Vienna Blood

22

ANDREAS OLBRICHT STOOD IN the middle of his studio. Condensation had frozen onto the windows, making them opaque and subduing the light. Propped up against the walls were some wooden frames for stretching canvases, some finished paintings, and a large full-length mirror. Olbricht studied his reflected image: a short man, wearing a soft cap and a brown, paint-spattered smock of coarse material. He affected a dignified pose.

The artist embarks upon the act of creation.

His gaze lingered on a smear of vermilion.

Turning, he walked across the bare floorboards to his table, where he examined his array of pigments: ocher, malachite, madder lake, raw sienna. The malachite caught his attention. He tipped some of the emerald powder into the mortar bowl and ground it with a wooden pestle. As he worked, he remembered his conversation with Von Triebenbach about Herr Bolle's commission. What scene from The Ring would he choose? The gods engulfed by fire, the ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's funeral pyre? At that time he had been almost certain that the subject of the commission would be something heroic. Yet, as he worked on the preliminary sketches, another, quite different scene kept entering his mind-the tableau with which The Ring Cycle opens: the three Rhine maidens-Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde-and the dwarf Alberich. This scene had kept on returning, asserting itself with something close to willfulness. Eventually he conceded, content to assume that a great work of art was struggling to be born.

Olbricht mixed some linseed oil into the powdered malachite and poured the mixture onto his palette. Then he turned and looked at the large canvas on his easel. The work was in its very early stages. Only the top left-hand corner had been colored with brushstrokes; the rest was still in sketch form. The figures had been executed using a red crayon, and Olbricht congratulated himself that the effect was not unlike a well-known Leonardo da Vinci cartoon.

On the table, next to the pestle and mortar, was a notebook in which he had copied out some of Wagner's original stage directions.

In the depths of the river Rhine.

A greenish twilight, brighter toward the top, darker toward the bottom. The upper part is filled with swirling waters… In all directions steep rocky reefs rear up from the depths… There is a reef in the middle of the stage that points a slender finger up into the denser water where the light is brighter…

Olbricht diluted his malachite with a few more drops of linseed oil and mixed it in with a stiff hog's-hair brush.

He was pleased with his Rhine maidens. They looked like good-natured, big-hearted German girls. Healthy, buxom, and carefreepossessed of an innocent charm. If the same scene had been treated by one of the Secessionists, it would have looked very different indeed. Someone like Klimt (or one of his degenerate associates) would have transformed the Rhine maidens into emaciated, orgiastic water nymphs, naked, with tiny breasts and exposed genitalia. The modernists were incapable of dignifying the female form-they could only degrade it. Their work was obscene.

Herr Bolle was a sensible man-a man who cherished traditional values. He would want his Rhine maidens to be stolid, chaste, and pure.

In a rocky hollow, Olbricht had sketched what would eventually become a giant nugget of gold. He considered the pigments he would use: lead-tin yellow, lead white, and iron oxide. He imagined how the amber glow would penetrate into the dark green depths. He let his gaze drop and allowed it to settle on the figure of Alberich-the Nibelung dwarf-climbing out of a dark rift in the riverbed.

The Rhine maidens were the guardians of the Rheingold, sacred treasure from which might be fashioned a ring that would give the wearer ultimate power. But, so the legend ran, such power could be achieved only by first renouncing love. The Rhine maidens were negligent in the exercise of their duty, because they believed that no thief would be prepared to pay such a high price. Who would possibly forswear the joys of love in exchange for earthly power?

Olbricht took a step closer to the canvas and squatted to look more intently at the dwarf who was clawing his way out of the crevice like a venomous reptile-his bulging-eyed stare fixed on the giant nugget.

Was it so remarkable that a creature spurned, taunted, and considered misshapen should have any difficulty making such an exchange? Love for power?

It was not so remarkable.