‘Oh dear … you’ve fallen out over the commission?’ Ben laughed, settling back into his seat.
‘He insulted—’
‘Your work?’
‘The family.’
‘Yours?’ The filmmaker was surprised. Jozef’s mother had been well liked among the university set, and her death had saddened them. Milo had sent flowers to her funeral.
‘No.’ Jozef took a hasty swig of beer, angry with himself; he hadn’t wanted to discuss Milo at all. ‘The Oderfeldts.’
‘Oh, but that’s just sourness at the lost money,’ Ben said.
‘Yes, perhaps.’
Yes, he was relieved Milo wasn’t there. He felt now how his discomfort with Milo’s hatred for the Oderfeldts had sharpened into disgust. Karolina, glowing Karolcia, the richness of her inner life, the way she watched, thought, sealed things away in her heart; how could anyone insult her? And Alicia, so clever, so much cleverer than anyone realised, a true talent. Adam and Anna with their complicated dance, always a kind of charge between them that was bewitching to watch. He could paint them together, he thought: ask for a new commission. He’d try to capture that charge somehow.
‘Milo can be a prick,’ Maurice said, laughing.
Jozef raised his glass to him.
‘So. You said you’re in a slightly different … not a painter? Or are you more of an honest artist, making modern pieces, not my stuffy portraits?’
Maurice watched him calmly. ‘I do some modern pieces, yes. But portraits can be very … lucrative.’
‘Ah, you think I’m a sell-out.’
‘I think there’s a lot of money to be made, and why not make it?’
‘Would I know any of your work?’
‘Oh yes, but you wouldn’t know it was mine.’
Jozef raised his eyebrows and sipped again, feeling stupid and slow. ‘Um, you’re … you work under a different name, you mean?’
Maurice laughed. ‘Oh yes, lots of different names.’ Jozef felt his stupidity rebound on him again as he understood. A forger. Maurice leaned in, so Jozef could smell the beer on his breath. Up close, he noticed the sheen of wealth, so well-rehearsed was he in spotting money: that shirt was thick and warm, the coat looked lined and from the kind of tailor Adam might use. ‘I have one hanging in your patron’s apartment,’ he whispered, and then gave a wheezing kind of giggle. ‘Thousands I got for that.’
Jozef wanted to smile, match the man’s conspiratorial air. It was rare for him to make a new friend. But instead he felt a reflected embarrassment for Adam, thought of his pride in his pieces, how he showed them to guests.
‘Which one?’
‘As if I would tell you! See if you can spot it.’
Maurice laughed again, clapped Jozef on the back. ‘If your piece is good, maybe I’ll paint it one day,’ he said, and broke into drunken laughter at Jozef’s face. ‘Now don’t be precious, you’d be lucky to have the compliment,’ he added, before heading back to the bar.
The evening got colder outside and the windows began to mist up; Jozef was seized by his usual childish impulse to draw in the cloudy glass canvas it made. They were all reluctant to go home, and stayed until past midnight, huddling into their coats whenever the doors opened and let in an icy blast of air. They fell into old tracks of conversation about university days and their plans for the future, politics and complaining about wives and girlfriends who didn’t support them enough, before a few more drinks tipped them into tearful confessions of how much they loved those wives and girlfriends, how guilty they felt at their betrayals, that other lover, that kiss, that fumble at that party. Always these led to good-natured baiting of Jozef, always with his empty bed. They’d all long ago come to separate, never-discussed conclusions that their friend loved men, and protected him and themselves from any embarrassment by building a wall of aggressive jokes about his secret women, his affairs with married ladies, or his sad and lonely love affair with the blank canvas: Jozef, a caresser of paintbrushes, a seducer of dust sheets, a fucker of paint.
‘I know at least three girls off the top of my head who would have your clothes off you so quickly your head would spin,’ the filmmaker cried.
‘Come on,’ Ben and the others, the poet, the playwright, the translator, added, smiling at the familiar taunts, awaiting Jozef’s usual lines in return: I’m too busy, I don’t like city girls. When his mother was dying, they’d put all this to one side, but now it seemed Jozef had recovered a little, they returned to it with gratitude.
Jozef smiled, sat back, let his head hang. He blushed a little, felt the familiar mixture of envy and comfort in old friends and the fixedness of their view of him: even if he felt he might fly apart, their Jozef was immovable. Taking a deep drink, he imagined telling them of Anna appearing at his door that night in the storm, the way the whites of her eyes had glowed in the lightning flickers, and weaving in a lie that led them to bed together, changing the narrative of both that night and the one of Jozef they thought they all knew so well. He grimaced into his glass at the thought of how the gossip would spread like water and lap right up to the apartment walls on Bernardyńska, hurting Anna and all the rest. He tried to assemble the nebulous wisps of feeling he had for Karolina instead, but that was even more unthinkable, to present her to them in this dirty bar, to their innuendo, to the questions: How big are her tits? I hear those rich girls are filthy in bed, the well-read ones will do the best dirty talk, ha ha … even if behind all the play-acting there was a genuine happiness for him, he couldn’t do it; he wouldn’t be able to explain what she was to him, since he didn’t know, and it would all end in a row. By the time he put his glass down, Jozef’s face was the smiling, blushing mask they all knew from the thousand versions of this conversation they had had before. They circled around the conversational track again as he nodded, smiled, laughed along, and they were no closer to knowing their friend’s insides than before.
Jozef wondered if Ben was aware his friend was a crook, then felt provincial and stupid for worrying about it. What did it matter if Maurice made money selling the odd knock off? A tiny voice from within answered: It matters. He might capture that same light, that same shape, the brushstrokes that made Alicia’s face, but it would be just an echo. Maurice was never in that room, with Karolina behind him, watching and pulling at the invisible thread between them, and he’d never met Alicia, slowly understood how she was half-hidden from the world, even from her own family, watching and thinking from behind a doll-mask.
He watched as Maurice returned to the bar again and again, free with his money, while Jozef was already feeling a familiar anxiety about how he would eat the next morning: he’d spent his coins on this last drink, and Adam hadn’t yet paid him. He swallowed down a tiny echo of Milo’s attack with the warm dregs of beer: Money in the walls, you think they’ll pay you what you’re owed?
The next day Jozef went early to Bernardyńska, breathing into his hands on the tram to check there was no lingering beer on his breath; it was sour, laced with the cheap coffee he made weak and with too much sugar, but there was no beer in it and he was relieved. An image of himself as a blundering drunk pawing over the girls made him close his eyes. At the apartment there would be good tea and hot rolls at this time in the morning, and maybe a chance to catch the family in its sleepy morning state, the papers spread out at the adults’ table, the girls sharing elaborate dream-stories downstairs, asking him what he thought they meant for their futures. Jozef’s stomach grasped at itself, complaining, a mixture of hunger and an old anxiety. Soon the painting would be finished and there would be money, for a while, but no more of those rooms, those mornings and evenings with the Wawel watching over him as he worked. And then the money would run out and he would wait, cold in his own little apartment, for Stefan or Adam to pluck him out again, send him to one of their friends’ houses, perhaps, or if he was lucky, think up something else for him to do at Bernardyńska.
The tram was full of the first wave of workers: early shif
ts, or perhaps fearful of losing jobs. There were the cheap poorly fitting suits and scuffed shoes of the younger clerks and shop assistants, the hurried, wispy hairstyles of women who worked in the department stores perhaps, and at least one teacher or governess, clutching a cloth bag full of files and books. Jozef liked groupings like this: the way the inside casing of the tram made a frame, the way the travellers entered into an unconscious swaying dance together. A grey palette would work, with flashes of yellow and white for the overhead lights, struggling against the morning gloom. In fact there was lots of red on the women, skirts and scarves, it was apparently in fashion, but in grey he would be telling the truth better: early morning in the city, the damp dullness of it, the wishing for the warm blankets again. He scanned for an interesting angle of limbs, a shape that could be drawn out in paint to make the whole fit into a kind of invisible pattern. Most faces were lowered into newspapers, and something about the collective hunch could work on a canvas. The newspapers were full of rumblings and mutterings about Germany, the echoes of a fight between giants.
On approaching the apartment he saw he had misjudged the time; he liked to be early, to work in the morning light, but the windows were still dark, the curtains drawn. Jozef ambled up and down Bernardyńska for a few minutes, relieved it was a mild morning, if grey, stopping at the bakery to watch the loaves being laid out in the window and to catch the delicious smell. He surprised himself by not feeling foolish but enjoying what felt like stolen time, in the mild air, watching the city rouse itself. When he returned to the apartment door, Robert’s hesitation was smoothly submerged as he welcomed Jozef in.
‘The family aren’t yet up, please let me show you upstairs—’
‘It’s all right, Robert, I’m sure there’s plenty to—’
Robert nodded at the bottom of the stairs, gestured to the dining room, where Jozef had been working these last months, assured him tea and rolls would be sent up for him, and melted away. Jozef play-acted as he walked up the stairs, letting his hand rest on the banister. My house, my family, my money, my paintings on these walls. He paused before entering the dining room, let a fantasy that he had left a wife sleeping catch hold of him for a moment. She was turned with her back to him, sleeping in satin sheets, so he did not have to define her face, some queasy cocktail of Anna and Karolina. The room had a fire lit and the lights dimly on and there was his painting, as he’d left it yesterday afternoon, waiting to be finished. He approached it, but then the others on the walls caught his eye, and he remembered Maurice’s comment: See if you can guess which one.
He’d said he’d made thousands. Could be an empty boast, of course. The paintings were arranged too stiffly in rows, not left the necessary space to breathe as they would in a gallery. It made the colours bleed a little into each other so that this dark one cast a shadow over this blue one. They were all framed in the same elegant way, by a framer in Warsaw to whom Adam sent all the family work; he used gold leaf on simple, clean lines and a very thin glass. Jozef caught his reflection in his own portrait of Anna and Karolina, which he’d avoided looking at, he now realised: why had he not returned to it like an old friend, a reassurance that he could do it? Karolina was so young in it, and his memories of her from that time refused to settle on the girl he knew now; how he had ignored her, dismissed her, barely noticed her at all. The whole painting had been rushed, between lessons at the Jagiellonian and caring for his mother and meeting his friends. He couldn’t believe it was the same rooms and the same people. He studied his brushstrokes now, Anna’s younger face, rounder, softer, and Karolina at her feet, a blankness to the expression. People had praised it at the time; Adam had adored it, he said. He saw now it was empty, a student’s exercise.
Next to his own failure was another modern piece, one of Milo’s? Jozef searched for the signature, found it. Not Milo but a name he recognised from a slightly older set, also from the university circles. A still life, rather dull. Some fruit and flowers, autumn light.
He scanned along the others, more family pieces and a painting of the apartment itself, interspersed with photographs. Some well-known Poles, a few locals like himself, mostly well regarded and expensive, but not of the calibre to attract a forger, not worth thousands. Nothing seemed out of place or obviously a fake. Maurice’s beer-sodden swagger began to seem like any other drunkard’s boast in a crowded bar, and Jozef’s vaguely formed daydream of finding a new route to support himself faded. He was surprised by the weight he felt settle back onto him, unaware of how much he had secretly invested in this idea, and why.
He turned to Alicia-in-paint again, started to mix some final colours. He could work without Alicia there now. Really he should have the whole canvas transferred to a rented studio space, or his own rooms, and finish alone. No one ever mentioned it. He tried to settle into the world of Alicia’s image, to let it reveal what it needed. He stared at the blank sludgy space behind her shoulder.
The air changed somehow, a tiny shift, some scent on it perhaps, soap and starch, paper, and beneath those the scent of her skin. She moved in quietly, noticing how he was working. Hearing how she carefully, carefully pulled out a chair, the tiny creak as she settled into it, made his chest give a little clutch of gratitude and something deeper that he wasn’t ready to name. He kept dabbing mindlessly at the paint mix, eyeing the space where he knew something was missing. He wanted to turn and speak but it was sweet to feel her there, knowing she watched him work, perhaps unaware he knew she had entered the room. He knew her legs would be tucked beneath her, her hand scrunched in her hair, head cocked to one side, watching him with that air of calm. His hand hovered with the paintbrush. He was aware of his untucked shirt and that he hadn’t combed his hair. He heard the flick of a notebook and the scratch of her pen. A rush overtook him to think she might be writing about him. He turned to watch her in turn now, her hair falling over her concentrating face. She raised her eyes to him, touched gazes.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t want to stop you working.’
‘I haven’t started yet,’ he replied, louder than he’d meant to. Somehow it broke the spell, and she began to move from the table.
‘Karolina, don’t go, it’s fine—’
She put her notebook back on the table, pivoted so her hand stayed touching it; a childlike pose as she leaned into her hand and let her other limbs dangle awkwardly. She cast her eyes around the room, a slow blush covering her cheeks.
‘I … wrote you something,’ she said, her blush deepening.
Warmth rushed through him, and an anxious drumming in his ears, too. ‘Will you let me read it?’
‘I’m too embarrassed. I’ll leave it here for you.’
She moved to the door. ‘It’s finished, isn’t it?’ She nodded towards the painting, Alicia’s eyes on them both.
‘No, still some touches.’
When she opened the door, the sounds of the house flooded in, now awake. Alicia was shouting Mimi’s name, who was yipping in return, her tiny paw-falls skittering on upstairs floorboards. Doors opened and closed, heavy curtains were swept back. Warmth was spreading through the rooms and the smell of breakfast drifted up from the kitchens. Karolina stayed in the doorway, twisted her hair.
‘Do you want to stay while I read it?’
She nodded, closed the door.
He was startled by the force of her kiss. He’d imagined (for he had imagined it) a shyness to her, her inexperience making her still and sweetly hesitant; instead she kissed him with hunger and confidence, pressed her body to him in a way that made him almost laugh in surprise. At first he was aware of the family noise, trying to notice sounds approaching even as he lost his hands in her hair and broke the kiss to bury his face in her neck, but it didn’t take long for the world to contract, for both of them, as though the apartment and the household didn’t exist. By the time Alicia came flying through the door, holding roses (‘These are the ones we should use, for the background, they’re from Mama’s bedroom and the perfe
ct colour, come on!’), Jozef had promised Karolina his whole life, shocked himself with how easy and simple it was. ‘I know how to make money,’ he said, ‘and I’ll marry you just as soon as I can afford to.’ She had only kissed him and smiled, and removed her hands from his as Alicia threw open the door.
Jozef finished the painting that day. He didn’t need to delay any more, now that he knew the painting and his connection to Karolina would not end together. Into the roses, just behind Alicia’s painted hair, curling in the background like wallpaper come to life, he put Karolina, always curled up behind the work, watching, beautiful, waiting to be seen.
Kraków, 1939
17
ANNA LOOKED BACK to where her husband and the car and all their possessions had been. The crowd was surging again, and she felt she would break her hands, so tight was her grip on the slippery coats of the girls. A man with a sack on his back, a storybook robber, knocked her almost off her feet. The ground was mulch beneath them, with the almost sweet smell of churned mud. Anna had no idea what to do.
‘Come,’ she said, and pulled the girls, pliant and in shock, in the wake of the sack robber-man, trying to match his path as people were forcibly removed from his way. Someone caught her arm and her very lungs seemed to leap out of her chest. She turned to find Janina Kardas gibbering something about a horse and cart.
‘We must get to that cart … but where is Adam? Where is your car? Anna, what is happening? This is awful!’ Anna could only nod at her.
‘Where is Adam?’
Alicia began sobbing, her tears riding on the name of her Papa.
‘I see,’ Janina said. She straightened herself, shoving a man who fell into her right in the chest.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There is a horse and cart not far, which is taking people for money and things. What do you have with you?’
‘I – everything was in the car. But we should go back, Adam is—’
The Light at the End of the Day Page 14