I sitting; she, with small, always slightly shivering breasts, leaning over me, stroking my hair: Beauty and the beast.

She lying, I between her legs, playing with the mask of a horned horse: The lady with the unicorn.

All this in the style of Ziege or Raskolnikov; color or delicate grey tones laid on with a fine brush (Raskolnikov) or with the impetuous palette knife of genius (Ziege). Some of these paintings carried an intimation of the mystery surrounding Ulla and Oskar; they were the work of Raskolnikov, who, with our help, found his way to surrealism: Oskar’s face became a honey-yellow dial like that of our grandfather clock; in my hump bloomed mechanical roses which Ulla picked; Ulla, smiling on one end and long-legged on the other, was cut open in the middle and inside sat Oskar between her spleen and liver, turning over the pages of a picture book. Sometimes they put us in costume, turning Ulla into a Columbine and me into a mournful mime covered with white grease paint. It was Raskolnikov—so nicknamed because he never stopped talking of crime and punishment, guilt and atonement—who turned out the masterpiece: I sitting on Ulla’s milk-white, naked thigh, a crippled child—she was the Madonna, while I sat still for Jesus.

This painting, entitled “Madonna 49”, was shown at a number of exhibitions; it also proved effective as a poster, which came to the eyes of my ever so respectable Maria and brought on a domestic quarrel. However, it was purchased for a considerable sum by a Rhenish industrialist and today it is hanging in the boardroom of a big business firm, influencing the board of directors.

I was amused by the ingenious monstrosities perpetrated on the basis of my hump and proportions. Ulla and I were in great demand, and received two marks fifty each for posing together. Ulla was delighted with her new career. Now that she was bringing in a regular income, the horny-handed Lankes treated her better and beat her only when his own abstractions demanded an angry mood. He could make no use of her as a model, but for him too she was a kind of Muse, for it was only by boxing her ears that his hand could achieve its true creative power.

I too was fired to acts of violence by Ulla’s plaintive fragility, which was actually the indestructibility of an angel; however, I kept myself under control, and whenever the desire to whip her became too strong, I took her out to a pastry shop. Or else, with a certain dandyism inspired by my association with artists, I would exhibit her as a rare plant, highlighted by the contrast with my own proportions, on the busy Konigs-Allee, where we would be much gaped at. Or as a last resort I would buy her lavender stockings and pink gloves.

It was a different story with Raskolnikov, who, without ever touching her, kept up the most intimate relations with her. He would have her pose sitting down, her legs far apart. On such occasions he did not paint. He would settle himself on a stool a few steps away, stare at her private parts, and talk, in a hoarse, impassioned whisper, of guilt and atonement. The Muse’s private parts became moist and distended, and after a while Raskolnikov, by dint of looking and listening to himself would experience exultation and release. Thereupon, he would jump up from his stool and belabor the “Madonna 49” on his easel with grandiose brushstrokes.

Sometimes Raskolnikov stared at me as well, but for other reasons. It seemed to him that I lacked something. He spoke of a vacuum between my fingers and kept putting one object after another—what with his surrealist imagination he was never at a loss for an object—into my hands. He armed Oskar with a pistol, made Oskar-Jesus take aim at the Madonna. Or I would hold out an hourglass to her or a mirror which, being convex, would distort her horribly. He made me hold scissors, fishbones, telephone receivers, death’s heads, little airplanes, armored cars, steamships, but none of these filled the vacuum. Oskar dreaded the day when the painter would turn up with the object which alone of all objects was made to be held by me. When at length he brought the drum, I cried out: “ No! “

Raskolnikov: “Take the drum, Oskar. I have seen through you.”

I, trembling: “Never again. All that is ended.”

He, darkly: “Nothing is ended, everything returns, guilt, atonement, more guilt.”

I, with my last strength: “Oskar has atoned, spare him the drum. I’ll hold anything you say, anything but a drum.”

I wept when the Muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded with tears, I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Saspe Cemetery.

But I did not drum. I merely posed—but that was plenty—and was painted as Jesus the drummer boy, sitting on the nude left thigh of the Madonna 49.

It was thus that Maria saw me on a poster advertising an art show. Unbeknownst to me, she attended the exhibition and looked at the picture; she must have stood there long and cloud-gathering, for when she spoke of it, she struck me with my son Kurt’s school ruler. She, who for some months had been holding down a well-paid job in a luxury delicatessen store, first as a salesgirl, then, thanks to her obvious ability, as cashier, was now an established citizen of West Germany and no longer a black marketing refugee from the East. Thus it was with a certain conviction that she was able to call me a pig, a pimp, a degenerate. She went so far as to shout that she wanted no more of the filthy money I made with my filthy occupations, nor of me either for that matter.

Though Maria soon took back this last remark and only two weeks later was again accepting a considerable share of my modeling fees in return for my board and lodging, I nevertheless decided to stop living with her, her sister Guste, and my son Kurt. My first idea was to go far away, to Hamburg or perhaps to the seashore, but Maria, who had no objection to my moving, persuaded me, with her sister Guste’s support, to look for a room not too far away from herself and Kurt, in any case in Düsseldorf.

The Hedgehog

It was only as a subtenant that Oskar learned the art of drumming back the past. It wasn’t just the room; the Hedgehog, the coffin warehouse in the court, and Mr. Münzer helped—not to mention Sister Dorothea.

Do you know Parsifal? I don’t know it very well either. All that has stuck with me is the story about the three drops of blood in the snow. There is truth in that story, because it fits me like a glove. It is probably the story of everyone who has an idea.

I was still a servant of the arts; I let myself be painted in blue, green, and earth tones; I let myself be sketched in charcoal and put in front of backgrounds; in collaboration with the Muse Ulla, I inspired a whole winter semester at the Academy and the following summer semester as well, but already the snow had fallen which was to receive those three drops of blood, the sight of which transfixed me as it had transfixed Parsifal the fool, about whom Oskar the fool knows so little that it costs him no effort at all to identify himself with this same Parsifal.

My image is clumsy but clear enough, I think: the snow is the uniform of a nurse; the red cross, which most nurses, including Sister Dorothea, wear in the middle of the brooch that holds their collar together, was for me the three drops of blood. There I sat and couldn’t take my eyes off it.

But before I could sit in the erstwhile bathroom of the Zeidler apartment, I had to go room-hunting. The winter semester was drawing to a close; some of the students, those who were not planning to return after Easter vacation, would be giving up their rooms. My associate, the Muse Ulla, was helpful; she took me to the students’ housing office, where they gave me several addresses and a recommendation from the Academy.