Downstairs in the climate-controlled underground gallery Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze of 1902 glittered golden; the swirls, snaking patterns and saggy dugs of the naked women who, according to the gallery notes, represented Lasciviousness, Wantonness and Intemperance, seemed alive. High up on the wall on which they had been directly painted they appeared to writhe coquettishly, as outside night fell on the eve of the winter solstice.
Looking at the frieze, I was surprised to find that I felt very little except a bout of heartburn caused by all the pastry I had eaten over the course of the day; I had left my bottle of Gaviscon back in our room, and was more focused on the acid reflux silently blazing beneath my sternum than the once-controversial ‘hostile forces’ of Klimt’s lewd figures. I wished my critical faculties could have been more astute, but sometimes the vessel that carries the mind rebels in a way that is difficult to ignore.
The Viennese we found to be rather brusque in temperament. Though far from hostile, they were frequently terse in their manner, especially those working in the service industry or of an older generation. Several times in cafes and restaurants our smiles or attempts at small talk were met by withering eyerolls or, worse, blank faces. When I asked for the bill in a traditional tea room whose customers seemed to be comprised of doddery old dears slowly spooning soup into their quivering mouths, and whose windows were so completely covered with steam that the busy street outside was hidden from view, the waiter offered little but the tiniest irritable twitch of one bushy eyebrow in recognition of my request. The sausages were well seasoned, though, and came with a delicious side order of grated horseradish, so we took the moral high ground and tipped generously anyway.
Not for the inhabitants of Austria’s capital the endearingly droll and often misunderstood humour of their neighbours in Germany either. Though the city had recently polled as the number-one capital in the world in terms of living standards, many of its elder residents whom we encountered didn’t seem to be outwardly happy. But perhaps we were projecting too high an expectation upon them, and not giving enough credence to cultural differences.
For some reason these dining hall observations made me think about the Vienna-set novel that I had read recently, about the rise of fascism and how such regimes only gain strength because of the complicity of those occupying the upper echelons of society. Right-wing ideologies were now gathering traction across Europe once more, and surely needed to be nipped in the bud before their roots were allowed to bed in further. The problem was, many of the fascists were now disguising themselves as everyday concerned citizens, their masks of old swapped for the comfort and safety of a social media avatar or a shared conspiracy that had been allowed to blossom unchallenged.
That I got all this from watching a dozen or so Viennese pensioners tuck into their veal and Sachertorte is perhaps as damning an indictment of my own state of mind as anything else.
Either way, none of it was helping my anxiety, which bubbled deep within me, a tar pit in my stomach.
Those who we did find to be friendly seemed to be either in their twenties and in possession of a positive energy and sense of openness that was lacking in their elder counterparts, which gave me a glimmer of hope for the future, or they invariably came from further afield – Berlin, Italy or Japan.
Vienna is the perfect city for temporary time travel, yet the mundanity of the modern world is never far away. That morning as we dressed I had turned on the BBC World Service and listened to the rolling news broadcast quietly in the background. According to a report, all flights at Gatwick were delayed due to the sighting of a suspected drone or drones near the airport. Travel chaos was the phrase they used, as they always do. A reporter said these words as he stood outside, shivering in the cold, the airport so far behind him that it was reduced to little but a grey shape in the distance. It could have been a battleship or a shopping centre or an ancient forest. Perhaps it was.
The trudge and the stumble through great expanses of nothingness. The long unbroken spells of stopping and looking, hours from anywhere.
The watching and waiting. Tracking and stalking.
Then suddenly a blur of fur.
A streak of hot pelt moving at great speed like a spear flung deep into the pounding heart of winter. The dogs are focused so totally that the only thought is their quarry, the scent so strong as to send them into a frenzied state. Tails up, noses down, they scour the ground, divining it for answers, for secrets, for flesh.
Perhaps they smell boar, the best bounty there is. Perhaps we think we smell it too, wishing it into being, sizzling and popping over hot coals in the dreams of tomorrow, the three of us meat-drunk on the very thought and the smiles of our children, their cheeks flushed with the glow of satisfaction. We’re already picturing the quiet glances of pride worn by our women through the darkest December days.
But it does not do to dream in the daytime.
It does not do to stray from the path.
Confused, the dogs scatter.
The moment passes.
It, like the creature, is gone.
That night, feeling bloated from the evening meal – charred calamari, seabass, something involving chickpeas – we headed back to the hotel room to take our trousers off and stretch out on the mattress beneath the Magritte lampshades.
I flicked through the TV channels and happened on a Syrian news show broadcasting grainy footage of tanks being fired at by rocket launchers, interspersed with shots of men waving and then discharging Kalashnikovs over their heads while dancing raucously to music.
I called my wife over and we watched it together, the changing colours from the TV screen continually altering the ambience of our darkened room.
Some of the men were wearing the same insulated Puffa jackets that small-time drug dealers wore in cold English towns in the 1990s. These scenes were played on a loop, explosion after explosion, the triumphant volleys of gunshots becoming louder and more frenzied, the music pulsating, slightly off-key so as to disorientate. No women featured in the clips. We tried to laugh at the absurdity of this display of machismo and pornographic violence that constituted the state news channel, but any attempt at humour felt hollow. We both knew that there were more than likely men in the tanks being blown up, that this wasn’t just for show.
The relentless music was dizzying and the tar pit of anxiety bubbled within me again. I had to turn over.
The room felt too hot. I fiddled with the radiator settings.
A film channel offered a selection of movies, few of which either of us were interested in, and we clicked through until we settled on Phantom Thread. I’ve always enjoyed the work of Daniel Day-Lewis. I first saw him when I was around ten years old in his breakthrough role in My Beautiful Laundrette, and then in My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, and later when he starred in such big-hitters as There Will Be Blood.
There is also the story of Day-Lewis quitting acting for a while to become a cobbler in Italy, a tale perhaps circulated in order to fuel the mythology of him as one of the most enigmatic actors of his time. Or perhaps he just genuinely wanted to make some shoes; after all, people may not always want films in their lives, but they will almost certainly always need shoes.
Phantom Thread was his first movie in five years and his last before his retirement, so we settled back to watch it.
It is perhaps most memorable for an early scene in which Day-Lewis’s English couturier Reynolds Woodcock, resplendent in a cravat and speaking in a distinctly mannered, almost simpering, voice throughout, orders a lavish and indulgent breakfast.
I happened to know that this section had been shot in a small hotel in the North Yorkshire village of Robin Hood’s Bay, the location for the novel I had recently finished writing and which was the source of my exhaustion and anxiety, though for some reason I was more tickled by Day-Lewis’s delivery of the concluding words of his breakfast request: ‘. . . and some sausages’.
We laughed at that line a lot, my wife and I, and
over the next few days I found myself repeating the phrase frequently, both internally and out loud too, often when I least expected it, occasionally surprising myself and anyone in close proximity who happened to hear me.
After the film ended we both slept, the phrase ‘. . . and some sausages’ echoing in my subconscious like a rubber ball being thwacked around a squash court. Over the coming days the mantra began to take on an almost malevolent quality as it embedded itself in my head, an unwanted squatter in the chatter of my every waking moment.
Pink is the snow as we enter deep forest as silent and still as a church of wattle. The trees are wind-bent spires. A hallowed place, sometimes a man can find God here. Sometimes he finds himself instead. Other times, nothing at all. A nothingness so deep and diabolical he must stuff a cold clenched fist into his mouth to stop the screaming. It consumes us. It consumes us all.
The main reason for our extended pre-Christmas break in this old city was to view the exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that had been assembled by the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I had long been a fan of the Dutch master’s depictions of sixteenth-century rural landscapes and peasant life, and was particularly excited at the opportunity to view his most famous work, The Hunters in the Snow, at close quarters.
So, it seemed, was a substantial fraction of the population of mainland Europe, for the three-month exhibition had long since sold out. Bruegel’s works were so old and fragile that they rarely travelled, so this ‘summit of masterpieces’, as the museum was billing it, was a rare occasion reflected in the exhibition’s title: Once In A Lifetime.
My wife and I had discovered that tickets were unavailable a week earlier, and I had emailed the museum’s publicist in advance of our visit to explain that I was a writer and sometime journalist who was visiting the city, and that I hoped to write a short story entitled ‘The Hunters in the Snow’ for a forthcoming collection. It was at best a semi-truth, a hastily drawn offhand request that I only half-heartedly intended to honour, if at all, yet years of journalistic experience had at least taught me that shy children get no sweets, and that wanton blagging is an art form that requires confidence, a certain minimal knowledge of the subject and, I’m ashamed to admit, a faint air of entitlement when faced with obstacles that might turn other people away.
The day before we flew out, a response had arrived from the museum’s publicist confirming that I had received press accreditation for myself and a guest.
Before we left the hotel, the BBC World Service offered an update on the Gatwick story. A newsreader said that flights in and out of the airport were temporarily suspended while police and airport authorities tried to ascertain whether the reported sightings of the drones were to be deemed a real threat. They were treating it as a possible terrorist incident and undertaking enquiries in the local area. Footage showed huge queues of people, some of them carrying skis, and a departure board with the words DELAYED or CANCELLED flashing beside every scheduled flight.
We arrived at the Kunsthistorisches Museum to see a throng of people outside.
In the main atrium the excited voices of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of visitors echoed around the great chamber as they had their bags searched, checked in their coats and donned headsets that provided a running commentary, but which I always eschew in such circumstances, reasoning, perhaps arrogantly, that I prefer to arrive at my own interpretations of the work.
Our names didn’t appear to be on the press list at the main entrance, but such was the confident manner in which we presented ourselves, and so harried were those at the ticket office, that they waved us right on through and up the twin staircases, where we repeated the process at the next security check. Once again they couldn’t find our names, but I presented a printout of the email received from the museum’s publicist and we were allowed to continue. The crowd thickened as we approached the final security check – again no name, again we talked our way through – and then we were in amongst the detailed dioramas of sixteenth-century Low Countries life.
It was busy, and warm too. I took off my scarf, rolled it up and shoved it into my pocket alongside my hat and fingerless gloves. As I unbuttoned my coat I immediately wished I had brought a bottle of water.
The thing I noticed first was not the art itself, or the people vying for a position to see it, but the sound of the creaking parquet floor under the weight of hundreds of pairs of shifting feet. It had a timbre and a rhythm to it that seemed entirely detached from the room, yet was so clearly a part of it. I stood for a minute or two just listening to the floor and feeling claustrophobic, before allowing myself to be drawn along with the crowd past the early pencil sketches of landscapes and into a room that held the subject of my fascination. There it was: The Hunters in the Snow (1565).
Ghosted from view, the beast is unseen. Light prints of toes pressed into snow disappear amongst the trail mess of dogs that have crossed one another in the pursuit. Was it even a boar? We reach a stream and the scent goes as cold as the water that I stoop to sip and pad at my throbbing temples. The dogs turn circles, two niggle and scrap, and I whistle to Elrick, who whistles to Bernt, the three of us holding the line. Around us the forest groans. Black timber looms. Wet feet.
No birds.
You probably know the painting yourself, even if the title is not familiar.
The work’s importance lies not merely in its survival as an artefact of its time – but in the fact that it tells us as much as a hundred thousand written words possibly could.
At least two dozen people of different nationalities stood around The Hunters in the Snow, my view of it blocked by bodies radiating a collective energy that was discernible as a low hum. I angled for a view, my exhibition programme in hand. My coat felt a little damp, and I clammy beneath it. I tugged at the collar of my jumper. The polished wooden tiles of the parquet floor continued to creak underfoot.
Around the room, similar clusters of people were vying for space near Bruegel’s more recognisable paintings. People would periodically break away from these cliques and move to another one, drawn by the opportunity to document the experience with a selfie. Everyone was part of the same swarm that was moving through the rooms, an ever-pulsing mass, absorbing, documenting, then moving on.
I turned back to The Hunters in the Snow. I now found myself in one of these clusters, akin to a mosh pit at a punk gig, a ritual based upon certain unspoken agreed-upon rules refined over several decades.
If that was the case, and I was a willing participant in the mosh pit, then the subject of our attention – the spark that lit our tinder, as it were – was not a band of musicians expressing themselves through the medium of electricity, but the work of a solitary painter. Here we were, jostling with pointed elbows, phones raised and tilted, feeling one another’s breaths down our necks, snapping photographs and uploading them via satellite technology to social media, all for a snowy scene created by a man who died five years after the birth of William Shakespeare.
This thought was a revelation. Here was someone who had us under a spell, someone who in this very moment – and the next, and the next, perhaps for evermore – was reaching forward into a future world he could never have possibly conceived, even with the most fertile of imaginations.
Snagged on brambles: a twist of fur the colour of Bernt’s beard. I press it to his flushed face and we stand in silence for a moment and then turn in the direction of the low-lying tunnel through the scrub. It’s a run carved by a fox, for sure; a fine pursuit for a pelt but little else, foxes being bad for the eating. Too bitter. On another day it might be a good game for the dogs but our stores are low and the winter is long and this is not a game.
It took what seemed like an inordinately long time to get into a position to view the painting without obstruction. I noticed that the museum was relaxed about the way in which we were all free to wander and get close to the works, much more so than the galleries in London. I didn’t notice any security guards pacing t
he rooms or yawning, bored on a chair in the corner. It was refreshingly trusting.
The gallery did, however, prevent us from bringing bags upstairs and by this point I was thirsty and thinking about water often. I’m not good when I’m thirsty. It’s the same when I’m hungry. I get irritable, distracted. My thoughts move sideways and splinter. My limbs become leaden, and my skin prickles with heat. Anxiety writhes in my stomach too, as it did now. A sour snake crawled up through my chest and into my gullet. Soon it would be at my throat.
To distract myself from the catastrophising that was threatening to take over my mind, and to escape these negative thoughts, I found myself checking my phone: the Gatwick drone story was still ongoing. A report from mid-morning said that all flights had been cancelled. Travellers were irate, confused and tired. Many people were going away for Christmas, or travelling home, and had no idea what was happening. Others had missed their connections and were now stretched out across chairs or lying on floors using their hand luggage as pillows, with T-shirts, scarves or hats pulled down across their eyes. The news reporter interviewed some of those who were awake. There were Mexicans and Poles and Australians and English. No one knew who the owners of the drones were, and furthermore no one was able to say who exactly had seen them, or indeed where and when. Many of the travellers were hungry and thirsty.
It was the wrong story to read in such a situation, as I now felt my heart thumping in my chest; I licked my dry lips and swallowed once, then twice.
When I looked up I found that I was very close to The Hunters in the Snow and there was no way I was going to relinquish this spot in order to walk back through several rooms and down the sweeping marble staircase and into the basement toilets, all for some water.
A cooling mint might have helped my thirst and I cursed for not being equipped with any, as I’ve always prided myself on being the person who has the aspirin, a pen, the mints, a paperclip, a comb. Whatever you need, I’ve got it. I even carry a spare Ventolin inhaler, though I'm not asthmatic.
Male Tears Page 10