The killer's art

39

The emptiness that always followed one of those nights washed over him. Erik Mattson had gone home and spent a couple of hours recovering. Later in the afternoon he left his flat and took a bus to the Waldemarsudde Art Museum in the Kungliga Djurgarden, the Royal Deer Park.

He got off at the museum bus stop, which was close to the shore. He walked the last stretch of the way up to what had once been Prince Eugen’s home during the first half of the twentieth century. The painter prince who never became king. He was a great artist and an especially good landscape painter. During his lifetime the prince put together an enormous art collection, which he donated, along with his beautiful villa, to the Swedish nation at his death in 1947.

The building with its yellow facade was located on a hill and seemed to be rising out of the rock. It stood on the shore at the very end of a peninsula facing the Baltic Sea, which reached all the way to Stockholm on this side. The main building in which the prince had lived was called the castle, although it looked more like a mansion on a small country estate.

At the moment the museum was showing an exhibition of Swedish art from the early 1900s. Erik went inside and paid the entrance fee. He wasn’t interested in going into the beautiful gallery; instead, he headed for what had once been the prince’s private residence, the castle. There, too, artworks were on display, and hanging in one of the drawing rooms was the painting he was looking for.

He saw it from far away. The large oil painting took up an entire wall. It was the mood depicted in the painting that attracted him — the colours, the soft and gentle movements, the tragedy and the coquettishness. Reverently he sank down on a bench that had been placed in front of Nils Dardel’s masterpiece, ‘The Dying Dandy’.

The motif was bewitching, and Erik hardly noticed the other visitors. Contradictory emotions welled up inside him.

He felt so close to Dardel, as if there were some kind of secret bond between them, a connection not limited by time or space. The fact that they’d never met was of no importance. He understood that they were twin souls. That was something he’d known ever since he saw ‘The Dying Dandy’ for the first time when he was visiting the home of a fellow student many years ago.

He was seventeen at the time, insecure and searching. The painting seemed to speak directly to him. The pale, handsome dandy was in the centre of the scene and immediately drew the eye of the viewer. The same mystery and enigma hovered over the dandy as over Dardel himself. How young he is, Erik thought as he sat there. So fragile and attractive. Those closed eyes with the thick dark lashes against the pale cheek. The slender body in the semi-reclining position on the floor with his legs apart, almost erotic in the midst of tragedy. The dandy had one hand pressed to his heart, as if it hurt. And judging by the pallor of his face, the life force had already left his body.

Erik was fascinated by the figure’s appearance: the sensitive face, the elegant clothing, one hand coquettishly stretched out on the floor with the long, slender fingers holding a hand-mirror. What did it mean? Was he fleeing from his own image? Was he weary of his life, his alcoholism and his homosexuality? Was he trying to escape his decadent life, just as Erik wanted to do but didn’t dare?

Erik’s gaze took in the three loving women surrounding the dandy, their soft figures, their tenderness. One of them was about to place a blanket over the slender, elegant young man, as if putting a piano cover over an exquisite instrument that was no longer played.

There was another man in the scene as well. Standing in the background, partially turned away from the small group. The young man seemed desperate with grief as he pressed a handkerchief to one eye, like a monocle. There was something theatrical about him, with his dark eyes and red lips. He was also dressed like a dandy in vibrant colours: purple jacket, orange shirt and a red-and-green tie. Erik was positive that the man in the background represented Dardel’s most important lover, Rolf de Mare. Dardel had carried on many homosexual affairs, although he’d had relationships with women at the same time.

Erik’s eyes moved back to the dandy’s hand over his heart. Was the pain purely physical? Was he killed by a heart attack? Dardel had suffered from heart disease after a serious case of scarlet fever when he was a child, but was it really that simple? Maybe the painting was about a broken heart from a love affair. Did the artist want to show that he was on his way to leaving Rolf de Mare and his own homosexuality behind in order to enter into marriage with a woman? When Dardel painted the work in the summer of 1918 he was secretly engaged to Nita Wallenberg, the daughter of a cabinet minister. Was that why the man in the background was grieving?

The painting moved him on so many levels; it touched his innermost soul and reflected the tragedy of his own life. If only we could have met, he sometimes thought in despair. If only we had lived in the same era. How he would have loved Dardel. How many times had he wondered what the artist had in mind when he created that painting?

Maybe he can see me right now, thought Erik, glancing automatically up at the ceiling. Then his eyes returned to the painting.

The way the three women had gathered around the dying dandy reminded him of Christ’s death, with the dandy as Jesus. Erik thought that the woman placing the blanket over him resembled an angel, with the green palm leaves like wings behind her. Another of the women could have been Mary, with her dress the strong blue traditionally used for her. And the younger girl holding the pillow under his head might symbolize Mary Magdalene with her red hair and red and purple clothing. The man in the background had the features of Christ’s favourite apostle, John. Sure, why not?

There was no mistaking the sense of tragedy, no matter what it might symbolize. It might have something to do with the war. When Dardel painted the scene, Europe was in the grip of the First World War. Sweden had remained neutral, but Finland had just entered the conflict, which was getting closer to Sweden and having a tremendous impact on the country. Not even in the wealthy salons frequented by Nils Dardel could anyone continue to close their eyes to the horrors being inflicted on people all around them. Maybe the artist wanted to portray the changes taking place in society during that time. The luxuries and amusements of the exclusive salons enjoyed by him and his friends must have begun to seem absurd — the self-absorbed dandy had become conscious of what was happening around him.

Erik thought that Dardel was an idealist, but a complicated and multilayered man, in many ways a tragic person who wanted to flee from himself. He did so through alcohol, but also through art.

Exactly like Erik.