Me Kaminski by Daniel Kehlmann
The canvas on the easel was almost untouched, only three brushstrokes cut across its whiteness. They began in the same spot down on the left and then pulled apart, in the top right was a tiny field crosshatched in chalk. No sketching, nothing to indicate what should have grown out of this. As I stepped back, I noticed that I had four shadows, one from each spotlight, that cut across one another at my feet. Several large canvases, covered with sailcloth tarps, leaned against the wall.
I pulled the first tarp away and winced. Two eyes, a twisted mouth: a face, curiously distorted, like a reflection in flowing water. It was painted in bright colors, red lines pulled away from him like dying flames, his eyes as they observed me were questioning and cold. And although the style was unmistakable—the thin layer of color, the preference for red-yellow, which both Komenev and Mehring had written about—it looked utterly different from anything else of his I knew. I looked for his signature and didn’t find it. I reached for the next cloth; as soon as I touched it, it emitted a cloud of dust.
The same face, this time a little smaller, more of a ball, a slightly contemptuous smile playing in the corners of the mouth. On the next canvas there it was again, this time with the mouth stretched unnaturally wide, the eyebrows angled violently toward the nose. The forehead was creased into masklike folds, and individual hairs straggled thinly, like tears in paper. No beginnings of a neck, no body, just the detached head floating in empty space. I pulled away tarp after tarp, and the face was becoming more and more deformed: the chin stretched and lengthened, the colors became harsher, the forehead and ears grotesquely extended. But each time his eyes seemed more distant, indifferent, and, I pulled the tarp away, more filled with contempt. Now it was bulging outward as if in a funhouse mirror, had a Harlequin’s nose and puckered frown lines, on the next canvas—the tarp got caught, I tore it off by full force, dust swirled up, making me sneeze—it crumpled together, as if a puppeteer were clenching his fist. On the canvas after that it was a hint of itself, seen in a blur through driving snow—the remaining paintings were unfinished, just sketches with a few patches of color, a forehead here, a cheek there. In the corner, as if thrown away, lay a sketch block. I picked it up, wiped it off, and opened it. The same face, from above, from below, from every side, even once, like a mask, seen from inside. The sketches were done in charcoal, increasingly unsure, the lines became shaky and missed one another. Finally there was more of a thick patch of pure black. Tiny splinters of charcoal trickled down at me. The remaining pages were empty.
I set aside the sketch block and began to search the paintings for a signature or a date. In vain. I turned one of the canvases around to examine its wooden stretchers, and a shard of glass fell onto the floor. I picked it up with the tips of my fingers. There were more; the entire floor behind the pictures was carpeted in broken glass. I held the shard up to the spotlight and closed one eye: the light jumped a tiny distance, and its black housing bulged. The glass had been ground.
I got the camera out of my bag. A very good little Kodak, a Christmas present from Elke. The spotlights were so bright that I wouldn’t need either a tripod or a flash. A painting, the photo editor of the Evening News had explained to me, must be photographed head-on, to avoid any foreshortening of perspective, if it is to be usable for reproduction. I photographed each canvas twice and then, standing back up and propping myself against the wall, the easel, the brushes on the floor, the shards of glass. I kept clicking till the memory card was full. Then I put the camera back in the bag and began to cover the paintings again.
It was hard work, and the tarps kept on getting hooked on things. Where did I know this face from? I started to hurry: I didn’t know why, but I wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. How in the world could it be familiar to me? I got to the last painting, met its contemptuous stare, and covered it up. I tiptoed to the door, switched off the light, and let out my breath involuntarily.
I stood in the hall again, ears cocked. The fly was still buzzing in the living room. “Hello?” Nobody answered. “Hello?” I went up to the second floor.
Two doors to the right, two to the left, one at the end of the landing. I began on the left. I knocked, waited for a moment, and opened the door.
It must be Miriam’s room. A bed, a TV set, bookshelves, and a Kaminski, one of the Reflections series:three mirrors—at their center a discarded duster, a shoe, and a pencil, arranged as a parody of a still life—that organized themselves into a perfect system of surfaces; if you looked at it out of the corner of your eye, it seemed to shimmer faintly. It must be worth a fortune. I looked in the cupboards, but they held nothing but clothes, shoes, hats, a few pairs of glasses, silk underwear. I let one of the pairs of panties slide slowly through my fingers; I’d never met a woman who wore silk underwear. The drawer of the night table was filled with boxes of medications: Baldrian, Valium, Benedorm, various kinds of sleeping pills and tranquilizers. The instruction leaflets would have made interesting reading, but I didn’t have time.
Next door was a bathroom. Pristine, smelling of cleaning stuff, there was a sponge, still damp, lying in the tub, and three perfume bottles in front of the mirror. One of them was Chanel. No shaver, so the old man must use another bathroom. How did blind people shave, anyway?
The door at the end of the passage led into an unaired room. The windows hadn’t been cleaned, the cupboards were bare, the bed wasn’t made: an unused guest room. A little spider sent a tremor across the web she’d spun over the windowsill. On the table was a pencil with an almost-worn-down eraser and teeth marks in the wood. I picked it up, rolled it between my fingers, put it back, and went out.
Only two more doors. I knocked on the first, waited, knocked again, and went in. A double bed, a table, and an armchair. An open door led to a small bathroom. The blinds were down, the ceiling light was on. In the armchair was Kaminski.
He seemed to be sleeping, his eyes were closed, he was wearing a silk dressing gown several sizes too large for him, with rolled-up sleeves. His hands didn’t reach the ends of the arms, the back of it rose high above his head, his feet dangled clear of the floor. His forehead twitched, he turned his head, opened and closed his eyes very quickly, and said, “Who’s that?”
“Me,” I said. “Zollner. I forgot my bag. Anna had to go to her sister, and asked me if I could stay, no problem, and . . . I just wanted to let you know. In case you need anything.”
“And what would I need?” he said calmly. “Fat cow.”
I wondered if I’d heard him right.
“Fat cow,” he said again. “And she can’t cook either. How much did you pay?”
“I don’t know what you mean. But if you have time for a conversation . . .”
“Were you in the cellar?”
“In the cellar?”
He tapped his nose. “You can smell it.”
“In which cellar?”
“She knows we can’t throw her out. It’s impossible to find good help up here.”
“Should I . . . switch off the light?”
“The light?” He frowned. “No, no. Pure habit, no.”
Maybe he’d taken another pill? I pulled the tape recorder out of my bag, switched it on, and set it on the floor.
“What was that?” he asked.
It would be best to come straight to the point. “Tell me about Matisse!”
He said nothing. I would like to have seen his eyes, but he’d obviously trained himself to keep them shut whenever he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “That house in Nice. I thought: That’s how I’d like to live one day. What year are we in?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I know you were in the cellar. What year?”
I told him.
He rubbed his face. I looked at his legs. Two woolly slippers dangled in the air, a hairless, white shin, that of a child, was exposed.
“Where are we?”
“In your house,” I said slowly.
“So tell me how much you paid the fat cow!”
“I’ll be back later.” He drew breath, I left the room quickly and shut the door. It wasn’t going to be easy! I would give him a few minutes so that he could collect himself.
I opened the last door and had finally found the office. A desk with a computer, a revolving chair, file cabinets, supplies, piles of paper. I sat down and put my head in my hands. The sun was already low, in the distance the gondola of a funicular climbed the side of a mountain, glittered as it caught a sunbeam, then disappeared over a patch of forest. I could hear crashing and banging from next door; I listened but nothing came of it.
I had to proceed systematically. This was Miriam’s workplace, her father probably hadn’t been here in years. First I would go through all papers that were lying open, then I would work my way through the desk drawers from bottom to top, then the cupboards, from left to right. I could be very tidy when I had to.
Most of it was financial records. Bank statements and deposit receipts, involving much less money than I would have thought. Contracts with gallerists: Bogovic had gotten forty percent to begin with, then it came down to thirty, remarkably little, whoever had done the negotiating with him back then had done a good job. Records for private medical insurance—fairly expensive—plus life insurance, for Miriam, oddly enough, but not for that much money. I turned on the computer, it chattered itself into action and asked for the password. I tried Miriam, Manuel, Adrienne, Papa, Mama, hello, and password, but none of them worked. Crossly, I shut it down again.
Now for the letters: carbon copies of endless correspondence with gallerists about prices, sales, transport of individual paintings, the rights for prints, postcards, illustrated books. Most of the letters were from Miriam, a few had been dictated and signed by her father, only the oldest of them were in his own handwriting: negotiations, proposals, demands, even requests from before he was famous. Back then his handwriting was a scrawl, the lines sloped off to the right, the dots on his i’s were all over the place. Carbon copies of various responses to journalists: My father is not and never was a representational painter, because he thinks the concept is meaningless, either every painting is representational or none is, and that’s all there is to say on the subject. A few letters from Clure and other friends: arrangements to meet, short replies, birthday greetings, and, in a careful pile, Professor Mehring’s Christmas cards. Invitations to lecture at universities; as far as I knew, he never gave lectures, obviously he’d turned them all down. And the photocopy of a curious card to Claes Oldenburg: Kaminski was thanking him for his help, but regretted he had to admit that he thought Oldenburg’s art—Forgive my candor, but in our business friendly lies are the only sin—was worthless nonsense. Underneath everything else, on the bottom of the last drawer, I found a thick leather portfolio, closed with a little lock. I tried without success to unlock it with the letter opener, then set it aside for later.
I looked at the time: I had to be quick. No letters to Dominik Silva, to Adrienne, to Therese? I heard an engine and took an uneasy look out of the window. A car had stopped downstairs. Clure got out, looked around, took a couple of steps toward Kaminski’s house, then turned aside, I let my breath out, and he opened his own garden gate. Next door I could hear Kaminski’s dry cough.
I got to the cupboards. I leafed through fat document files, copies of insurance stuff, copies of land registers, he had bought a piece of land in the south of France ten years ago and sold it again at a loss. Copies of trial documents from a court case against a gallerist, who had sold paintings from his early Symbolist period. Also old sketchbooks with detailed drawings of the lines of reflected light between various mirrors: I calculated what they must be worth and struggled for a few seconds against the impulse to pocket one of them. I was on the last cupboard already: old bills, copies of the last eight years’ tax returns; I would have loved to go through them, but there wasn’t time. Hoping for secret compartments or false bottoms, I tapped the rear walls. I lay down on the floor and peered under the cupboards. Then I got up on the chair and took a look on top of them.
I opened the window, sat on the windowsill, and lit up a cigarette. The wind carried away the ash, and I carefully blew the smoke into the cool air. The sun was already touching one of the peaks, soon it would be gone. So, the last thing left was the portfolio. I flicked the cigarette away, sat down at the desk, and pulled out my pocket knife.
A single smooth incision down the back from top to bottom. The leather was already cracked, and gave way with a crackling sound. I worked the blade carefully and slowly. Then opened the portfolio from behind. No one would notice. Why would anyone take it out while Kaminski was still alive? And by then—so what?
There were only a few pages in it. Some lines from Matisse, he wished Kaminski success, had recommended him to several collectors, and assured him of his good wishes and was, his respectfully . . . the next letter was also from Matisse: he was sorry about the failure of the exhibition, but nothing to be done about it, he recommended serious focus and work, work, work, was optimistic about Mr. Kaminski’s future, and moreover assured him of his good wishes and . . . a telegram from Picasso: Walker wonderful, wish I’d done it, all the best, compadre, live forever! Then, already quite yellowed, three letters in Richard Rieming’s small, semi-illegible handwriting. I knew the first, it was reproduced in all Rieming biographies; it was a strange feeling to be holding it in my hand. He was on the ship now, Rieming wrote, and they would never meet again in this life. This was no cause for sorrow, just a fact; and even if after our separation from our mortal bodies there were still ways in which we would endure, it still was not certain that we would remember our old masks and recognize one another again, in other words if there were such a thing as a last farewell, this was one. His ship was on course for a shore that he still, despite what the books said, and the time-tables, and his own tickets, found unreal. Yet this moment at the end of an existence which had at best been a compromise with what people called Life could not be allowed to pass without serving to ensure that if he, Rieming, had earned the right to call anyone his son, then he would wish to bestow this title on the recipient of this letter. He had led a life barely worthy of the name, had been on earth without knowing why, had carried himself because one must, often freezing, sometimes writing poems, a handful of which had had the luck to find favor. So it did not behoove him to advise someone against following a similar path, and his only wish was that Manuel should be shielded from sorrow, that was already a great deal; indeed it was everything.
Rieming’s two other letters were older, written to Kaminski when he was still a schoolboy: in one of them, he advised him not to run away from boarding school again, it didn’t help, you had to endure; he didn’t want to claim that Manuel would be grateful one day, but he promised him that he would get past it, fundamentally you do get past most things, even when you don’t want to. In the other, he announced that Roadside Words would be coming out next month, and he was anticipating it with the anxious joy of a child who feared he was going to get the wrong thing for Christmas, and yet knew that whatever he got, it would also be the right thing. I had no idea what he meant. What all this pointed up was his coldness and affectation. Rieming had always struck me as unpleasant.
The next letter was from Adrienne. She had been thinking about it for a long time, it hadn’t been easy for her. She knew it wasn’t in Manuel’s capacities to make people happy and the word happy had a different connotation for him than it did for other people. But she was going to do it, she was going to marry him, she was prepared to take the risk, and if it was a mistake, then she’d make a mistake. This wouldn’t come as a surprise to him, but it did come as one to her. She thanked him for giving her time, she was afraid of the future, but perhaps that’s the way it had to be, and maybe also she’d be capable one day of saying the words he so longed to hear.
I read it again and wasn’t sure what it was that struck me as so weird about it. Now there was only one page left: thin graph paper, like something torn o
In a panic I ran downstairs and opened the door. A gray-haired man was leaning on the fence, a felt hat on his head and a fat-bellied bag next to his feet.
“Yes?”
“Doctor Marzeller,” he said in a deep voice. “The appointment.”
“You have an appointment?”
“He has an appointment. I’m the doctor.”
I hadn’t expected anything like that. “It’s not okay right now,” I said, rather choked.
“What isn’t okay?”
“Unfortunately it’s not okay. Come back tomorrow!”
He took off his hat and stroked his head.
“Mr. Kaminski’s working,” I said. “He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“You mean he’s painting?”
“We’re working on his biography. He has to concentrate.”
“On his biography.” He put his hat back on. “Has to concentrate.” Why the hell did he have to repeat himself all the time?
“My name is Zollner,” I said. “I’m his biographer and friend.” I held out my hand, he took it hesitantly. His handshake was uncomfortably strong, I returned it. He looked at me sharply.
“I’m going to him now.” He took a step forward.
“No!” I said, blocking him.
He gave me a skeptical glance. Was he wondering if I could stop him? Just try it, I thought.
“Surely it’s just routine,” I said. “He doesn’t need anything.”
“And why do you think that?”
“He really is very busy. He can’t just interrupt things. There are so many . . . memories. The work means so much to him.”
He shrugged his shoulders, blinked, and took a step back. I’d won.
“I’m sorry,” I said generously.