All Whom I Have Loved

45

The following day we went back to the coffeehouse to see if anyone had bought a painting. As it turned out, just one had been sold: Father's admirer, Karl Proper, had left his gold watch with the proprietor, promising to bring the money within a few days. The press summed up the exhibit in two words: Decadent Art. Father was furious and got drunk, shouting obscenities at the people sitting there. Victor and his friends barely managed to pull him outside. I clearly remember the complete havoc of this scene — it was the first time I had seen Father totally drunk. Victor never left his side, talking to him all the while. “Don't worry, I have enough money to put up seven such exhibitions. I'll buy the pictures and send them to France. In France, they still know real art when they see it.” But Father did not calm down. Not even when he returned home did his rage abate.

Cold, gray days had come. Father stopped painting and slept for most of the day. I would go to his room almost hourly to look in on him. In the afternoon he would wake up and ask, “Where's Victor?” Victor would come in the afternoons and take us out to the country. Perhaps he thought that his being there would have a calming effect on Father, but of course in the country there's no good cognac, so we would come straight back to the city to stock up on a few bottles.

“I once loved the country,” said Father distractedly.

“And now?”

“I find the quiet hard to take.”

In moments of clarity, Father would embrace Victor and say, “What do you need this trouble for?”

There were some art critics, mostly Jews, who no longer wrote for the newspapers. They would come to see Father. But Father was not that welcoming, because he lumped all art critics together. Eventually people stopped visiting; only Victor came. Father would read the newspapers and say, “Here they are.”

“They make no impression on me at all.” Victor dismissed them lightly.

“Now they're telling us what to think.”

“Telling who?”

Victor talked to Father softly, persuading and promising, stuffing banknotes into his pockets. One evening Victor came by with five of his friends and announced that the Pissarro Foundation's Committee for Visual Art had decided to award Father its annual prize. Victor hung a gold medallion around Father's neck as the five friends clapped. Father must have guessed that this was Victor's invention, but he was still happy. He drank, told jokes, and did not take the medallion off his neck the entire evening.

The next day Father did not get up to paint as I had expected, but slept until the afternoon. When he got up he asked, “Where's Victor?”

And Victor did come. Father asked if there'd been any interest in the exhibit. Victor told him that seven paintings had been sold so far and that there was considerable interest. Father looked dubious, but Victor put his hand on his heart. “I swear to God.”

Then they sat in the living room, and Father suddenly asked about the general. Victor told him the story right from the beginning.

The general's wife, Victor's aunt, had been very unhappy when he converted to Judaism, but she was convinced that it was a passing whim. The poor woman could never have imagined that he would grow a beard and sidelocks, and that he would rise early every morning to go to the synagogue to pray. When she saw he was serious she threatened to leave the house, but eventually she gave in to his folly in the hope that one day he would revert to what he had been. His sudden death changed her, and she began to believe that his ancestors must have been Jews who were forcibly converted. She told not a soul of this conviction, except for Victor. Before her death she bequeathed all her property to him and asked Victor to turn the house, or at least one of its wings, into a museum, so that Jews could come and see how even famous generals can be drawn to the Jewish faith. The poor woman did not understand that the Jews themselves no longer wanted to live as Jews, and that nothing would help.

I loved listening to Victor speak about the general. A faint smile would play about his round cheeks. Father asked lots of questions, but Victor apologized bashfully, saying that he hadn't spoken with them all that much; his aunt had been a private woman and the general a stern man.

One morning little Tina came by and asked if Father was at home.

“He's sleeping,” I whispered to her.

She immediately retreated to the doorway, apologizing. From sheer embarrassment I did not ask her to stay. The few encounters I'd had with her had instilled within me a closeness to her. Father, who was confused and angry at the time, had forgotten her, but I had not.