Utz Read online

  ‘I want him,’ said Kaspar.

  The grandmother blanched. Her impulse was to give him everything he asked for. But this time she said, ‘No! One day perhaps. Not now.’

  Four years later, to console him for the death of his father, the Harlequin arrived in Dresden in a specially made leather box, in time for a dismal Christmas celebration. Kaspar pivoted the figurine in the flickering candlelight and ran his pudgy fingers, lovingly, over the glaze and brilliant enamels. He had found his vocation: he would devote his life to collecting – ‘rescuing’ as he came to call it – the porcelains of the Meissen factory.

  He neglected his schoolroom studies, yet studied the history of porcelain manufacture, from its origins in China to its rediscovery in Saxony in the reign of Augustus the Strong. He bought new pieces. He sold off those which were inferior, or cracked. By the age of nineteen he had published in the journal Nunc a lively defence of the Rococo style in porcelain — an art of playful curves from an age when men adored women — against the slur of the pederast Winckelmann : ‘Porcelain is almost always made into idiotic puppets.’

  Utz spent hours in the museums of Dresden, scrutinising the ranks of Commedia dell’ Arte figures that had come from the royal collections. Locked behind glass, they seemed to beckon him into their secret, Lilliputian world – and also to cry for their release. His second publication was entitled ‘The Private Collector’:

  ‘An object in a museum case’, he wrote, ‘must suffer the de-natured existence of an animal in the zoo. In any museum the object dies – of suffocation and the public gaze – whereas private ownership confers on the owner the right and the need to touch. As a young child will reach out to handle the thing it names, so the passionate collector, his eye in harmony with his hand, restores to the object the life-giving touch of its maker. The collector’s enemy is the museum curator. Ideally, museums should be looted every fifty years, and their collections returned to circulation . . .’

  ‘What’, Utz’s mother asked the family physician, ‘is this mania of Kaspar’s for porcelain?’

  ‘A perversion,’ he answered. ‘Same as any other.’

  The sexual career of Augustus the Strong, as recounted by Von Pöllnitz in ‘La Saxe Galant’, served Utz as an exemplary model. But when, in a Viennese establishment, he aspired to imitate the conquests of that grandiose and insatiable monarch — hoping to discover in Mitzi, Suzi and Liesl the charms of an Aurora, Countess of Königsmark, a Mlle Kessel or any other goddess of the Dresden court — the girls were perplexed by the scientific seriousness of the young man’s approach, and collapsed with giggles at the minuscule scale of his equipment.

  He left, walking the wet streets alone to his hotel.

  He got a warmer welcome from the antiquaires. The sale of his Sudetenland farms, in 1932, allowed him to spend money freely. The deaths, in quick succession, of his mother and grandmother, allowed him to bid against a Rothschild.

  Politically, Utz was neutral. There was a timid side to his character that would tolerate any ideology providing it left him in peace. There was a stubborn side that refused to be bullied. He detested violence, yet welcomed the cataclysms that flung fresh works of art onto the market. ‘Wars, pogroms and revolutions’, he used to say, ‘offer excellent opportunities for the collector.’

  The Stock Market Crash had been one such opportunity. Kristallnacht was another. In the same week he hastened to Berlin to buy porcelains, in U.S. dollars, from Jewish connoisseurs who wished to emigrate. At the end of the War he would offer a similar service to aristocrats fleeing from the Soviet Army.

  As a citizen of the Reich he accepted the annexation of the Sudetenland, albeit without enthusiasm. The occupation of Prague, however, made him realise that Hitler would soon unleash a European war. He also realised, on the principle that invaders invariably come to grief, that Germany would fail to win.

  Acting on this insight, he succeeded in removing thirty-seven crates of porcelain from the family house in Dresden. These arrived at České Křížové during the summer of 1939. He did not unpack them.

  About a year later, shortly after the Blitzkrieg, he had a visit from his red-headed second cousin, Reinhold: a clever but fundamentally silly character, who, as a student, had sworn that Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid’ was the greatest book ever written; who now expounded his views of racial biology with analogies culled from dog-breeding. An Utz, he insinuated, even if tainted with alien blood, should at once assume the uniform of the Wehrmacht.

  At dinner, Utz listened politely while his cousin crowed over the victories in France: but when the man prophesied that Germans would occupy Buckingham Palace before the end of the year, he felt, despite his better judgement, a surge of latent anglophilia.

  ‘I do not believe so,’ he heard himself saying. ‘You underestimate this people. I know them. I was in England myself.’

  ‘Also,’ the cousin murmured, and, with a click of the heels, marched out towards his waiting staff-car.

  Utz had indeed been to England, to learn English at the age of sixteen. During an autumn and dismal December, he had boarded at Bexhill-on-Sea with his mother’s former nanny, Miss Beryl Parkinson, in a house of cats and cuckoo-clocks from which he would gaze at the turgid waves that broke across the pier.

  He did learn some English – not much! He also made a short trip to London, and came away with a vivid notion of how an English gentleman behaved, and how he dressed. He returned to Dresden in a racily-cut tweed jacket, and a pair of hand-made brogues.

  It was this same brown jacket, a little threadbare, a couple of sizes too small, and with leather patches sewn onto the elbows, that he would wear throughout the War – as an act of faith and defiance — whenever German officers were present.

  He wore it, too, his racial purity called into question, during the reign of Reinhard Heydrich, ‘The Butcher of Prague’: one afternoon, he confounded his interrogators by pulling from its pocket his father’s First War decoration. How dare they! he shouted, as he slapped the medal onto the table. How dare they insult the son of a great German soldier?

  It was a bold stroke, and it worked. They gave him no further trouble. He lay low at České Křížové and, for the first time in his life, took regular exercise: working with his foresters at the saw-mill. On February 16th 1945 news came that the Dresden house was flattened. His love of England vanished forever on hearing the B.B.C. announcer, ‘There is no china in Dresden today.’ He gave the jacket to a gipsy who had escaped the camps.

  A month after the surrender, when Germans and German-supporters were being hounded from their homes — or escorted to the frontier ‘in the clothes they stood up in’ – Utz succeeded in disavowing his German passport and obtaining Czech nationality. He had a harder time dispelling rumours that he had helped in the activities of Goering’s art squad.

  The rumours were true. He had collaborated. He had given information: a trickle of information as to the whereabouts of certain works of art — information available to anyone who knew how to use an art library. By doing so, he had been able to protect, even to hide, a number of his Jewish friends: among them the celebrated Hebraist, Zikmund Kraus. What, after all, was the value of a Titian or a Tiepolo if one human life could be saved?

  As for the Communists, once he realised the Beneš Government would fall, he began to curry favour with the bosses-to-be. On learning that Klement Gottwald had installed himself in Prague Castle, ‘a worker on the throne of the Bohemian kings’, Utz’s reaction was to give his lands to a farming collective, and his own castle for use as an insane asylum.

  These measures gave him time: sufficient at least to evacuate the porcelains, without loss or breakage, before they were requisitioned by the canaille.

  His next move was to make a show of taking up Hebrew studies under the guidance of Dr Kraus: these were the years when pictures of Marx and Lenin used to hang in Israeli kibbutzes. He got a poorly paid job, as a cataloguer in the National Library. He installed himself in an
inconspicuous flat in Židovské Město: its previous inhabitant having vanished in the Heydrichiada.

  Twice a week he went loyally to watch a Soviet film.

  When his friend Dr Orlík suggested they both flee to the West, Utz pointed to the ranks of Meissen figurines, six deep on the shelves, and said, ‘I cannot leave them.’

  ‘How did he get away with it?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘The porcelain. How did he hang on to it?’

  ‘He did a deal.’

  My friend the historian gave me an outline of the facts as he knew them. It seems that the Communist authorities — ever ready to assume a veneer of legality – had allowed Utz to keep the collection providing every piece was photographed and numbered. It was also agreed – although never put in writing – that, after his death, the State Museums would get the lot.

  Besides, Marxist-Leninism had never got to grips with the concept of the private collection. Trotsky, around the time of the Third International, had made a few offhand comments on the subject. But no one had ever decided if the ownership of a work of art damned its owner in the eyes of the Proletariat. Was the collector a class-enemy? If so, how?

  The Revolution, of course, postulated the abolition of private property without ever defining the tenuous borderline between property (which was harmful to society) and household goods (which were not). A painting by a great master might rank as a national treasure, and be liable for confiscation — and there were families in Prague who kept their Picassos and Matisses rolled up between the floor joists. But porcelain? Porcelain could also be classed as crockery. So, providing it wasn’t smuggled from the country, it was, in theory, valueless. To start confiscating ceramic statuettes could turn into an administrative nightmare:

  ‘Imagine trying to confiscate an infinite quantity of plaster-of-Paris Lenins . . .’

  His face was immediately forgettable. It was a round face, waxy in texture, without a hint of the passions beneath its surface, set with narrow eyes behind steel-framed spectacles: a face so featureless it gave the impression of not being there. Did he have a moustache? I forget. Add a moustache, subtract a moustache: nothing would alter his utterly nondescript appearance. Supposing, then, we add a moustache? A precise, bristly moustache to go with the precise, toy-soldierish gestures that were the only evidence of his Teuton ancestry? He had combed his hair in greasy snakes across his scalp. He wore a suit of striped grey worsted slightly frayed at the cuffs, and had doused himself with Knize Ten cologne.

  On reflection, I think I’d better withdraw the moustache. To add a moustache might so overwhelm the face that nothing would linger in the memory but the spectacles and a moustache – with a few drops of paprika-coloured fish-soup adhering to it – across our table at the Restaurant Pstruh.

  ‘Pstruh’ is Czech for ‘trout’ — and trout there were! The cadences of the ‘Trout’ Quintet flowed methodically through hidden speakers and shoals of trout – pink, freckled, their undersides shimmering in the neon – swam this way and that way in an aquarium which occupied most of one wall.

  ‘You will eat trout,’ said Utz.

  I had called him on the day of my arrival, but at first he seemed reluctant to see me:

  ‘Ja! Ja! I know it. But it will be difficult . . .’

  On the advice of my friend, I had brought from London some packets of his favourite Earl Grey tea. I mentioned these. He relented and asked me to luncheon: on the Thursday, the day before I was due to leave – not, as I had hoped, at his flat, but in a restaurant.

  The restaurant, a relic of the Thirties in an arcade off Wenceslas Square, had a machine-age decor of plate-glass, chromium and leather. A model galleon, with sails of billowing parchment, hung from the ceiling. One wondered, glancing at the photo of Comrade Novotný, how a man with so disagreeable a mouth would consent to being photographed at all. The head-waiter, sweltering in the July heat, offered each of us a menu that resembled a mediaeval missal.

  We were expecting the arrival of Utz’s friend, Dr Orlík, with whom he had lunched here on Thursdays since 1946.

  ‘Orlík’, he told me, ‘is an illustrious scientist from our National Museum. He is a palaeontologue. His speciality is the mammoth, but he is also experienced in flies. You will enjoy him. He is full of jokes and charm.’

  We did not have long to wait before a gaunt, bearded figure in a shiny double-breasted suit pushed its way through the revolving doors. Orlík removed his beret, revealing a mass of wiry salt-and-pepper hair, and sat down. His hand – rather a crustacean claw than a hand – gave mine a painful nip and moved on to attack the pretzels. His forehead was scoured with deep furrows. I stared with amazement at the see-saw motion of his jaw.

  ‘Ah! Ha!’ he leered at me. ‘English, he? Englishman! Yes. YES! Tell me, is Professor Horsefield still living?’

  ‘Who’s Horsefield?’ I asked.

  ‘He wrote kind words about my article in the “Journal of Animal Psychology”.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘1935,’ he said. ‘Maybe ‘36.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of Horsefield.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Orlík. ‘He was an illustrious scientist.’

  He paused to crunch the remaining pretzel. His green eyes glinted with playful malice.

  ‘Normally,’ he continued, ‘I do not have high regard for your compatriots. You betrayed us at München . . . You betrayed us at Yalta . . .’

  Utz, alarmed by this dangerous turn to the conversation, interrupted and said, solemnly, ‘I cannot believe that animals have souls.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Orlík snapped.

  ‘I say it.’

  ‘I know you say it. I know not how you can say it.’

  ‘I will order,’ said Utz, who waved his napkin, like a flag of truce, at the head-waiter. ‘I will order trout. “Au bleu”, isn’t it?’

  ‘Blau,’ Orlík bantered.

  ‘Blau yourself.’

  Orlík tugged at my sleeve: ‘My friend Mr Utz here believes that the trout, when it is immersed in boiling water, does not feel more than a tickling. That is not my opinion.’

  ‘There are no trout,’ said the head-waiter.

  ‘What can you mean, no trout?’ said Utz. ‘There are trout. Many trout.’

  ‘There is no net.’

  ‘What can you mean, no net? Last week there was a net.’

  ‘Is broken.’

  ‘Broken, I do not believe.’

  The head-waiter put a finger to his lips, and whispered, ‘These trout are reserved.’

  ‘For them?’

  ‘Them,’ he nodded.

  Four fat men were eating trout at a nearby table.

  ‘Very well,’ said Utz. ‘I will eat eels. You also will eat eels?’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  ‘There are no eels,’ said the waiter.

  ‘No eels? This is bad. What have you?’

  ‘We have carp.’

  ‘Carp only?’

  ‘Carp.’

  ‘How shall you cook this carp?’

  ‘Many ways,’ the waiter gestured to the menu. ‘Which way you like.’

  The menu was multilingual: in Czech, Russian, German, French and English. But whoever had compiled the English page had mistaken the word ‘carp’ for ‘crap’. Under the heading CRAP DISHES, the list contained ‘Crap soup with paprika’, ‘Stuffed crap’, ‘Crap cooked in beer’, ‘Fried crap’, ‘Crap balls’, ‘Crap à la juive . . .’

  ‘In England,’ I said, ‘this fish is called “carp”. “Crap” has a different meaning.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Dr Orlík. ‘What meaning?’

  ‘Faeces,’ I said. ‘Shit.’

  I regretted saying this because Utz looked exceedingly embarrassed. The narrow eyes blinked, as if he hoped he hadn’t heard correctly. Orlík’s wheezy carapace shook with laughter.

  ‘Ha! Ha!’ he jeered. ‘Crap à la juive . . . My friend Mr Utz will eat Crap à la juive . . . !’

  I
was afraid Utz was going to leave, but he rose above his discomfiture and ordered soup and the ‘Carpe meunière’. I took the line of least resistance and ordered the same. Orlík clamoured in his loud and crackly voice, ‘No. No. I will eat “Crap à la juive” . . . !’

  ‘And to begin?’ asked the waiter.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Orlík. ‘Only the crap!’

  I tried to swing the conversation to Utz’s collection of porcelain. His reaction was to swivel his neck inside his collar and say, blankly, ‘Dr Orlík is also a collector. But he is a collector of flies.’

  ‘Flies?’

  ‘Flies,’ assented Orlík.

  I began to form a mental picture of his lodgings: the unmade bed and unemptied ash-trays; the avalanche of yellowing periodicals; the microscope; the killingjars and, lining the walls, glass-fronted cases containing flies from every corner of the globe, each specimen pierced with a pin. I mentioned some beautiful dragonflies I had seen in Brazil.

  ‘Dragonflies?’ Orlík frowned. ‘I have not interest. I have only interest for Musca domestica.’

  ‘The common house-fly?’

  ‘That is what it is.’

  ‘Answer me,’ Utz interrupted again. ‘On which day did God create the fly? Day Five? Or Day Six?’

  ‘How many times will I tell you?’ Orlík clamoured. ‘We have one hundred ninety million years of flies. But you will always speak of days!’

  ‘Hard words,’ said Utz, philosophically.

  A fly had landed on the tablecloth and was sopping up some soup that the waiter had let fall from the ladle. With a flick of the wrist Orlík upturned a glass tumbler, and trapped the insect beneath it. He slid the glass to the edge of the table and transferred the fly to the killing-jar he took from his pocket. There was an angry buzzing, then silence.

  He flourished a magnifying glass and scrutinised the victim.

  ‘Interesting example,’ he said. ‘Hatched, I would say, in the kitchen here. I will ask . . .’