William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

Loud cheers rose from the crowd at some sally from the speaker.

“They just don’t understand,” Cycling-coat said fiercely to Lysander. “Empty words, hot air.”

“Politicians,” Lysander said, rolling his eyes in ostensible sympathy. “All the same. Words are cheap.” He was beginning to be aware of glances coming his way. Who is this smart young man in his polka-dot tie talking to the madman? Time to leave. He walked away around the group of miners — black troglodytes come up from the underworld to see the modern city. Suddenly Lysander felt the idea for a poem grow in him.

♦

The Bosendorfer-Renz gallery was in a street off Graben. Lysander hovered some distance away at first, watching to see that guests were actually going in — he needed the security of other bodies. He approached the door, invitation in hand, but no one seemed to be checking on the identity of invitees so he slipped it back in his pocket and followed an elderly couple into what seemed more like an antique shop than an art gallery. In the small window were a couple of ornately carved chairs and a Dutch still life on an easel (apples, grapes and peaches with the inevitable carefully perched fly). At the rear of this first room was a corridor — bright lights beckoned and a rising hum of conversation. Lysander took a deep breath and headed on in.

It was a large high-ceilinged room, like a converted storage area, lit by three electric chandeliers. Long sections of wooden partitions mounted on small wheels broke up the space. It was busy, forty to fifty people had already arrived, Lysander was glad to see — he could lose himself. Hoff’s canvases were hung from a high picture rail; here and there small sculptures and maquettes stood on thin chest-high plinths. He decided to do a quick tour of the paintings, say hello to Miss Bull, congratulate Hoff and disappear into the night, duty done.

Hoff’s work, at first glance, appeared conventional and unexceptional — landscapes, townscapes, one or two portraits. But on closer inspection Lysander registered the strange and subtle light effects. A view of a meadow with a wood beyond seemed bathed in the glow of powerful arc-lights, the shadows cast densely black, razor-edged, turning the banal panorama into something sinister and apocalyptic, making you wonder what blazing light in the sky caused this baleful iridescence. A Saharan sun shining on a northern European valley. There was another sunset which was so lurid that it seemed the sky itself was diseased, rotting. In a townscape — Village in the Snow — Lysander suddenly noticed that two houses had no doors or windows and the village church had a round ‘O’ on its steeple, not a cross. What secrets were harboured here in this humble village?

As he went round the room spotting these potent anomalies, Lysander found that he was growing impressed with Hoff’s subtly oblique and disturbing vision. The largest painting was a full-length portrait of a heavily made-up woman in an embroidered kaftan sitting in a chair — Portrait of Fräulein Gustl Cantor-De Castro — but a second glance revealed that the kaftan was unbuttoned in her lap to reveal her pubis. The arrowhead of dark hair had seemed part of the decorative frieze-motif on the richly embroidered kaftan. When he saw this, Lysander felt a genuine frisson of shock as he realized what he was looking at. The flat stare of the hard-faced woman appeared to be directed exclusively at him, making him seem either complicit in the exposure of her sex — she had undone these buttons just for him — or else he was a voyeur, caught in the act.

He turned away and saw a waiter circulating with a tray of wine glasses. Lysander helped himself to one — it was a Riesling, a little too warm — and moved away to a corner to survey the crowd, most of whom seemed more interested in talking to each other than looking at Udo Hoff’s new paintings. He wondered who was Hoff. You could spot the artists — one with a shaven head, one with no tie, one bearded fellow in a paint-spattered smock as if he’d just come from his studio. Absurd to demarcate yourself so obviously, Lysander thought — no class. He could see no sign of Miss Hettie Bull, however.

He set down his empty glass on a table and wandered off to glance at what was hanging on the mobile partitions. He jerked to a halt, almost comically, at what he saw next. Turning a corner to investigate what was on the reverse side of a partition filled with small, framed drawings of jugs and bottles he found himself in front of the cartoon, the original design, of a theatre poster. There it was — a near-naked woman cupping her breasts as some blunt-faced rearing dragon-monster, like a scaly eel, threatened her — one orange eye glowing and a snake’s forked tongue extended in the direction of her loins. Written on it was “ ANDROMEDA UND PERSEUS eine Oper in vier Akten von GOTTLIEB TOLLER ”. So Udo Hoff had designed the offending poster, the shreds and scraps of which he had seen throughout Vienna…One mystery solved. And Perseus not Persephone.

Lysander stepped back for a better view. It was a provocative and disturbing image, no doubt. The scaly neck and head of the monster with its solitary septic eye. Even the most innocent bourgeois could see what was meant to be symbolized here, no doubt about it. And the woman pictured, Andromeda, she seemed –

“Did you ever see it?” An English voice — Manchester accent.

Lysander turned. Dr Bensimon stood there in evening dress — white bow tie, tailcoat — his beard recently trimmed and neatened. They shook hands, Lysander finding it strange to see his doctor here, out of his context. Then he remembered Miss Bull was a patient, also.

Bensimon had obviously been thinking along similar lines. “Never thought to find you here, Mr Rief. Took me aback when I saw you.”

“Miss Bull invited me.”

“Ah. All is explained.” He looked again at the poster and gestured at it. “The opera only had three performances in Vienna — at a Kabarett called ‘Hell’ — die Hölle . It was the only place that would put it on. Then it was banned by the authorities.”

“Banned? Why?”

“Gross indecency. Mind you, I would have banned it for the music. Intolerable screeching atonality. Richard Strauss gone insane.” He smiled. “I’m very old-fashioned in only one thing — music. I like a good melody.”

“What was indecent about it?”

“Miss Bull.”

“She sang?”

“No, no. She was Andromeda, sort of. Can’t you see the likeness in the portrait? You know the myth: Andromeda is chained to some rocks by the seashore as a placatory offering to a sea-monster, Cetus. Perseus comes along, kills Cetus, rescues her, they get married, etcetera, etcetera. Well, the soprano playing Andromeda — forget her name — could have passed easily for a heavyweight boxer. So Toller came up with the idea of a stand-in Andromeda for the monster-attack — our Miss Bull. There was an actually very impressive shadow-play — an Oriental puppet-effect for the monster projected somehow on the back wall — huge. Perseus was stage-front singing some interminable tenor aria — twenty minutes it seemed like — while Andromeda was being menaced. The soprano was off stage wailing and screaming. Cacophony, is the only word.”

Lysander was curious. “What was so indecent about Miss Bull’s Andromeda?”

“She was entirely naked.”

“Oh. I see. Right, yes…”

“Well, she had a few yards of some semi-transparent gauze around her. Left nothing to the imagination, let’s say.”

“Very brave of her.”

“Not short on audacity, our Miss Bull. Anyway, you can imagine the outrage. The brouhaha. They closed the theatre, ripped down every poster they could find. Poor Toller was charged with everything — immorality, indecency, pornography. Threw the book at him.” Bensimon shrugged. “So he killed himself.”