All Days Are Night

Chapter 2

Dust was time in material form, Hubert could no longer remember who had said it, or where he had read it. At any rate, a lot of time seemed to have collected in his studio, because there was a thin, almost transparent layer of dust over everything. He didn’t bother to wipe it away, he had only come to take a look through his old stuff and see if there was anything he could use. The big nudes, the naked housewife series, as his gallerist called them, he didn’t even look at, they had become so strange to him, it was as though they were by someone else. He took a stack of large folders from a shelf and opened them one after the other, industrial landscapes, pencil drawings of machinery, portraits, and nudes, the oldest things dated back to his student days. After briefly hesitating, he took down a folder labeled Astrid. It contained two dozen photographs and a few sketches. He had done them right at the beginning of their relationship, during a summer holiday in the south of France. They had driven around, staying in campsites. In every picture there was Astrid naked in a different landscape, sometimes so small that she could hardly be made out. He had thought of drawing the whole series in crayon but only finished a very few. In his memory they had been better than they were. He put them all back in the folder and went on to the next one.

An hour later, Hubert was back outside the building. He had managed to find nothing usable, but carted the slides and projector into his car anyway, raw material that sometime might come in handy. It was midnight, but the air was balmy.

He had been teaching at the art school for six years now. There were two weeks left of the semester, but he was already finished, and he felt that strange mix of freedom and what now? that he was caught up in every summer.

He had lit a cigarette and rolled the window down. There were still plenty of people around, in the distance he heard a police siren. All month, the weather had been unusually warm and dry. First, Hubert had been pleased about it, then the longer it went on, the more it disquieted him. The news carried reports of desiccated crops, and everyone was talking about climate change, but that wasn’t the cause of his disquiet. When he drove over the bridge, he saw the lakeside lights flashing a storm warning.

The next morning a light rain was falling. Hubert had opened the window, and a cool wind blew in his face. He had gotten up early and prepared the apartment for a few months without him. On the car radio he listened to the weather forecast. It seemed the next few days would remain cold and rainy, and the snow line would fall below a thousand meters.

He got caught up in the rush-hour traffic. He wasn’t a very experienced driver, and when he abruptly changed lanes, or got moving too late after the lights turned, the cars behind him honked. On the Autobahn other cars sat on his tail. After two hours, just before he exited the Autobahn, he stopped at a rest site and drank a cup of coffee. In the restaurant there were some pictures by a painter who had made a name for himself depicting elephants and tigers. A little leaflet was provided, which listed the absurdly high prices that were charged for the works. Hubert was almost physically disgusted by the paintings, and he soon set off.

Driving on, he briefly entertained the thought of making a living like that artist. Since he’d begun teaching, he hardly got around to painting anymore. He persuaded himself that it was because he was pushed for time. In his younger days, he always used to mock artists who feathered their nests as professors, but following Lukas’s birth he accepted an offer from the college. A regular job seemed to be the only way of having a reasonably comfortable middle-class life and not ending up as an impoverished artist in the gutter.

When Lukas started kindergarten, Astrid went back to work in the property department of the same bank where she had worked before. They moved into the town next door, where they managed to buy a small house on the edge of the fields.

As well as her work, Astrid pursued her interest in energy and the body. Hubert wasn’t impressed by the esoteric life-help scene she started to move in. He passed occasional ironic remarks, to which she reacted so violently that he didn’t say anything the next time she registered for a weekend course in psychodrama or breathing therapy.

After a short while, she began to offer special coaching for entrepreneurs. She converted their basement into a sort of treatment room. On the walls she hung pictures by an Italian woman artist Hubert knew. The multiply exposed cityscapes through which anonymous individuals moved had always struck him as being on the cool side, but Astrid said no, they were perfect for her clientele. On a little corner table she put a rose quartz. She got a flyer printed up, full of executives and problem awareness, resources and parameters, and before long the first clients arrived, usually big shots from her bank, and disappeared downstairs with her.

When I have a large enough customer base I mean to go full-time, said Astrid over dinner.

She got terribly angry when Hubert said the only reason her bosses came to her for coaching was that she was so good-looking. Or is it an accident that you always seem to be in short skirts for your sessions?

You need to think about your own life-work balance, she countered. It would be a start if you weren’t always mowing the lawn when I have clients.

In objective terms, they were doing very well, but Hubert felt increasingly like an impostor when he stood in front of his students and critiqued their work. He always had something big planned for the holidays and then kept putting it off, doing odd jobs about the house and garden or busying himself with vague research for projects that were never realized. He read a lot, and he saw colleagues. He still kept his studio in the old textile mill, but he rarely went there anymore. At first he had supposed his difficulties marked the beginning of a new productive phase. He put off his gallerist month after month. And he in turn asked less and less about what Hubert was working on now and instead sent him photos of the dog he had acquired and invitations to the openings of other artists in his stable. Hubert took a quick look at the postcards and laid them aside with a mixture of envy and irritation at the ardor with which his colleagues pursued their humdrum ideas.

Then one day he got an e-mail from Arno, the head of a cultural center in the mountains where he had had his first and only large solo exhibition seven years before. To him it all seemed incredibly remote, and he had no significant memory of the place, the rooms or the people there, but this Arno guy still seemed to be full of their meeting. He addressed him by his first name, wrote enthusiastically about that show, and invited Hubert to come back. He gave him a budget and carte blanche, he could stay in the cultural center as long as he wanted, only the date for the exhibition was set, the end of June next year. Hubert felt like turning it down immediately, but then he printed out the e-mail and left it with a pile of other stuff in his in-box.

After dinner, he told Astrid about the invitation from Arno. That was a nice time, she said, do you remember? I helped you hang the paintings. I was pregnant then. We had this little room right at the top of the building with a creaky bed. Arno once made some remark about it, but you weren’t bothered. She smiled quickly, then her face took on an expression as though she was confused by what she remembered. Could be, said Hubert, who could remember nothing of all this.

They had been sitting in the garden, Lukas was playing in the meadow with a neighbor’s son. Hubert collected the dirty dishes and carried them into the kitchen. He was barefoot and felt the chill of the grass at approaching nightfall. When he came back, Astrid asked him why he didn’t want to accept the invitation.

Because I’ve got nothing to show, he said.

It doesn’t get any easier, she said. Sometime you’ll need to start working again. The scenery up there is beautiful.

Beautiful landscapes are no use for good paintings.

There are lots of radionic power places around there.

That’s more your thing. Are you trying to get rid of me, by any chance?

Astrid got up and called Lukas. Her voice sounded strangely rough when she told him to come home right away. Ten minutes later, she came out into the garden and said Lukas wanted his good night kiss from his father.

It was cool inside, all the blinds were down. Lukas lay perfectly still in his bed, waiting. At such times Hubert thought of him as a strange creature whose world was so much bigger and darker than his own. Hubert bent down, only for Lukas to grab him around the neck and start kissing him frantically on both cheeks.

Enough, enough, said Hubert. You go to sleep now.

As he walked over to the stairs, he remembered an early cycle of pictures, little colored pencil drawings of kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. There were no people in them, but you could sense that someone had either just left or was just about to arrive. He stopped on the top step. From the kitchen he could hear the clatter of dishes. Then he saw Astrid walking through the dark corridor, without noticing him up on the stair. She was carrying a wine bottle and two glasses. Her walk looked as though she was trying not to be noticed. Hubert went softly down the stairs and saw that Astrid had stopped at the glass door that led out into the garden. She was hesitating, perhaps she had heard something or seen something. He took a couple of rapid steps toward her, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her neck. She turned to face him. When he made to kiss her again, she freed herself.

I need to talk to you.

Hubert could only dimly remember the conversation. On the next-door property a halogen beam had come on every other minute or so, because some animal had triggered the motion sensor. In the distance, there was the quiet drone of traffic on the Autobahn. It had gotten colder. Astrid had long since bundled herself up in a blanket. When they finally went in at around midnight, Hubert had trouble walking in a straight line. He carried in two empty wine bottles, set them on the dining table, and lay down on the sofa. Astrid went up to bed without a word.

It was the first of many conversations that always took the same course. Astrid said she felt trapped in their relationship. It was so different with Rolf. He opened up to her. Ever since she had started moving in the therapy scene, she spoke a new language.

Each time, she calmly explained her view of things to Hubert and reacted understandingly to his rage, which only made him still more furious. It all had nothing to do with him. Her decision had been made. In the end, Hubert had no alternative but to agree to a trial separation. Astrid was to stay in the house with Lukas, while he found a small apartment for himself.

Now that Hubert knew about Astrid’s lover, she had no more reason to meet him clandestinely. Every second or third evening she went out. Then Hubert would sit at home all evening and watch Lukas, who had trouble sleeping and had awful nightmares when he did. When Astrid got back at one or whenever, Hubert was sitting in front of the TV, and she vanished upstairs without a word.

The semester was over in the middle of June, but Hubert still went in every day. He had taken a one-bedroom apartment near the lake. He had forgotten all about the invitation to the mountains when Arno sent him a reminder.

What do I have to do to convince you? he wrote. After lunch Hubert had coffee with the head of his department. She knew about his separation from Astrid and urged him to accept the invitation. It was almost twelve months off, in all that time he would surely think of something. Perhaps the pressure of a deadline was just what he needed.

After lunch, Hubert replied to Arno: He’d be happy to come.

In July he went away on vacation with Astrid and Lukas. They had rented the house just after Christmas. Hubert had offered to step down in place of Rolf, but Astrid said they weren’t that far along yet. She had no problem going on holiday with Hubert anyway.

During their two weeks in Denmark, the weather stayed cool and rainy. Lukas was bored. They did all sorts of activities, visited a safari park, a maritime museum on a restored three-master, and a glassworks, where Lukas made a glass mold of his hand. At least by day Hubert could give himself to the illusion that they were still a family. Lukas too seemed to appreciate that they were all together again. Astrid received a string of text messages and at least once a day a phone call. Then she would go into another room or, if they were outside, take a few steps away. Hubert watched her in the distance. She was serious and if anything more irritable after these conversations than before.

When Lukas was tucked up in bed, he and Astrid would sit in the living room drinking wine and reading. Eventually Astrid would say she was tired and head for the bathroom. Hubert put his book down and listened to the unfamiliar noises of the strange house, the creaking of the steps, the whooshing of the pipes, and the wind that was always blowing here. He waited for half an hour, then he would go to the bathroom himself. They slept in separate rooms, except once, when Astrid got up to go to bed and she whispered to him: Are you coming? He followed her up the stairs. On the landing she took him by the hand and led him into her room.

The next morning, neither of them talked about what had happened in the night, but for the rest of the vacation, Hubert noticed that Astrid would link arms with him when they walked, or kiss him when he bought ice cream for her and Lukas. Sometimes he would shock himself by thinking that this was the last holiday they would have together.

Their closeness during the two-week vacation only served to distance them further from one another. Their relationship became increasingly pally, they barely quarreled anymore when they met. They compared schedules and talked about who would collect Lukas from school or day care, and who would have him over what weekend. Astrid asked if Hubert knew where the warranty for the coffee machine was or if he would fix the puncture in Lukas’s bike tire. They talked about their work, and sometimes Astrid even talked about Rolf, and Hubert listened without interrupting.

There was plenty to do in the garden, and Hubert took it on. He avoided going into the house. Only when he needed some tools from the basement did he go inside. Lukas often came out, played in his vicinity and kept half an eye on him all the time. Sometimes Hubert asked him to fetch something, and he would jump up and run and get it, as if he too preferred that his father didn’t set foot in the house.

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 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.

It’s all in your weekly program, said the waiter.

I’m not staying at the hotel, said Hubert, and the waiter laughed as though he’d made a joke.

When Hubert returned to the cultural center a little before four, he saw a large heavyset man waiting in front of the building, with a camera and an enormous telephoto lens. He put out his hand and said he was from the local paper. He was a little early, but perhaps they could get the photos out of the way. While he took his pictures, he asked a few questions, from which Hubert guessed that the man had no idea who he was or what he was doing here. The answers seemed not to interest him either, presumably he just wanted Hubert’s face to be in motion.

My colleague will be here in a minute to interview you, he said, after shooting off two dozen pictures.

Hubert sat down on one of the stone benches in the arcade, and the photographer sat opposite him. They sat there and waited in silence. After about a quarter of an hour, a tiny car drove up, and a black-haired young woman got out. Even as she approached the two men, she was apologizing for being late.

Tamara, she said and held out her hand to Hubert. Then she hugged the photographer. Hubert couldn’t say if she’d kissed him on the mouth or not. The photographer went away. Tamara unpacked a small recording device and set it in front of her on the table. Then she winked at Hubert.

What may we expect from you? Are you still painting naked ladies?

Hubert hesitated.

Tamara said Arno had told her he wanted to develop his new show here in situ, but if he thought he would find models in the village he had another think coming. Because here everyone knew everyone else, and nobody was about to get her kit off for him. Suddenly her voice had an aggressive undertone. Hubert imagined her naked, with that expression on her face. He said he didn’t yet know what the exhibition was going to contain. Tamara said he hadn’t left himself very much time.

I know that, he said, irritated.

Then he remembered what she was there for and said he hoped to find inspiration here. The only driver for his work was desire, a kind of hunger for reality, for presence, and also for intimacy, as opposed to publicity. In a very wide sense, he was interested in transcendence.

Tamara looked as though she didn’t believe a word of it. Do I have to warn the local women about you, or not? she asked.

He shook his head. I haven’t painted any nudes for years.

She asked him a couple more standard questions about his life, his work at the college, and his plans for the future, then she got up, and so did Hubert.

Well, see you at the opening, if not before, she said, gave him her card, and got into her car.

The entrance to the cultural center was north facing and already in shade. The air was cold. Hubert went in to get a jacket and then he drove into the village and took a look around. The center of the village looked impressively unspoiled, there were many old buildings decorated with artful graffiti, some were festooned with Romansh proverbs, one had a sundial. The whole area must have been prosperous once, he thought, the boxy concrete hotels you found in other touristy places were completely absent.

After Hubert had wandered around for a while, he took a seat on a bench in a big square and watched the passersby. He thought about the exhibition. The village was lovely, the landscape was lovely, even the weather was lovely. He had grown up in a village himself, what was there to say about it? He should have known there was just as little for him here as there was at home.

The shadows had gotten longer, and when they stretched to cover the bench he was sitting on, Hubert felt the cold. He walked into the nearest restaurant, ordered a cup of tea, and checked his e-mails. Astrid had written, and so had Nina and a couple of the other students. The college invited him to a meeting and sent him the minutes for another. His gallerist asked him how he was getting on in the mountains and wrote to say he was looking forward to the opening. He asked Hubert to book him a room for the time.

Hubert answered evasively. By the time he was finished it was seven o’clock, and he ordered something to eat. The restaurant was almost empty, a few men were sitting at a round table drinking beer and arguing noisily about local politics. Shortly before nine, Hubert left the restaurant. He had drunk too much to drive, really.

The hotel was brightly lit. When Hubert parked his car, he heard voices and laughter from the grounds, and music. There were no lights on in the cultural center, the door was locked, and the building looked discouraging. Hubert groped for a light switch. In the kitchen he found half a bottle of grappa. He took it up to his room, set up the slide projector, and looked at the photographs of women he had taken back in the day. He didn’t mean to work with the slides, presumably he had just brought them with him because they were part of the last sensible thing he had done. He projected the photos on a wall. He hadn’t looked at them for years, in his memory they had been more interesting than they were. He was surprised at the impertinence with which he had proceeded, he must have been completely convinced by his work. Almost more surprising was that his self-assuredness and enthusiasm had been so contagious that he had found women who agreed to take part. In one of the photographs there was a small black-haired woman, a postwoman, whom he had run into at the end of her shift. She wedged a bottle of Prosecco between her thighs and fiddled with the cork. In the next picture she was reaching for glasses on a high shelf, in the third she was pouring wine into one of them and laughing because the bubbles overflowed the glass. Then there were two out-of-focus shots of her walking down the corridor, and one of her turning back the corner of her bed. That was the one and only time that Hubert had slept with one of his models. He had never used the photographs.

In the next slide tray there were photos of a woman of sixty or so, knitting, in a third a young woman breast-feeding her naked baby. She had struck an attitude and after the session asked him for copies of the pictures, which he had never sent her. These pictures had been useless as well. Hubert went through all his trays, pictures of more than forty women. Most of them he could just about remember, but in some of the latter trays he had the sense that he had never seen the pictures before. One sequence was taken in dim light, the pictures were slightly out of focus, and the face of the woman was never completely visible, sometimes she hid it behind her long hair, most of the time she was trying to avoid the camera anyway. Hubert couldn’t quite remember her story, she was leaning across a table and seemed to be tidying up or looking at something. The room she was in seemed anonymous, other than the table there were no pieces of furniture or other objects to be seen. The pictures radiated a deep quiet, as though the model had been all alone in the room.

When he stood in the kitchen the next morning making coffee, Arno walked in. He said he had to go ahead and print up some exhibition posters, perhaps Hubert could let him have an image.

No, said Hubert.

A rough sketch? Anything at all? Is there a title for the show?

Hubert shook his head. Arno grimaced.

I suppose we can just print “Carte Blanche” on a white background, he said, what about that? Or better, white on black. Get it? He laughed. Have you seen the article?

He went off and reappeared a little later with a newspaper, which he laid on the table. Hubert took it back with him into his room. On the front page was a small photograph of him, with just his name, the word “painter,” and the number of the page where the article could be found. There was another picture of him, and a reproduction of the poster for his previous exhibition. The article wasn’t exactly hostile, but it had an ironic undertone. Tamara had gotten hold of biographical information (and misinformation) from Wikipedia. She referred briefly to the first exhibition in the cultural center, which had provoked a minor scandal, and wrote about Hubert’s way of working. A few of the quotations must have been lifted from other interviews.

Hubert Amrhein’s interest in naked ladies has worn off, wrote Tamara, he has matured, or perhaps simply got older, and he no longer scouts out naked bodies. There was a time when women had to go in fear of him, nowadays he is a spiritual seeker. It’s not impossible that he will find what he is looking for here in our area.

Hubert had no idea what that was based on. He took the newspaper back to the office.

Arno looked up at him questioningly. Do you like the article?

The stuff about spirituality is nonsense, said Hubert, I have no idea what that’s about.

Arno told him there were a lot of power places in the area, most artists who came here were interested in those.

Well, I’m not, said Hubert and he went back to his room.

That afternoon he went for a walk. He called Tamara and asked if she had time for coffee, he thought she had played pretty fast and loose with things he’d told her in her article.

Do you want right of reply?

Coffee would probably take care of it, he said, but I’ve got some things I want to ask you.

Okay, she said, come and meet me at my office at six.

Oh, the power places, snorted Tamara. That’s a complicated story.

She jabbed at her salad, and Hubert wondered if that was everything, then she put down her fork and said she didn’t believe in any of that stuff herself. But of course she couldn’t print anything negative about it in the paper, there were lots of people who came here for precisely that.

There are a few standing stones and cup marks from the Bronze Age, sure enough, but the dowsers, the guys who run around here with pendulums, measuring Bovis units, and claiming the radio vitality here is as strong as Chartres Cathedral, I think they’re bonkers.

She talked about an ethnologist who called himself a geobiologist and saw traces of a landscape deity called Ana everywhere around. The hills were her breasts, the valleys and sources her loins. Hubert recalled the landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe, where the hills looked like the bodies of naked women.

Tamara called the waitress and asked for the bill. She said she was on her way to a meeting of the commune. Hubert insisted on paying. After she was gone, he stayed for a long time alone. He got a copy of the paper, reread the article about himself, and listened to the conversation of the men at the next table.

In the hotel, there again seemed to be plenty of activity when Hubert went over there for a nightcap. At the circular bar in the lobby there were only couples and a group of young men, talking and laughing loudly. Opposite Hubert stood a woman between two men, who were talking over her head. She had blond hair and very pale skin, in the dark room it looked like she had been picked out by a spotlight. She seemed unconcerned, as though she had fallen into a kind of rigidity. Even when his eyes briefly met hers, Hubert saw no reaction in them. He drew her face on the back of a coaster. That made him think of a series of tourist portraits on coasters, but he was sure he would reject the idea when he was sober.

The next morning Hubert breakfasted in the hotel. It was already quite late, the few guests were mostly young couples. Hubert wondered what they were doing here and imagined spending a few days here with Nina. When the staff began clearing away the buffet, he went to reception, asked what a room cost, and also if he could pay to use the pool. You mean the spa and recreation area, said the receptionist, and quoted a rather steep price. Hubert thanked her and strolled through the hotel. The building looked a little faded and dim, although lights were on all over the place. From a second-story window he surveyed the grounds, where a few children sat in a circle with a young woman, tossing a ball around. A few elderly visitors read or snoozed in deck chairs, even though it was ten in the morning.

Hubert went back downstairs and scanned the hotel notice board, the week’s program, the day’s menu, looked at a poster of protected Alpine flowers that was familiar to him from boyhood, and studied what to do in the event of a forest fire. Then there was an organizational chart of the hotel, with the first names and functions of every employee. Over each name was a small photograph, almost all of them showed smiling young people in red polo shirts, most of the women had long hair, many of them were blond. One face was familiar to Hubert: JILL, HEAD OF ENTERTAINMENT, it said under the picture. Gillian’s face looked a little different from before, but that might just be the photo. He looked around, as though he’d been doing something forbidden, and quickly left the hotel.

He walked down a narrow footpath along the river and thought of his last meeting with Gillian, and how he had thrown her out of his studio.

At the end of his walk, he went briefly into the cultural center to fetch his swimming trunks. He had no plan to get in touch with Gillian, but he was drawn back to the hotel. In the pool there were a few people copying exercises demonstrated by a young man on the poolside. Hubert went into the sauna, but the heat was soon too much for him. When he returned to the pool, it was full of shouting children. He watched them for a while, then went to the changing room. All the time he was thinking of Gillian, and preparing an account for what had happened then. As he walked past reception, he stopped on impulse and asked about her. The woman at the desk asked him for his name and made a quick phone call.

She’s just on her way, she said.

Hubert sat down in his old leather armchair in the lobby.

Five minutes later, Gillian was standing in front of him. He pushed himself up with both hands, and for a moment they stood uncertainly facing each other. Gillian’s face looked somehow incoherent, she had slight scarring, like someone with bad acne in childhood, and her nose looked different, it seemed cruder, a little puffy.

She smiled, kissed Hubert on the cheek, and asked him if he wanted to have a drink.

Do you have time? he asked.

She nodded and said the preseason was pretty quiet. Come on, let’s go outside.

She led him across the hall. She was wearing a red polo shirt with the hotel logo on it, and tight white pants.

The terrace was at the back of the hotel and gave onto the grounds. Only one of the tables was occupied, by two old couples sitting together over beer and cards. Gillian sat down and waved to the waiter. She ordered a white wine spritzer. Hubert followed suit. While waiting for their drinks, neither of them spoke.

Gillian raised her glass, smiled, and said I go by Jill here, it’s easier for people to say.

Again, neither of them spoke.

It seems to me I have every reason to be angry, she then said, smiling again.

Hubert nodded and was a little surprised at his willingness to accept the blame.

How did you find me? Did Arno say something?

Hubert said it had been pure chance, he had seen her picture on the hotel notice board. I’m doing another exhibition at the cultural center.

I know, said Jill. I saw the article in the paper, though it didn’t tell me much.

Me either, said Hubert. It’s all so long ago, I can hardly remember.

I suppose it was my idea to have you back, said Jill. I’m on the committee that runs the cultural center. My last connection to the arts.

Why didn’t you get in touch? he asked.

Jill made a face. You made it pretty clear last time that you weren’t interested in me.

My wife left me, said Hubert.

Jill didn’t respond and asked instead what he was planning to show. Hubert shrugged. He laughed uncertainly. Suddenly Jill stood up, finished her spritzer, and said she had to go back to work.

Come and have dinner sometime. Are you free on Sunday?

I’m always free, he said.

Then come and meet me here at six.

She bent down, kissed him on the cheek, and disappeared.

There was a knock on the door, Hubert was still in bed. It’s me, said Arno, can we talk?

I’ll come down, said Hubert.

He waited for the footfall of the director to disappear, then he went to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, he was standing in front of Arno’s desk like a naughty pupil told to see the principal. Do you need anything? asked Arno. Is there some way I can help …

Hubert lied that he had an idea but wasn’t able to say anything specific about it.

We’re under a certain amount of pressure here, said Arno, some local politicians resent us, and we need proof that we’re doing good work. It’s important that the show be a success.

I’ll keep you posted, said Hubert

Just do something, said Arno. Anything, so long as we don’t have bare walls in three weeks.

Hubert breakfasted in the hotel. Then he got the password for the WLAN and Googled Gillian’s name. A couple hundred mentions came up, but almost all of them seemed to be about her former work in TV. When he put Jill for Gillian, there were fewer than a dozen results, and they all had to do with her work in the vacation club.

The opening of the graduation show at the art college was scheduled for Friday. Hubert had promised Nina and the others he would be there, but he was just on his way out of the cultural center when he saw on the door a large black poster with Carta Alba/Carte Blanche on it, his name, and the dates of the show. The opening was in exactly three weeks, on June 25. He decided not to drive down into the valley and instead went to the hotel and sat in the lobby. He wrote Nina an apologetic e-mail. He was under pressure, didn’t know what to do, couldn’t get away. He promised to come down in the next week or two to take a look at her work.

When he drove down to the village later on to buy food, he saw the poster for his exhibition in some of the shop windows. It felt as though Arno was making fun of him. He spent the evening in the hotel lobby, aimlessly surfing the Web.

On Saturday morning, Hubert called Astrid. She asked how he was doing and whether the show was coming together. He replied evasively. They talked about a few practical matters, then Astrid asked if she and Lukas should come up and see him. Maybe Rolf would come too. Hubert said it wasn’t a good time, he needed to concentrate on what he was doing. Then he asked to talk to Lukas and asked him what he was doing, but the boy was pretty monosyllabic and soon hung up.

All Sunday Hubert was nervous. He had crazy ideas about what he might do for the show, he thought about unpacking his old slides, projecting them on the walls or magnifying them, the whole series as a sort of illustrated romance. He could cut bits out of them, blow up certain details till they became unrecognizable. Or take pictures of himself, naked or clothed, doing the same things he had painted the women doing, as an ironic commentary on his earlier exhibition. Or he could do the thing he thought about doing before, make portraits of hotel guests. Or he could start a herbarium, paint with natural materials, make a stone circle, some reference to the power places. He even briefly considered a performance, though that really wasn’t his thing. None of it interested him.

In the afternoon, he took himself to the hotel spa. At six he asked at reception for Jill. He was told she would be on her way, but it was another ten minutes before she appeared in the lobby.

We can take my car, she said, leaving the hotel almost at a run.

She had a red Twingo, the backseat was a jumble of papers and clothes. Jill drove fast up the narrow road and over the new bridge.

Don’t you live in the village, then? asked Hubert.

Just outside, said Jill, it’s not far.

Five minutes later, she drew up outside a 1950s vacation house.

It’s not a thing of beauty, she said, but it belongs to my parents, so there’s no rent to pay.

How long have you been living here? asked Hubert.

Six years. I moved up here right after the accident.

Hubert said he had read something about that in a magazine, what had happened.

Jill climbed out. While they were still standing in front of the house, she explained rapidly that her husband had been drunk, had hit a deer, and died.

I was pretty badly hurt. My nose was more or less gone, but they built me another one that’s almost the same. It took over three years and lots of operations before it looked all right. Come in. Do you want a tour?

She showed him around and talked about the oil-fired central heating that would have to be replaced sometime, and the fact that they could do a roof conversion if they ever needed more space. The décor looked impersonal, perhaps because a lot of the furniture was old and didn’t really belong, as though its useful life had been spent somewhere else, and it was here in semiretirement. On the walls were a couple of calendar photos of Engadin landscapes, which Jill certainly wouldn’t have chosen. The magnificent landscape outside reappeared inside, in smaller, faded versions. On the dining table was a thick mustard yellow cloth, with a wrought iron ashtray on it. The air smelled of cold cigarette smoke.

They sat at a little granite table in the garden, in the middle of a flower meadow ringed by tall shrubbery. The sun hadn’t gone yet, but the light was changing, and large flecks of shade were wandering over the facing slopes.

I get properly snowed in here sometimes, said Jill. I’ve more or less got used to the mountains, but the winters are very long here.

How on earth did you wind up doing this vacation club thing? asked Hubert.

I had to do something, said Jill. I couldn’t go back in front of the camera, and I didn’t want to retreat into editorial. I came here because I wanted to recuperate for a while, then I saw a job ad and applied. At first I was working with children. The good thing is that ninety-nine percent of our guests are from Germany. No one recognized me. My boss was the only one who knew I’d once worked in TV. I told everyone who wanted to hear about it about the accident, and after that people no longer asked. Anyway, my nose kept looking better after each operation. Once I had settled, there was an opening in events, and my boss offered me the job.

And what do you do there? asked Hubert.

We put on an event every other evening, plays, musicals, sing-alongs. I’m also responsible for sports and fitness, I draw up schedules, look after my team. And I’m very often out with guests, we go on hikes together, I play games with them, sometimes do a little bit of acting. I just about have enough talent for the kind of things we put on. Tomorrow we’re doing Love Between Valley and Peak, you can come if you like, I’ll save you a seat. I’m playing the farmer’s ugly daughter.

Hubert stared at Jill. She looked back, unabashed.

The play wasn’t as silly as it sounded, she said, at any rate it was perfect for the guests. And she got a kick out of being onstage again. It was only here that I realized how heartily sick I was of the arts scene in the city.

She asked Hubert what he had done in all that time. He talked about his teaching job and the fact that he had almost stopped painting. I don’t know why that is, he said. Maybe I’ve just seen too much bad art, my own included.

By now the sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and the shadows were creeping up the slopes.

I’m cold, said Jill, shall we go inside?

Hubert followed her into the house and then into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and looked uncertainly at what little it contained. I’m afraid I haven’t bought anything wonderful, she said. What do you feel like eating?

Perhaps I just need to reconcile myself to the fact that people want pictures to hang on their walls, said Hubert, and watched as Jill washed lettuce and cut a carrot in slivers. It’s not a crime. But I think I’d rather work on a building site or wait tables than make commercial art.

Stay here, said Jill, I can make inquiries at the hotel. You could offer drawing classes to the guests, I’m sure that would go down well. She was facing away from him, and for a moment he thought she meant it. She turned and passed him the salad bowl with a grin.

During the meal, Jill talked about the club, and meetings with hotel guests, personnel difficulties, and the one big family they were.

When I began here, I looked so horrible, I’m surprised they gave me a job at all. Hang on.

She brought out another bottle of wine and went over to a small desk by the window, opened a drawer, and pulled out a cardboard folder that she laid in front of Hubert. She sat down beside him and opened the folder. He saw a photograph in which she looked more or less as he saw her now. She went on, and from page to page her face changed. It looked as though it was crumbling, even though it was always the same face. Sometimes Hubert clutched Jill’s hand and asked her to go back one. Then there was a picture of Jill’s nose, which looked like a large red potato, and another in which her whole face was cut and bloody. It was so swollen around the eyes that he could hardly see them, and everywhere there were patches of raw flesh. There was no nose.

That’s what I looked like after the accident, said Jill. They took the photos in the hospital.

Hubert turned away. It wasn’t the last picture, but Jill dwelled on it for a long time before turning the page. The next was a portrait of her as she was at the time Hubert had met her. Her face had an expression of vulnerability, as though she sensed what was in store for it. But it was only when he saw the next picture that he realized where these pictures came from. Jill was sitting naked on a chair in his studio, her hands in her lap, a pose he had cribbed from Edvard Munch. These were the pictures he had taken then. They were better than he had thought at the time. He remembered accusing Jill of not being there and of being stilted. He picked up the rest of the pictures, laid them on the table side by side, and stood up so he was able to see them all together. A few were shots of her upper body, or her face.

Do you like them? she asked.

Hubert suddenly remembered her provocative question to him when she had taken her clothes off. Do you like what you see, then?

Yes, he said. Presumably something could have been done with these.

He also spread out the photos of Jill’s injured face.

They have more to do with one another than you might think, she said. If my husband hadn’t seen these shots of yours, the accident wouldn’t have happened.

She refilled their glasses and lit a cigarette. That’s a frightening thought, isn’t it, that you’re capable of killing someone with your art.

He put the photographs on the table into two piles: the nude shots and the injured faces.

Do you want me to exhibit these?

I don’t know, said Jill. You’re the artist.

She had been smoking one cigarette after the other, now clouds of smoke hung under the low ceiling. Hubert wanted to open a window, but when he stood up he almost overbalanced and had to grab hold of Jill’s chair. She stood up as well, and the chair fell over. They held each other.

Come, she said. He looked in her eyes, but their look was expressionless. It was chilly in the bedroom and smelled of wood and old smoke.

When Hubert awoke, he felt giddy, but at least he didn’t have a headache. He was dressed. Next to him lay Jill, apparently asleep. She was wearing a short silk nightdress, which had ridden up a little. He stroked her, felt her coming around, though she didn’t move. After a time she turned and looked at Hubert.

What time is it?

Without answering, he laid his hand on her stomach and went on stroking her. Jill smiled. When he slipped his hand down between her legs, she gripped it tight.

Draw me.

Hubert groaned.

There’s a pad and pencils on my desk downstairs, she said.

He groaned again, got up, and went downstairs. When he came back, she was undressed. She was lying on her stomach, her head pillowed on her crossed arms.

Hubert sat on a chair and drew her. As soon as he stopped, Jill changed position, and he turned the page and started a new sketch. She lay on her side; with her upper body raised; kneeling, hands behind her back; standing with folded arms by the window; sitting on a chair, legs apart, hands on her knees.

After he had done about twenty drawings, Jill went up to him and propped her hands on her hips. Let’s see what you’ve done.

Hold that, he said and sat on the bed to go on drawing.

Turn around.

He made a couple more drawings until Jill said she was hungry and had to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette. They ate breakfast in the sunshine outside.

Well, that seemed to work all right, said Jill.

Hubert shook his head. Those were just finger exercises.

Jill leafed through the pad on the table in front of them.

I like your drawings.

Of course I can knock out a couple of nudes, said Hubert, but that doesn’t prove anything.

I think I expected to be told something about myself from your pictures, said Jill, but then I saw you didn’t see me at all. That’s what made me undress. The notion that a human being should be something sealed off like a table or a chair is nonsense. Eventually I was reconciled to the thought that I didn’t really exist.

She went on leafing through the drawings.

The thing about the drawing lessons here, by the way, I meant that. They don’t need to be life classes. If you’re going to be spending more time here. You’d be paid for it, maybe it would inspire you.

Hubert was pushing buttons on his phone. There’s no reception here either, he said.

He spent the next several days driving around the area, even though he felt tired and unwell. He took photographs of the landscape that he knew he would never use. It was pleasant and warm. Sometimes he parked his car and walked some way up a slope, but he never went very far. When he ran into Arno, Arno always looked at him reproachfully. Once, Hubert asked him when the other artists were arriving. Arno shrugged and said they were delayed, he had no exact information.

On Thursday Hubert took the train down into the valley and spent the weekend in the city without getting in touch with Nina or Astrid, or taking in the diploma exhibition. Arno tried to speak with him once or twice, but each time Hubert refused the call. Instead, he called Jill and made a date for Saturday.

This time they went to a restaurant in the village. In the car, Jill asked Hubert where he had been, Arno had been desperately looking for him. We have the events committee tomorrow afternoon. He’s afraid you won’t be ready in time. It’s in less than two weeks. He’s thinking of trying to bring in someone else instead at short notice. Hubert didn’t say anything.

After dinner, Jill quite naturally drove back to her house. They split a bottle of wine and talked about the past six years. At midnight Jill asked if Hubert wanted to stay the night. Again, they slept in the same bed.

When Hubert awoke, Jill was already up, and he could smell coffee. Over breakfast she said she had to get going, but he didn’t have to hurry. Just call Arno.

Hubert didn’t feel like going to the cultural center and getting leaned on, so instead he showered and then wandered farther on up the road out of the village. It climbed a little more, and wound among meadows with large rocks lying on them, and then it went down, and he arrived in a thin forest. The air was cool and damp and resinous and ever so slightly smoky. Sunbeams fell through the trees and cast blurred patterns on the forest floor. He sat on a thick tree trunk by the side of the road and listened to the birds. He could hear the rushing of the Inn down below. He remembered walks he had gone on with his parents, vacation weeks in the mountains, endless days spent building dams over mountain streams, playing hide-and-seek in the forest, making campfires and cooking sausages. Suddenly he heard a buzzing sound. He looked down at his cell and saw he had five text messages. Three were from Arno, who wrote that there was an important meeting today, and would Hubert get in touch, urgently. The fourth was from Astrid, who asked how he was doing. She was planning on coming to the opening. Nina had written some nonsense. Hubert wiped everything and put the phone back in his pocket.

He walked back to Jill’s house, did the dishes, and picked a bunch of wildflowers from the garden. He couldn’t find a vase, so he used a big beer glass. Then he looked around the house once more. The books on Jill’s shelves were surely mostly her parents’. Everywhere in the house lay piles of magazines and fashion papers, in the living room next to the sofa was a stereo, beside it a little shelf with a couple dozen CDs. Hubert sat down at Jill’s desk and opened a drawer. He leafed through her old calendars, which he found right at the back. Most of the entries seemed to be about her work, plus a few massage or pedicure appointments, and sometimes a name without time or comment. Mostly they were women’s names, and they came around fairly regularly.

It was just two o’clock. Hubert went back out into the garden. He took a piece of wood from the pile next to the door, sat down at the granite table, and started whittling away at it with his pocket knife. He didn’t carve a shape, but first took off the bark, then cut the wood patiently into thin strips. As a boy he had often whiled away the hours like this, had pulled one thread after another from a piece of rough cloth, or picked away at a rope until there were just thin fibers left, broken up a blossom or a fir twig into its constituent parts, hatched and crosshatched a piece of paper with pencil till it made a shiny even surface. Suddenly he saw the exhibition he wanted to put on: white steles distributed around a room, and on them the remnants of such labors, a pile of thread, hemp fibers, blossoms. Or, better, he would leave the steles empty, and the materials would lie beside them on the floor, as though rejected, or as though the objects had dissolved of their own accord. He went into the house, got a small plastic bag from the kitchen, and put in the wood shavings and the rest of the log.

He made his way back to the cultural center. He was pretty sure that Arno would be underwhelmed by his idea, but he didn’t care. It had sprung organically from the situation in which he found himself and was the logical continuation of his earlier work. Whereas he had always been at pains to arrest time, now for the first time it would be incorporated into his work. He doubted that anyone would notice, but the main thing was that it convinced him.

In the cultural center, he headed straight to Arno to tell him the good news, but he wasn’t in his office. Presumably the committee meeting was in progress where they were talking about the exhibition. He thought of calling him, but he liked the idea of the committee racking their brains over something while he had already solved their problem for them. He would tell Jill about his project tonight, that was plenty early enough.

He drove down into the village to buy the things he needed, a rope, soft pencils, a few coarsely woven red place mats that would be easy to pull apart. Then he drove back to the cultural center and climbed up to the attic. The roof wasn’t insulated and it was warm in the long space, and smelled of dust and old junk. There were all kinds of things standing around, and after looking for a while, Hubert found a dozen white steles. They were a little tall to be ideal. He carted six of them down to the ground floor and carried them into the kitchen and washed them with warm water and soap. They were full of spiderwebs, and it took a long time to get them more or less clean. Then he stood them up in the entrance hall and tried out what their best positions were. In the end, he decided to stand them all in a row.

Jill was waiting in the hotel lobby.

No sooner had they sat down than Jill said she had some good news for Hubert. And I’ve got some for you, he said. You start.

We’ve found someone to stand in for you, said Jill, a young woman artist from Germany who was going to come up anyway. Thea Genser, perhaps you know her? Arno talked to her on the phone a couple of days ago, now she’s coming a little earlier than planned and bringing a series with her that she’s completed recently.

Hubert shook his head and smiled, that wouldn’t be necessary, he had had an idea himself.

When? asked Jill.

Hubert told her of his plan.

But we’ve committed to Thea now, said Jill. She’s been here before too.

You could at least have spoken to me, said Hubert.

Arno was trying to reach you all this time, said Jill, but you kept ignoring him. I’ll try and have a word with him.

The dining room was starting to empty when a young man joined them. When he had finished his plate of hors d’oeuvres and went up to the buffet, Jill explained that it was part of the concept of the vacation club that no one was to sit alone. Hubert wouldn’t have minded talking to her quietly a little longer, but now the young man cut in and told them about a hike he’d been on. Twelve hundred meters, up and down, he said. Jill praised his fitness. When she got up to get her dessert, she laid her hand briefly on his shoulder. Hubert followed her to the buffet, but only to get a cup of coffee.

Who the hell is that? he asked. Is there something going on between the two of you?

It’s part of the job, explained Jill. It’s called talking to the guests.

What if the guest gets on your wick? asked Hubert.

No sooner had Jill finished her apple strudel than she said she had to get changed and made up for her performance.

Will we meet at the bar later?

After she was gone, the young man told Hubert the whole story of his hike again, as though he hadn’t heard it already. Hubert got up and went over to the bar.

There were a few couples on sofas and armchairs by the windows, in their midst stood a hotel employee asking questions in a broad Frankish accent. It seemed to be a kind of quiz, whoever knew the answer had to call out a word, Hubert didn’t understand it.

He went outside for a stroll in the grounds. When he came back, the doors to the theater were open, he sat as far away from the two dozen or so hotel guests who were waiting for the show to begin. The young man from dinner was sitting in the front row.

The play was banal enough, but for all that Hubert sometimes had to laugh. The other members of the audience seemed to entertain no reservations. In one scene the beautiful daughter emptied a full chamber pot over the ugly sister’s dress. Jill had to take off her dirndl and stand there onstage in old-fashioned underwear, which brought her a separate little round of applause. She wasn’t especially good, though better than the others, and she clearly enjoyed it. At the end, even the ugly daughter got her man, Toni, a yokel in lederhosen. To tumultuous applause the cast bowed, and the lights came on.

Hubert waited at the bar, but instead of Jill there was Arno suddenly in front of him. He was carrying a roll of paper under his arm. Jill called me, he said.

I’ve got an idea for the exhibition, said Hubert.

I’m sorry, but it’s too late, said Arno. Hubert thought he could detect some schadenfreude in his voice. I’ve covered over all the posters. He unrolled one of the pale blue posters he was carrying. Thea Genser, Durch Wasser/Through Water.

She takes pictures of empty swimming pools in winter, said Arno, it’s outstanding work.

I don’t understand the title, said Hubert. He ordered another beer and watched Jill and the young man from dinner in animated conversation. Arno said he had to go on. Hubert took his glass and went over to Jill, who was just laughing heartily.

Armin was suggesting I always wore underwear like that.

He can’t actually be that stupid, said Hubert.

They were both silent.

I think he wants to get inside your pants himself, said Hubert.

Excuse me, said Jill to Armin.

She took Hubert by the arm and walked him over to the door.

Will you please stop insulting our guests, she said. I think it’s best you go home.

I’m not at home here, he said and emptied his glass.

Jill took it from him and said, if he liked, he could spend the night at her house.

When Hubert woke up, Jill was standing by the window, opening the curtains. The sun was shining. Jill went to him and sat on the edge of the bed.

Sleep well?

What time did you get home? he asked.

Not so late that I had trouble getting up in the morning. If you want to have breakfast with me, you’d better get a move on.

After Jill had gone off to work, Hubert looked up his e-mails on her computer and answered the most urgent ones. Although he had been pretty drunk the night before, he had taken the car. Now he walked to the cultural center, he was in no particular hurry.

In front of the building was an old minivan with German plates. A young woman was carrying a big wooden crate inside. Hubert held the door open for her. Only then did he notice the light blue poster that had been plastered over the larger, black one, giving the appearance of a window in a dark room. The steles he had set up yesterday in the entrance hall were parked in a corner, on the floor was a pile of aluminum frames in bubble wrap. The young woman had been in one of the guest rooms, and shortly after she came back. She walked up to Hubert and held out her hand. Hi, I’m Thea. Hubert, he said. Oh, she said. Well, I hope you don’t mind that I’m having the exhibition here now. He shrugged and grabbed one of the steles and carried it up to his room.

He spent the rest of the day pulling single threads out of the place mats, until there were just enough left for one to guess the original shape and size. Music started playing in the building, punctuated by the unctuous voice of a radio announcer. Hubert went into the entrance hall, where Thea was just unpacking her pictures and propping them against the wall. On the floor among the packing materials was a tinny little transistor radio. He asked her if she’d mind switching it off.

No problem, she said.

I can’t work with that sort of noise going on, Hubert said tetchily.

No problem, repeated Thea. I had no idea you were still around.

In the evening, Hubert went for a walk. He followed the road to Jill’s house. Behind him he heard a car. Only when it pulled up alongside him did he realize it was Jill. She wound down the window and asked if he was going somewhere.

It was cold in the house. Jill hadn’t turned on any lights. The blue sky through the windows reminded Hubert of the poster for Thea’s show. Jill sat down with him and lit a cigarette.

What sort of farce was that?

You mean the play yesterday? asked Jill. That’s just for fun, you mustn’t take it seriously.

I mean the whole thing, said Hubert. The invitation to the cultural center, and then your taking the exhibition away from me in the eleventh hour, in favor of a girl who’s barely got her diploma. And you in this ridiculous hotel, you can’t mean it. That’s not you.

Maybe not, said Jill, but life here is less of a strain. Our guests like to have a bit of fun, that’s what they’re paying for, and when they get it, they’re grateful and satisfied.

They sat facing each other in silence.

To begin with, I took an ironic view of everything here, said Jill finally, but over time I got to be really fond of the people. You’d be surprised at who comes here for vacations.

Hubert made to speak, but Jill cut him off.

I think I wanted to show you that. Because of the way you cut me down to size and said I wasn’t there. She stood up and made an actorish bow to him, and smiled. Well? Do you like what you see?

The last remaining days before the opening Hubert worked incessantly. He had set out the steles in his room. On one he put the rest of the log he had whittled, and at its foot the whittlings, on the next the frayed place mats, and on the ground the red threads he had pulled out. Over one stele he looped the picked-at rope. He started covering some pieces of paper with pencil hatchings till gleaming black surfaces resulted, where the individual lines were no longer visible. Sometimes the paper was rubbed through or got warped in the course of the work, but he didn’t mind.

Thea spent days over the hanging of her pictures. Each time Hubert left his room, he found her standing in the exhibition space with a framed picture in her hand or on the floor at her feet. In the evening, Hubert left the cultural center and drove into the village to eat in a restaurant there. Then he would look up his e-mails. Astrid wrote that she was coming to the opening with Lukas and Rolf, perhaps he could reserve them a room in a nice hotel. Nina similarly said she would be coming for the opening, and bringing a couple of friends. He deleted the e-mails without answering them, he had to concentrate on his work.

He only went into the kitchen in the morning, to fix coffee. He no longer appeared at the hotel. What little he needed he bought in the village store. Some days he ate nothing but salted peanuts, until his mouth was burning with them, and drank copious amounts of coffee. He slept badly and had wild dreams from which he often woke bathed in sweat. Sometimes he had the feeling that everything he perceived stood in some relation to his slow work of destruction, the way the light crept over the floor, the rushing of the river audible inside, the cries of the children in the hotel grounds. He tore a piece out of an old shirt and then used a needle to pick thread after thread out of it. The weave was so fine that he needed the lens of his slide projector as a magnifying glass. After he had spent hours working, he pushed everything aside, only to begin right away on the next task. For many hours on end he was unaware of time passing.