly. I’d really put the fear of God into him.

  “Give me a cigarette!” said Kaminski.

  “You’re not supposed to smoke.”

  “Whatever speeds things up is fine by me. You too, no? Painting, I wanted to say, is all about problem solving, just like in science.” I gave him a cigarette and he lit it with a trembling hand. What had he said—me too? Had he guessed something?

  “
For example, I wanted to do a series of self-portraits, but not using my reflection in a mirror or photos, just drawing on the image I had of myself. Nobody has any idea what they really look like, we have completely false pictures of ourselves. Normally you try to even things out, using whatever you can. But if you do the opposite, if you intentionally paint this false picture, as accurately as possible, in every detail, with every characteristic trait . . . !” He banged on the table. “A portrait that isn’t a portrait! Can you imagine such a thing? But nothing came of it.”

  “You tried.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I—I’m assuming.”

  “Yes, I tried. But then my eyes . . . or maybe it wasn’t my eyes, maybe it just wasn’t going well. You have to know when you’re defeated. Miriam burned them.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I asked her to.” He laid his head back, blew smoke straight up in the air. “Since then I haven’t set foot in the studio.”

  “I believe you!”

  “There’s no reason to be sad. Because that’s what everything’s about: your estimate of your own talent. When I was young and hadn’t yet painted anything useful . . . I doubt if you can imagine it. I locked myself up for a week . . .”

  “Five days.”

  “I don’t care, five days, to think. I knew that I hadn’t yet produced anything that mattered. Nobody can help with stuff like this.” He groped for an ashtray. “I didn’t just need a good idea. They’re a dime a dozen. I had to find what kind of painter I could become. A way out of mediocrity.”

  “Out of mediocrity,” I repeated.

  “Do you know the story of Bodhidarma’s pupil?”

  “Who?”

  “Bodhidarma was an Indian sage in China. Somebody wanted to become his pupil and was turned away. So he followed him. Silent, submissive, year after year. In vain. One day his despair overcame him, he planted himself in Bodhidarma’s path and cried, ‘Master, I have nothing.’ Bodhidarma answered, ‘Throw it away!’” Kaminski stubbed out his cigarette. “And that’s when he found enlightenment.”

  “I don’t get it. If he had nothing left, why . . .”