Seiobo There Below

610. JUST A DRY STRIP IN THE BLUE

He stands in line: there are still five people in front of him, but that’s not what is making him nervous; he will catch his train, it isn’t because of that, and actually, to say that he is nervous does not even accurately describe his frame of mind, because instead he cuts the figure of someone who has lost his mind: his eyes are burning, they shine dementedly yet are completely still, like those of a wild animal ready to pounce in the last moment before the attack, it is much better if no one looks into them, and no one does look into them, and whoever by some misfortune does happen to catch the gaze of the celebrated painter — those standing in front of him don’t dare turn around even once, and those behind him try to turn their heads in the other direction — this gaze cannot be endured, as it is completely apparent that Monsieur Kienzl is beside himself, it is evident that just a little harmless nothing will be enough and Monsieur Kienzl will immediately explode, will attack anyone at all, really like an animal infinitely roused, like a feral beast surrounded, one clearly facing a stronger power, when any resistance is as hopeless as could be, that is why he is the way he is, and that is what everyone observes in him, on this early morning of November 17, 1909, everyone in line to get a ticket for the number one express.

He has no idea why they are looking at him so much, he would be only too happy to knock them all down, to smash all those curious figures into many pieces with one single blow of his fist, how could they even imagine they could do this, that they could assault him like this, with this aggressive moronic gaping again and again, just what are they thinking, he clenches his teeth now, for how long will he be able to withstand such a brutal intrusion into his mourning, because no one can claim that they don’t know, since yesterday the entire city has spoken only of that — from the last bakery to the first salon, from Eaux-Vives to the Rue de Grand — the news traveled everywhere, and now this insolence, he presses his fist into his palm, in the face of his mourning, a completely unforgivable, intolerable, treacherous intrusion, and this damned line is moving so slowly, why the hell is that ticket clerk taking so long with those dammed tickets, and there are still five people in front of him, let the sky rot over their heads, how long will he have to stand around here, the train is leaving soon, and in general he’s not even sure if he should go, really, wouldn’t it be better to turn away from this accursed line and go home instead, and leave the whole thing as it is?! — because then at least he wouldn’t have to see these shifty faces, because then at least he wouldn’t have to be incessantly afraid that in the end some idiot, thinking things over, would feel obliged to approach him, and then turning to him would express his condolences, well, no, not that, Kienzl says to himself, if someone here among these people even dares to try that, then he will not hesitate for a moment, but grab him and without a word strike him dead, anyone who gives even the slightest hint of anything like that, with one blow, he won’t hesitate even for a second to do it — really.

Hector brought the news in September, but then there was already nothing to be done: there was nothing that could be done in the entire God-given world, because there is no cure for this; everyone dies: his father died, his mother died, all his siblings and relations died, and now Augustine had died as well and now he had no one from the past, only Hector from Augustine, because Augustine was dead, and with that the past was dead, she too lay recumbent, since yesterday; everyone lay recumbent, everyone lies down one day, and nothing remains of them, just a dry strip in the blue; the person who remains does not want to acquiesce to this, cannot even do so, it’s all arranged so that that the person who remains cannot bear it, he knows, he is aware, that, well, Augustine is dead, his old lover, who knew everything, who knew who he was at one time, and who at the end bestowed to him dear Hector, and this Augustine, his one-time Augustine is already being eaten up by worms, she is no more, and already is just a horizontal strip in the blue, and so too were they all here, in essence, all those here with him — he cast a glance around — all dead, here stands a pile of the dead in the blue, Kienzl thinks to himself, but what is even worse is that these five people keep standing in front of him and there behind the ticket window is that decrepit turd who is incapable of issuing a single ticket, this much is already obvious, there will be no tickets here, the train is leaving and they will remain here, this pile of the dead, here in the Geneva Station, finally perishing in a matter that seemed simple, on November 17, 1909, when already in the very first minutes they had entered a hopeless situation by wishing to buy a ticket for the train from Geneva to Lausanne.

The landscape painter is confronted not with the landscape, but with the blank canvas, namely that it is not the landscape he has to paint, but the picture, and he has stated this already many times, he begins to chew his moustache in rage, but well, he stated it already many times before, completely in vain, however; people think he paints so many landscapes because this is a rewarding subject for the canvas, they think that what they see is beautiful, but they are just blind, and they don’t see that it isn’t beautiful, but that it is — everything, but he repeats this over and over in vain, and chiefly he paints in vain, no one who looks at one of his pictures sees that he is not simply a painter but much more than that: a landscape painter, the kind who cannot do otherwise than paint landscapes: meaning this is so if there is some kind of landscape on the canvas, but also — and to the same degree — if there is a figure, so, well, what can be painted by the landscape painter is always, in this sense, a landscape, and nothing else, exclusively a landscape, even if there is a figure, he could never repeat this often enough, and he could never paint enough, but now he doesn’t say anything, he just paints, because why say anything, no one understands anyway, better to be quiet and paint, without expecting the wealthy clients to follow him, as they had never done so before — only in Paris and Vienna maybe, yes maybe there; here however, no, and this is not even surprising, if a person looks around — this world never ever changes — in Geneva and Bern and Solothurn and Zurich, this entire spiritual torpidity proved once and for all that it was incapable of comprehending anything at all, because they never bothered to think about anything at all, and never could, not here; he could paint well, among these figures, ever more awe-inspiring canvases toward the final, the great, the cosmic end, here, however, it was completely hopeless; before, until now, they didn’t understand and they didn’t buy the paintings, now they still don’t understand and they buy the paintings, so that, well, only that has changed, now he is not poor but rich; unchangingly, and in full measure, he was, however — alone, exactly when he might have believed that this barren misapprehension might have come to an end, because no, there would be no end, they would never understand even what it means to paint a landscape, to stand before a scene, and then it doesn’t matter if the scenery is that of Grammont or Augustine on the deathbed, to stand there, to look at this life withdrawing for all eternity into death in the human and natural landscape, and to depict what is before him when he looks up from the blank canvas: that is everything — who should he explain this to?! maybe to these people in the station, who are only capable of trampling upon his mourning?! to affront him yet again?! for if there is anyone at all, well, he really cannot rely upon them to show some respect, now in this mourning he must be silent, he must be silent and continue to paint all that Augustine was and what Augustine will be, and what remains of Augustine.

She lay recumbent and he pulled the sheet off her, so he could see the whole of what Augustine had become, when his heart, shattered by the pain, nearly stopped in his chest; he pulled off the sheet, because he is used to doing this in other cases as well: when he sits outside on the slope of the Grammont, or at Chexbres in the heights of Saint-Prex, and his brain, his soul utterly tautened, he pulls the sheet down from the landscape, and he sets to looking above the blank canvas, then to take up evenly, from left to right, with a thick brush or ever more frequently with the painting knife itself, the blue, the violet, the green, and the yellow, namely, when he begins to work on a canvas, or to make it even more plain; for years now he has been painting a single picture where only the canvas is exchanged, but the picture is almost always the same, where the colors too, and the parallel planes, and the proportions of sky and water and earth, too, in the picture are, in their essence, the same — he pulled the sheet off, and he saw what remained, what there was, and this lasted for a long while, as he watched with his tautened brain; until he can smooth the sheet back into place; and he feels not only his heart but his mind is shattering from the loss, because he must think, and his mind very nearly shattered in the thinking, during the entire previous evening, which he spent next to the dead woman, and it will shatter again, he determines with his clattering brain here before the ticket desk, for as much as he knows that he is really within the proximity of what he sees, he still does not however see it in its final form in that picture — its essence constructed according to already inviolable principles — he knows that he still has to modify something, maybe the yellow has to be a little more dirty, maybe the blue a little harsher, something somehow has to be modified from what it has been until now, with Lake Geneva he’s headed in the right direction, but to know exactly where to now, what is to be the next step, for that he needs that brain in his head, and he would need the ticket already, which he can’t manage to get to as he is still standing here in front of the ticket counter and there are still four people in front of him.

Valentine, too, is going to die, the thought lacerates through him suddenly as he stands in line, Valentine will also lay recumbent, the dreaded thought slashes through him, and he will not be able to bear that either, then so it shall be, Valentine as well, that inconceivably beautiful, immeasurably alluring, maddeningly sensual, exquisite woman, his current lover, to whom he is rushing with this loss and with his mind tautened in pain; she too will end up like everyone and everything, recumbent in the blue strip, falling into bed, becoming gaunt, her skin drying up, her face falling in, her chest caving in, and that marvelous flesh will come off her down to the bones, just as it did with Augustine, just as with his mother and his father and his siblings and his relatives in his beloved Bern, exactly the same, exactly the same as every dead person here and there and everywhere, but first, the news will come, if it indeed happens like that, and finds one in the midst of this atrocious life, and he will start to go to her again and again, maybe with the number one express every afternoon, just as he did with Augustine since September, to always be there, so as to be there beside her bed, day in and day out, just so that she would not have to die alone; if the time comes maybe everything will be exactly the same as with Augustine — he just stands in line, there are still four people in front of him, and he tries to brush off the thought, but it doesn’t work — Augustine and Valentine — it throbs in his brain, and he sees them already, the two of them dead, one atop the other, stretched out at length, like the strips of color on his canvases, like the beginning and end of existence in the Cosmic Whole, two bodies emaciated to skeletons with sunken-in eyes, tapering noses, lying stretched out above each other as the water lies above the ground, the mighty sky lies above the water, swimming in the blue of death.

Maybe everything truly does happen exactly in the same way — Kienzl finally steps forward one place in line — because every story repeats itself, life unto life, and at the end of course: death unto death, he thinks with a clouded countenance, well he is not the painter of death, he says, but of life, and now he even speaks the words aloud, nearly comprehensibly for those who are standing in close proximity to him, he doesn’t know, nor is he even interested, if they hear what he is mumbling, the painter of life, he repeats it several times, of life, which he loves unspeakably, he loved it in Augustine and he loves it in Valentine, that is why he has painted even its tiniest vibration for these long years now, that is why it is so important, finally a matter of life and death, to place the most decisive emphasis on this vibration, in Augustine and in Lake Geneva, to give it emphasis, if he sees it in the local death, this is his task and so he does it, because it is right, he cannot do otherwise, he must be the painter of oneness, thus, well, he must give himself over to death, but nothing can compel him not to find a place for that mere wisp of a fact, the presence of life, its eternal rebirth, in the green and gold — not to put it up there where it flashes, he will search for a place for it, and he will put it up there, thinks Kienzl, and now in his horrifically tautened brain, a picture appears from the Geneva material, painted not long ago, in which the gray-blue of the water extends toward a strong, earthy yellow strip below, in layers of color that follow and distance themselves from each other, giving depth and majesty to the scene; then there is the opposite shore of the lake, depicted with a thin green, a pale violet, and a more poisonous green: all of this is below, enclosed in the lower third of the canvas, so that then he can paint the sky into the gigantic space, into the two-thirds of the canvas extending above it, above the horizon of the far shore, some kind of weak, paler than pale sunlight, declining in gold with its swirling fog, then high above, just the pure blue of the pure sky, repeating clusters of white clouds following upon each other, accordingly, then, roughly twelve layers placed above each other: and with these roughly twelve layers placed above each other, with these crude twelve deathly parallels, is flung down there, as coarsely as possible: This is your Cosmos, this is Complete, the Whole, in roughly twelve colors: EVERYTHING, from Kienzl — and now — he stands shifting from one leg to the other in the line — it is yours.

There are three people in front of him, and now he simply doesn’t believe his eyes, such slowness as this cannot exist, the old man, the railway official selling tickets behind the window, he sees clearly from here, is slowing down the process in every possibly conceivable manner, after the destination has been stated, he repeatedly asks in confirmation, Morges, really? Nyon, yes? well that is wonderful, I wish you the very best, that truly promises to be a pleasant trip, so then you will want a ticket to Céligny, is that right? If I may ask, in which class of carriage does the gentleman wish to travel? First-class, that is simply marvelous, a demonstration of truly excellent taste, and I can assure you that it shall be exceptionally comfortable, so then, Morges? Nyon? Céligny? Lausanne? in a word it goes like that all the way up the line, in the most roundabout fashion possible, again and again bringing things to a complete halt through some discreet question, or through gushing inanities, in addition to which, Kienzl now realizes, his face reddening in rage, the people standing in front of him even visibly enjoy and appreciate it, what a sweet old man, someone notes, ticket in hand, as they turn away from the counter, passing by Kienzl — this blithering oaf, he shakes his head in disbelief, yes, Morges, he mutters loudly to himself, yes, Nyon, yes, yes, Céligny, and Lausanne, don’t you hear, my good man, what they are saying? — Morges, Nyon, Céligny, yes, give them the tickets already, that should be your worry, to hell with it, and he flings all of this into the discreet silence, no one reacts, everyone tries to look as if they haven’t heard anything, and as if they wouldn’t even understand why Monsieur Kienzl is so impatient, for there is surely much time left before the train departs, and certainly not even three minutes have passed since he got into line, they don’t understand, but they don’t even really dare to contemplate the matter lest something be visible on their faces, because Monsieur Kienzl seems invariably and inexpressibly dangerous, the glances are turned away, the eyes cast down, then a tiny cough or two, then not even that, just the silence, and the patient waiting, and some kind of general agreement and forgiveness — which just infuriates him, Kienzl, all the more — for everyone knows what happened yesterday, that Mademoiselle Augustine Dupin, Mr. Kienzl’s former model from the slums, died, and they know what this poor lady could have suffered, and what Monsieur Kienzl himself must be suffering, and how magnanimously he behaved with that poor pariah, he, the celebrated painter of the city, who in the space of a couple of years had become a millionaire, providing her with the very best, sitting every day — and for hours! — by the dying woman’s bed, thus giving proof of his strong, faithful nature, for he certainly did not abandon her in any way, she who in his one-time destitution was not only his model, but in the most intimate sense of the word, his companion, moreover the mother of their little boy, in a word the city knew everything, but everything about the events of yesterday and the events proceeding yesterday, and of course here among the people waiting for a ticket, the situation was no different, they, however, also recognized and knew well that it would be better not to confront his vehement nature, namely that he was increasingly giving evidence of being incapable of mastering his pain, and one inappropriate word would be enough and he might just hurl himself at one of them, and finally, out of the present-day gentleman — the wealthy and dignified artist — the former ill-mannered, scruffy vagabond of Bern, just as familiar to everyone there, will burst out.

Augustine and Valentine, it echoes in his head, and he cannot he get that picture of Lake Geneva out of his mind, the one that arose earlier, the painting as yet untitled but completed the other day: the obsessively pursued sequence, he cannot drive away those twelve obsessive parallels out of his mind, and in a sudden terror of the contiguities he says to himself that later. . later, instead of the yellow, a metallic matte blue-green should be burning below, then to spatter a GHASTLY quantity of ochre and brown and crimson, and onto the sky as well, so that it will be ablaze in the ochre and in the dead crimson-brown, only above will there remain some kind of grayish ominous blue; then the mountain ridge on the opposite bank should burn intensely in a dark deathly, final blue, because in the end this picture must be aglow, must be ablaze, must burn, and then suddenly in a flash he sees himself as the train takes him to Vevey: somewhere between Nyon and Rolle he suddenly perceives there below, from the window of the well-heated carriage, a ragged figure struggling against the strong wind, his own self in 1880, walking with all of the paintings he has completed mounted on his back and under his arm, to Morges, so that he can sell them, and then there is a beaten scruffy dog in the storm; the wind is blowing against him, still mainly coming from the lake, and it strikes down upon them again and again; and it is still very far away to Morges on foot, it is 1880 and he is hungry, and the train from 1909 runs alongside them, the dog runs after the clattering wheels, and barks, the train disappears from view like an unreachable dream, one in which he will take his place in just a moment in one of the second-class compartments, and exclusively on the right-hand side next to the window, because he wants to see the lake, nothing else but the lake, for really, as never before, he wants nothing else than to see this lake, as this lake replenishes its own enormous space, with the rather tenuous shore here below, and the rather tenuous shore, there, on the other side, and above, the whole, the enormous sky — if he could only manage to drive that rotten mangy dog out of his mind, he mutters to himself, but speaking so loudly this time that everyone standing around him understands his words clearly, although they don’t know what to think about Monsieur Kienzl, who now wants to get rid of some dog that won’t budge from his heels, he kicks it aside in vain, it just won’t leave him alone, it just keeps on coming, says Kienzl irritatedly, just dragging itself along beside him, as if there would be any sense at all in this entire devotion.

He’s cold, they say, repulsive and unfeeling, he’s heard it hundreds and hundreds of times, that he is harsh and merciless and brutal and unsympathetic and decadent, by that, however, they only betray — he takes one step forward — that they are afraid of him, because it is terrifying, really, when they have to be confronted with the fact that he is here, he who amidst eternal death and in the greatest of need, had to break out in a truly harsh, merciless, unsympathetic, and decadent world, with that truly unassailable desire in him, so that at last someone could state something about the truth, but what kind of a statement is that — he is cold and repulsive and unfeeling! and his mind is filled with rage yet again, and now he is the one who would be called repulsive and unfeeling! exactly him, who could be called the fanatic of reality, if anything at all; but not cold and unfeeling, no, not that; in his anger he begins to pull at his beard impatiently, in front of the ticket desk window, no one will ever get there, will ever get to the point of being able to understand, only Valentine understands, no one — just Valentine, and Valentine alone — understands what he is searching for so obsessively, and no one can say that he is unfeeling, because that was exactly what was so unbearable in his dreadful life, that he wasn’t brutal, but everything was — from Geneva through Bern and all the way to Zürich — it was he who surmounted everything with the greatest of sensitivity, because he alone had a heart, and with this heart he looked at the landscape, and he looks at it now too, and it is with this heart that he sees now that everything is woven into one: the earth with the water, the water with the sky, and into the earth and the water and the sky, into this indescribable Cosmos is woven our fragile existence as well, but merely for just one moment that cannot be traced, then, already, it is no more, it disappears for all eternity, irrevocably, like Augustine and all that Augustine was as of yesterday, nothing else remains, only and exclusively the landscape; in his case, then the locomotive’s whistle sounds from the direction of the tracks, and with that, this line, where there is only a woman with a hat in front of him, suddenly speeds up; he speaks once again out loud to himself, in his case, Lake Geneva remains, the recumbent monumental strips in the dead blue space, the Great Expanse, those two words begin to rattle around in his head, just like, in a moment, the wheels beneath the carriage pulling out of Geneva Station: the monumental, the inconceivable, the Great Expanse that includes all within itself, the ultimate painting of which is, of course, right here in front of him, and he will paint it, he finally reaches the ticket window — he will go that far, he flings out, with his two insanely burning eyes, to the visibly frightened elderly railway official, that he wants a second-class ticket to Vevey; he knows already what title he will give to the painting of the lake completed not too long ago, he knows already, once he comes back from Valentine, his first order of business will be to go into the atelier, take the picture down from the easel, and note down on a piece of paper, and finally to attach to the back of the painting those few words, which he cannot express more precisely than to say that he, Oswald Kienzl is on a journey, a journey in the right direction, just a few words, namely “Fomenrhytmus der Landschaft,” hence the most appropriate possible expression for the painting, for it not just to have a title, but in his own succinct way to let the world know, inasmuch as it may be curious, to let the world know who he was, what kind of figure he was, upon whose gravestone would one day be written the words: Oswald Kienzl, the Swissman.