A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (8 page)

—That's . . . that's just plain fucking crazy. I'm sorry. But you think I voted for these guys? You think anybody you'll ever see at a hostel in Berlin voted for these guys?

Owen walked away, positive that the man behind the desk was gesturing for him to fuck off.

—Do you want me to leave this door open?

—I want you to leave, but it's not my hostel.

Owen passed four newsstands on his way to the Winerei. It's a raw morning when the all-caps headline of every paper reads the same thing:
FOLTER!
He didn't need to know what the word meant because from here on out, the word meant
that
.

A handful of morning coffee regulars at the Winerei would confront him, since they had already asked him to defend familiar evils like the dropping of bombs. By eleven, the two knitters and the flirtatious Brit who always sat at the round table with the Tiffany lamp had accused Owen of perpetuating the fraternal mentality that would allow these events to transpire. At five, the co-owner unwound his conspiracy theory of horrors: What must the CIA be hiding if they allowed this picture to leak?

That left pinball with Kurt Wagener and his sidekick, the two flippers who would bat Owen into the light show and then watch him roll into the drain. They would wait for the evening crush to gather before pulling the plunger.

Sure enough, the artist and his friend showed at nine. Owen had been apologizing all day. He fretted the cover of his passport until the gold-foil letters disappeared into the navy field. Apologies only. He was ready for Kurt. The artist rolled for Owen's chair with two firm strokes of the push ring. He unstoppered a bottle of red with his teeth and filled Owen's glass before taking a swig.

—Today couldn't have been an easy day to be American. You're fine?

—I'm not the one being tortured.

—Look, I understand what it means to suddenly lose degrees of freedom you previously took for granted. I understand what it means to be attacked. Unfortunately, in my case, it was a literal attack that put me in this chair.

Kurt and companion waited for Owen to respond. Kurt put the bottle back between his legs, locked the brakes, and shook Owen's hand with his cut-fingered gloves.

—Kurt Wagener. This is Hal. And tonight we've got reason to celebrate.

Owen looked at the wine as if it might be drugged.

—What're we drinking to?

Kurt raised the bottle and toasted loud:

—To another dashing American. Now the neighborhood has someone else to vilify.

—I assumed you guys were German.

—I'm Swiss, but I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. Hal's Swedish.

—With a student visa that expired four years ago, but don't tell anybody.

At arm's length, Kurt poured the last drops of the bottle into his mouth. He looked around as if he might throw it, but settled with holding it aloft. After a minute, Hal replaced the bottle and then helped himself to a seat at Owen's side. Owen glanced at the blue-green scribbles on Hal's arms and the one professional tattoo of a tarot card:
THE TOWER
. A yellow lightning bolt struck the top of the inked-in tower, setting it ablaze and throwing two figures forward toward the ground.

—We saw you in the park yesterday.

—I go there in the mornings to write.

—You attract attention. Have you ever acted?

Owen studied the speaker. Eyes like faded denim, uneven and almost yellow in places. When Owen looked closer, he saw an erosion in Kurt's eyes that suggested he had witnessed some horrible things and caused a few more. He wore his hair shaved at the sides and long on top, as did Hal. Hal looked up from the cigarette he was rolling on Owen's father's Loeb edition
Odyssey
, vol. I.

—Still reading that? You'd probably get more girls if it was in German.

—I read the verso. The Greek.

—What?

Kurt answered for Owen:

—He means he doesn't borrow his opinions.

—My father's sort of Greek.

—Americans are all “sort of” something, Hal muttered.

Owen thought of explaining that were it not for his mother's intervention, he would have been named for a dictionary: Liddell Scott Burr. A moment's hesitation, and Hal was up trailing a girl out the front door. Kurt rolled closer, until his face was inches from Owen's.

—Hal pretends he's an asshole sometimes.

Owen remembered their first encounter. The word stung.

—What else does he do?

Kurt pinched his nose a few times, sniffed.

—What does he do? Why divide who you are from what you do? That's an American schizophrenia that'll go away if you live in Berlin long enough. Berliners define themselves with verbs, not nouns. Hal plays music, but he's not a musician. He throws parties, but he's not a promoter. He takes pictures, but he's not a photographer. Well, he would say he's a photographer, but his real contribution is his presence, you know.

—He acts, Owen said.

—That's closer to the truth. So who are you, Owen? Why are you in Berlin? What do you want to accomplish?

Owen finished his glass of wine, giving Kurt time to ask another question.

—Are you an artist?

—Yes. Well, I'm trying to be.

—Perfect. I'm looking for an outsider artist to collaborate with.

—What's an outsider artist?

—In Berlin, anyone who asks that question!

Kurt laughed hard at his own joke and looked around for someone who might have heard it. Not finding anyone to connect with, he continued,

—A young outsider artist is someone who doesn't have connections. If we're talking about someone over forty, “outsider artist” is just a euphemism for “crazy person.” And you can't really collaborate with those guys. They'll bite your hand, literally, and sue for all sorts of made-up shit. But someone like you, if you're any good, brings something new and vital to a project.

Owen squinted.

—Look, you can be another one of these mopey guys who has a “show” in a coffee shop, or you can get serious. Collaboration is the best way to make connections. It's kind of the only way. No curator is going to include you in a group show until you have a platform. Unless wrinkled balls are your thing. In which case, I see the birth of a bright star.

Kurt smiled and hit Owen's leg.

—So let's talk alternatives. I've got a booth to myself at Art Basel.

Kurt saw that the name didn't register.

—It's like the Super Bowl. And I've got seats in the owner's box. So. Are you in?

—I don't have any real works yet, just some ideas.

—Let me explain. This is all brand-new work, not a bunch of shit that's been touring London, New York, and Shanghai. I only do new. Anything that doesn't sell at an opening gets destroyed. What I'm looking for is a collaborator who can make choices. There are going to be some difficult decisions, and I'll need you to make those decisions. To a large extent, I want to be absent from the composition, or if not absent, only there in a reduced capacity—like an invisible hand.

—Yeah, but specifically . . .

—
Specifically
needs to wait until we've signed the contracts. So what do you say?

Owen raised a glass as a why-not. Kurt clanked it as a handshake. Hal returned just in time to offer a toast:

—To the Cripple and the Cyclops—at least you'll get their attention.

They drank. Kurt spoke sotto voce so his words would be noticed by a nearby table of girls.

—Don't underestimate being noticed. A little bit of pressure and the sense of an audience are essential to molding an artist. You know, if a few museums in London, or New York, or whatever, exhibit your work.

Kurt lit a cigarette, continued.

—Or if you're collected by some really big names. I know right now you just want to sell work, sell something to anyone, but you're better off starving. It's not how much you sell, it's who you sell to. Guard your work. Set the prices high, then prove them. The goal is to get to a point where you can't make enough work to keep the most serious collectors in the world happy. Whatever. I mean. The only thing that matters is that your friends are taken care of. You know, people come in to see my art or whatever and then maybe see a picture of Hal's and think, “Shit, if Kurt thinks he's good, I should buy this guy while he's cheap.” When you're around successful people you get noticed, and maybe you pick up some of the habits that made them successful in the first place. Whatever it is you're trying to do in Berlin, I can guarantee that from my platform more people will hear the message.

Owen, young and allergic to any sales pitch, answered:

—I'm more concerned with the quality of the message than the volume.

—You don't need to pretend to be noble. This is Berlin. We're all monsters here.

Kurt now got Hal's attention and pantomimed lighting a pipe. They stopped at the table of girls. Kurt said something that made the prettiest one blush.

Owen returned to his book. Previous Kurt sightings had done much in the past month to undercut his romantic notions of being an artist, but he also wasn't prepared to back out—if for no other reason than to figure out if art was the wasted half or his real reason for staying above the ground.

Kurt and Hal came back with red eyes, surrounded by a cloak of tobacco. Kurt locked his wheels. Hal stooped over the table and began sketching a map of Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain on a napkin with his felt-tipped pen.

—If you follow Saarbrücker Straße, Kurt said, through Prenz'l Allee, it will change names, but stay on the road. Eventually it hits our park.

Kurt took the napkin and added several trees, a triangle, and a cylinder. He squinted, pinched his cigarette, and admired his work.

—This is the
Wasserturm
, he said, adding a star to the top of the cylinder. Do you know that word? It means “water tower.” You'll see it when you get in the park. It's on the top of a hill. You can stay with us as long as you like—a month at least.

—I can't really pay you anything.

Kurt cocked an eyebrow.

—I'd never expect you could.

Hal tried to find an earnest expression:

—You're lucky you came here tonight.

—You live in a water tower?

—The big
Wasserturm
is in Kollwitzplatz. Our
Wasserturm
was built for a brewery.

Kurt explained:

—These kinds of things would never be possible now, even with colossal sums of money. Hal and I were in East Berlin at the beginning, and now we have my gallery to take care of all the paperwork—because of the wheelchair or whatever. We've been living in the water tower since the mid-nineties. When this shit happened, we converted the stairs to a big ramp, like the Guggenheim.

Hal finished his wine then clapped Owen on the shoulder.

—You'll see for yourself. Go check out from your hostel or whatever and meet us at the tower tonight. The door will be open. First floor's yours.

Kurt stabbed out his cigarette.

—European first floor. American second floor. You'll see.

Kurt shook Owen's hand and turned away when the young woman he had been performing for walked over. Owen bussed wineglasses. Hal followed him to the sink.

—Come tonight. It will seem too awkward tomorrow. But trust me, this is a good idea. I know better than anyone that Kurt can be . . . abrasive. But if there's one person in Berlin who can make your career, it's Kurt. You'll be famous by Christmas. You won't even need to try. Your only question should be: Do I want to do anything with my life while I'm still young enough to have a good time doing it, or do I want to read Greek in a wine bar?

When he'd finished drying the last glass, Owen shook his head and snorted.

—All right, let's have some fun.

Hal returned to Kurt and the young woman already seated in Kurt's lap. Kurt yelled over the music:

—You may not see us tonight. We won't be back early. But make yourself at home. You're a monster now.

U
naccustomed to the silence of the gods, Owen was left to follow whatever he had. In this case, a crudely drawn map. A day's drizzle gathered to a drop and fell from the awning onto the napkin in Owen's hand. Blue lanes drawn in felt pen began to swell and bleed into one another. Tethered clouds, which Kurt had drawn to indicate a forest, lay just ahead to the north. And beyond, in a park past the cross-field cemetery, was the cylinder with a star on top, the
Wasserturm
.

Owen folded the napkin-map along its frilled edges and placed it in his coat as a pocket square. As he checked out of the hostel, he asked if he could continue to use the beach cruiser, since it was the only bike big enough for his knees. That got a laugh from the manager.

And fair enough. It was better that he was walking into this new world, their world. He thought of Brancusi—or was it a character in Balzac?—walking hundreds of miles to Paris to begin his new life. Owen kicked past the gated cemetery and saw the entrance to the park.

The Volkspark Friedrichschain peeled around him. Maple and oak carpeted the empty winter fountain with layers of leaves in the lamplight, all waiting patiently for a
psoph
to flip them over and dry their undersides, a keel like Owen's that would wake the twigs and tangles. Fallen limbs. Thick mist swelling above the plaster fauns and fairy forms. Vapors condensing on goat-riding cherubim. A peeling park waiting for this night. And past the colonnade, past the keystone arches and knobby balustrade, the trees framed a vanishing point of the
Wasserturm
.

Now Hal's magnanimity made sense. How could anyone draw a map for a stranger to a monolith in the middle of a deserted, wild park without at least a chuckle? Owen circled the sandstone tower until he found the door.

Heavy enamel layers told the story of a war against graffiti. A deep red shellac was now overrun with silver Krylon and names like
SKELO
and
ÜTER
and
TRAK
written in white paint pen. The double-door junction was covered in what appeared to be the dried spittle of a fire extinguisher, but proved to be more paint. Several band stickers had been slapped on the flat panels of the door. Next to the doorknob, a stencil of Dr. Strangelove.