by Peter Stamm
Hubert increasingly got used to the new situation, but he still refused all contact with Rolf. As if to punish him for it, Astrid talked about her friend all the time. He had started his own career advice business. That was what he called it, but in actual fact it went far beyond that.
He works according to holistic principles, he intuits his way into his opposite number, and then he can practically go backward and forward on the temporal axis and give advice, very concrete advice.
Is he your lover or your guru? asked Hubert.
Neither, she said. When he spends the night here, he stays in the guest room.
After the beginning of the new semester, Hubert had hardly any time to think about the invitation to the mountains. There was less to do in the garden, and the only times he went by the house were to pick Lukas up for the weekend or to bring him back. He tried to find out from him what was going on between Rolf and his mother, asked what they talked about, what they did together, but Lukas didn’t like to talk about that.
In the fall, Hubert organized an exhibition for his students, and no sooner was that over than the planning started for an artists’ ball at the end of the semester. The work wasn’t unwelcome to him. Since he was living on his own, he had a lot of time on his hands, especially in the evenings. Sometimes he went to the cinema or the theater. He rarely saw friends. After Lukas’s birth he had lost contact with most people anyway.
In January, in the course of a weekend skiing with the department, he started an affair with one of his students. Nina was in her final semester, she was attractive and energetic. For two months they met once a week. They slept together, and then they would discuss their work. At Easter, Nina wanted to go into the mountains with him, but Hubert said no, he was spending the holiday with his son.
Then bring him, she said. I’ve got nothing against animals and children.
The idea of spending a weekend with Lukas and Nina seemed absurd to Hubert, and he said as much. There followed their first and only quarrel, at the end of which they went their separate ways.
One reason is always lots of reasons, said Nina before she left. The fact that he oversaw her work was something she could deal with apparently better than he could. I’m not angry with you, she said. We had a good time.
Hubert thought more and more about the show. When he accepted the invitation, he had thought he would come up with an idea in plenty of time. Now, with the deadline looming ever larger, he didn’t feel so sure anymore. His head of department asked him once or twice what he had planned. He shrugged.
I might do something with youngsters, he said, or something about mountains or water.
Maybe being up there will turn you into a landscape painter. When do you go?
End of May, he said. For a month.
When he was half out the door, she called after him to say he should put some of his newer work up on his home page. He discussed the exhibition with Nina as well. They were sitting in a bar drinking beer.
There’s a bear on the loose up there, isn’t there? she said. Did you read about it? You could do something with teddy bears. Or with bear poop. Like that African guy who works with elephant dung.
Chris Ofili, said Hubert. And he’s British. To hear you, everything sounds so easy.
You just think my ideas are crap, admit it, she said, and laughed.
Sometimes Hubert asked himself when his creative crisis had started. It hadn’t happened suddenly, at some point he had noticed that he no longer got a kick out of painting and that he hadn’t started anything new for months. Maybe it had something to do with Lukas. He and Astrid hadn’t planned on having a kid, and he was in the middle of the preparations for his first solo show when he learned about the pregnancy. It was the first time his work had gotten any serious attention, an art magazine ran some of the pictures, there was even a report about him on TV. A few days after the opening, a lot of the pictures had been sold, even though his gallerist had set the prices far too high. At that time, he was spending more time in the studio than at home. The gallerist had said he could paint as many naked housewives as he wanted, he would sell them all. Hubert didn’t like it when his gallerist called his paintings that. So that was a no go. And the pictures were starting to bore him as well. Technically they were no longer a challenge, maybe the newer ones were a little bit better than their predecessors, but they still lacked oomph.
Then the first e-mail came from Miss Julie. Hubert had set up his home page a couple of years previously, but no one had ever written to him there. Her praise flattered him. She asked him about his influences, his methods, why he always painted naked women. He wrote back that he wasn’t obsessed with women, it was just a subject cycle. Basically his pictures of women were a logical continuation of his empty room series before. Julie didn’t believe him.
He didn’t tell her about his girlfriend, or the child they were expecting. He didn’t ask her about her circumstances either. Their e-mails were never entirely serious, Julie’s especially were more playful than inquisitive. Hubert got a clearer sense of her, he was almost certain he would recognize her if they ever met.
When Julie asked him if he would paint her, his first thought was that she was just playing games again. He hesitated and asked her for a photo, but he wasn’t unhappy when she didn’t send him one. He had noticed he was spending all his energy on the exchange and thought perhaps he could invest that concentration in his work and get over the apathy that had been bothering him for months. No one else interested him.
A couple of days later he and Julie had met. When he saw Gillian sitting in the café, he wasn’t surprised. He had been familiar with her face from her television show for a long time, but it was only when they met in the studio that he had felt her uncertainty and curiosity, which weren’t so evident on the screen. He invited her back to his studio. While he was showing her his pictures, Gillian touched his hand, and he was this close to throwing his arm around her shoulder. He offered her a beer and watched her drink it. He saw the possibilities of her face, not so much its beauty as its variety, the many faces that were contained in it.
After Gillian had left, Hubert looked at the pictures he had taken of Astrid in the south of France again. He could remember their excitement when he stopped the car in the middle of the country road. Astrid got undressed in the car, while he looked around nervously. She tiptoed out on the pebbly ground, he framed the picture and took a shot. Once they were chased off by a farmer, another time Astrid got a thorn in her foot and they had to go to see a doctor. Astrid’s poses were classical, and in their stiffness there was almost something cubist about the pictures. In drawing from the photographs, he had given more care to the landscape than to her body. After that she hadn’t wanted to model for him anymore. One of the pictures had hung in their apartment for a while. Only when Hubert noticed how many of their visitors were embarrassed by it had he taken it down. Astrid hadn’t said anything. Then he had started painting the small-format interiors. The fact that there were no people in them wasn’t a concept, just lack of proficiency on his part.
The idea with the female passersby had occurred to him long before he ever told Astrid about it. You’d never get anyone to go along with that anyway, she said.
And at the beginning, it was true, no one had. Over time, Hubert got used to the refusals. From the way the women hesitated before rejecting him, he learned to see which ones he had a better chance with and how best to proceed. He left the city center and hung around the outskirts. The first time a woman consented was a rainy morning in spring. He stood outside a swimming pool and addressed a fit-looking woman of fifty or so, with short hair. When he had put his question to her, she laughed out loud and asked how could she be sure he wasn’t a pervert. He said she couldn’t, she would just have to trust him. He accompanied her back to her apartment. He was so excited that even while he was taking the photographs, he knew the pictures wouldn’t come to anything. Still, he used up four or five rolls of film before thanking her an
d saying he had what he needed. Hubert promised to send her an invitation to the opening, if there should be one. The woman had actually come, along with her husband, and had been disappointed not to see herself in any of the paintings.
With each new model, Hubert got a little calmer, and the pictures a little better. Eventually, the sessions became predictable, and he noticed he was beginning to get bored. This was shortly before the exhibition, and even as the pictures were praised and he spouted nonsense about them in interviews, he already knew that he would have to get going on something else. His gallerist told him about a series of paintings by an American artist who for fifteen years had painted the same woman, a neighbor. He hadn’t shown the pictures to anyone, not even his own wife or the woman’s husband had known about them. Hubert got hold of a catalog of the pictures and decided to concentrate on a single model. When Gillian visited him in his studio, he thought she might be the one.
The idea of painting Gillian didn’t let him go. As he went through the motions of completing his latest nude, he imagined how he would capture on canvas what he had seen in her face. Two weeks later she called. He disregarded the annoyance in her e-mails, he felt certain she was just as determined as he was. But the sessions went badly from the very beginning. Gillian had evidently imagined he would paint a portrait of her that she could put up on the wall at home, whereas he had no interest in just one picture. He had thought her presence would shape his paintings. He was on the point of throwing in the towel when she suggested posing for him naked. It wasn’t so much her nakedness that interested him as the hope that she might be unsettled by it. But it didn’t get any better. She struck attitudes. He had always left his models the freedom to be as they were, to make themselves comfortable. Gillian he forced into a pose that wasn’t her, really as a last desperate attempt to undermine her. But even that hadn’t worked, and he had given up.
Shortly after, Lukas was born. Once when Hubert took him to the pediatrician, he was leafing through magazines in a waiting room and ran into a short report on Gillian’s accident. He tried several times to write her an e-mail, but he couldn’t find the right words and gave up. The next time he was in the studio, several weeks later, he took the sketches of her off the walls.
Before setting off for the mountains, Hubert packed his outdoor gear he hadn’t used in twenty years and bought new hiking shoes and a waterproof. He was going on Monday. The weekend before, he had Lukas with him. They went to the zoo, and Hubert made pancakes, Lukas’s favorite. On Sunday he dropped him off a little earlier than usual. Astrid asked if he had time for coffee. While she put on water to boil, he looked at the notes on the fridge, a gynecologist’s card with an appointment marked in, Lukas’s timetable, a flyer for a tango evening. Dance to silence, he read.
Have you started going to that again?
Astrid tipped coffee into the filter. I talked Rolf into giving it a try.
And will you let him lead you? asked Hubert.
If someone knows what he wants, I’ll let myself be led, said Astrid.
She made the coffee, poured two cups, and gave one to him. He followed her into the living room where Lukas was playing with his Lego set. He wanted Hubert to play with him, but Astrid said there was something the grown-ups needed to discuss and went outside into the backyard. Hubert followed her across the little lawn and sat down under the sycamore on the rough bench he had built himself years ago. I’m amazed this is still in good shape, he said.
There are quite a lot of things of yours still here, said Astrid. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’d be glad if you would take them away with you.
What would I do with a bench? said Hubert. I don’t have a garden.
I’m not talking about the bench, she said, I’m talking about your military uniform, your books, your records, your boyhood stuff, the telescope. The whole attic is full of your junk.
Hubert said he didn’t have much space in his apartment and asked why the sudden hurry.
What do you mean, sudden hurry? she said. You moved out almost a year ago now. She took a sip of coffee and stood up. I asked Rolf if he wanted to move in, she said as she walked off.
Hubert caught up to her by the garage. She opened the door. His things were all piled up inside.
You can come for them when you’re back.
Hubert drove home to finish packing for his trip. The whole time he was thinking about what he could possibly show. Late in the evening, he drove by the studio in the hope that his old stuff might inspire him, but it only depressed him. Astrid had asked him the other day for the photographs he had taken of her in the south of France. Hubert flicked through them and then put them up on a shelf with the other stuff. He had no intention of giving them to her.
He drove off in the morning. The sky was overcast, and it was raining lightly. Hubert left the Autobahn and took a gently climbing country road. The rain turned into snow, which fell more and more heavily in big, wet flakes. Hubert’s first idea had been to take the mountain pass, but shortly before the turnoff he decided to put his car on the train. When he got to the ramp, a train had just left. He got out to stretch his legs. The air was freezing cold and smelled of snow and cow dung. He thought about how futile it would be to try and capture this scene in a painting, the late snow, the damp chilly air, the slopes that came in and out of view behind the veil of snowflakes, the crudity of the concrete ramp and the tunnel entrance.
In the tunnel, Hubert left the car lights off. It was shortly before noon, and he listened to the weather forecast on the radio. When the train emerged from the tunnel, there was snow only on the upper slopes. The valley was green.
Hubert could only vaguely remember the imposing two-story cultural center. It was set in a fairly narrow gorge that the River Inn had dug into the valley. Originally the building must have belonged to the old spa hotel next door. Outside the hotel, which was now run by a chain of vacation clubs, there was a large sign welcoming new guests: TIME FOR FEELING. As Hubert got out of the car, he saw through some trees a group of children in costume led by a woman also in costume, running shouting through the hotel grounds. On the well-kept lawn there were a few deck chairs, none of them occupied.
Hubert stepped into the arcade that led up to the entrance to the cultural center, but the front door was locked. There was no bell, and no one answered when he knocked. In the arcade were benches and a table tennis table, a couple of rusty bicycles were propped against the wall. Hubert walked around the building. Along the side, a few steps led down to a narrow path that followed an iron fence that continued along the back of the building. The other side of the fence was the riverbank. The Inn was a yellowish-gray, the current was rapid.
Grass and little bushes had taken root between the weathered concrete slabs of the path. Roughly in the middle of the wall was a door, presumably to the basement. On the ground in front of the gate and along the walls there were thousands of black ants.
When Hubert emerged back in front of the cultural center, there was another car parked next to his, a bottle-green Volvo, and the front door was open. He entered the hall, off which corridors opened to either side. Hubert followed one of them and on one of the last doors found a handwritten sign that said ADMINISTRATION.
No sooner had he knocked than the door flew open, and a stout man stood in front of him, who had to be around about the same age. He embraced Hubert and patted him on the shoulder. Hubert couldn’t remember ever having seen him before.
They went out to the car park. Arno seemed astonished that Hubert had brought only a suitcase and a bag with him, and a couple of open cardboard boxes of slides and a projector.
No pictures, no materials? he asked.
Hubert said he hoped to generate the show here on the spot. Whatever materials he needed he would surely be able to obtain locally.
There’s lots of leftover stuff from previous exhibitions up in the attic, said Arno, you can have a look around if you like. He picked up one of the boxes of slides and
went on ahead. For the moment you’re our only resident artist, he said, we were shut over the winter and only reopened a few days ago. You can take your pick of the rooms.
After Arno had shown him all the rooms, Hubert chose one that was large and almost empty, and a long way from the office. Aside from the bed and a dark chest of drawers there was a desk and a couple of old deep armchairs, but neither a phone nor a TV. If Hubert wanted to call anyone, he could always do it from the office, said Arno, the mobile connection was unfortunately very weak down in the gorge. Hubert looked at his cell phone, which indeed said NO RECEPTION. Arno said Hubert would have the building all to himself in the evenings. He brought the box of slides in from the corridor where he had left it and set it down in the middle of the room. Then he was suddenly gone, and Hubert had to bring in the rest of his stuff by himself. As there wasn’t a wardrobe, he left his clothes in the open suitcase and didn’t unpack. He sat down on the bed and stayed like that for a while. He remembered once as a child having been sent up to a vacation camp in the mountains. At midday the bus had stopped in front of a large white house, and those children who had been there before all rushed out into the dormitories to claim the best places. By the time Hubert came up the steps, some of them were already running the other way, to explore. Hubert had sat all alone in the dormitory, not daring to go out. For days he had been homesick and regretted that he was not as enterprising and independent minded as the others.
Hubert knocked on the office door. When he walked in, the first thing to greet his eye was the poster of his first exhibition hanging on the wall behind Arno, a rear view of a naked, rather lumpy woman washing her foot in a sink, presumably the best picture in the series. On the poster was the rather hopeless title of the show, Begegnungen/Encounters, with the dates, September 6–28, 2003.