Katharina Fischer had laid her knife and fork across her plate, folded her napkin. That atmosphere Martin was surrounded by — the same as in his space installations. While customers at nearby tables continued their conversations about the day’s events and their holiday plans, the interpreter was lost in thought for a while. “It may be that today I would hardly feel the latent aggression that used to make me recoil when I walked into a space set up by Martin Spengler. What do you think? Was he aiming to convert tension into harmony?”
It was hard for me be the judge of that, since from childhood I had known extremely harmonious moments in his company. I can’t remember exactly whether he had already taken to visiting the hyenas, I couldn’t even say whether the hyenas were already back in the zoo during his student days. But Martin went to the zoo a lot, right from the beginning. Cloven-hoofed animals. Wild cats. The aviaries. I can see him outside an animal enclosure, bent over his drawing pad, working on into the sunset. Soon the zoo would be closing for visitors, Martin enjoyed the remaining time right down to the last minute, hardly seeming to look up as the animal on the other side, the black bear, observed him curiously.
I sat next to him for many hours, absorbing what was taking shape on Martin’s page. I especially loved going with him in the mornings, he had permission to start drawing early when the animals were being attended to, it was all intimacy and pleasurable expectation, none of the bustle the day would inevitably bring, no school groups, no families, no bunches of high-spirited art students who regarded animal studies as nothing but a boring exercise.
It was on a morning like this that I brought up the subject of Ludwig Kaltenburg’s lecture. When Martin reacted evasively, I thought I detected a note of regret at having confronted the professor bluntly.
“No, no, that’s not quite right,” he corrected me, in the same friendly tone in which he had addressed Kaltenburg. “I don’t feel guilty about disturbing the professor’s peace of mind. On the contrary.”
He had been completely indifferent to the topic of the lecture. The lecturer himself, however — Martin had come across the announcement in the newspaper, that is to say, he probably wouldn’t have taken any notice of it if the name had not vaguely jogged his memory. He flipped back through the pages, the large capitals: “Professor Ludwig Kaltenburg Lectures,” Martin stared at the words, there could be no mistake, not even a chance identity of names, and the professor didn’t have a doppelgänger, for sure — this was the man, all right. Martin had suffered sleepless nights because of him. Met him? No, he had never met Kaltenburg. He only knew the name. He knew it from the evenly flowing handwriting of a botanist, my father’s writing. From letters he had read in another life on the edge of dusty airstrips.
“To be honest, I sat in the audience all evening with one fixed purpose: to entice the great Professor Ludwig Kaltenburg out of his shell. And to do it just before the end, when nobody — least of all the professor — would be expecting a wild, unusual question.”
Martin concentrated on a female bison which stood feeding not far away, looking over at us from time to time. On the page he had drawn broad charcoal lines, which he began calmly rubbing.
“You remember your nanny, of course? I sometimes wonder what became of her. She was about my age, perhaps a year or eighteen months younger. When I went to Posen I was still obsessed by the idea of becoming a pediatrician, she was looking after you, there were things for us to discuss. We strolled through the fields, just as you and I did. She even persuaded me to go for walks in the town. Our Sunday afternoons. I was never sure whether your nanny told you about it, she denied it, but I suspected you knew. She couldn’t have hidden anything from you.”
The animal turned away, Martin tore the portrait he had begun off the pad, it consisted of not much more than a bison’s chest in isolation. A quick glance — and he sketched a bison’s flank.
“I hope you don’t mind me telling you this now. She was fond of you, I’m sure you know that. Though you must have been a difficult boy at times. Perhaps that’s just what she liked about you. At one time there must have been a situation where you got her into a lot of trouble, or so it seemed to me, but I could never for the life of me get her to say anything about what you did wrong. She stood firmly by you. Do you remember her name? Your parents called her Maria, but maybe that wasn’t her real name at all. I’d love to know whether she’s still alive. Where. And what she’s doing. Married with children, that’s what I would wish for her. I always had the feeling that your parents kept a protective eye on her. Did you notice anything? I don’t mean anything about her, but the way people treated her. Why am I asking you this, you were only seven or eight, what could you know? But we can’t ask your parents now. Did she go with you to Dresden?”
Flanks by themselves, parts of the chest, the beginnings of an ear — the keeper was coming around now, making one last check on the enclosure, our time was running out. With hurried strokes and without a further glance at the animals, Martin produced a piece of shaggy hide.
“I was jealous when I found out from your parents’ letters that Professor Kaltenburg was in and out of your place for a while, then stayed away after an unpleasant scene. For me it was obvious he had made approaches to Maria. She rejects him, there’s a big commotion, your parents come out on her side and break off all contact with the professor. I found my own scenario so convincing that I was on the point of literally taking off to come and see you. Where was I at that time, Croatia maybe, Apulia, in the Ukraine. I had no idea how I would manage it. Just clear off with the plane. Desert. The enormous distance almost made me lose my mind. So one morning out of a clear blue sky a plane lands on the dusty road in front of your house. You have been sitting drinking cocoa. The noise. Maria joins you at the window. You see me climbing out of the cockpit. A professor who is barely forty, a fanatical motorcyclist to boot, that kind of man can be dangerous. It was only then that I found out I was really keen on your nanny. And you can’t imagine how intensely I loathed Herr Professor Kaltenburg.”
The first school groups had arrived at the entrance. Martin said goodbye to the ladies at the ticket office, and then the zoo and our undisturbed morning were behind us.
“Did you know that for Maria — that I made some drawings of her? My private name for the work I did then is the ‘Posen Block,’ and if it’s ever exhibited anywhere you’ve got to remind me of that title, okay?”
Frau Fischer inquired whether the drawings still existed.
Certainly. They survived the Posen years, the war, Martin preserved them carefully in a number of portfolios, and somehow he even succeeded in smuggling them out intact to the West. Today they are among the most important works from that early period.
“As the ‘Posen Block’?” She had never heard of a body of work with that title.
No, in fact the “Posen Block” has never been exhibited as such. Memories of a nanny — but in the catalogue it’s called “Russian Nurse,” a restrained sketch on a tear-off drawing pad, the soft hair, the cap with a cross, only the eyes and nose are executed with a stronger pencil line. Another drawing: “Three by the Fire,” a very consciously chosen, vague title, two dark human figures contemplating an aureole, and on the left the contours of a bright figure with long hair, crouching, eyes downcast. The young woman, a suppressed fantasy perhaps, which recurs in the late work.