Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

The Copyist by Paul Lascaux, Stefan Slupetzky, Anke Gebert, Richard Lifka, Thomas Przybilka, & Christoph Spielberg

The idea for the following tale originated with Thomas Przybilka, head of the prize jury for the German Crime Writer’s Association. Asked to contribute a tale to a crime calendar, he proposed a “relay” story, in which each member of the prize jury (all notable fiction writers) would write a scene and pass the baton to the next member. Paul Lascaux led with a flexible scenario involving a Renoir painting, which allowed those who followed creative scope.

The sign on the front of the otherwise unprepossessing residence in a suburb of Grechtenweil boasted gold letters on black enamel and spelled out Winfred Kaltendorf. And under the name stood: Painter, Portraitist,Copier. The order ought to have been backwards, of course, when viewed from the standpoint of the activity that brought in Kaltendorf’s meager income. Indeed, a new commission had just arrived. The Grechtenweil Boating Club wanted a copy of Auguste Renoir’s Oarsman’s Breakfast for its clubhouse. Two thousand euros. To be delivered in one month, in time for the club’s anniversary celebration.

Winfred sighed gustily, startling the gray-and-white cat on the window sill out of her afternoon nap. The fee would cover the rent on his little house and the canvas and painting supplies he needed, but the few cents left over for liquor after he had paid the grocery bill scarcely rewarded the work of copying the Renoir. And besides: What did the boating club want with a copy when it could have a genuine Kaltendorf? Winfred longed to show the world that his own skills were every bit the equal of the great masters. He was only willing to concede a point or two on the issue of originality. And on the fact that he would never enjoy a place in the annals of art history; that much was clear.

He had already painted the entire background of the Oarsman. Only the painting’s figures and their heads were missing. Winfred bent over the local paper — or, to be more precise, over the page with the death notices. He had never had any patience with the sanctimonious sayings usually found there: “called to his last rest”; “torn abruptly from life.” Kicked the bucket; bit the dust; pushing up daisies; shuffled off this mortal coil: That’s the way Kaltendorf would have written death notices. And then that expressionless black-and-white photo of Mareike Koller, whose face Winfred was now painting carefully under the brim of the straw hat of the young woman leaning casually on the railing in the back of Oarsman’s Breakfast. The shadow cast by the hat was a blessing; it hid her lifeless eyes. Kaltendorf hadn’t had a chance to shoot his own photo of Mareike after the young woman came racing around the blind curve and steered her car over the cliff. He’d barely had time to get the warning signs that he’d used to block off the road stowed safely away in the trunk of his car before the sirens were audible. Someone in that nearby house must have noticed the accident. Faster, at any rate, than Mareike had noticed what she’d done when her car ruthlessly swept his favorite cat from the street. It was a stiff, inanimate face that stared up at him from the painting. Kaltendorf had to admit that this was not yet his masterpiece.

It’s a funny thing about art. The dramatist Johann Nestroy once said, “It’s only art when you can’t do it yourself. Because if you can, there’s nothing magical about it.” Well now, Winfred Kaltendorf could wield a paintbrush with the best of them — at least purely from the point of view of technique. But solid technique alone doesn’t make a genius, as he had been forced to admit to himself in his sorrowful but thankfully rare moments of self-understanding. His pictures just didn’t breathe, they didn’t live; they were missing a certain quality that separates the painter-for-a-living from the artist who is truly called to greatness.

Now, however, he had found it. The element that had been missing from his vocation, the salt in the bread of his creative prowess. He was sure of it... With a lightly furrowed brow he bent over and studied the portly man in the photo he had wedged into the lower corner of the easel. It was a good photo this time, even if it was a bit underexposed. Just like the mind of the man it depicted, thought Winfred, and smiled maliciously, in spite of himself. The photo showed Erich Pollack, owner of a small gallery in downtown Grechtenweil. An arrogant philistine who couldn’t distinguish a Rembrandt from a dirty spot on the wallpaper. “My dear Mr. Kaltendorf,” he’d said to Winfred when the latter had showed him his work, “You’re not exactly Van Gogh, are you now...?”

Kaltendorf began to copy Pollack’s face onto the canvas with painstaking attention to detail. He placed it on the body of a young man who was bending over a girl in the right side of the picture. “Perfect,” he purred to himself, comparing his work with the photograph. “Just perfect. And nobody can see that his ear’s been cut off...” There comes a time, you see, when a man just has to defend his honor. Such as when he’s compared with a lunatic Dutchman. The photo didn’t reveal how much more had been severed from the head than just the right ear — namely, the entire body. But that had no meaning at all from the spatial-conceptual point of view: Pollack’s “mortal coil” fit masterfully in Renoir’s composition.

Maybe Nestroy hadn’t been right, after all. Winfred’s mother had always said that art came from skill. As Winfred painted the portrait of the girl sitting at the table on the right side of the picture, he was suddenly very sure that his mother (God rest her soul) had been right, as she always was. Because he was painting as he’d never painted before!

It was Amelie’s face that came to life on the girl, looking up so expectantly at the man who was now wearing Pollack’s visage. And for this portrait, for the first time in his life, he didn’t need a photo or a drawing, not even the real Amelie as a model. Like a great pianist, who only needs to hear a melody once to be able to play it from memory, even to rearrange it or improvise on it, Winfred now made Amelie beautiful — more beautiful, perhaps, than she had really been. He regretted that he only had room for her face and her slim throat. He would have liked to immortalize her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs, and the dark triangle above them. He closed his eyes, remembering every detail. But the template forced upon him by Oarsman’s Breakfast did not allow him more. He painted like a man possessed. And isn’t possession one of the signs of a true artist? Winfred closed his eyes and saw Amelie, and then opened them and painted Amelie.

She had been his model. But not just a model, like all her predecessors. No, she was supposed to be more than that. His muse, at the very least. But now she was dead. And Winfred was creating her memorial. Painting like crazy, just the way he’d done when Amelie sat in his studio, naked and provocative. He’d studied her, painted, studied her again. He’d wanted to touch her, had used every opportunity at his disposal, arranging her in poses, composing her, you could say, his hands on her as often as possible. Amelie had let it happen and had laughed her carefree laugh. Until the day when Kaltendorf took hold of her and didn’t let go. And then Amelie abruptly pushed him away. And said things like “old” and “fat.” And asked him what made him imagine... And laughed, a dirty laugh that Winfred had never heard from her before. Well, that was it for Winfred Kaltendorf! And for Amelie. After all, she was only a college student; whatever had made her think...? He could have had any of the models he’d had before her, all of them, if he’d wanted them. But Winfred had desired only Amelie, and she hadn’t had the sense to appreciate it. “The most despicable women are the ones who lure a man and then push him away,” his mother had said once, and she’d been right, she always was.

Kaltendorf closed his eyes and saw Amelie. Her face hadn’t been all that pretty in her last moments, it’s true. He opened his eyes and saw Amelie on the painting — as beautiful as if she were still alive. He owed this masterful painting to his great skill — and just a little to her.

Winfred Kaltendorf walked heavily into his studio, sat down on the wobbly stool, and rested his face in his damp, earth-encrusted hands. He wasn’t used to physical work; it had exhausted him, every bone in his body ached and he gasped for breath. It’d been a close call, but he’d managed it.

It was all the fault of that arrogant snoop. He’d claimed to be interested in buying Winfred’s original paintings, had praised them, praised them so highly that Winfred allowed himself to be blinded: finally someone who appreciated him as an artist, understood his art! He took his hands away from his face and looked over at his copy of the Renoir, and then at the rocking chair that stood next to his easel. His own stupid vanity and the cheap rot-gut had made him careless. Thank God he had turned around one more time on his way out to the shed to get more paintings. There the fellow stood, in front of his easel, throwing back the sheet under which Winfred had hid Oarsman’s Breakfast. But even that might have been bearable if the photo of the earless Pollack hadn’t still been wedged into the corner of the easel.

A slight groan escaped the painter’s lips as he stood up. His back hurt and his arms felt like lead. But there was nothing he could do about that, there was work to be done! He pulled the stool over to the picture and wiped his hands on his brown corduroy trousers. Lovingly he regarded his “oarsmen”: Koller, Pollack, and Amelie. Amelie! In front of her, a muscular man, still headless, sat backwards on his chair. Winfred’s eyes slid over to the right, toward the rocking chair, and took in the pale face. Precisely. It was just right. He mixed the facial color on his palette and selected a mid-sized cat’s tongue brush of red marten hair. He began with the throat, applying the ground color, and noticed that a blister was developing between his thumb and forefinger, a blister that hindered his brush strokes. That heavy spade. Onward! he told himself sternly. The portrait had to be finished before dawn. And filling in the hole in the garden would take some time, too. He positioned the brush anew, and then paused again. Should I make a photo of him after all? he asked himself, and then shook his head. No, he’d never have an opportunity like this again. Slowly, the throat and head took on form, and once again he was a man possessed. He forgot the pain, forgot the world around him. In a trance he mixed color, compared, corrected, added shadows. It was nearly three when he let the palette drop, stood, stretched, and took a step back to observe. Perfect — faithful to the original, natural, and full of life.

Ramirez Arnaldo Lainez sat in the lounge of the Hotel Husa Via Romana in Saragossa. His cellphone was strategically placed on the low table next to his armchair. Content with himself and the world, he ordered another glass of Rioja from the bar and leafed through the newsletter of the Grechtenweil Boating Club, which he had subscribed to since being stranded in southern Europe years ago, when he was just an exchange student. Now he called himself Arnaldo Lainez and was regarded by those around him as a Spaniard. Other features of his new life included a formidable house in an elegant neighborhood in Alicante, a pretty wife — no children, thank God — and a collection of paintings representing almost all of the impressionists, a collection that was famous beyond national borders. Those paintings he had acquired legally hung in his house, awaiting the ever-ready admiration of his visitors. And Arnaldo alone knew about the walk-in safe in the basement. Here, he admired those artworks that had found their way into his collection through channels best left undescribed. An exquisitely balanced lighting system threw the brush strokes in the paintings into clear relief, and it gave him tremendous pleasure to sit sunken in his armchair and view this intimate little collection. Spatters of blood clung to some of the pictures, but that didn’t matter to him.

Over the course of time, Arnaldo Lainez had built up a small network of trustworthy informants all over Europe who kept him abreast of privately owned art. The brief mention of the Renoir copy in the boating club’s newsletter might have escaped his notice if one of his best informants, Berlin’s art historian Dr. Felix Hoffmann, hadn’t drawn it to his attention. (Hoffmann had also made a name for himself as an artist: His pacemaker installations had been the start of the so-called “CardioArt” movement.) Several days ago, one of Lainez’s confidants, the Grechtenweil gallery owner Erich Pollack, had agreed to find out more about this copy for Lainez. Lainez had waited impatiently for Pollack’s telephone call. When, after two days, no call came, Lainez had sent his man for delicate operations to Grechtenweil to investigate. And now Arnaldo Lainez waited impatiently for his man’s telephone call in the lounge of the Hotel Husa Via Romana. His glance slid repeatedly toward his cellphone. Even the delightful anticipation of having a copy to hang next to the original in his safe could not entirely quell the nervousness slowly rising in him. Why didn’t his man call? His last message had consisted merely of the information that he was standing outside Winfred Kaltendorf’s studio in Grechtenweil and would telephone again as soon as he had spoken to the copyist. Slowly Arnaldo Lainez was losing his taste for the Rioja.

The painter regarded his figures almost lovingly. None of these people would ever humiliate him again. Never! For a long time, he’d pondered who should serve as his model for the arrogant fellow in the front on the left. And then who should appear out of the blue but his neighbor, complaining of extreme financial distress and inquiring with an odd grin what Winfred had been up to in his garden in the middle of the night — and had thereby solved Winfred’s problem. Now the only thing missing was the man in the top hat.

In the future, Kaltendorf decided, he’d continue to stick to familiar paintings. Not that he lacked any ideas of his own, mind you. His works wouldn’t really be copies, you see; they’d just make it easy for people to recognize his genius when they compared his paintings to the originals. He’d be the one to truly perfect the original painting’s artistic idea! Winfred also realized that he’d been too cautious and petty in the choice of his, ah, circle of models. In the future he’d have to be much bolder. After all, his mission extended beyond mere bourgeois revenge fantasies; it was intended to be worthy of the quality of his art. Art, he realized, is the fusion of genius and life, of death and grace! Grace! He liked the word. He who is graced can also show mercy. Hadn’t it been the quintessence of mercy to release these people from the meaninglessness of their material lives, to grant them immortality through his art?

The telephone rang. It was an Arnaldo somebody-or-other from Spain, asking for Pollack. Arnaldo! Kaltendorf didn’t know any Arnaldo, but he knew the voice. Even after all these years he’d recognize it among a thousand voices — the arrogant tones of a former fellow student who had never paid him any notice. Doubtless this “Arnaldo” would soon turn up in person — and he’d be the perfect “man with a top hat”!

But that was enough for today. Almost. Kaltendorf had given some thought to what, in the end, had caused his predecessors to fail. They were painters who’d never really been pushed beyond their own limits. Van Gogh, vastly overestimated, had cut off his ear. An ear! How ridiculous! Had Van Gogh painted with his ears? He, Kaltendorf, would sacrifice something truly absolute on the altar of art. He positioned the axe carefully and with deliberation. The right or the left? After a moment’s hesitation he decided on the right. Naturally, he nearly fainted from the pain. And yet his left hand would learn, virginally and unencumbered by the past, to wield the brush. And through the throbbing and the blood that had spattered in his eyes, he had a vision of his next works: Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, for example, or Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières. And just as his existence seemed to be composed of nothing but searing, burning pain, his ultimate masterpiece came to him in a flash — Altdorfer’s The Battle of Alexander at Issus!

Copyright © 2006 by Paul Lascaux, Stefan Slupetzky, Anke Gebert, Richard Lifka, Thomas Przybilka, & Christoph Spielberg.

Translation © 2006 by Mary Tannert.