Postcards From No Man's Land (11 page)

And after our family farewells, the turn of the soldiers who shared our cellar. Those young men from a foreign country had in a few awful days become more intimate friends than any of our Dutch neighbours who we had lived beside for years. Not knowing, perhaps, how else to show their feelings, they pressed upon me as I said goodbye to each one, small gifts of the few personal possessions they had left. Cigarettes, though I did not smoke, some sweets, a cap badge, shoulder flashes, a pen (‘Maybe you’ll be able to write us a letter one day’), matches, a paratrooper’s scarf, even a wristwatch (‘You’ll need to know the time, Gertie, wherever you’re off to’), and from poor shell-shocked Sam, only just hanging on to himself, a book of poems which lies by me today as I write (‘Help you with your English!’). Norman, oldest of them in age and time spent with us, waited appropriately till last in this goodbye parade. He handed me a small black leather wallet, with a picture in it of his family and himself, saying, ‘Cheerio, Gertie. You’re a brave and lovely girl. I want you to have this. I hope we’ll meet again.’

And then with jokes and teasing, which is, I think, as much the English fashion on these difficult occasions as is our Dutch robust civility for us, we were led and helped and followed up the cellar steps and through the rubble of our dear home and out in to the back garden, where, in the roar
and shudder of the embattled night, we sat Jacob on the trolley, his gun held ready in his bandaged hands, my emergency suitcase and his backpack tucked one on each side of him, and with the icy rain threatening either to freeze us or to drown us before we could be shot dead or reach our destination, we set off, Dirk leading the way, Henk pushing the trolley, and me by his side, my heavy heart pounding, my throat lumpy and dry, and my thoughts torn in shreds.

Such a leaving I would never wish on anyone.

Nor the cold coming we had of it to our hiding place.

POSTCARD

We become what we behold.

William Blake

‘OPEN YOUR EYES
,’ Daan said.

He was standing behind Jacob, holding him by the shoulders, in one of the smaller galleries of the Rijksmuseum. Before entering he had made Jacob promise not to cheat, then guided him through the drift of visitors to this spot.

On the wall in front of him Jacob saw a portrait of himself. In ancient oils. Head to waist. Angled towards his left. In rich and rusty browns. Except for the pale triangular familiar face. Life size. Which shone as if bathed in sunlight, framed within the shadowed enclosure of a monk’s hood raised over the head. Eyes lowered and heavy-lidded. Wide mouth with fleshy bee-stung lower lip caught by the painter in a shy demure pleased-with-himself smile. And the feature which took most of Jacob’s attention because he hated it so much, the long thick nose with its blunt and bulbous end. His father’s nose. His grandfather’s nose. The Todd nose. His sister Poppy and his brother Harry didn’t have it. They had his mother’s pretty, slim-line version.

How often with the aid of a couple of mirrors he had scowled from every possible angle at that offensive hooter, that hideous snout, that swollen trunk, that tumescent nasal evacuator. He would sometimes squeeze and manipulate the end of his embarrassing blower between finger and thumb, like a sculptor moulding clay, hoping to reshape it into at least a presentable, if not a handsome conk. He had
in mind something like the fetching schnozzle that, for example, graces Michelangelo’s David, or the one belonging to devastating River Phoenix, which and whom he had studied closely while viewing recently for the fourth time a video of
My Own Private Idaho
. To no effect of course. His discomfiting snitch remained as baneful as ever.

Unable to take his eyes from this image of himself, he said, ‘Who is he?’

‘Titus. Titus van Rijn.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘But of his father.’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Who painted the self-portraits of Rembrandt?’

‘Eh?’

‘Who painted the self-portraits of Rembrandt?’

‘Rembrandt, of course!’

‘Whose full name was Rembrandt van Rijn.’

‘Ah! But this isn’t one of his self-portraits, is it, because it’s of someone called Titus. So it’s a portrait by Rembrandt of …?’

‘His son dressed as a monk. Painted in 1660 when Titus was nineteen.’

Thinking only now to do so, Jacob glanced at the caption on the wall by the side of the picture, confirming that Daan was not making it all up, and then, stepping as close as he dared, inspected, nose-to-nose you might say, the portrait of himself as Titus.

A watchful female guard of sumo proportions moved towards him.

Titus seemed so
there
that Jacob felt the painted boy might at any second lift his head and look straight back at him and speak. His fingers longed to touch that reflexive face. Unthinking, he raised his hand.

‘Back,’ the guard said. ‘Move back.’

Jacob took a step or two away but could not take his eyes from the painting. It mesmerised him. Which he thought,
even at the time, was strange, for the picture was not impressive. Had he been wandering on his own through the gallery he might easily have passed by without noticing it, just as other people were now. Most of the picture was so dark that you could hardly tell what was there: some foliage in autumnal colours behind Titus’s back was clear; and the monk’s brown habit, which was made of a thick coarse heavy-looking material and was much too large for the boy’s body, at least to judge from the head, so that he seemed to be encased inside its barrel chest and voluminous arms, like armour, rather than wearing it. But shining out from the middle of all this swallowing darkness was Titus’s glowing face, alive and vibrant, the skin pale gold, the lowered eyes deep and perhaps a little sad, the full lower lip, which he might just have licked, fresh red and sensuous, yet still innocently delicate. Untouched, was the word that came to Jacob’s mind.

‘You like it?’ said Daan coming to his side.

No picture he had ever seen had so absorbed and fixated him. He did not want to say this but made himself say yes.

‘Then you should see the portrait of Titus in a red cap when he is a little older. In that one he looks right at you, straight in to the eyes. And you see his hair, which you can’t in this one. Unlike you, he has long curly brown hair. Very beautiful. You should try growing yours the same.’

‘No thanks.’

‘It would suit you. You could easily see the portrait. It’s in the Wallace Collection in London. I like it better than this one. It’s better painted, and this one is a bit, how do you say? …
nuffig
… prim. The Madonna pose.’

‘Madonna!’

‘Not
Madonna
. I mean, the Mother of Christ.
The
Madonna.’

They laughed.

‘And how is Titus like her?’

‘The pose. Head down in innocent resignation. Hands
clasped on his lap. The monk’s dress. Very saintly, very pure. Very prim. Just like all those thousands of pictures of the holy virgin. And
bij God!
, Titus certainly looks virgin, don’t you agree?’

His eyes still on the picture, Jacob said, ‘You know all this from studying art history, I suppose.’

‘No. I study art history because of Rembrandt.’

‘How come?’ He did not really want to know but at least while Daan was talking he could go on gazing at Titus.

‘For me, he’s the greatest painter who ever lived. He is at the end of the old world and the beginning of the modern. He’s fascinated me ever since the first time I saw
The Nightwatch
. That huge picture we passed on the way here. My father brought me to see it when I was eight. I thought it so dramatic, so exciting, I wanted to climb on to the canvas. Really! Into the painting—and be part of the scene. Of course, I know now it’s totally a piece of theatre, not at all realistic. The lighting is artificial, the grouping of the figures is operatic, their attitudes are false heroic poses. So stagey. High camp! But when I was eight, it seemed more real than the people who were crowded around me, looking at it. From that moment I’ve wanted to know everything there is to know about Rembrandt. I see every one of his pictures that I can. I study his work, his life. Everything. Every detail. And my thesis will be on Titus. The role of Titus in Rembrandt’s life. It’s never been done. Not as a subject on its own.’

Jacob was only half listening and now couldn’t distract himself enough from Titus to keep the talk going.

There was a silence between them before he felt Daan’s arm slip round his waist, drawing him away.

‘Look here,’ Daan said, guiding him to a slightly larger picture next but one along the wall.

An old man with a lumpy face, a white and yellow hat like rolled-up towelling wrapped round his head, madman’s fly-away curly hair sticking out from under it, forehead
creased with many wrinkles from his raised eyebrows, watery eyes staring out at Daan standing by Jacob’s left shoulder, his hands holding open a large book as if he has this very second looked up from reading. And like the picture of Titus, all the light, all the emphasis on the face. And like Titus, the nose—large, lumpy, bulged at the end.

Jacob chuckled. ‘Looks a bit gaga.’

‘Rembrandt when he was fifty-five, eight years before his death.’

‘Looks like he’s already on his last legs.’

‘A self-portrait dressed as the Apostle Paul. Painted a year after the picture of Titus as a monk. Come. Stand further away.’ Daan’s hand took Jacob’s shoulder and pulled him back. ‘From here you see both pictures. Side by side. Looking at each other. Yes? Father and son at just about the same time.’

Not to be outdone, Jacob added, ‘And each pretending to be someone else.’

‘But what comes through, what you see, is not the
acteerspel
—’

‘The acting? … The pretence?’

‘Yes, not the pretence …
Door de gezichten
…’

‘You mean, the true person?’

‘Exactly. The true person. Don’t you agree?’

Jacob considered each picture. ‘Yes. That’s right.’ And it was. He saw it was so. ‘It’s the faces, isn’t it.’

‘That’s one reason why I love Rembrandt. His truthfulness. Always honest. Loves people and loves them just as they are. Never afraid of life as it is.’

Jacob thought: This isn’t a game any more. He’s talking differently. He’s being serious. He means it. We’re not the same together. We’ve changed.

Again he felt something about Daan he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something he liked but which also disturbed him.

‘So why write about Titus? What’s so interesting about
him? It’s Rembrandt you admire.’

‘Well, for one thing. When Rembrandt was forced into bankruptcy—’

‘He was?’

‘Yes. He earned a great deal, was very successful, worked very hard. Work, work, work, all the time. But he also spent a lot. Had a madness for collecting things. A museum amount of stuff. All sorts of objects. His house was full of them. In the end, he got into debt and couldn’t pay. So all his belongings were taken away and sold at auction. Titus went to the auction and used his own money to buy back as much as he could. Things his father would need. Among them the beautiful mirror in an ebony frame that Rembrandt used when painting his self-portraits. But on the way home, somehow or other the mirror was broken.’

‘Oh-o! Bad news.’

‘Very bad. Can you imagine how he felt? And think of what it means that he did what he could to buy his father’s things back. So that Rembrandt could continue to do the only thing that mattered to him: paint pictures. Many people, historians, critics, have said that Rembrandt stole from Titus. That he exploited his son, used the money Titus’s mother, Saskia, left to him when she died. In other words, they are saying Rembrandt was a selfish abusive father who only cared about his own career and welfare. I don’t believe that at all. And the story about Titus going to the sale and buying the mirror tells me that he loved his father and would do all he could to support and help him. In fact, if it was not for Titus, Rembrandt would have been prevented from painting, because in those days, if you were made bankrupt you were stopped from practising your trade. To save Rembrandt from that fate, Titus became his father’s employer, hiring him to paint pictures.’

Jacob looked at the two portraits with different eyes. The son who employed the father was employed by the father as his model.

‘A good story,’ he said. ‘What did Titus do?’

‘For a living, you mean? They say he tried to be a painter but wasn’t any good at it. I don’t believe that’s what he really wanted. What he did, what he was, was his father’s model. I think what he loved was sitting for his father. He loved being closely observed by his father, receiving all his attention, and loved watching his father at work.’

‘Father watching son watching father.’

‘Right. While one painted the other and the other knew he was being painted. That’s important to it.’

‘How? I don’t quite understand what you mean.’

‘Put it this way. I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is—real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she’s right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you’re seeing. Complete attention, one of the other.’

Jacob swapped his gaze between father and son, and saw what Daan meant.

‘But in that case,’ he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, ‘all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn’t it. Looking closely at what’s being painted.’

‘The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting. Writing—literature—also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It’s the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It’s the history of love.’

‘What happened? To Titus, I mean.’