Madonna in a Fur Coat Read online

  My hands were almost trembling as I flipped through the exhibition catalogue. I was hoping I might find out more about the painting. At the bottom of a page at the very end, I found just three words beside the number of the painting: Maria Puder, Selbstporträt. Nothing else. Clearly the artist had no other work in the exhibition. I was not unhappy about that. I was afraid her other paintings might not have the same overwhelming effect on me and indeed diminish my initial admiration. I stayed until late. Occasionally I got up and wandered through the gallery, looking blindly at the other paintings, but soon I came back to the same place to gaze at that one painting. Each time it seemed as if I could see new expressions in her face, as if she were slowly coming to life. Her downcast eyes seemed to be glancing at me and her lips, I thought, were fluttering.

  With time, the gallery emptied out. The tall man at the door must, I thought, be waiting for me to leave. Quickly I stood up and left. A soft rain was falling over the city. For once, I made straight for the pension without dawdling along the way. I was desperate to get through dinner and retire to my room, to conjure up the image of that face. I didn’t say a word over dinner.

  ‘Where did you go today?’ asked Frau Heppner, the manageress.

  ‘Nowhere in particular,’ I replied. ‘I took a stroll and then visited a gallery with an exhibition of modern art.’

  Everyone else at the table launched into a discussion about modern art, and I slipped out of the room.

  As I was taking off my jacket, my newspaper fell out of the pocket. I leaned over and picked it up and as I was placing it on my desk, my heart skipped a beat. This was the paper with the article about the exhibition I had read that morning in a café. I tore it open to see if there was anything in the article about the painting or the artist. It surprised me to be behaving so rashly because I was in fact a gentle, unemotional man. I scanned the article from the beginning, and suddenly stopped at the name I had seen in the catalogue: Maria Puder.

  Considering that she was a young artist exhibiting her work for the first time, the article gave her a fair amount of attention. It claimed she was interested in following in the footsteps of the great masters, showing a fine and admirable talent for capturing an expression. In sharp contrast to most other self-portraits, she did not fall prey to a ‘stubborn ugliness’, nor did she go in pursuit of an ‘exaggerated beauty’. After touching on a few technical matters, the critic concluded by saying that (by uncanny coincidence) the woman in the painting bore, in both expression and manner, a striking resemblance to Andrea del Sarto’s depiction of the Mother Mary in his Madonna delle Arpie. In a slightly humorous tone, he wished the ‘Madonna in a Fur Coat’ every success, before moving on to discuss another work that had caught his eye.

  Early the next morning, I went to a shop renowned for its reproductions and searched for the Madonna of the Harpies. I found her in a large album featuring Del Sarto’s work. Although it was a poor reproduction that failed to give much sense of the original, I could see that the critic was right. Standing on a pedestal and with the holy child in her arms, the Madonna was gazing at the ground, heedless of both the bearded man to her right and the young man on her left; in the tilt of her head and in her face and on her lips, I could clearly see the same expression of anguish and resentment that I had caught in the painting the day before. As the pages from these albums were sold separately, I was able to buy the reproduction and take it back to my room. After studying the work carefully, I was convinced that it was a work of great value. For the first time in my life I was truly looking at the Madonna. In all the other depictions of Mother Mary that I had seen until now, she wore an expression of such innocence as to render the work absurd; in those paintings she resembled either a little girl looking down at a baby in her arms as if to say, ‘Have you seen? Have you seen the gift God has given me?’, or a chambermaid staring blankly at a child who has come crashing into her world, courtesy of a man they cannot name.

  But the Mother Mary in Sarto’s painting had learned how to think, she had developed her own ideas on how to live, she was a woman, no less, who had begun to shun the world. She paid no heed to the supplicating saints beside her, or the Messiah in her arms. She was not even looking up at the sky; instead, she had her eyes on the ground, and no doubt she saw something there.

  I left the picture on my desk. I closed my eyes and imagined the painting in the exhibition. Only then did it occur to me that the woman depicted in the painting must exist in real life. Yes, of course. It was a self-portrait! Which meant that this miracle of a woman was living among us, her deep dark eyes gazing at the ground or at the person across the way, her lips parted to speak, her lower lip slightly larger than the other … she existed! She was alive! Somewhere, sometime, I might even catch sight of her … When the possibility first struck me, it was as an overwhelming fear. For a man of no experience like me, it was nothing short of terrifying to think of coming face to face with a woman such as her.

  Although I was twenty-four years old by then, I had never had an adventure with a woman. In Havran there had been various drunken exploits and the odd flight of debauchery led by the older neighbourhood boys, which I never managed to make any sense of. My natural reticence stopped me from ever mustering enough courage to try again. The only women I knew were the creatures that stirred my imagination. They might feature in the thousand and one fantasies I concocted as I lay under olive trees on hot summer nights, far from material concerns, but they all had one thing in common: they were beyond my reach. I had, of course, been secretly in love with our neighbour Fahriye for many years. In my dreams, I had explored improprieties that bordered on the shameful. Whenever I passed her on the street, my face would turn so red and my heart beat so fast, that I’d soon be ducking for cover. On Ramadan nights, I would steal away from the house and find myself a hiding place near their front door, to watch her come out with her mother, who’d be holding a lantern. But once the door was open, I could barely make them out in their long, dark coats, cocooned in that soft yellow light. Turning away, I would tremble for fear that they might see me, as they left for the Tarawih prayers.

  If ever I met a woman I found attractive, my first thought was to run away. From the moment we came face to face, I lived in dread that my every glance and movement might reveal my true feelings. Drowning in shame, I became the most miserable person on earth. I cannot recall ever looking directly at a woman during my adolescence, not even my mother. Later, when I moved to Istanbul, I made an effort to overcome my absurd shyness; through friends, I met a few girls with whom I could be myself. But the moment I sensed a spark of interest on their part, all my courage drained away. I was never innocent: when I entertained these women in my mind, I would engineer scenes that even the most masterful lover would have found daunting, and when I imagined these girls’ smouldering lips pressed against mine, it seemed to me an intoxication far greater than anything real life could bring.

  But this painting of the Madonna in a Fur Coat had shaken me – so much so that the very thought of imagining her in such a scene was impossible. I could not begin to imagine it. I could not even imagine sitting beside her as a friend. All I wanted was to stand before that painting for hours on end, gazing into those dark, unseeing eyes. And the desire to do so only grew. I threw on my coat and headed back to the gallery. It went on like that for days.

  Every afternoon, I would stroll in, pretending to stop to inspect each painting in the gallery, as my impatience grew. For all I wanted was to go straight to my Madonna. When at last I reached it, I would make as if I had noticed the painting for the first time. And there I would remain, until the doors of the gallery were about to close. I soon became a familiar figure to the guards and the handful of artists who visited the gallery as often as I did. They would greet me with wide smiles, and follow this strange art enthusiast with their eyes. In the end I gave up masking my intentions. I would walk straight to the Madonna in a Fur Coat, settling myself down on the bench across from it. I
would stare and stare, until I could stare no longer, and had to cast my eyes down to the floor.

  Inevitably, people noticed and were curious. And then one day my worst fear came true. Most of the artists who frequented the gallery were men with large foulards and long hair that tumbled down over their dark suits, but there was also a young woman who joined them from time to time. I thought she must be a painter too.

  One day she came over to me. ‘It seems you are particularly fascinated by this painting,’ she said. ‘You come to look at it every day.’

  I looked up, to be undone by a knowing, mocking smile. To save myself, I looked down. But there, just ahead of me, were her pointed shoes, waiting for me to explain myself. As my eyes travelled upwards, I noticed that her skirt was short and her legs uncommonly shapely. And I could, every time she moved, almost see a sweet wave rippling down her stockings, all the way to her knees.

  Seeing that she was not going to leave until she got an answer from me, I said: ‘Yes! It’s a beautiful painting …’ Then, for some reason, I felt the need to offer an explanation. I mumbled a lie: ‘She looks a lot like my mother …’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you come and look at it for so long!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Is your mother dead?’

  ‘No!’

  She waited as if she wanted me to go on. Still staring at the floor, I added: ‘She’s far away.’

  ‘Oh … where is that?’

  ‘In Turkey.’

  ‘Are you Turkish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew you were a foreigner.’

  Letting out a little laugh, she sat down next to me on the bench. Her manner could only be described as brazen. Throwing one leg over the other, she revealed her leg well above the knee. I realized then that I was blushing – yet again. Greatly amused by my discomfort, she asked me another question:

  ‘Don’t you have a picture of your mother?’

  Such impertinence! I thought. She had, I realized, come here only to mock me. The other painters were watching us from a distance and – I was sure of it – smirking.

  ‘I do but … this is something else,’ I said.

  ‘Oh! So this is something else.’

  With this, she let out another little laugh.

  I made as if to leave. Taking note of this, she said: ‘Don’t let me disturb you. I was just going … Let me leave you alone with your mother.’

  Standing up, she began to walk away. Then suddenly she wheeled around and came back over to me. Her voice now bore no resemblance to the one I’d just heard: it was solemn, even mournful: ‘Would you truly like to have a mother like that?’

  ‘Yes … oh yes, I would.’

  ‘Oh …’

  Turning her back on me yet again, she sauntered away. I raised my eyes and watched. Her short hair bounced against the back of her neck; with her hands in her pockets, her coat was snug around her hips.

  Thinking how those last words of mine had exposed the lie in our first exchange, I did not dare look around me, as I jumped to my feet and fled.

  And I left feeling as empty as if I had parted too quickly from a travelling companion I had come to rely on. I knew that I would never set foot in the gallery again. People – people who understood nothing of one another – had driven me away.

  Returning to the pension, I contemplated the dull days that lay ahead. Every time I sat at the supper table, it would be to listen to middle-class people berating the inflation that was eroding their fortunes, or dictating how Germany was to be saved. Every night, I would go back up to my room, to read stories by Turgenev or Theodor Storm. I saw then that over the past fortnight, my life had begun to take on meaning. I saw, too, what it would mean to lose it. A shaft of light had passed over me, illuminating my empty life with possibilities I dared not question. But now, just as mysteriously, it had vanished. Only now did I understand what this meant. For as long as I could remember, I had – perhaps without knowing, or perhaps not daring to breathe the thought – been searching for someone. That was why I had been avoiding all others. If only for a moment, the painting had convinced me that I might find her, and find her soon. It had sparked in me a hope that would never sink into despair. Shunning the society of others, I withdrew into myself. I cursed the world around me, with greater vehemence than ever before. I considered writing to my father, to tell him I was ready to come home. But what would I say when he asked me what I had learned in Europe? Better, I thought, to remain a few more months and master the perfumed soap trade, just to please him. I went back to the Swedish company and although they did not greet me with the same warmth as before, they agreed to take me on. And each day I reported to the factory for work. I took diligent notes, recording their methods and formulae. I read the books.

  Back at the pension, the Dutch widow Frau van Tiedemann was paying me a great deal of attention. She would lend me the novels she’d bought for her ten-year-old son at boarding school, and ask for my thoughts. Sometimes, after supper, she would come to my room on some petty pretext and chatter away for hours. Mostly she wanted to know about any adventures I might be having with German girls, and when I told her the truth she’d narrow her eyes, wag her finger and give me a knowing smile, as if to say, ‘You can’t fool me – I know what young men like you get up to!’ One day she invited me out for an afternoon stroll and on our way back she talked me into stopping at a beer hall, where we drank enough to lose track of the time. I’d had the occasional beer since I’d come to Berlin, but never as much as that night. After my head began to spin, I found myself in Frau van Tiedemann’s arms. When I came to my senses some moments later, the good-hearted woman was wiping my face with a napkin she’d had the waiters moisten for her. I said that we needed to get home at once. She insisted on paying the bill. When we stepped outside, I noticed that she was staggering as much as I was. Arm in arm, we stumbled forward, swaying into the path of those coming the other way. It was late by now, so the streets weren’t too crowded. Then, as we were crossing a street, something strange happened. Stepping up onto the pavement, Frau van Tiedemann caught her foot on the kerb; plump as she was, the woman grabbed onto me to steady herself, and I suppose it was because she was taller than me that she ended up with her arms around my neck. But after she had regained her balance, she didn’t let go; instead, she gripped me more tightly. And perhaps it was because I was drunk, but I had lost all inhibitions. Wrapping my arms around her, I felt the hungry lips of a thirty-five-year-old woman exploring mine. I breathed in her warm breath and with it the pungent, intoxicating perfume of passion. A number of passers-by laughed and wished us happiness. Then, about ten paces ahead, I caught sight of a woman walking towards us, under a street lamp. A shock passed through me. Whereupon Frau van Tiedemann tightened her embrace, passing her lips over my hair. But by now I was struggling to free myself. All I wanted was to see the woman walking towards us. It was she. A single glance and lightning flashed, clearing the fog in my mind. For here she was: the pale, long-nosed, dark-eyed woman draped in the skin of a wildcat, my Madonna in a Fur Coat. How sad she looked, and how weary, as she walked down the street, oblivious to the world around her! But when she saw us, she stopped in surprise. Our eyes met. In hers I saw the flicker of a smile. I winced, as if lashed by a whip. Although I was drunk, I felt it would have been distasteful to have met her under such circumstances. Her smile made her verdict clear. At last I freed myself from the old woman’s grip. I dashed off after the Madonna in a Fur Coat, hoping I might catch her. Not knowing what I would say or do, I went as far as the corner. She was gone. I stood there for a few minutes, searching all around me, but there was no one. No one but Frau van Tiedemann: ‘What’s come over you? Out with it, what’s happened?’ Linking arms, she led me back to the pension. All the way, she kept a tight hold of me, pressing her face against mine. But now her warm breath seemed intolerable, oppressive … All the same I didn’t resist. I had, after all, never learned how. The best I had ever managed was to run awa
y and now that seemed to be out of the question. I couldn’t take three steps without the woman pulling me back into her arms. And at the same time I was still reeling from my surprise encounter. As the effects of the alcohol wore off, I tried to recall what I had just seen. But those smiling eyes were lost again. It was as if I had dreamt them. No, I thought, I must not have seen her. I could never have met her under such circumstances. What I’d seen was a nightmare, born of that woman who had taken me into her arms, to smother me with her kisses and hot breath … I longed for nothing more than to escape to my bed, to let go of my cheap fantasies and let sleep do its work. But the woman had no intention of letting me go. The closer we came to the pension, the tighter and more passionate her grip.

  On the stairs she wrapped her arms around my neck again. Somehow managing to wrest myself free, I dashed up to the next landing. Her massive body made the staircase tremble as she hurried after me, panting heavily. As I fumbled with my key, Herr Döppke, the colonialist, appeared at the other end of the corridor. Slowly he approached me. I realized then that he had stayed up waiting for our return, and I took a deep breath. Everyone in the pension knew that this gentleman (who was quite well off) had fond feelings for the widow in whom the flames of passion still stirred. Indeed, Frau van Tiedemann was not entirely unaware of his affections, and it was rumoured that she herself had fond designs on the mighty old bachelor, whose spritely demeanour belied his fifty years. Catching sight of each other, the two friends stopped short. At once I slipped into my room, locking the door behind me. A hushed conversation ensued. It went on for some time. Careful questions were met with careful answers, soothing the ears of those anxious to believe. At long last I heard footsteps, as whispers followed them down the corridor.