Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

months, was flooded with the diffuse reflected light.They arrived in high spirits. Becky’s house, an art nouveau villa near the Taurichevsky Gardens, seemed to float in thecold light. The white two-story building was adorned by a staircase with stained glass windows. Along the upper level rana mosaic of semi-nude mermaids floating in blue irises. Swinging floral reliefs framed the windows. They climbed a flightof broad steps to the main entrance, under a balcony embellished with a hand-wrought iron arabesque: Ostentatious, butof uniform style and in the best taste.Becky ushered her guests into an intimate salon where she served Earl Grey tea and petit-fours from the best Frenchbakery in town.Konrad looked around. The interior decor and the furniture complemented the outside, leaving the impression that herfather had given free hand to a carefully selected architect and interior decorator.In contrast to the subtle decor the paintings were overbearing. They covered the walls of the foyer, the living room, and alarge formal dining room in two and three tiers up to the ceiling.On a first superficial inspection Alexandra recognized only a few: two Renoirs, a southern French landscape by Cezanne,and a horse-racing scene, probably by Degas. Two large, disturbingly colorful canvasses, a turbulent landscape and apair of provocative, dark-skinned nudes, she could not place. Marti explained that the Tahitian women were by PaulGauguin and the Provençal landscape by Vincent van Gogh.Marti became very agitated. Unable to sit still, he stared spellbound at the Gauguin. Umoved by their excitement, Beckylazily offered to take them around, if Marti would explain the paintings.Konrad stood rooted before the Gauguin. It showed a tropical beach. A triangular stretch of hot-pink sand slanteddiagonally across half the canvas. The two voluptuous Tahitian women, both stark naked, dominated the foreground.One was lying, highly foreshortened, with the head to the viewer. The other sat facing them, one leg bent up, the otherangled underneath. In the background a horse drank from a colorful pond of paint in which a third woman took a bath.Konrad declared the painting outright obscene but then moderated his judgement. "On second consideration, it is not thenudity that disturbs me as much as the outrage of the colors, the pink sand in particular. It has already burned atriangular hole into my retina."Marti meekly defended the freedom of expression of an artist. Dissatisfied with Marti’s apology, Alexandra, overcome byexcitement, brushed all conventional decorum aside. "Look, what offends you is the unveiled sexuality that this paintingconveys. Sex is a part of life, how to show it in a painting? Gauguin dares to express the emotional heat he felt by hiscolors. His two nudes are in themselves completely innocent, the visual implications and the arousal are only in the mindof the observer—and that of the painter. Maybe Gauguin was as shocked by the Tahitian women as you are now. Hisskill succeeded in making you feel it."Konrad got a red face, embarrassed he stared at her in restrained silence."I admire you, Alexandra," said Marti. "You dare say such things openly. That is exactly what the critics in Paris shouldhave said. After an initial scandal, Gauguin was ostracized as a barbarian for decades."Konrad moved out of Alexandra’s way and turned to Becky, but she was absentmindedly lost in her own dark sensuality.She had nothing to say that could rescue him.Marti tried to lead them to other, less provocative paintings in the next room.Still tingling from her attack on Konrad, Alexandra stayed behind. She was not yet finished with these paintings. She triedto concentrate on Van Gogh’s wildly swirling sky. It radiated the hallucinating heat of Tuscany and the play of light andshade under the trees brought back the afternoon when, under such an olive tree, she had conceived the child shecarried. She put her hand on her belly and felt the child move.What had happened to her men? They trailed this spoiled, mindless child-woman Becky. Vladimir, her challenge, whomshe had wanted to seduce and destroy, had turned out to be a pretentious, sarcastic talker. He had lost his eloquenceamong these paintings. He was out of his depth. He lacked a strong sense for the visual. How could he presume to writepoetry without visions?And Konrad? His whole body slouching, visibly annoyed by the ‘hole in his retina,’ he was seeking solace from thiswoman. She knew that Becky would fade from his mind, being wiped out by the power of Gauguin.She turned to the other van Gogh, a touchingly bare, blue room with a bed and a rickety red chair. Marti had mentionedthat van Gogh had become deranged and had spent his last years in an insane asylum in Arles. He died in that bare,blue room.Insanity?Could insanity be a possibility in her life? Could her vibrant spontaneity turn into madness? Dizziness overcame her. Shesat down on a chair and closed her eyes. Gauguin’s pink seemed to flood the room. With an effort she concentrated allher energy on the kicking child in her belly. And then she knew that her female body and her eyes, yes, her eyes, wouldprotect her from going insane.She gave herself a push and got up.She found sweet, blond Nina, tears running down her cheeks, standing alone before a small painting to which none ofthe others had paid any attention.59