How to Be True by Daisy May Johnson

Author:Daisy May Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

THE LIGHT THAT WENT OUT

Kurt Mercier was killed.

He was killed underneath a bright blue sky and a sun so fine and clear that it might have been shaped from gold. It was not the sort of day to die in, and he had not expected to die. He had been waiting for Agathe and Odette to return home from their classes at university, and he had prepared a supper of some bread and some cheese, and then he had answered the door to some Nazi soldiers and everything had changed.

He had expected this visit for a while, for the things he painted made him visible in a world where it paid to be the very opposite. And so when these soldiers arrived at the flat, Kurt let them in and listened to what they had to say. He had no choice. The soldiers told him he was saying the wrong sorts of things and painting the wrong sorts of people. They mentioned one painting in particular that had offended them: a painting of two young women with their arms around each other and seemingly in love. Kurt changed the subject quickly at this point, but the soldiers did not. They told him that his art was degenerate.1 If he continued to make art in the way that he wanted to, then they would make it so that he could not buy canvases or paint or anything to work with. They would prevent him from selling his art and from lecturing at the university.

Once they had told him this, they told him that he could stop it from happening. He must never paint again unless it was in the way that they wanted him to. Munich was to be a capital of art, but only the sort of art that was right and proper to produce. Art that shared the values of the Nazis and all that they stood for. Kurt could keep painting if only he painted the right things. Other artists had agreed to this. They told him about the artist who now only painted innocent views of the countryside, and about the man who had handed in his oil paintings without complaint. It was all very straightforward. All Kurt had to do was paint what they told him or stop. There was nothing more to it.

Kurt told them that he would not stop painting.

That he would continue to paint precisely what he wanted and how he wanted.

And so they shot him.

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