The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World (11 page)

In the summer of 1937, as a first measure in purging Germany of all existing Modern art, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, issued a decree that allowed his government agencies to seize all works of Degenerate art from public as well as private collections. Within three months, they had confiscated more than sixteen thousand works of art. Of those sixteen thousand, some were sold at auction, some were secretly given to Nazi officers, and some were burned as part of a fire drill in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Station. And of those sixteen thousand works of art, six hundred and fifty were chosen to be displayed at the exhibit entitled
Entartete “Kunst.”

In the year 1937, on two consecutive days, two art exhibits opened in Munich, Germany.

On July 18, the Great German Art Exhibit opened in a newly completed state museum, the House of German Art.

With great pomp, Adolf Hitler himself presided over the inaugural ceremonies and gave the major speech. He started out by praising the architecture of the new building and trumpeting the important role that he, himself, had played in its design. Hitler went on to praise the art of the Third Reich by contrasting it with Modern art. And then he got to the meat of his message: Racially pure work was good and exalted the Aryan way of life; Modern art was insulting, distorted, and the work of inferior racial strains. By the time he got to saying that Modern art was destroying motherhood, heroism, and German culture, Hitler was wildly waving his arms and spraying saliva. He twisted around and thrashed about, and then in a power-possessed rage, he shrieked his real message: It was forbidden for artists to use anything but the forms seen in nature in their art. If they were either stupid enough or sick enough to defy his guidelines, if they continued to present “unfinished” work, if they continued to exalt the Jew and insult the Aryan, it would be up to the medical
establishment and the criminal courts to stop them. “We will, from now on, lead an unrelenting war of purification, an unrelenting war of extermination, against the last elements that have displaced our Art.”

By the time he finished, even his own staff worried that Hitler had gone mad.

The following day, July 19, 1937, in an old warehouse across the park, the exhibition called Degenerate “Art” opened. Six hundred fifty “racially impure, inferior works” of Modern art were crowded in nine small rooms. They were crammed together on the walls and floors. In an effort to make the work look ridiculous, some paintings were hung at strange angles. The walls were covered with cruel slogans painted in strong German blackhand. Young people were barred from attending because these six hundred and fifty works of Modern art were labeled pornographic.

Goebbels declared that the work was “such dreck that a three-hour visit makes one sick.”

But people flocked to it. More than two million people came to see the Degenerate art—five times as many as came to see the Great German Art Exhibit. Curiosity brought some, patriotic disdain brought others, and despite the insulting slogans telling people why they should hate
it, despite every rant of propaganda the Nazis waged against Modern art, some people discovered its power and (secretly) liked it.

After finishing the first draft of his copy for the catalog, Peter Vanderwaal bundled the pages together, tapped all four edges until they were as tight and even as a Marine honor guard, clipped them together, and laid them tenderly in the center of his desk. He glanced again at the title page and smiled to himself as he read it:
Once Forbidden.
(Crisp! Elegant! Apt!) He congratulated himself on his choice and resisted the temptation to read again what he had written. He knew it would be better to leave it alone for now so that in the morning he would have a fresher look. He knew—absolutely!—that there could not possibly be a better title. (Applause! Applause!)

He left his office and paused just outside the door. The sun had already dropped and taken the day's heat with it. It was early October, and he could almost hear the leaves turning yellow. Peter stuck his tongue out ever so slightly—only slightly—so that he could taste the air. It was time: time to take his
pelzkeppe
out of storage.

Peter Vanderwaal had been in his twenties when he started losing his hair, so years before it became a fashion statement, Peter shaved his entire head. And long before it was common for men to do so, Peter had had each of his ears pierced: the right one twice; the left one, three times. His head shone like the moon, and his left ear twinkled like the bowl of the Big Dipper.

The winter after he took the job in Sheboygan, Peter commissioned a furrier to make him a tall, large, wide-brimmed hat that was a slightly scaled-down version of the one worn by the bridegroom in Jan van Eyck's famous painting
The Arnolfini Marriage.
It was his private homage to an artist and a painting he loved. In Sheboygan, Peter's hat had become more famous than the one in the painting that had inspired it. Peter's hat was known throughout the community as “Peter's
Pelzkeppe
“—Peter's Fur Hat.

Peter treasured his
pelzkeppe.
“It is the next best thing to having hair,” he often said.

He bought two wig stands—one for his office and one for his house. Each had a place of honor on the far right corner of his desk, set out like a museum display.

Every year the children of Sheboygan had a contest. The first one to sight Peter's
pelzkeppe
called “Beaver! Beaver!” and if that child had an eyewitness, he or she
won the right to sign his or her name and date on a small plastic statue of a beaver and keep it until the next first sighting.

Peter had known about the contest for years, but he pretended he didn't. On the day he first donned his
pelzkeppe,
he carefully mapped the route he would take from his apartment to the art center. He walked very slowly in the direction of the neighborhood of the child he currently believed to be worthy of the trophy. Despite the chill that came from his slow pace, he would not speed up until he heard the cry “Beaver! Beaver!” Peter was aware of two occasions when a parent rather than a child had done the first sighting. It was the same woman. It was late autumn, and both times she was waiting with her child at the school bus stop. Since he was not even supposed to know about the contest, he said nothing. But saying nothing didn't stop him from wanting to—even three “Beaver!”s later.

As he walked back to his apartment after having finished writing the copy for the catalog, Peter's thoughts turned to organizing all the activities that would be associated with Once Forbidden. (What a fine name.)

The exhibit itself was already a
cause célèbre.
The town fathers and business philanthropists had generously donated money to keep the museum open extra hours
to accommodate the many classes that would take tours. His staff, too, was helping out. They had pledged hours of overtime to train docents who had volunteered to lead the tours.

To reward himself for the good work he had done that day, Peter allowed himself to fantasize about the grand opening party. It would take place the first weekend in November on the very cusp of the fall art and social season. It would be a gala occasion, but a formal one. He would wear his tuxedo—he loved to wear a tux—and he would request that all the male principals wear one too. He would ask all the women to dress very thirties-ish—as in 1937ish, to evoke the era of the original
Entartete “Kunst.”
Three sponsors were underwriting the event.(Thank you very much.) He would engage the best caterer in town to provide the food, and a string quartet to play background music. There would be champagne, and he himself would supervise the design of the invitations. There was a calligrapher on his staff who promised to address them. He would personally select every bite of food and every piece of music, and he would invite everyone he knew, everyone from his personal and professional lives, going back to his grammar school days in Epiphany, New York.

Opening night would be a major—a
molto, molto
magnifico
—event. An event to go down in the history of Sheboygan. It would be
dazzling!

By the time Peter unlocked the door to his apartment, he couldn't wait to start his list.

It was past midnight when he finished. He walked to the closet in his spare room to retrieve his
pelzkeppe.
As he reached for the big round box in which he stored it, he stubbed his toe on the gray metal box that held the archive of his father's life. He stooped down and moved the box farther back inside the closet.

He settled his
pelzkeppe
on the wig stand and returned its box to the shelf in his closet.

T
HE DAY THEY WERE SORTING
out the contents of the upstairs sitting room, the room that had once been Mr. Zender's study, Mrs. Zender sat in a red Bibendum chair and supervised their clearing out the drawers of a giant executive desk. Mrs. Zender said, “I am in no great hurry to move into the Waldorf.”

Amedeo, who was sweating, said, “At least it's air-conditioned.”

Mrs. Zender ignored him, and Mrs. Wilcox, forever worried that someone was offended, said, “I'm sure, Mrs. Zender, that you will be sorry to leave this house. It must hold a treasure of memories.”

Mrs. Zender rolled her eyes. “There were parties, Mrs. Wilcox. There were many, many parties.”

Mrs. Wilcox said, “I read about some of them parties in the
Vindicator.
”

Mrs. Zender said, “There were boating parties and tennis parties, and pool parties and lawn parties. I didn't boat, and I didn't play tennis, but I always dressed for the occasion. Dressing up has always been entertainment to me.”

Mrs. Wilcox said, “To me and my family, reading about all the goings-on in the paper, this here house was like the court of Versailles.”

Mrs. Zender protested, “Not Versailles.” She thought a minute and said, “Sissinghurst. The only things missing from an English country weekend were the horses and the dogs. Mr. Zender couldn't ride, and Mother was allergic to dog dander. But there were plenty of dinner parties with white-glove service. And after-dinner drinks on the boat. There was one party when our crew took our guests down the river to Paloma. Everyone got off to be met by a fleet of cars that took them to a country barbeque place where Mr. Zender had arranged for take-out baskets of barbequed ribs and cornbread. Mr. Zender reigned over it all. The viceroy of Mandarin Road.”

“Yes, I remember reading about that party. The
Vindicator
had pictures in the Sunday section.”

“When we moved here after Daddy died, the house was already big enough for an embassy, but Mr. Zender
insisted upon enlarging it. He added a dock and a boathouse at the end of the dock and a three-car garage with living quarters over it. The rooms over the garage were for ‘our couple,' which was what Mr. Zender called the butler and cook.” Mrs. Zender looked at Amedeo and said, “That's when we had people.” She sighed and said, “The butler was Bridges, and his wife was Mrs. Bridges. Before Mr. Zender hired them, we had had a housekeeper named Jessie Mae who cooked, and a laundress who came twice a week. Bridges demoted Jessie Mae from housekeeper to cleaning lady and hired a cook. Jessie Mae quit. She called Bridges ‘the Führer,' because he would never give her a lift to the city bus stop, which was a mile and a quarter up Mandarin Road back then.”

“Still is,”William said.

Mrs. Zender paid no attention.

“Jessie Mae was a proud cook, but Mrs. Bridges told Mr. Zender said there was too much fried food on Jessie Mae's menus and that the vegetables were overcooked. My mother, who was still alive at the time, agreed. Mother always had a problem with weight. My weight. But to me fried and overcooked are as Southern as marinara is Italian. I missed Jessie Mae's collard greens, cooked, overcooked, with a
strick o' fat and a strick o' lean,
but the cook
who Bridges hired made béchamel instead of gravy and said that collards are cow fodder.”