by Naomi Wood
‘Oh, Paul,’ he said, looking up at me, startled.
‘Aren’t your shoes getting soggy?’
‘They’re all right.’ He gave me a tense grin, a flash of teeth. He was quite a bit rounder these days: his flesh was graspable; a hand could paddle into it. He didn’t look like he was carrying more fat so much as more water. His skin was stretched like the top of a pie, and it made you want to press a thumb in to see how far it would go. The darkness under his eyes was the result, I imagined, of last night spent in the woods with a bottle of vodka and the ear of any painter he’d persuaded to stay up late. I wondered if the forest had had its first snow; the beech trees blacker, the branches ravishing. ‘How was Weimar?’
‘Same old thing.’ I watched his eyes skate the water. ‘Pretty girls; chickens.’
‘And Ernst?’
‘Ernst, well; Ernst is still very fat.’
Walter’s own extra weight made his mouth a heaviness; his forehead was higher as he had lost some hair. There was always a soreness in my heart to see him aged and bigger. I followed his line of sight to the school.
‘Do you ever feel like it’s going to eat you alive?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I might die if I stay any longer.’
His words made me imagine him as Ophelia, floating down the river, his loafers engorged. ‘Every time you go to Weimar you say things like this.’
‘Do I? I’m sorry; I must be very dull.’
‘Walter, come on: that’s not what I meant. Surely you’ve saved enough for years’ worth of school fees. I don’t understand why you go back.’
‘Ernst kissed me. Behind the studio.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t remember whether this had been expected. ‘That’s nice. Isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. He asked if I was still in love with that man from the Bauhaus. Jenö.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Yes,’ he said, without pausing. ‘As soon as I said it, I felt like a fool. To be in love with the same man for six years! How can I be so stupid?’ He looked dumbfounded at the water. ‘What a waste of time, and effort.’
We never really talked this frankly; we usually skirted the issue. This had become the easier way of doing things. ‘It’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘To be in love with someone.’
‘It’s beginning to feel that way.’
‘You haven’t exactly had a choice.’
‘But how long can I carry this torch!’ Pain made his voice rich. He took off his glasses and his eyes were smaller without the lenses. ‘Jenö once said to me I had too many feelings. It was early on, in the autumn when we’d all just met. I had no idea what he meant. I didn’t know what it was like not to feel things like I did – to be a man who felt things come and go, as if it were a case of watching the clouds go by; skitter, skitter. I wanted to say: do you not feel things? How is it that out of everyone I’m the only one to ever feel anything? But now I’ve learnt: best to pretend everything is fine. Whatever you do, don’t say what’s on your mind. That’s what will save you. Say nothing. Do nothing.’ He looked at me bitterly, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and I knew already that I would lie. ‘Do you still have feelings for Charlotte?’
‘No,’ I said, and I felt relief in my heart for the deceit.
‘You always were so much more sensible. I envy you that. You knew how to keep your cool.’
A flock of birds set off from the trees, spooked by something.
‘Do you want to see him again? Ernst? Like that, I mean?’
‘I’d like to be with someone, yes,’ he said, by way of an answer. I thought about Ernst and Walter together, two bodies pressed between the trees.
‘Well, why not have a little fun then? You deserve it.’
His hand slipped to his pocket again. I wondered what was in there. Rocks to drown himself with? Or his wages from the studio? ‘Shall we head back?’
Walter went, scowling. It was cold and the trees were noisy with wind. Things were in disarray: the sunshine so quickly changing into wet squalls and thunderstorms, and then days of this: nothing but cloud. Even today the iced school shone. The bottom of the building was painted grey, which gave the illusion that the school was hovering. I often found it a confusing place to find my way around; each leg of the building drawing you away from its centre like a switchblade.
We walked toward the big letters spelled in metal and shadow: BAUHAUS. The word ran vertically. As we reached the doors – painted in red, the only real colour at the school – there was a knocking above us: it was Jenö and Charlotte, grinning down at us from the Metal Workshop.
I felt a lurch of feeling, seeing them there, then I put it away. It might even have been rage: in the time that I had buried my feelings the entrance to the honest state of things was now slender as a keyhole. It made me smile that I had once been obsessed with truth and transparency; now I had a synthetic life with no great passions; and it wasn’t all that bad. I knew I was a little dead. But in a funny way it was the only means I had to stay alive.
We waved up at them. We were both well practised in pretending that we were fine, though Walter occasionally let slip a lash of his tongue, a droplet of poison. Charlotte made a moony face, then turned away, the yellow silk of her hair following. Walter mimicked her expression. Jenö didn’t look like he knew what to do, and so he followed Charlotte back into the workshop. ‘They’re idiots,’ Walter said, ‘but we’re fools. What should I do? Tell me, won’t you, what should I do now?’
He didn’t understand that nothing could be done. We lived in the same stack of bedrooms and balconies: should I crane my neck from my balcony to Charlotte’s room, I could see right inside it. Walter lived on top of me, and he could see my room from his own. In fact, we could all see each other all of the time. There was no escape.
25
Dessau
Given my inauspicious beginnings at the Bauhaus, it was surprising I had become a fixture at the school. I had only really landed my role as a Journeyman due to luck: an apprentice had left when I’d graduated in 1926, and I stepped into the position as Josef Albers’ assistant. Because I knew how it felt to be bottom of the class, I considered myself a good teacher: even to those who showed minimal promise.
It was a week or so after seeing Walter at the watery reeds that I was teaching the foundation year Vorkurs. My class was a good bunch of students, and they reminded me a little of ourselves as first-years: they were that curious mix of optimism as well as fatalism that Germany had been forever ruined by their parents. There was, I suppose, no other way to be; this attitude was the right one.
Josef Albers – Master Itten’s replacement – had taken them for the morning session, and this meant they would work hard for me in the afternoon. Josef could be severe, even with the Bauhaus babies. He was a good-looking man: his hair dense and grey-blond; his sharp nose dominant. Like Walter he was a Westphalian, and always wore a suit.
Josef had spent a large part of the first semester stripping the students back: he called it their year of ‘forgetting’. He began his first workshop with a box of drinking straws: ‘Take what you need,’ he would say. ‘Make something that could only be made of drinking straws: not knitting needles, wire, or spaghetti.’ And, after the students’ initial confusion – lessons from the lemon continued – they would start to make things: straws were split, flattened, glued, even used as spatulas and paintbrushes.
Most of them came around to it. Some dragged their heels, wondering, I think, what it was they had come to the Bauhaus to do. It all looked too much like child’s play, and not enough like fine art. I always had my eye on the man or woman who was most resistant; someone like me who clung to the imitative impulse. I tried my hardest with them.
Today I would continue Josef’s themes of spatial creation. The babies gathered at their work tables. Most of them looked like they could do with a good meal, and I wondered that they didn’t stock up at the cafeteria, as we Journeymen did. Most of the students were bl
ond, but there was also Michiko, a student visiting from Japan, and a tall dark man: Howard, an American. Before I began I felt self-possessed and powerful; how good it felt, to be their teacher; to have the students in my hands.
Beside me were stacks of colourless cardboard. ‘I want you to find new ways of dividing and joining the cardboard. Obviously, cutting and gluing are uninteresting. Can we make this cardboard do something it has never done before? Something it is particularly suited for?’
It was always best to leave them unobserved, because even the suggestion of authority could impede their experimentation. And so I left them to get on with the task, and in my room I worked on a painting that was turning out better than expected: a simple grid of berry-bright colour. Now I was living, as well as teaching, Master Itten’s methodology, which was not to care too much about what was produced.
When I returned to the classroom an hour later the results were ingenious. One of the students had wetted the cardboard into spirals which retained their shapes when dried. Another – this was Michiko, who was particularly talented – had made a design on the board by stippling its layers of laminated fibre. No other material would have achieved such textural difference; she had discovered its unique properties. ‘Was it accidental?’ I asked her. ‘This discovery?’
She nodded.
‘What knife did you use?’
‘No knife.’ Michiko brought out something from her handbag. ‘My eyebrow tweezers.’
We surveyed the offerings. Some students had scored and folded, so that the sculptures formed buildings and bridges; others had found ways of curving the board into wheels, stars, bowls. We assembled everything at the front. ‘We need to pay attention to create things materialgerecht,’ I said. ‘The Wilhelmian Age delighted in making things that appeared what they were not. How could iron sprout acanthus leaves and blossom? Why would tin ever look like wood?’ (Whenever I gave this speech I always thought of my mother’s fruit bowl, shaped, unthinkably, like a swan. It had caused a big argument between me and my father about truth in art, and he’d called me humourless, which was probably accurate; it wasn’t long after I’d lost Charlotte.) ‘A station shouldn’t pretend to be a Scottish castle! A hotel shouldn’t be the Alhambra! Truth to materials – in their technical treatment, and truth to purpose in form – should be the target of all our efforts. What we do in here is not art,’ I said, ‘but experiment. Beautiful design may come from it. But that’s a way off until we understand the material’s innate properties, and how we can exploit them for our function.’
After that I gave them a shoebox of gramophone needles to share amongst themselves. Several students ran their hands through the cool needles. This would be a tricky task for them, since they probably wouldn’t be able to build or construct with them. ‘Have a good think about them,’ I said, realising I was hungry, and therefore warming to my words as hunger could make me do. ‘How do they feel? What are their properties? How does light interact with them? I don’t care about the painterliness of what you do. I care about invention. Classical ideas of form and symmetry may still be in your system. Eradicate them! Forget them! Is not the balance of unequals more exciting than symmetry? After the war, what is order? Form? Perfection? It is not a thing; it is not in this world. Tension is everything. Avoid hammers and nails and glue and tape and thread, but concentrate on what the needle itself can do. What would it do standing upright, cast in light, spilled across different textures: velvet, hair, grass? And what would the needle do,’ I said, getting edgy, ‘in skin?’
I could just as well hit my hand on the table and shout, ‘Licenza! Licenza! Licenza!’
They looked up from their notebooks. I knew this was the moment when they wondered if I would let them keep their work. I was more indulgent than Josef, and didn’t make them destroy what I had just asked them to create. ‘You can keep your things,’ I said, ‘but don’t sentimentalise them. We’ll do the gramophone work in a couple of weeks. You’ll notice I’ve given you double the time as usual. That’s on purpose. Only in boredom will you understand. Boredom is very helpful to the artist. And come down to the cafeteria, won’t you? You all need feeding up.’
Day to day, the Bauhaus operated just as it had done in Weimar. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were eaten in the cool expansiveness of the school’s modernist cafeteria (Marcel Breuer’s chairs; Marianne Brandt’s lighting). It was Charlotte and Jenö who could be found there most mealtimes, sitting away from the other Journeymen and students. Though Charlotte had never ceased to be the centre of our quartet (Irmi and Kaspar had gone to Berlin after graduating) I think the rest of the school found her standoffish. As Journeymen we were permitted to sit with the Masters, but when we did it only promoted the idea that our gang, by proxy, was a little aloof.
While Jenö and Charlotte were creatures of habit, Walter was ambulatory and carousing: king of the jailhouse; pals with everyone. Really he could have sat at any table and any students or Journeymen would have made space for him. He was even friendly with Marianne Brandt, the one female Journeyman in the Metal Workshop, who had a famous froideur with almost everyone.
‘What was today?’ asked Charlotte as we settled down with potatoes and sausages.
‘Twisty bits of cardboard.’
‘Ah; that one. Josef doesn’t like to change things too much, does he? Did you do the “eradicate” speech? About the war?’
‘Yes,’ I said, laughing. We had all heard this speech in one of his lectures.
‘I do that one too,’ said Jenö. ‘Did they understand?’
‘They looked bamboozled. I was rather hungry. I went on too long. But in a funny way they remind me of us.’
They both nodded. How alike they were. Being around them was like being with a brother and sister. Or twins, perhaps.
‘There’s a woman in my class,’ Charlotte said, ‘she’s just like me. She’s determined to fight it: the work, the loom, the wool. Everything she makes is rough and coarse. I haven’t worked out what to do with her: I want her to fight, but I also want her to survive. I think I should probably give her the order to surrender.’
‘Probably,’ said Jenö, putting a hand on hers. ‘Look at you, and Otti and Anni; none of you were naturals; at least, not to begin with.’
She tucked her ash-blonde bob behind her ears and frowned. ‘I do wonder about the cost, though. Both of you got your first choice. It’s not exactly fair.’
‘I know, I know,’ Jenö said, putting an arm around her, and placing his forehead against hers.
If I were any other man I’d have been able to simply observe Jenö’s tenderness, but it was in these moments that my ancient feelings flared. ‘Where’s Walter?’
‘With Franz,’ said Jenö, ‘I think.’
‘Is he in one of his Weimar moods?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen him since Sunday.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A big one.’
‘I don’t know why he continues there,’ said Jenö. ‘It plunges him into a depression every time.’
‘Someone has to pay his school fees. Why not Mr Steiner?’
‘His school fees! He should just take whatever diploma he can get.’ Charlotte’s mouth turned flat. ‘What do you make of him?’
‘Ernst Steiner?’
‘Franz Ehrlich.’
‘Oh; I don’t know. Walter seems very attached to him all of a sudden. Apparently he’s an excellent Print student.’
We’d first met Franz when he’d been a Bauhaus baby. He had so enjoyed being baptised in the city fountain that, drunk, he’d gone for a swim in its shallow waters. He had that kind of reputation. Instead of taking the staircase, for example, he’d slide down the bannister with his legs in a V. His intelligent eyes were always on the move, trying to find what fun could be had in the most ordinary of situations. I knew that Walter had had his eye on him all autumn: here was someone who might provide diversion. And, after the moody conversation at the river, Franz and Walter were suddenly best friends. I didn’t begrudge h
im it. Walter had had a tougher time than most.
‘Did you know Kaspar and Franz know each other?’ said Charlotte, who was a regular letter-writer to Kaspar. ‘Something to do with Berlin. Kaspar says they didn’t get on, as kids.’
‘Franz gives me the creeps,’ said Jenö.
‘You’re just jealous,’ said Charlotte, giving up on her food. ‘You’re used to being Walter’s star. You don’t know what it’s like to be in the shade.’
26
Dessau
Dessau was a small town, and well kept for working people. It had none of Weimar’s classical beauty, but it was a little more honest, and this drew me in. It had a church, a square, a shopping arcade, and a cinema of silent movies, where the workers from the Junkers factory spent their money; as well as the Lamb, where I liked to drink, sometimes with Walter, sometimes with Walter and Jenö, on the fine boulevard of Cavalierstrasse.
As well as the Brownshirts on the streets that winter, there were also Communists and Anarchists, and every other idiot that could dress in a uniform who had idle time after shifts at the sugar factory. Most of the Junkers men, who were better paid than the rest, dismissed them as kids. The Brownshirts drank in the beer-halls and sometimes the Metropol, but they were usually shooed away, since they were known as trouble-makers.
After dinner with Jenö and Charlotte that evening I had a few drinks in the Lamb. I often came to the city on my own. I liked getting away: the school, with its multiple balconies, could be a grid of surveillance. There were a few Brownshirts in the Lamb: younger than me, and good-looking. One, with green eyes and an aquiline nose, kept on looking over, knowing that I was a Bauhäusler. I didn’t like his scrutiny, and finishing my drink, I soon left.
As I headed to school the traffic was coming from the factory, and the cars had the sleek edges of the aeroplanes manufactured there; cruising, remote. I walked past the Metropol, the air inside blue with smoke, and the noise of people having a good time. A woman stumbled onto the pavement; she gave me a hobnailed smile. A man ran his hands down her sacklike dress. They kissed as if I weren’t even there.