Читать книгу Degas' Dust - Carnie Matisonn - Страница 8

As a boy, I had great difficulty sleeping, so I frequently wandered into the kitchen. On most nights Natie would be sitting at the old wooden table, reading. The faded linoleum floor had large vacant sections through which the even older Canadian maple wood appeared. The steel cupboards were sparse and struggled to conceal rust. The ageing stove, oven, refrigerator and kettle made up the balance of the furniture. A single light bulb dangled from a cord in the centre of the room. The kitchen table had a smooth wooden top with traces of paint that had survived years of attrition from endless cups of coffee, magazines and plates. Natie would sit in a maroon dressing gown and barely acknowledge my presence. I would cast an occasional eye over the titles of whatever books he was reading. His interest in World War Two was all-pervasive, his appetite for nonfiction on the topic insatiable.

I often found him looking at pictures and documents, but he offered no explanation for his obsession. He concentrated on the pages of whatever book he was absorbing, the ever-present cup of coffee in his right hand.

Occasionally, he would glance at an old letter. He never uttered a word or raised his head. This silent scenario repeated itself almost every night.

I could not have been more than ten years old when, one night, I walked into the kitchen at about 2am. Natie’s posture, the coffee, the cracks in the walls above the sink, the rain dripping through a hole in the ceiling into a bucket behind him, a cigarette burning in an ashtray to his right and the sound of thunder cast a pall of gloom over the kitchen. The letter I’d seen him reading so often was again open in front of him. It was clearly old, the paper brown and cracked along the folds and the writing a faded blue that may once have been navy or black.

I had to ask about it.

“Natie, what’s in the letter?” But he didn’t reply. I repeated the question and he responded by turning his head and raising his eyebrows. This was his way of telling me he wanted nothing to do with me or my sudden curiosity.

As I opened the fridge, he stood up, book in hand and walked out of the kitchen. I could hear him opening and closing the bathroom door. I took the chance to look at the letter. It was written in Yiddish, in the hand of what was obviously an educated writer. It was addressed to his mother, Kate, and the depth of feeling in many of the words troubled me deeply.

“Fur kine vert sine” (from envy grows hate), I began to read. The author, whose name I could not make out, spoke of the persecution of the Jews in Norway. “Margot hot moireh; far far mentchen, nuz nen sikhhiten” (fear God, but be wary of men). “People have feared imminent death and helplessness,” it went on.

In reference to Hitler, the mysterious letter writer said: “God should visit upon him the best of the ten plagues. It will never be redeemed. It will only be through the merit of children, because the deeds of their fathers can never be forgiven.”

Natie returned to the kitchen and retrieved his seat at the table. I told him I had read the sad letter. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

There was a long pause as Natie pondered the page and the prospect of our discussion. Finally, he lifted his head and gazed blankly at the wall above my head. He spoke about a brother of his father’s whom he had never met and never would.

“Perhaps it was written by a childhood friend or a relative. I do not know, as the events of the war were too painful for him to discuss with me. His name was Karnielsohn and my father was deeply saddened when he learnt of his brother’s death.”

Natie appeared to be talking to himself and was almost oblivious to my presence.

It’s hard to say what it was about the mystery of the letter and the tragic events it hinted at that so captured my imagination, but I knew, somehow, even as a mere child of ten, that there was something of great significance behind it.

“I want to know about it,” I told him. “You have to tell me. I want to know about the author of the letter,” I demanded.

Natie turned to face me while placing the letter in the pocket of his dressing gown.

“I cannot talk about those dark times simply because you want me to,” he replied, tears welling from his eyes. My father slowly stood up, fidgeting with the contents of his dressing gown pocket. At that moment, I was certain I would never see the letter again. He left the room with the weight of his emotions clearly heavy on his shoulders. His heart had reasons for concealing the answers his mind refused to allow him to articulate.

But that only made me want to understand it more.

There were numerous tantalising notes, letters, scraps of information in English and Yiddish in Natie’s drawer. There were even small artworks. Whenever Natie was not home, I would pore over those papers, trying to understand the stories, secrets and mysteries they seemed to hold.

My young eyes came across stories containing names of artist after artist. Gauguin, Cézanne, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cassatt, Picasso, Miró, Chagall, Moore, Degas … the names were sprinkled on every page, with details about their lives and artworks that meant nothing to me. But I read each piece of paper hungrily, and eventually committed all of it to memory. To me, the immediate reason was to try to understand some of the secrets about my father, but I also knew this was important for deeper reasons I did not fully grasp, but hoped to some day understand.

In Natie’s drawer I came upon a sketch signed by Paul Cézanne with the following inscription on the left-hand side: “Harry Abbot, Paris, ’99”. With it was a somewhat damaged and torn piece of paper with a sketch of Paul Gauguin and a handwritten note addressed to my granduncle Karnielsohn, which read: “Xmas 1889 … To my esteemed sponsor, patron and friend …

“Greetings! May you be blessed with health, wealth and the goodwill of all men (and women) this festive time and always!

Yours

Harry HA”

That name, Harry Abbot, like all the other names and stories from my father’s drawer, stuck in my head. I don’t know what happened to the sketch and the letter – both are probably long gone – but I remembered them for the rest of my life.

I did not know Natie to be either an art connoisseur or sentimentalist. The papers had lain beneath the liners at the bottom of one of his drawers, as though placed there and forgotten.

The first time I asked Natie about them I recall he was standing up, leaning over the boudoir grand piano, reading the newspaper. He had his usual glass of whisky in his right hand. “Where did you get that sketch and what does it mean?”

When he failed to answer, I tried again. “Natie, can you tell me anything about it and what it means?”

Still nothing was forthcoming. Either my father really didn’t know, had no interest in telling me or simply did not care.

My small discovery became part of the intriguing and incomplete puzzle of what I knew about Karnielsohn.

After he started becoming a heavy drinker, I always had difficulty engaging Natie in discussions. Questions I put to him meri­ted little more than a dismissive retort. Perhaps this was because I posed these questions when he was reading or tired. Or perhaps he didn’t want to be bothered with my persistence. Publicly, Natie had often been a wonderful actor and raconteur, but I was rarely his chosen audience.

There were times when Natie set out on visits to his Freemason’s lodge wearing a dark suit and bowtie. When I asked him what it meant to be a Freemason, what was in his black bag and what took place at the meetings, his reply was always that he had taken an oath of confidentiality – and that was that.

To the extent that I came to know my father, it was through being present at discussions he had with friends who shared his interest in theatre, journalism or literature. One of his closest friends, Raymond Matuson, was a well-known actor and producer who Natie would visit on many a Sunday morning. I accompanied my father on a number of these visits and was privy to his conversations with Raymond. We would arrive at his avuncular friend’s small, conservative middle-class home in Greenside to an always-warm smile and ebullient hospitality. Raymond never failed to take a keen interest in whichever one of Natie’s children came along and, naturally, I loved these visits. I would listen to Raymond regaling Natie with stories about whichever current book, play or film he was working on. Not to be outdone, Natie would reciprocate with a considered response and ideas of his own about a storyline they could collaborate on. I was able to witness the best version of my father here, shorn for a time of the self-conscious weight of failure that grew heavier about his shoulders with every passing year.

It was during these discussions that I came to learn more about Karnielsohn. On one occasion, Natie and Raymond were discus­sing books about the rise and fall of the Third Reich. A book by William Shearer by that name was part of Natie’s collection.

Raymond asked: “Natie, with all your interest and knowledge about how the Third Reich prospered and became history’s worst human killing machine, you could surely produce a compelling novel.”

My father merely shrugged and shook his head. “I find it easy to write articles on sport for Fight magazine and humorous stories for Gek,” he replied. (He wrote these articles on a freelance basis.) But I struggle to write about those troubled times.”

“So let’s talk about it and see where it goes,” Raymond told him. “If there is a part for me to act in, I am sure I could find a sponsor.”

My father smiled – Raymond’s enthusiasm was always infectious.

“You are only one generation away from the ghetto,” Raymond pressed on, “and you were close to your mother, who must have told you stories about her experiences in the slums, the pogroms, the persecutions – the kinds of things that will force people to listen, and consider and remember.”

Natie appeared to mull over this for a while. “Actually, the most intriguing story was told to me by my father,” he said.

“But your father was brought up in Norway,” Raymond began, but Natie stopped him.

“The Jewish community in Norway may have been very small compared with those in Germany, France and Eastern Europe, but that didn’t mean their suffering at the hands of the Nazis was any less vicious,” my father explained.

He told us most of what he knew about Karnielsohn. I was transfixed by the story of his fascinating friendship with the artist Edgar Degas – who eventually let him down. Though I was young when I heard these stories, nothing about them has left me and the little I know about my granduncle is based largely on what I heard Natie telling Raymond and how this might be the basis for something they could work on together: a book, play or even an attempt to produce a movie.

Karnielsohn’s interest in art had had much to do with his background. He was born in Germany and later emigrated to Norway. He spoke fluent German, French and Norwegian and completed enough schooling in German to become acquainted with the arts and culture in neighbouring countries. His parents were well-off enough to allow the young Karnielsohn to travel to Austria, France, Belgium and Holland.

He was known as an academic and introvert, more stimulated by the origins of legal systems and the study of jurisprudence than by actively participating in litigation. His study in Oslo was lined with textbooks, statutes and precedents, which aided his reputation in providing well-documented opinions on complex matters of private international law. Unlike public international law, which deals with the conduct of sovereign states, intergovernmental organisations and multinational corporations in respect of global matters, private international law is the study of the conflict of laws between different countries and their companies.

Karnielsohn, for instance, would be briefed by a Norwegian company that had purchased goods from a German manufacturer for delivery to a company in France. If a dispute arose in respect of a breach by any one of the parties, it was my great-uncle’s function to provide an opinion of some sort and follow it up with a plan to resolve the dispute, taking cognisance of the conflicting laws in different countries. Because of this, he travelled frequently throughout Europe. His knowledge of German and French proved useful, if not critical, in helping him establish a reputation as a legal mind and negotiator well suited to these tasks.

In Paris, Karnielsohn usually took a hotel within walking distance of the Seine and the famous Palace Garnier opera house, which allowed him to be near the Place Vendôme, a public square. The Opera Metro Station made the Louvre Museum accessible and he was also within easy walking distance of the Galleries Lafayette department store.

He tried to arrange his visits to Paris to coincide with the nearest weekend so that he would be free to visit the many artists working along the Seine. Here he became mesmerised by the work of Claude Monet and his renditions of the many scenes along the river. Karnielsohn made meticulous notes about various artists during their formative years. He wrote about a Renoir that was purchased for seven dollars. He admired many of the lesser-­known Impressionists, with whom he formed loose friendships.

Karnielsohn first met Degas when he bought a painting from him.

Under pressure from his father, Degas had begun his studies as a law student but soon dropped out and graduated instead with a bachelor’s degree in literature. He then registered as a copyist in the Louvre. He went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, possibly France’s most famous fine arts school, and finally caught the attention of his tutors.

Naples was his next destination, where Degas spent time study­ing and copying works by Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists. He returned to Paris in 1865. After the end of the Franco-­Prussian War in 1872, the artist travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States, where he had a brother, René. After their father died in 1874, Degas discovered his brother had amassed considerable business debt. He took it upon himself to sell the family house and art collection to cover his brother’s debts, and suddenly realised how reliant he was on income from the sales of his own works. So he produced paintings prolifically over the next ten years.

My great-uncle immediately liked this artist, who was so well versed in both French and German literature and apparently knew something about legislation in both countries. During this time, Degas also became an avid photographer. He exhibited his art with the Impressionists – despite his dislike of the term, which he considered populist.

In the 1880s, Karnielsohn commissioned Degas to do a portrait of him working at his desk in Oslo, projecting him in a manner that embodied the life he was leading.

At first, Karnielsohn had been fascinated by Degas’ skill and reputation, but his relationship with the artist eventually faced difficulty. He wrote that Degas had not correctly fulfilled his mandate, as he had chosen to depict Karnielsohn only as a professional man surrounded by legal textbooks, which my granduncle felt ignored his depth of character and own artistic interests. It is recorded somewhere that they argued, during which Degas’ anti-­Semitic leanings came to the fore. Karnielsohn was shocked and disappointed.

He paid Degas for the portrait, but could not find any satisfaction in it. They never saw each other again.

Degas’ anti-Semitism became more apparent in the years that followed. By the early 1900s, he had terminated all relations with his Jewish friends and refused to use models he suspected were Jewish. He became an outspoken anti-Semite, choosing to depict the facial features of Jews in the ways one typically finds in cruel caricatures.

Karnielsohn, still following the artist’s career, was particularly disturbed by this turn and chose not to hang the portrait any more. He placed it behind a cabinet in a little-used room in his house, so as not to be reminded of his error in judgement.

And that was where the Nazis who killed Karnielsohn found it many years later.

* * *

My father toyed with the idea of dramatising his uncle’s life for some time.

On some Sundays, Natie would visit Hank Margolis, an American journalist (whose wife made mouthwatering fresh bread rolls and coffee, finished with a topping of cream I spent days dreaming about). I was there when Natie put his idea to Hank about collaborating with Raymond on the story of Karnielsohn.

“I think there is substance to the story you have told me,” said Hank, “but perhaps not enough to write an entire play. I also have some concern about whether you and Raymond could work together on writing and producing it. You are good friends but are both strong personalities. I believe you would clash.”

They left it at that and returned to the subject of the cartoons they wanted Abe Berry to draw for the next edition of Gek magazine.

For a few months after, Raymond and Natie still alluded to the idea of elaborating on the life of Karnielsohn, exploring whether they had access to material that might provide a setting for the story, but their enthusiasm seemed to have faded. It was also emotionally challenging for Natie to try to tease out details. In one discussion, my father mentioned a letter his father had received from Karnielsohn, to which Raymond replied: “Natie, this is not a court case that needs proof. The reality of the circumstances in which he died and the way in which he lived are enough to get the attention of the audience. We have to concentrate on the man, the way he lived, who else in his life shared his interest in art. We need to build up his relationship with Degas until he discovers that Karnielsohn is a Jew and how Karnielsohn’s life was affected by this experience.”

My father protested: “I can only write about the information I can reasonably believe to be true. My father had some letters that got lost after his death. Sometime later I found only one of them, which I hid away as a link with my father and his family in Norway.”

“In all the time I have known you,” said Raymond, “this is the one and only time you have mentioned your father, yet you so often speak freely of your mother.”

Natie sighed; his gaze dropped.

With that, Raymond became reconciled to the reality that this was a play that would never see the light of a spotlight on stage.