He saw her in town on three different occasions after the break; once at a concert, when she didn’t realize he was standing at the back of the room. She had the look of a woman who was dying.
She’d written letters to his mother, pleading that he be allowed to see her. That had been his fault: rather than saying outright that he didn’t love her, he’d invented a story in which his parents’ views played a ruling part. A married woman, he’d said: they’d be horrified.
Axel’s mother was indeed horrified. She couldn’t understand why, instead of asking his father for advice about these things, he’d implicated a decent, married woman in his philanderings; and evidently hurt her very deeply. But, Axel had answered, his father’s advice had been to get married as soon as possible to a rich girl with no looks, who would bring him enough money for a comfortable life and would always do what he told her. His mother wasn’t too happy about that reply. Over the next few days his father came into the argument too, and it was eventually decided that if Axel agreed to take a job working with Thorvaldsen’s cousin at the bank, they’d let him go to Paris for a year, as he’d always wanted – to see if he could become a painter.
He’d been there since October. And now it was January.
‘And you?’ he asked Eino. ‘How do you come to be so far from home? Did you always dream about living in Paris?’
‘Not at first. In the beginning I just wanted to go away, anywhere. I couldn’t get along with them at home. And I hated school.’
‘I liked school, but I was lucky. I had good teachers and tutors.’
‘It doesn’t depend on the teachers. I just didn’t have the aptitude for it. Otherwise … What I wanted to do was to be an architect, or something along those lines – to make things and to build them. I was always good with my hands. I had a great-uncle like that; he’d sit all day long, whittling things with a penknife: animals, people – he could do anything. He taught me to paint, to draw; to hunt, and do woodcarving. For that kind of thing I loved being in the country. And for real work – to do hard work that satisfies your body. I helped a friend of my father’s to build a house once. That was fine. That was a side of home life that I liked.’
‘Me too,’ Axel said. All his life he’d felt comforted and healed by the beauty of the countryside, although as far as any real work went, they’d had servants for that.
‘In the town,’ Eino told him, ‘you just sit on a stool and don’t do anything, and you’re ready to die of tiredness at the end of the day. It isn’t healthy.’
‘You mean school?’
‘School, and most businesses. My aunts had a confectionery shop – a big place, staff, everything tied up in ribbons and fancy wrapping, people making the boxes, importing ingredients, and so on. When I was a boy they let me design the boxes.’
‘And all the chocolate you could eat, I suppose.’
‘They say it’s poison, you know – all sweet food: that it rots your insides, not just your teeth.’
‘The favourite food of children.’
‘Yes. Right from the beginning we develop a taste for what’s going to destroy us.’
‘Well,’ Axel said, ‘that’s putting it rather strongly. If you live long enough, you can die of anything. It’s simply a matter of time, isn’t it?’
Eino laughed. Tears came to his eyes. The laughter began to sound wild. It made Axel wonder if he was sick or crazy, or even hungrier than he’d assumed. ‘But the chocolate wasn’t enough?’ he said.
‘I’d been taken to a museum once. My mother wanted to look at china – plates and vases, that sort of thing. And they had a section for Venetian glass. That made a big impression on me. I wanted to know how it was possible to form a hard material like that into shapes – to add colour to it, to make a glass flower or even a glass bowl. Then they told me that the men who made things out of glass did it by blowing molten bubbles. Of course I thought that was wonderful. I wanted to see it straight away. I kept asking to go. You know, I’d forgotten all this. It’s odd how things suddenly pop into your head when you get to talking. That’s right: I made them take me to a glass factory somewhere. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember too much about that. It wasn’t very interesting after all. The next craze was wanting to learn about architecture. That wasn’t any good. I couldn’t do the schoolwork. But I always had this idea that I’d build a house – a real one. Big. Not just helping to work on somebody’s summer cabin. I still think so. There are plenty of good houses that were built without mathematics, aren’t there?’
‘Of course,’ Axel said, although he had an idea that the big houses usually demanded a preliminary plan and a lot of calculation – measurements, investigation of the surrounding land, information about soil and drainage.
Eino said, ‘My father always wanted a boat, all his life. He had the idea, but it was only a wish on his part. He never had the absolute certainty that one day he’d get the boat. But in my case, you see, I just know I’m going to build that house.’
‘And that’s why you came to Paris, to learn about –’
‘No, that was a long time ago. What happened was that they sent me to Berlin to learn about the restaurant trade and I wanted to be a painter, so I just jumped on the first train out. A friend of mine came with me, but he moved on. I stayed put, and painted.’
‘You’re a painter?’ It didn’t seem possible to Axel that anyone his own age, anyone from his own country, and especially anyone he knew, could be a genuine painter. ‘That’s how you make your living?’
‘If you can call it that. I do a lot of other things, too. Anything for cash.’
‘Portraits?’
‘Portraits, landscapes, billboards, valentines, playbills, ceilings. And you? You don’t have to work, am I right?’
‘I work in a bank.’
‘I see. That explains it.’
‘What?’
‘The clothes.’
‘It’s only like any other uniform.’ He smiled, thinking that Eino too was dressed in a kind of uniform; some looks were chosen, some imposed according to someone else’s choice. He wasn’t ready to say that he too was a painter, that he wasn’t getting anywhere with it, and that after discovering how inferior all his work was, he wasn’t enjoying it any longer.
He’d realized just before Christmas. The knowledge had ruined his holiday. He’d come in late after the office celebrations, sat down at his writing table, opened the presents from his family, and suddenly felt so homesick that he’d wanted to weep. There were books, and some extra money from his parents, cards and letters from aunts and uncles and cousins; a scarf his sister, Anna, had knitted for him, a pair of opera glasses from his uncle Karl, a photograph of all the family gathered together. And he’d given up all that family life for the sake of the dismal, misshapen daubs propped against the wall in front of him and beside the chair in the corner. He could see all at once that in putting the paint on the canvas he had been responsible for adding to the ugliness in the world. It would have been better if those objects had never been made. Nor was he a success, as he’d dreamed, in any other way. He was in the capital city of love, and was ready to die of loneliness.
‘I couldn’t work in a bank,’ Eino said.
‘Why not?’
‘The routine would kill me.’
‘It’s actually full of variety. They keep moving you around from one department to another. It’s quite interesting. Very interesting, really – only I always wanted to do something more, ah, artistic.’
‘And the fixed hours. Once you’ve been your own boss, every other kind of job seems servile.’
‘I don’t look at it that way. You can’t get anything much done without a certain amount of teamwork and cooperation.’
‘Would you rather be the one giving the orders, or carrying them out?’
‘I don’t think it matters, as long as the work is important. Of course, I’m not like you – I was never very good with my hands, so there are some jobs I’d rather not try.
I was better at all the mathematics and sitting at a desk.’
‘I could only work for somebody I liked.’
‘Most people feel like that.’
‘Most people don’t have the choice. They’re glad to get any kind of work.’
‘Do you go back for visits?’
‘No. I write to one of my sisters, once in a while. Do you?’
‘I’ve only been here a few months. But I write to them, all the time. They’d be worried if I missed a week. I expect your family believes in more independence.’
‘We had a big fight,’ Eino said. ‘I haven’t seen any of them for three years.’ He put down his empty cup and breathed out. He was about to say thanks for the coffee.
Axel asked, ‘Do you think I could see your paintings sometime?’
*
When he looked around the walls at Eino’s pictures, Axel knew for certain that he himself stood no chance of becoming a painter, even if he were to start all over again. Eino painted easily and quickly. The canvases hung around the room and leaning in rows against the walls, were clear, bright, attractive. Even if they weren’t great, they were well presented. Axel liked them.
He also liked, and was extremely impressed by, the way Eino lived. They were the same age, yet Eino had dared to step straight into the bohemian life: he had a mistress named Marissa and a small child – a boy called Bruno – who was dark-eyed, like his mother.
Marissa approved of Axel immediately. His presence in their circle seemed to her an indication that Eino might soon work his way towards the respectability she longed for. She invited Axel to come see them whenever he liked.
He took to visiting them early in the evening, or – at the end of the week – in the late afternoon. If the weather was good, he’d stroll to a café with them and buy them all something to drink. If it was raining, they stayed at home; he might bring cakes with him, or flowers. One afternoon, at the beginning of their acquaintance, Axel came to call and found that Eino was out. He was embarrassed and said he wouldn’t stay, but Marissa told him that he had to come in and sit down – she wanted to talk to him.
He sat on a chair while she brought out the bath for the child. She wouldn’t let him help her with anything. ‘You just sit there,’ she ordered. ‘You don’t know how nice it is to have someone to talk to. Sometimes I’m so lonely, I start talking to myself. And I know where he is, too. He’s with that woman. I suppose you know who I mean.’
‘No,’ Axel said. ‘Who?’
‘There’s no need for you to try to protect him.’
‘I don’t know who you mean. You’re the only woman Eino has introduced me to.’
‘A rich woman who’s got a studio full of other rich women. They’re all trying to be painters and sculptors. I call it the Marie Antoinette club. She’s in love with Eino.’
‘But he loves you.’
‘Then why doesn’t he marry me?’ she asked. The child shrieked as she began to undress it.
‘Maybe he doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage.’
‘Men just say those things. It means it makes it easier to leave.’
‘He wouldn’t leave a woman with a child? Surely not.’
‘And another one coming,’ she muttered. ‘I was a fool. I didn’t want to lose him. I loved him too much.’ She tugged at the child’s arm and hissed, ‘Be quiet,’ into its screaming face. She didn’t look like a woman who had ever loved anyone.
*
As he got to know Eino better, Axel met a good many people, most of them women. He began to assume things that Eino didn’t tell him. He suspected, for example, that Eino was sleeping with the wife of the grocer down at the end of the street, and with a widow who occasionally hired him to do painting and repairs in her daughter’s house; and with a few others. The woman whom Marissa thought of as the guilty one was – according to Eino – not on his list.
Axel met her one rainy day just before afternoon turned into evening. Rain poured down the high windows of her studio. She’d had the fires lit in the drawing-room and was about to pull the curtains. Everything in the room was plump and lustrous: the velvet cushions, the thick, plush sofa covers, brocade curtains: even the figured wallpaper. But the studio beyond was plain. The far wall was simple plaster, the door-frame in it unpainted and the floorboards bare. Three women were at work under the vaulted, glass-paned roof; they wore aprons like shopkeepers or butchers and had their hair pinned back severely. It seemed to Axel at first sight that they were like the three daughters of a fairytale: old, middle and young. The old one was an American spinster who painted badly but enthusiastically; the middle woman was good-looking – the young wife of an older man; a manufacturer of some kind, who was proud of her accomplishments. And the youngest was a black-haired German girl named Minna. She was very young: a large girl, not especially pretty, but she had something; as soon as you noticed that she was fairly plain, you decided she had a certain charm that made up for that. Her subject was sculpture. She was modelling a bust in clay when Axel was introduced to her. He nodded and smiled. At that moment he was more interested in the founder of the school and owner of the house, who showed them back to the warmer room and rang for tea.
‘They stay on late, even when the weather’s like this,’ she said.
‘Karen never has a free moment,’ Eino explained.
‘All my moments are free, my dear,’ she told him. ‘That’s why you’re never going to get anywhere with all that. Stop pushing and sit down.’ She dropped into a chair and laughed. Axel and Eino took the chairs set in front of her, so she could see them both without turning her head. The positioning was a little like the seating in a small boat.
He began to forget about everything else as she talked. He thought he was falling in love with her: with the look of her clear skin and the pale colour of her hair; with her voice, her thoughts, the serenity of her manner and irony of her speech. He said so to Eino afterwards while they were walking through the rain. But Eino told him, ‘No, it’s just friendship. I thought the same thing myself at first, but you’ll see: she isn’t for love.’
‘Of course she is. She’s wonderful.’
‘Oh, I agree. And she’s beautiful too, but she’s rather – not alluring, you know. She’s like a nursemaid. One doesn’t have romantic thoughts about her.’
‘Speak for yourself. I think she’s lovely.’
‘Everything about her is so nice and tidy. All in its place, so controlled.’
‘Yes. I admire that.’
‘And – I’m not sure how much she likes men.’
‘She likes you. I got the impression she liked me, too.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. I think somehow she doesn’t take certain things seriously. Anything much, really. Certainly not love.’
‘You were flirting with her all the time.’
‘I like her a lot. It aggravates me that she’s never going to say yes.’
‘So, she never has lovers? She’s always been alone?’
‘Well, that’s the mystery. You think you’ve understood the way it is, and then suddenly there are these intriguing flashes of something else, and you wonder.’
‘Tell me some more about her.’
Eino talked about Karen – what he knew about her family back in Sweden, and of her friends in Paris. The school, he said, had been going for six years and was a success, although it hadn’t yet produced any outstanding work.
‘And Karen herself?’
‘She’s a good painter. Nothing she ever does is bad or cheap or a poor imitation. But she doesn’t have the eye. She doesn’t see in a new way, or make a shape or a vision that seems to be a new form. She’s a little better than I am, that’s all.’
‘But you’re good.’
‘I’m competent, yes. And that’s good. But there are gradations, and you asked me. A really important school of art would be turning out students who broke the mould. Maybe not in six years, of course.’
‘I don’t understand,�
�� Axel said, ‘how you can talk about art like this, when you can paint the way you do.’
‘That’s why. I’m a practitioner. You’re an appreciator.’
‘Well, as far as that goes, some day if we get really drunk together, I’ll show you my paintings.’
‘You?’
‘I think there are a few left that I haven’t painted over.’
‘What’s wrong with now?’ Eino said.
‘There isn’t enough time. We’d have to be drinking all day.’
‘We’ll make up for it in speed,’ Eino told him.
They went out drinking for three hours. Axel still didn’t want to show Eino the paintings. ‘You’ll think I’m such a fool,’ he said. ‘I wish now I’d never mentioned them. You’ll see them, and you’ll think: how could this man be a friend of mine?’
‘Axel, if you don’t show them to me tonight, I’ll know you didn’t trust me enough. And if you don’t show them to me now, I’m going to be too drunk to see them. Come on.’ Eino rose from his seat and plunged out into the night, dragging Axel after him. Axel tried to get his hand free in order to put up his umbrella, but Eino wouldn’t listen to his complaints. They were both soaked to the skin.
Axel led the way upstairs, trudging ahead slowly. Eino prodded him from behind. ‘Don’t make so much noise,’ Axel told him. ‘You’ll get me thrown out.’
‘What for? You pay your rent, don’t you? Besides, I can find you a better place than this.’
Mrs Caliban and other stories Page 29