All Days Are Night (12 page)

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 and 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.

I’m busy, said Arno, crumpling up a form and tossing it in the trash. Just have a look around and help yourself. If there’s a problem, you know where to find me.

Hubert asked when the other artists would be arriving. Arno looked up from his work and shrugged. There’s a young German woman who takes pictures of swimming pools. She’s due soon, he said, but I don’t know exactly when. Oh, yes, and someone from the local paper is coming to interview you. I hope four o’clock’s okay with you?

Hubert walked through the building. Most of the other doors going off the corridor on either side were to rooms Arno had already showed him. One small room contained the toilets and three shower stalls. At the far end of the corridor was a kitchen with a long wooden table and an array of chairs of which no two were identical. The cupboards harbored pots and pans, dishes, and other gear. On one shelf were opened packets of dry goods, pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas, and lots of jars and tins of all sorts of spices and condiments. Everything was coated with a sticky layer of grease, some of the dried herbs were years past their sell-by date.

That afternoon he sketched a rough layout of the entrance hall, which doubled as exhibition space, marking the position of outlets and measuring the height of the ceiling. He tried to remember his first exhibition here, but he had the impression he had never seen this room in his
life. Finally he went for a walk to look at the locality. He crossed the old bridge beside the cultural center, which crossed the Inn. On the opposite side there was another, smaller building. Over the door he read
SPA WATERS
, and a scrap of paper taped to the glass door told him that the hall was closed, and no trespassing. Through the dirty windowpanes, Hubert saw evidence of former luxury, lofty pillars and three niches with polished stone facings, and the names of the respective sources over them: Lucius, Bonifacius, and Emerita.

The old road wound its way up the wooded slope. It was off-limits on account of building work, but there was no one to be seen, just a few machines had been left standing around. Hubert scrambled over the barrier and climbed on up the mountain. As he climbed, he kept checking his cell phone, but there was still no reception. He remembered that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he turned back. He decided to get something to eat in the hotel next door.

The sun outside was so dazzling that Hubert could see nothing at all when he walked into the lobby. The large room was full of old armchairs, in the middle was a bar, but there was no one around at all. At a desk behind reception, he finally saw a woman sitting at a computer. Hubert cleared his throat, and she got up. She walked up to the desk, parroting a greeting. She called Hubert “
du
” and explained that that was normal here, even before he could say what he had come for. The restaurant would open at six, she said, at the moment all the guests were out. But he could get coffee and cake here. Hubert thanked her and sat down in a leather armchair in a corner. After a while a young man dressed as a pirate came out and took his
order. When the waiter brought his coffee, Hubert asked him about the costume and learned that there was a pirate-themed dinner tonight.