by Clare Clark
‘Shall we?’ I say and Mina hesitates, then nods. It is an extravagance, but you can’t be careful all the time. We are given a table set back from the street.
‘Do you like cake?’ I ask. ‘Because the plum cake here is famous.’
‘Is this where you used to come with Anke?’
All this time and still it knocks the breath from me. I nod.
‘I thought so,’ she says. ‘Plum cake was always Anke’s favourite.’
I am glad when she says it’s too hot for cake and asks for a strawberry ice. I don’t want to talk about A with Mina, who says her name as though it were a word like any other. Instead I ask her about her schoolwork. What is her favourite subject? If she thinks the question dull she’s too polite to say so.
‘Science,’ she says firmly, running her spoon around the outside of the glass where the ice cream is melting. ‘It’s the only thing that matters.’
‘The only thing?’
‘I think so.’
‘We learn nothing from history, from literature?’
‘Only that human beings have always told themselves the stories they want to believe. But what is important is how things are, don’t you see? How they really are, whether we want to believe them or not.’
‘You think only scientists tell the truth?’
‘I think at least scientists understand that nothing is true until they prove it.’
‘And yet scientists through the ages have believed a great number of things to be true that turn out to be mistaken.’
‘Yes, but when they are shown to be wrong they change their minds. Do you think priests change their minds, or politicians?’
‘That will do,’ I say sharply. The man at the next table is looking at us. The brim of his hat shades his eyes, I cannot see his expression, but I am filled with a sudden apprehension.
‘Finish your ice cream,’ I say, dropping coins on the table. ‘It’s time to go home.’
Thursday 27 July
Having Mina in the flat changes everything. It is not just the trail of her discarded belongings. It is not even the atmosphere when I get home, though it is plain Gerda is finding it a strain to be so little alone. It’s how it alters things between the two of us. Before Mina came Gerda and I had reached a kind of peace. Perhaps we didn’t talk as much as we used to, without A and her chatter we lost the knack of it, but our silences were companionable, tender even. When I put my arms around Gerda, all the words we didn’t say moved through us like invisible threads, stitching us together. But with Mina here the silences are solid, sharp-edged. They squat between us, defying us to ignore them. And so we talk, stumbling through courtesies and platitudes like actors in a bad play.
Mina notices. I watch her at dinner as she chews on her lip and waits for us to finish. Sometimes I see her looking from Gerda to me and back again as though we are pieces in a puzzle she’s trying to fit together. I suppose it was different in Stefan’s house, Bettina reeling off lists of improving admonitions, the boys nudging and giggling and pinching each other under the table. What I would give for some peace and quiet, Stefan used to say when we visited, the pride coming off him like heat.
When supper is over Mina helps bring the plates into the kitchen but it is too crowded with three.
‘It’s all right,’ Gerda says. ‘You can help tomorrow.’ Mina doesn’t need to be told twice. When she is gone Gerda closes her eyes and leans against the sink.
‘That bad?’ I ask but when I put my hand on her shoulder she straightens up and sets to scrubbing the roasting pan. She tells me Mina has taken to pacing the flat, along and round and through, the same circle again and again like a sleepwalker or the dead-eyed bear at the Zoo. Gerda has tried sending the girl on errands, giving her chores, but, though Mina never refuses, she forgets what she has been sent for or does the work so poorly that it is less trouble for Gerda to do it herself.
‘Not stupid, is she?’ I say and the look Gerda gives me could turn milk.
The light is on in A’s room, I can see the stripe of it under the door. I knock. There is a pause before she answers. When I open the door Mina is sitting on the bed, her hands folded in her lap. Books scatter the bed. She looks at me cautiously.
‘I thought we might have a talk,’ I say and immediately her face snaps shut. It would be better to sit but the only place is beside her on the bed so I stand, one shoulder awkwardly against the wardrobe. ‘Aunt Gerda is worried about you. She’s afraid you don’t like it here.’ Mina stares at her lap.
‘I don’t know what you’ve heard about Berlin but it’s quite safe to go out so long as you’re careful. Most Berliners don’t hold with this Nazi nonsense and, besides, no one would think to give you trouble, you don’t look Jewish in the least.’
‘Because I’m not.’
‘Well. The thing is, you mustn’t be afraid to go out. It’s not good for you, cooped up in here all day.’
‘Aunt Gerda never goes out.’
‘That’s not true, though, is it? Yes, there’s the housework and so forth but she goes out every day to shop, she meets her Wednesday friends for coffee—’
‘What Wednesday friends?’
I sigh. ‘Look, Mina, I don’t want to argue with you. I understand you don’t want to be here and I don’t blame you. No one wants what is happening at the moment. But this is how things are, for now at any rate, and locking yourself away in here won’t make it any easier to bear.’
Mina is silent. Then she shakes her head. ‘You don’t understand,’ she says.
‘Don’t I? Then perhaps you should explain.’
She glances up at me quickly, as though she suspects a trick, and says nothing. Perhaps she thinks I’ll lose patience, but I am a lawyer, I know how to wait.
‘There’s no point,’ she says at last. And then, ‘I need to go back. To Hannover.’
‘You miss your family, I know you do, but as soon as your father is settled—’
‘I can’t go to Antwerp, don’t you see? What about the Abitur, what about university? It’s all right for the boys, what do they care if they’re some place no one wants them, where they don’t understand a word anyone says, all they care about is playing football and stuffing their faces with sausage, but I can’t just leave, I have exams, if I go now I’ll lose a whole year, maybe two, I’ll have to start all over again. How can Papa ask me to do that?’
‘Because he wants what’s best for you all. Because he thinks it isn’t safe here any more.’
‘Not safe for Jews, maybe, but I’m not a Jew! My mother’s a Protestant and my father’s nothing, he doesn’t believe in any of it. I don’t even know what Jews do except not eat pork, we’ve never bothered with any of that, and Papa agrees with me, religion is just a bunch of superstitions, a primitive social mechanism invented to frighten people and keep them in order, I mean, the idea of some old man with a long white beard presiding over some invisible kingdom with flaming pits of sulphur in the cellars and up in the sky angels in white nightdresses, how can anyone still believe in fairy stories like that? Why is it so impossible to accept that once someone is dead they’re dead and that’s that!’ She breaks off sharply, bites her lip. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t believe it, do you? That Anke’s sitting on a cloud somewhere, playing a harp?’ Her name cast carelessly as a fish hook, tearing my throat.
‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘I don’t think that.’
‘So you don’t believe in God either?’
‘Not in a God who would give Anke a harp. It was bad enough having to listen to her sawing at a violin.’ I don’t know how long it is since I said her name out loud. The taste of it lingers in my mouth. ‘What good would it do to return to Hannover? Haven’t you been expelled from school?’
‘That wasn’t my fault. The headmaster was a Nazi. He said only Germans could excel in German schools.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I told him I wasn’t even
a Jew, that I had finished top of my year three years in a row, except for Hans Meier there was never anyone who did better than me, but he didn’t listen, he said Jews like me set a bad example to the rest of the class, that I could never be a scientist because there were two kinds of science, German science and Jewish science, and German science was the only one that counted. He said Jewish science was nothing but fakery and lies, that Einstein made up his theories so he could be famous.’
I rub my face. I think of Bettina’s mother, who considers it her duty as a good German to deny her grandchildren a father and a home. ‘The man is plainly a fanatic,’ I say. ‘Most people in Germany do not think like that.’
‘Which is why you have to talk to Papa for me. I’ve written to my friend Margarete, her parents will let me live with them, I know they will, they’ve known me all my life. Please, Uncle Frank, he’d listen to you.’
I sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Mina, but your father’s made up his mind. It’s all decided.’
‘But it isn’t fair, why didn’t he ask me what I wanted? He’s ruining everything and for what? I mean, if things were actually as terrible as he says they are, you and Aunt Gerda would be leaving too. Wouldn’t you?’
I don’t answer. I walk over to the window. When we moved in we were told that the rooms on this side of the flat looked on to a light well, which is true only if you choose to spell ‘well’ with an a. The bricks are streaked with damp and almost close enough to touch. Among the scatter of books on the bed is an open exercise book, its square-ruled pages busy with equations. I have no idea what they mean but the way they dance across the page makes me think of music. Idly I pick it up. There is another book open underneath it, a sketchbook, and I catch a glimpse of a drawing, a man’s face, before Mina snatches it and snaps it shut.
‘I didn’t know you could draw,’ I say. Mina hugs the book against her chest and says nothing, only chews her bottom lip. It won’t be long till there is nothing left to chew. ‘Won’t you let me see?’
She hesitates, then lets the book slide into her lap. She doesn’t meet my eye.
‘It’s not mine,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, I—it’s Anke’s.’
She looks at the sketchbook, then holds it out to me. The cover is worn and bruised with ink. I think of A at the kitchen table, a piece of butcher’s paper in front of her, her face furious with concentration. She couldn’t understand why her pictures never came out the way they looked in her head.
‘It was behind the bed,’ Mina says. ‘I was going to tell you, only—I’m sorry.’
I open the covers. BERLIN, someone has written in large capitals on the flyleaf, and underneath, November 1927. The first drawings are all of hands. Whoever drew these, it wasn’t A. Sometimes A pressed so hard her pencil went right through the paper. I turn the pages and the hands give way to people, a fat woman on a balcony, an almond-eyed girl with cropped hair and an impatient expression. Some people in evening dress. I stop, look more closely. The drawings are sketchy but the likenesses are strong, there’s no mistaking them. On the left-hand page, Julius Köhler-Schultz and his very young wife. On the right, in a too-tight collar, Gregor Rachmann.
‘I never knew Anke was so good at drawing,’ Mina says and I frown, closing the book.
‘Why didn’t you say you’d found this?’ I demand.
‘Why do you never talk about her?’ she demands back and I say nothing and the silence is like holding a seashell to your ear, a whole ocean roars inside it.
Friday 28 July
It is Gerda who works it out. A couldn’t have hidden anything behind the bed, she says when I suggest it, Gerda would have found it, she pulls the bed out every time she changes the sheets, but what about those crates, couldn’t it have fallen out of one of those, and immediately it comes back to me, the Katzke boys and the tea chest tipped over on the bed, and my stomach lurches as if I have stepped up a step that isn’t there.
Furious at my reckless stupidity, I order Mina out of A’s room and yank the bed from the wall. I tear off the sheets, upend the mattress. I don’t know what I am looking for, only that I have to look. I signed for those crates, if anything goes missing it’s me they’ll come after. I know it’s only a sketchbook, but you hear about it all the time, the shopkeeper arrested for short-changing a customer, the tailor accused by his debtors of harbouring communist sympathies and imprisoned without trial. A few pfennigs or a vengeful fiction, it doesn’t matter. For Jews trouble comes down like the executioner’s axe, swiftly and without pity.
I find nothing in the bed but the fear is in me, I dare not stop, so I haul the chest of drawers into the middle of the room and empty the drawers. I yank open the wardrobe, dragging Mina’s clothes from their hangers, scrabbling among her shoes. I am on my hands and knees when I look up and see her standing in the doorway. Her face is white.
‘Mina,’ I say but she is already gone. The front door bangs. I sink my head to the floor and close my eyes.
They have done nothing to us, not yet. I am going mad all the same.
Saturday 29 July
All of Mina’s things are put back as they were. It is not so easy with Mina. At breakfast she passes the butter when I ask her but she does not meet my eye. I pretend not to notice. In a bright voice I don’t quite recognise I tell Mina that the sketchbook she found came from the Rachmann case. The prosecution never disclosed it, which was why I’d never seen it before, but it must have been one of the articles seized from Matthias Rachmann’s brother’s studio.
Mina shrugs. Apparently she has never heard of Matthias Rachmann. Of course she’d have been too young for the newspapers then, but I’m surprised Stefan never mentioned it. So I tell her, anything to fill the silence, and as I explain about the paintings and the inability of the art experts to agree on what is real and what is fake I see I have piqued her curiosity. She has never seen a van Gogh, she says, but she has heard of him. She knows his pictures have sold for hundreds of thousands of marks.
‘Not now though, I suppose,’ she says and when I tell her that, on the contrary, in the years since the Rachmann scandal broke the prices for van Goghs have almost doubled, she nearly chokes on her milk.
‘The Nationalgalerie acquired three in 1929,’ I say. ‘The most expensive, Daubigny’s Garden, cost them nearly a quarter of a million marks.’
Mina gapes. ‘How can a picture be worth that much money?’
‘Perhaps we should go and see for ourselves,’ I suggest, and to my astonishment she agrees. We walk together to the Kronprinzenpalais, where the Nationalgalerie keeps its modern paintings. Though it’s still early it is already uncomfortably hot. It is a relief to reach the river, the faint stirrings of a breeze.
‘So if half of Rachmann’s paintings were real and half were fake,’ Mina asks, ‘who painted the fake ones?’
‘No one knows. The prosecution had Rachmann’s brother in their sights for a while but they dropped that long before the trial—their evidence didn’t stand up.’
‘You must have an idea, though. Who did you think did it?’
‘Rachmann always insisted that all thirty-two paintings came from his Russian.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘A criminal lawyer must always believe in his defence.’
The foyer of the gallery is cool. A large photographic portrait is displayed prominently at the bottom of the stairs. The man in the portrait shares both the Führer’s bank manager moustache and his air of suspicious irritation. The plaque beneath the photograph reads Gerhard Hanfstaengl, Direktor. So Gustav Stemler has gone. I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s happening all over Germany, but I still don’t understand. It is one thing to fear the Communists and the foreigners, but what kind of government is afraid of art?
Mina and I stand in front of Daubigny’s Garden for a long time. The picture gleams, in this light-filled space there is a just-licked freshness to the colours that the paintings in the gloomy courtroom never had, and though the paint is applied in thick slashes
it gives off a feeling of enormous calm. When I ask Mina if she likes it she frowns and says she isn’t sure. ‘But I don’t want to stop looking at it,’ she adds.
‘So is it worth a quarter of a million marks?’
She thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It’s difficult, isn’t it, when there’s only one of something in the world? How can you say what it’s worth?’
‘Especially when there’s a chance it might actually be a fake.’
‘What?’ Mina looks at me and back at the painting. ‘Seriously?’
‘There was something of a to-do about it after the Rachmann trial. It seems this isn’t the only Daubigny’s Garden in the world, after all. There’s a second one in a Swiss collection, which shouldn’t matter, van Gogh painted plenty of his pictures more than once, except that apparently in this case he didn’t. According to a Dutch expert, a man called Teuling, the Swiss painting is the real thing and this one here is a copy, made by a friend of van Gogh’s after he died.’
‘And the Nationalgalerie, what do they say?’
‘They dismiss Teuling’s claim completely. They assert that, if a forgery was made, it’s the Swiss picture, not this one.’
‘So how will they prove who is right?’
I think of the experts at the Rachmann trial, their contempt for conclusions that differed from their own. ‘I’m not sure they will. Both sides have threatened to sue but so far nothing’s come to court. Ultimately, it seems, it’s just a matter of opinion.’
Mina frowns. ‘But there must be ways of proving it, scientific ways.’
‘It’s not that simple. There are tests, X-rays, chemical paint analysis, that sort of thing, but even the scientists admit they’re not foolproof. They could dismiss some of the Rachmann pictures because they found a hardener in the paint that van Gogh never used, but it’s much more difficult if the paintings were made forty years ago, with the same paints and canvases the artist used himself. And that’s assuming you can run the tests in the first place. Under German law no painting can be scientifically examined without the consent of its owner. In this particular case both sides refuse. They claim the risk of damage to the paintings is too great.’