The Rules of Perspective by Adam Thorpe

Author:Adam Thorpe [Adam Thorpe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Today the one with the big moustache brought a mirror, but I am not to keep it. It is the lovely lake of Konigssee, in which I look at myself and drown.

27

‘The Teniers,’ Herr Hoffer said, finding his voice after swallowing, ‘is in the salt-mine.’

‘No, it had already left the museum.’

Frau Schenkel tutted. ‘Herr Oberst, is this the time or place?’

Tiny bits of masonry pattered down. The candle’s flame was sucked into the melting wax and then enlarged, turning Werner Oberst’s half-moon spectacles into two headlamps taped for a blackout. They seemed to be driving straight for Herr Hoffer, mesmerised in the road like a rabbit. There was a distant boom.

‘Yesterday morning,’ said Werner, ‘I had an appointment with Herr Kreisleiter Fest, in his gymnasium of an office. I was attempting to recover the unique town plan of 1701 that the district Party office had borrowed from the archives, if you remember, two years ago.’

‘Did you get it back?’

‘That, Heinrich, is beside the present point. Everything was in chaos, with Fest sitting in the middle like a pumpkin. They were packing everything into boxes, everything except the telephone. Funny, they all knew before we did. I was wearing my wound badge. Fest asked me what kind of wound it was. As if I was shirking.’

Werner lifted up his right arm, the one that was always rather awkward in its movement. ‘It splintered at the elbow from a single bullet on the Somme,’ he said. ‘The nerves were smashed. It gives me pain every day. If I am sometimes short-tempered, it is the pain.’

‘Ah,’ said Frau Schenkel, ‘so that’s all right then.’

‘The buffoon was called out to greet some woman in a fur. At any rate, through all the comings and goings of men with boxes, I noticed something extraordinary through a door at one end. Pink flesh.’

‘Nothing surprises me,’ Frau Schenkel sighed. ‘You never know what’s round the next corner.’

‘I went closer,’ continued Werner, ‘and peeped in. It was the Kreisleiter’s private drawing room, not yet packed up. The pink flesh belonged to the torso of a painted Venus. You’ll have guessed by whom. She was hanging above the fireplace. I was very surprised: I had thought Venus Bathing was here, in the vaults. At that moment the buffoon came back into the room. I was a little vexed, I have to admit. “Ah, yes, a wonderful painting,” he said, leading me into the private drawing room. “Look at the arse on her! That’s genius, that is. They knew how to paint skirt, in those days.”’

Frau Schenkel giggled. ‘You’ve got him very well, Herr Oberst!’

Never, in twenty years, thought Herr Hoffer, has she complimented him before. I am in trouble.

‘“But this wonderful painting, my dear Oberst,”’ Werner went on, pitching the Hannoverian accent even thicker, ‘“like all your wonderful paintings, is the property of the Reich! As you bloody well know. Anyway, I did not even expropriate the bird. She was a gift.” “A gift, Kreisleiter Fest?” “And stop pissing

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