Chapter 4b
The Awakening

Theo kept his world hidden to himself. It was fantasy he kept stored away in the back of his mind. It probably would have remained there, forever, un-nurtured and perhaps even to be forgotten, hadn’t it been for one single event that shocked him to new awakening. It was a movie film that he saw. It was to turn Theo Meier’s world topsy-turvy.

It was not even a movie film as such. It was a documentary by German filmmaker Friedrich Murnau that depicted the Island of Bora Bora in French Polynesia. It was tided “Tabu.” It shocked its European audiences with bare breasted island girls frolicking across the screen. The film was banned in America, making it even more enviable on the Continent. Here was a story of two characters right out of Rousseau’s noble savage, Matahi and Reri, two young people in love on an island whose inhabitants still lived their lives according to traditions that went back hundreds of years. The story goes, a ship came to their South Pacific island, and on that ship was Hitu, who bore the news that Reri must leave her home to be the sacred virgin on an island far away. She was taboo, a human being that cannot be desired. Never had European audiences seen any film like it. The tale was told with images both lush and realistic, powerful enough to win a Best Cinematography Academy Award for photography that year. The native islanders who acted in the film were photographed from low angles and pictured against a sky of dramatic clouds.

What further indication did Theo need that the noble savage was very much alive? But “Tabu” was not the end only the beginning of Theo’s awakening. Soon came another film that intensified even more his growing desire to escape to the South Sea. This second film was Victor van Plessen’s “Island of Demons.” Indeed, the fascinating world of the South Seas began to take an irresistible hold of Theo. After seeing the films, Theo knew he had to see the South Seas for myself. He had to find these noble savages and paint them, as Gauguin had. Theo was twenty-four years old when he made up his mind to go to Tahiti. So in 1931, against the advice of his friends, he began to plan his trip in earnest. He didn’t tell his mother and father, nor Helga. But keeping a secret in Basel was near impossible and when word did get around that Theo Meier planned to go to the South Seas, everyone was convinced he had lost his reasoning. His plan was too outlandish to be taken seriously. A trip to Tahiti, to the far reaches of the world, people would say, was impossible. Where would the money for the trip come from? Theo had been earning hardly enough money to pay his rent. He owed Max Opplinger’s shop on the corner a fortune for the canvases that he had bought on credit. Theo became the laugh about town. His father laughed the loudest, and Helga merely fed him more pastry that she sneaked from her father’s bakery. “‘Here, you will like this,” she would say to humor him.

There was one man, however, who didn’t laugh at him. He was Theo’s close friend, Lucas Staehelin. You might say with Lucas it was quite the opposite. After listening to Theo rave about the wonders of the South Seas, and joining him for a viewing of “Island of Demons,” Lucas announced over a beer at a street cafe where they frequently met that he would go with Theo to Tahiti.

Theo thought at first Lucas was joking but when he realized Lucas was not only serious but determined as well, he accepted the idea. Now they made plans together.

The one obstacle standing in Theo’s way, obviously, was money.

But a thing like the lack of money wasn’t going to stop him. He would get money. He never doubted it. With Lucas money was not an issue. His family had money and although they were opposed to the venture they agreed to support him financially, “to get it out of his system.” Theo thought it hysterical that he would travel ‘to get it out of his system” when in reality it was the opposite. “We travel to get it into our system,” he ranted.

Although Theo didn’t have the mind of a businessman he was capable of coming up with business propositions. When he first mentioned his idea to Lucas, Lucas called it a “con scene” rather than a business venture. But Lucas slowly changed his mind when he heard Theo out. In fact, Lucas even lauded him. The idea was ingenious, depending upon, of course, from which side you viewed it. His scheme, after giving it considerable thought and working it out down to the last detail, could work if Theo could convince the right people that he was sincere, and Theo was good at that, convincing people. He would find twenty people willing to pay twenty francs a month for one year as a subscription for his paintings. They could make a preliminary choice of the paintings they wanted before Theo left, or, if they wished, they could choose from those canvasses he brought back for an exhibition he would stage at an art gallery in town. It was such a bold idea that many people, some Theo hardly knew, went for it. The first man to sign up as member of the “Theo Meier Club,” as it had been tentatively called, was the man who came to read the electricity meter. The second was a police inspector; the next Robert Spreng, a photographer friend, and so it went. Soon Theo had rustled up all twenty members. Upon hearing of his success, one of his friends asked: “How on earth did you get hold of all of these idiots to give you money?” Theo thereafter called his club, in private only, “The Idiot’s Club.” Roland Ziegler, another close friend and financier, but not considering himself an idiot, paid Theo half the yearly total of subscriptions as a loan and agreed to see to it that the payments were regularly remitted. That’s what you call having confidence in someone, Theo boasted. He was now solvent, and he had moved up the ladder of success, for Ziegler had also arranged for Theo to have an account at the private bank of Saracen-one of Basel’s most exclusive financial institutions.

But poor Lucas, he felt left out with Theo getting all the notoriety. Theo would be painting; he would be taking with him his paints, his easel and his sketchpads. What did he, Lucas, have to take? Nothing. He began to feel that the trip for him should serve some purpose rather than drinking and partying around the world. “What’s wrong with the that?” Theo scolded him. “I work for both of us and we both drink and make party.” Theo would have preferred it that way but then as luck would have it, the Basel Ethnological Museum approached Lucas to do a study of the various ethnic groups they would encounter en route. An assignment but it wasn’t what Lucas had in mind. He felt uncomfortable about accepting the assignment in which he had to pretend being an authority of something he .knew nothing about. “What do I know about primitive ethic groups?” he said to Theo

“What do the professors at the museum know?” Theo ranted. “They haven’t been there. They just read stuff. We are going where university professors don’t go. It’s simple. All you have to do is keep a journal and scribble it with notes about insects and the size of the big tits of the women and our making love with them and one day you will be famous.” Lucas didn’t think it was so funny, but Theo did. He laughed at the thought, his big gargantuan laugh bursting out. Theo had a thing against academics and he didn’t hesitate to make it known. He reminded Lucas about Margaret Mead who had been in the news and everyone was talking about her for her anthropological work in the South Seas. Wasn’t that all that Margaret Mead did when she went to live with the natives in Samoa, take down notes, and out of it came her book Coming of Age in Samoa. To Theo it was all hogwash. He had grown bitter at the establishment after his sojourn in Berlin. He was happy to get away from Hitler’s Germany where painters were told what to paint and banished if they didn’t. He swore no one would ever tell him how to paint or what to paint.

Lucas still was not fully convinced that this was the right thing to do, to masquerade as a scientist, regardless of how much ribbing he got from Theo. But what finally did win him over was two letters of recommendation the museum gave him and Theo; one for the Swiss Consul in Sydney and the other for the governor of Tahiti. The letters were intended to give Lucas some help in collecting ethnological material for the museum. Theo in a jesting mood presented Lucas with a gift-an empty notebook. “Now all you have to do is fill it up,” Theo said, “and I will give you the material to write about.” At that they both laughed and shook hands.

Now the only thing remaining for Theo to do was for him to tell his father and Helga that he was leaving. He did that, as painful as it was, but promising he’d be back in a year.

Chapter 4a
BREAKING AWAY

As I mentioned, Theo had returned to Basel without a mark, without a franc in his pocket. He had spent the last of his money for his train fare back from Germany. Very disillusioned and uncertain which way to turn or what to do, he was walking to his flat when he passed a museum that was holding an art exhibition. Perhaps a short visit might ease his mind of his troubles. Still carrying his portfolio under one arm he entered the museum. Before he could go far, he was greeted by a former teacher. The teacher was with a well-dressed, elderly gentleman whom he introduced to Theo. Theo knew him by name, Paul Sacher, the wealthy owner of Hoffmann-Laroche, and the founder of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. “So you are an artist,” Sacher said giving Theo the once over. ”And what do you have there?” he asked when he saw Theo’s portfolio under his arm. He asked to see it. Theo was reluctant to show him his work, mostly rough sketches, but he had no other choice. At a marble bench facing a Renoir hanging on the wall, Theo laid down his portfolio and opened it. Sacher picked up a sketch, studied it for a moment, placed it back in the folder and withdrew another one. He studied this one longer. Theo felt he had a pistol pointed at his chest, waiting for the trigger to be pulled. He wondered which sketch it was that Sacher studied so intently, but he dared not stretch his neck to look to see what one it was. Theo waited for the pistol shot. Sacher said nothing, not a word. Nor did the expression on his face change. Finally he returned the sketches and closed he folder. Slowly he turned to face Theo. With great theatrics he removed his glasses and carefully placed them in his coat pocket behind his handkerchief He then said something that was totally unexpected. He asked Theo if he could keep the portfolio until the following day. He didn’t wait for Theo to reply. He picked up the portfolio and handed it over to his assistant who was trailing behind him. He told Theo to come to his office the next afternoon, bid him good-bye and was gone, his assistant following close at his heels. What was all that about, Theo wondered?

What was only a day’s wait seemed like a month to young Theo. What could Monsieur Sacher possibly want? It had to be a commission. It couldn’t be anything else. Could this be the break Theo needed? Could this save him from clerking in his father’s office, The Meier Office Machine Company? It has to be a commission. Theo languished at the thought. The following afternoon he appeared at Sacher’s office, all scrubbed and neat, his hair trimmed. The secretary of the owner of Hoffmann-Laroche’s was waiting and ushered him into the boss’ office. Sacher was seating behind his polished desk, and across the top was Theo’s portfolio. It was opened. “I have two commissions for you,” he said coming straight to the point. He was all business. He picked up one sketch, laid it down, and picked up another. He folded the portfolio and handed it back to Theo and then handed him an envelope.

“Here are two letters of introduction,” he said. “Your commissions-” he hesitated-“your commissions are to paint the portraits of composers Arthur Honegger and Igor Stravinsky.” His commissions, Sacher said! Commissions for two world famous composers! Theo stood there stunned. He could hardly make out what his benefactor was telling him after that. Words floated meaninglessly by. Something about his going to Paris. Train tickets would be waiting with the secretary. He was to leave the next day. Out in the street Theo wondered if he had thanked Monsieur Sacher. He wondered if what the heard was real, that is, he wondered until he looked at the train tickets, and there was his name. It was real. If Theo ever had doubt that there was a higher being looking down over him, it was dispelled now. He was saved again from working in his father’s business, just-by the bell.

Once he was out in the street, he cut loose and shouted with joy to the top of his lungs. Those passing him on the street might have thought the young man carrying an artist’s portfolio had gone mad, and in a sense he had. What could be more magnificent than for him, a young artist, to be commissioned to paint the portraits of two of the greatest musicians in Europe, Arthur Honegger and Igor Stravinsky? He skipped all the way back to his flat, hardly touching the ground.

Theo was still baffled the next afternoon as he sat aboard the express train that carried him to Paris. Generally aboard trains he found enjoyment looking out the window watching the scenery flashing by, but not this time. His mind was preoccupied with other thoughts, his commissions, Honegger and Stravinsky. The pressure began to set in. He remembered Monsieur Sacher’s parting words, harsh words that echoed in his mind like heavy drum beats-“And I don’t like to be disappointed~.”

Honegger was the most talked about composer in Europe, and the thought couldn’t make Theo any happier. Shortly before in 1927 Honegger had composed the music for Abel Gance’s epic film, Napoleon, a silent film that had deeply impressed Theo. More recently, he had shot to fame with his latest “Le Roi David” composition. And there was Igor Stravinsky, the great Igor Stravinsky. Theo could hardly believe he was going to paint these two great men. He, Theo Meier, was going to paint them. Both men were in Paris, which made it easier for him. Theo opened the letter Sacher gave him and read that he was to go first to Stravinsky’s residence at the rue Faubourg St.-Honore. What Theo hoped to be a happy moment and a splendid experience turned out to be the opposite. Stravinsky’s wife had contracted tuberculosis and she was dying. To make matters worse she had infected their eldest daughter, Ludmila, and Stravinsky himself Nevertheless, the great composer posed for Theo. The painting proved to be one of Theo’s finest portraits. He depicted the agony that Stravinsky was suffering. With Arthur Honegger it went much easier. Theo was back in Basel in two weeks.

The commissions, of course, were quite an undertaking for a young, unknown artist, to paint two of the most important composers in Europe. Theo was pleased with the assignment and with the results, and he was gratified to be commended highly for his work. He was pleased, that was certain, but he was not satisfied. He was troubled. He was haunted by something from which he couldn’t escape. It had started ever so slowly a few years before, almost without his being aware of it, like a man who grows older and doesn’t realize it. He had discovered the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and he became deeply, perhaps even self-consciously, moved with the author’s “noble savage” idea. Man, Rousseau stated, was better off when he wasn’t corrupted by the influence of civilization. This concept of the noble savage had reached a new height in the later 18^th century with the publication of the voyages of Captain James Cook. And Theo read them too.

Cook’s journals gave the world a glimpse of an unspoiled and un-Christianized South Seas. And then there were the biographical novels of Pierre Loti that Theo had also discovered. He was bewitched by The Marriage of Loti. He wondered if the pond at Fautera Falls, where Loti bathed with his love, the lithe and beautiful Rarahu, was still there, hidden away in a lotus-covered valley as Loti so wonderfully described.

Something was about to erupt and he didn’t quite know what it was. One interest led to another, and soon Theo became mesmerized by primitive art and Neoprimitivism, the 19th-centurydiscovery of the primitive arts of the South Sea Islanders and the woodcarvings of African tribes. And there was still another discovery that Theo made, and that was Paul Gauguin. Gauguin became Theo’s guiding star. Gauguin had been the major artist to employ exotic patterns and motifs in his woodcuts and paintings of the tropics, painted during his extended sojourn in Tahiti. For Theo, primitive art, with its complete negation of the notion of progress, seemed to be the promise of a new beginning. When Theo saw an exhibition of Gauguin’s works in 1928 he was beside himself. Gauguin had gone to great lengths to put the doctrine of primitivism into practice.

Chapter 3b
Adventurous Feeling

Theo arrived at the port of Paimpol, thrilled beyond expectation, and he couldn’t believe what opened up before him. The sea! A pulsating waterfront! The lighting was poor and the sky overcast but what did that matter! He had found the world of Monet and Pierre Loti and was re-living the pages from Lori’s famous Pecheur d’Islande, a novel of life among the Breton fisher folk. It was a book that Theo had read and reread. He often pictured the scene in his mind, as Loti had so well described it, but he never imagined it to be so real. The fishing port pulsated with activity. Fishing boats had moored along the quay while their crews took on supplies for their next voyage. Shouts and calls from fishmongers filled the air, air that was heavy laden with the odor of tar and hemp and the smell of the sea. Stepping around the crates of fish came the shoppers, women mostly, haggling for bargains. Eateries with marquees out front that announced fresh seafood were as numerous as the nautical stores. Shops with fishing nets and fishing lines, sinkers and floats, and everything a fisherman needed, all displayed in their open-fronted shops. Hardened fishermen with weather-beaten faces and seamen in blue-and-white striped jumpers ruled the waterfront bars with their boisterous voices and their insatiable thirst for drink. The streets were cobbled, wet beneath the feet, and trash ridden, and there was no escape from the crowds. And there was the Latin Quarter that Theo longed to seek out. He was elated to find La Place du Martray and he tried ever so hard to surmise which was the street of the House of Gaud where the heroine of Pecheur d’Islande had lived. In the end it didn’t matter; one of the dilapidated dwellings had to be the place where she had lived and just being on the same street made it all so real for Theo.

The spirit of adventure hit Theo hard, like an uncontrollable typhoon wind gone wild. He saw the whole world open up before him and he wanted to capture it all, to feel it down to his last pore, to imbibe in all its wonders–not later, but then and there, instantly. When he learned that many of the fishing boats were on their way from Paimpol to Iceland, without his giving thought to the consequences, he wanted to join them. He went from one fishing boat to another until he found one captain who would take him on as crewmember. It turned out to be a catastrophe. The adventure didn’t last long. Theo became so seasick the fishermen had to unload him on the British coast forcing him to work his way back to Basel, a distance of several hundred miles. Helga nurtured him back to health with food she sneaked from her father’s bakery.

Back in Basel Theo found himself broke. He felt like a pauper. He couldn’t go on like he was; he had to earn a living. He was beginning to think maybe his father was right. He gave thought to going back to his father’s business, to make a decent living, and then, maybe one day, he could still travel. He was about to acknowledge defeat and concede to his father’s wishes, to the delight of Helga, when fate played its hand. Theo had met Jacob Schaffner, a native of Basel, and he offered Theo a commission to paint his portrait. Schaffner was to be bestowed with an honorary doctorate from Basel University. Theo did the portrait, and Schaffner was so pleased with the result she gave Theo introductions to three famous German painters–Max Liebermann, Karl Hofer and Otto Dix-all living in Berlin.

 “I’ll just go and see what it’s all about,” Theo told Helga who had been hinting to Theo that it was time for him to meet her father the baker. She had already mentioned to her father that she had met a young man who one day would take over the Meier Business Machine Corporation in Basel. She didn’t mention about Theo being an artist.

With the letters of introduction and the fee for his commission for the portrait, Theo set off by train for Berlin. He arrived wide• eyed in the German capital filled with enthusiasm. His excitement faded quickly. There was everywhere in the city jubilation and unrest, those in favor of the rising Nazi party and those opposed. Theo was quite astounded by the political mood of the country, of which he wanted no part. Adolf Hider had taken over leadership of the National Socialist German Workers Party and it was only a matter of time that he would become Chancellor of Germany. The atmosphere was rife with political uncertainty and Theo didn’t like what he saw.

Theo lost no time and went directly to see Professor Liebermann, Director of the Berlin Academy of Art, and presented his letter of introduction. Liebermann was standing amidst a classroom crowded with doting art students. He looked more like a diplomat, dressed the way he was in a long waistcoat than a master painter and art instructor. He looked sharply at Theo, scarcely read his letter and told him to be seated and, without introductions or formalities of any sort, instructed him to join the class. Theo set up his easel and opened his kit. He glanced about at the other students. He was quick to gather that they were parvenus of the arts, toadies to the teachers who lauded over them.

Theo disliked Liebermann from the moment he entered the class and sat down. He was beginning to have doubts about him. Maybe it was Liebermann’s appearance. He gave the impression of a country gentleman, or maybe it was the fact that Liebermann classified himself as the father of German Impressionism. About his dress, Theo had no problem with that. So his professor was a dapper. And Theo did credit Liebermann for being instrumental in teaching the new art to his students. But Theo’s dislike ran deeper than the obvious. He watched him move from student to student, attacking each student’s work not with the aplomb of a caring teachers but rather with a scolding acrid tongue. And when he came to Theo he told him to draw a wooden cart. Theo began to draw the cart, wondering all the time why was he doing this. He grumbled to himself that if he wanted to draw a cart he could have saved train fare and stayed in Basel, but he said nothing. He drew the cart. When the class was about to end, Liebermann came to see what Theo had done. For the rest of his days as an artist Theo wondered why he put up with what he did that afternoon at the Berlin Academy of Art. Liebermann tore into Theo’s drawing style like a cantankerous Soviet policeman. “I teach you to be an impressionist and what is this you give me?” he stammered and, picking up Theo’s brush, slashed some heavy lines across the sketch. Theo never did understand why he remained as stoic as he did. But all that night after he checked into his room on the campus he seethed with anger. He reasoned, yes, he did try to be innovative with the drawing of the cart, but that was his own creative style. The French impressionists themselves were rebels in art when they broke away from the traditional styles of the academies. In the beginning the impressionists were ridiculed by the critics in Paris, and after they gained recognition, like the academy before them, they defended their style vehemently, refusing even the slightest deviation for the traditional. Was this what Liebermann was doing?

With his easel and paint kit in hand Theo returned to the class the next morning. He had calmed down, having assuaged his temper. Liebermann stood on a raised dais at the head of the room. Standing at his side was another man who Theo immediately recognized from his photograph-Karl Hofer, the famous impressionist painter. Theo had a letter of introduction to him too. Hofer had come to help Liebermann monitor the class. Before the class began Lieberman introduced Hofer. He extolled upon the merits of his colleague standing next to him. The praise was exuberant, which brought admiration from the students. 1his was Liebermann’s opportunity to speak out against some of his opponents and critics. He brought up Emile Nolde.

In recent months Nolde was coming under criticism by the Socialist German Workers Party. Although he had been a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s, the party began to express negative opinions about expressionism of which Nolde was a part. Theo was an admirer of Nolde’s work, his vibrant brushwork and expressive choice of colors. Theo especially liked his bright yellows and deep reds that appear throughout his work. The colors began to appear on Theo’s pallet.

Liebermann made a condescending remark about Nolde’s political preferences, which Theo would perhaps have let pass but when Liebermann began to attack Nolde’s background, a farm boy and the son of Danish peasants, Theo could no longer remain silent. Theo was sympathetic to Nolde. As a young struggling artist, Nolde had been refused entrance into the academy, no doubt resulting from his background, but instead, the academy claimed, because he had made a living by painting postcards. Theo spoke up in Nolde’s defense. He was adamant. He let his feelings be known in a fiery tirade to Liebermann, but before he could express himself further he was abruptly interrupted by Hofer who demanded that Theo retract his statement and apologize to Liebermann. Theo refused whereupon he was ordered to leave the classroom. He was subsequently kicked out of the Berlin Academy of Art. He had lasted but two days thus ending his formal education in art.

Theo wanted to see Nolde but the artist had left Berlin.

Theo returned to Basel, very disillusioned. It was the year 1930. He couldn’t wait to see Helga. He wanted to curl up in her arms and forget the world. When he arrived at his street, carrying his easel and kit, he saw her peeking through the curtained window of her father’s bakery. It was just a matter of time and the bakery would dose, and Theo knew there would soon be a knock at his door. He left the door partly open and sure enough Helga came bounding in, smelling of flower and fresh bread. They were happy together but Helga knew something had happened to Theo. He was not the same person as when he left. She didn’t find out the reason until they met the next afternoon in the park. Helga appeared with her girlfriend who quickly disappeared and left them alone.

Theo was tired and disillusioned. He tried to explain this to Helga but there was little chance she would understand him. How does one explain one’s uneasiness when one himself is not sure? He tried to tell Helga he was tired of the art scene, and tired of the students he had met. He had no sympathy for them. They wanted

 to create, but they did not want it bad enough. They dreamed of artistry but they failed to deliver the goods. Theo saw life with no vision save his own, with his own eyes, with his own brain, with his own senses. He was given no support except that which he created for himself. Helga was of no help but he talked to her anyway, as one might talk to a rag doll.

Chapter 3a
COMMERCE OF ART
Basel, Switzerland, 1908 to 1930

Basel in Switzerland where Theo Meier was born is a long way from Tahiti and even farther from Bali, to say the least. How did a native son, a young man, who wanted to paint pictures, make it that far is quite remarkable. To tell the truth, it was a movie, a motion picture that did it, a simple movie film that changed his life forever. And they say movies have no effect on people. Let me tell you how it happened.

Basel is a busy commercial center, but quieter than Zurich, less international than Geneva, and farther from the Alps than Bern. It’s Switzerland’s second-largest city where its wealthy patrician families have nurtured a tradition of scholarship and art since the Renaissance. Basel has more than two dozen museums with a population of 200,000, which is proof that this is no ordinary provincial town. And so it was no small wonder then that Theo Meier, born in Basel in 1908, became influenced by the art scene at a very young age. That doesn’t mean, however, that Theo’s father agreed that his only son should delve into the arts. On the contrary, young Theo was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps-a dealer in office machines. Theo never doubted, while growing up, that his profession would be other than that of his father’s. After all, as was the tradition then, shoemakers’ sons became shoemakers; baker’s sons, bakers; and so on. Nor was there anything unusual about Theo’s formative years. His childhood was ordinary, like every other schoolboy in Switzerland. He went to school, came home, did his studies, and met with friends in the evening. He spent Saturdays helping in his father’s business and on Sundays went to church with his family. He had an attentive mother, a strict father and an older sister who bossed him around. The years passed slowly, the sameness year after year, and even the war, when it broke out on the continent, had little effect on Basel. Life in the city went on as usual. The war passed by in the distance. Theo was six when it began and eleven when it ended four years later.

Theo grew up dreading the day when he would turn sixteen, for at that time he had to take a commercial apprenticeship in his father’s office. His life was programmed to revolve around business machines, office equipment, ledgers, accounts, time cards, and set hours. But for young Theo, instead of business machines, his thoughts were elsewhere. His real love was for forms and colors. His likes and talents were in art. Secretly he wanted to paint pictures. When he did approach his father and said he would like to go to art school, he was surprised to find that his father didn’t object. “Certainly, why not?” his father commented to his wife, Theo’s mother. “Who knows, it might even help in the office, promoting business machines.” The senior Meier even paid for his son’s art classes at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts, but with the stipulation that Theo could study painting as long as it didn’t interfere with his commercial studies. Theo’s dabbling in the arts, his painting was, in his father’s eyes, merely a hobby and nothing more. After all, the boy would have a successful and well-established business to step into, one that had been handed down from generation to generation, one that young Theo was being groomed to take over one day.

The war may have passed but, nevertheless, in Switzerland in the late 1920s military service was compulsory for all young men and still is. Theo was assigned to an anti-aircraft unit, given a uniform and a rifle, but without ammunition, to keep locked up in his closet. Since he was a student, enrolled in school, he never had to put on his uniform and when his service time was up he returned the rifle without ever having fired a shot.

After his required three years apprenticeship Theo earned his certificate in business. His father had it framed and hung it on the wall in the living room where everyone could see it. But in the meantime, Theo’s love for painting had intensified. It took preference over business machines. He didn’t want to give up painting. He approached his father with an idea. Since he had his certificate in business, and before he entered the family business he would like to take off for one year and do nothing but paint.

One year before settling down to business.

His father was, of course, pleased that his son had earned his certificate. Why not? Let his boy see how difficult the outside world might be on his own, without support. Theo’s father agreed, but he made it dear, Theo would be on his own. He had to live off the money he made from painting. Theo’s father gave him his one year, but not one franc. He was certain his son would come back into the fold, for he was a bright lad merely living out some sort of fancy. Hunger changes many young men’s minds.

Theo’s father was certain, with no income Theo would come back, and he left the door open to him. But what Theo’s father never expected was that his son would win a grant from the Basel School of Art for 400 francs for a year. Theo was thrilled. He was more proud than ever to be a Ballios, one of the clan, a bona fide member of the city of arts and culture. Indeed, it was exciting times in Basel for young painters, musicians, poets, writers and pursuers of the arts. The exhibitions seen at the Kunsthalle were enough to capture any aspiring young artist’s soul, and Theo soon became fascinated with art groups like the Rot-Blau who were making a name for themselves in Basel. He was caught up in the whirlwind of creation. He moved out from his family dwelling and found a room on the 4th floor of an old apartment across the street from a bakery and dose to school. Poor but happy he lived on coarse sausages, salty bread rolls and cheap Spanish wine. He learned what it was to be free for the first time in his life. He bought canvas on credit from Max Opplinger’s shop on the corner. He found delight in his room with a fresh canvas on his easel, while looking out his window at all the rooftops. He felt like the captain of a great ship embarking on a fabulous journey. He was free. It meant so much to him. He didn’t want to think what would happen when the year was up.

To fill a need in Theo’s life, along came Helga, a buxom jolly woman two years older than him. She was the daughter of the baker across the street, and she would come sneaking into his room in the black of night. They both were aware, had her father caught his “virgin” daughter in the room with Theo, Theo would be slaughtered and his daughter, Helga, sent to a nunnery. Helga’s parents were basic people, strong Catholics who held fast to their faith and they abided by the law of the church and man. Theo thought the end came one night when unable to locate his bottle of wine, he got up and flicked on the overhead light. Helga who was lying naked on the bed let out a scream that could have wakened everyone in the block, including her father and mother across the street. To Helga, being seen without her clothes on was a sin far worse than the act of fornication itself. Fortunately no one heard her scream, and Theo was careful after that never to turn the lights on. When Theo saw her there, naked on the bed, he got the idea of painting her in the nude. At first, when he asked her, she thought he was joking, but when she saw that he was serious she went into a fit. “How can you even think of something so vulgar,” she said and stormed out of the studio. It was a week before she came back, without apologies but with firm words, “Don’t ever ask me anything like that again.”

That night when they lay side by side in the dark, with Helga breathing heavily, Theo remembered a painting by Degas. He had to suppress a chuckle for fear of waking up Helga. The painting was the backside of a nude woman. She had both hands placed firmly on her buttocks. She stood next to an unmade up bed. The painting was titled “The Baker’s Wife.” He wondered if the baker had ever seen the painting, and now he wondered what would happen if he had painted Helga in the nude and her father saw the painting. He would be murdered, or else it would be marriage. Theo got thinking about another painting by Gauguin. Three or four workmen, he couldn’t remember how many, were at a beach in Normandy entering the water. They were in swimsuits that fully clothed their bodies. He then recalled Gauguin’s later paintings, those he did when he was in Tahiti. The Tahitian women wore no clothing. Theo wondered if that was really the way it was in Tahiti. Helga was a simple woman, the kind who makes a good attentive wife and a responsive mother. Theo was appreciative of her efforts, even though he knew when he met her at an exhibition that she would rather have been at the Sunday Flea Market than looking at paintings she didn’t understand. Nevertheless, she was an understanding woman and when Theo said he wanted to go to the French coast to see the countryside where Monet had painted his wonderful garden scenes, and which Pierre Loti had written so romantically about, she had no objection. She stole buns and poppy seed rolls from the bakery and packed him food for several days. He scraped his francs together, packed his easel and kit and bought a third class train ticket to Normandy.

Chapter 2
Opportunity Knocking

I didn’t have to wait a few weeks. The next morning when I was sitting in the garden by the river, a servant came to tell me someone had come to see me. At the time, I didn’t know anyone in Chiang Mai, except Theo, and it wasn’t likely he would come to see me? I went out to the lobby, and to my surprise it was Theo. He was standing there, talking to the owner. He greeted me warmly when he saw me. “I had to come into town, and I thought you might want to come for lunch with Yattlie and me,” he said. “I know this great noodle shop, the best in Thailand.”

Lunch lasted the better part of the afternoon, and it was my first opportunity to witness Theo’s love for food. He was ecstatic. “Here, here,” he shouted in his heavy German accent. He was pointing to a plate of noodles, or what I thought were noodles. They were duck intestines that looked very much like noodles. Theo ordered the intestines and other dishes as well, but, as it were, he just didn’t order them. He stood beside the chef, an old man, and lauded over each serving as it was being cooked. The old man, who didn’t mind Theo standing there, was an ancient white-haired Chinese-Thai grandpa who wore a soiled apron and had a cigarette dangling from his lips. The cigarette had a long ash, half the length of the cigarette, and as the old man swung a wooden ladle in one hand and a long-handled spoon in the other, I watched with bated breath, waiting for the ash to fall at any minute into one of the cooking pots–but I should have known better: it never did. Theo was delighted over the old man’s cooking. No sooner did Theo sit down than he would jump up to check that the old man was preparing the dishes as he wanted them. I was tempted to tell Theo that his duck intestine noodles tasted like fried rubber bands but refrained from doing so, and it was best that I didn’t. Theo talked incisively about food: “I knew a shop in Papeete that served fish soup. Best fish soup you could have. You took raw fish, dropped into boiling soup at your table.”

“You know Papeete?” I asked.

Theo looked at me as though I had said the wrong thing. “What! Tahiti, do I know Papeete?” He shouted, giving out a great boisterous laugh that only Germans can do. “Maybe I know; do you know?”

“Papeete, and Tahiti,” I said. “I spent a good many years there.” “You what? Ya, and what about the Marquesas?” Theo asked.

“You know the Marquesas, yah?”

“Yes, the Marquesas too. Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa, where Gauguin is buried. I’ve been there, on a copra boat.”

Like a welder who unites two pieces of steel, Theo and I struck a common bond. Immediately he began asking me about Tahiti and the islands. When had I been there last? Where did I go? How did I get there? We soon discovered, even though he had been there many years before I had, there were people we both knew.

“You mean you met Bob McKitridge in Nuku Hiva; he was still there?” He exclaimed. I told him how the old island trader, nearly blind, was sitting in front of his store in Taiohae when I met him. “And the McCullens from Moorea, what about them?” He asked.

I told Theo that I had heard that Bob McKitridge had died, but the McCullens were still on Moorea, alive and well.

Theo was pleased beyond words. I would tell him something and he would explain it to Yattlie in Thai. He bantered back and forth, in English and then in Thai. Finally, he said, “I have photographs. I have photographs I have taken. You must see them. When are you coming back to Chiang Mai?”

“In a few weeks.”

“In a few weeks,” he responded. “No, too long. You come now. No. Tonight. You come tonight. We make a feast.”

I could hardly refuse.

That night Theo arranged for a baht bus driver to pick me up at the guesthouse. He was waiting when I arrived just after dusk. He was draped in a sarong; his hair wet from a shower. Yattlie was at his side, she too in a sarong, her hair done up in tiny flowers. A table had been set on the verandah, directly under a huge oil painting by Theo that dominated the entire wall. Tiny brass bells hanging from the eaves tinkled with the slightest movement of air, and from a room, most likely his studio, came the scent of oil paintings. Strange, but I hadn’t heard the bells nor detected the scent of paint earlier when I was there the day before.

Candles and wicks burning in bowls of coconut oil added a wonderful scent to the air and cast flickering lights upon the scene, and the sound of flutes someplace in the background lent an atmosphere totally unlike any I had known before. Theo may have been poor, a struggling artist, but he knew how to fill life to its fullest.

A girl servant materialized from nowhere, and to her Theo waved a hand and said, “Mekong.” She vanished without a sound and reappeared as silently as she had left, with two Mekongs. We drank our Mekongs, and had dinner of roasted pig and buffalo meat marinated in fourteen different spices. Dinner was hardly over when Theo jumped up and said for me to follow him. He led me into his studio and turned on the electric lights. A large unfinished oil was resting on his easel and I wanted to study it, but before I could, Theo was calling me and pulling open drawers. He began digging out his photographs. He had them stuffed in envelopes and cardboard boxes, tucked away in drawers and on shelves. He dumped the photographs on the floor. He was as excited as a kid at Christmas.

The photographs were not those snapshot types that people generally keep, the slightly out-of-focus family album stuff of birthday parties, Christmas gatherings, weddings and pet cats and dogs. Theo’s photographs were taken by him, and as the artist he was, they were taken with an eye. for composition and beauty. He was a master at shadows. There were landscapes and portraits, still lifes and nature studies, and women, hundreds of women. There were many black-and-white photographs of people whom Theo painted, or else whom he intended to paint. Whoever they were, they were no doubt long dead. The photographs had their own stories to tell; they told of Theo’s extraordinary life, a reckless, happy youth in Basel and in the islands, wild and savage dancing and drums in the night, cane chairs pulled out on verandahs, tumbling waterfalls and beautiful women.

That night when I climbed into my bed at the guesthouse, I couldn’t forget those photographs. It was almost dawn before I fell asleep.

Little by little I got to know Theo. It took time for he was not one to reveal his innermost feelings all at once. I spent three days with him that first time, and in the months and years to follow I spent long hours and even days in his company. I kept copious notes and taped hours of our conversations, and I snapped endless rolls of film. I met with him and Yattlie when they came to Bangkok, traveled with them to the remote hill tribe villages of the north and one year joined them in Bali. In Chiang Mai whenever there was a village feast or a religious celebration, Theo would invite me. “You must come. It’s something special.” Everything to Theo was something special. Living to him was special. When Theo became more affluent and built a grand classical Thai house, I stayed there as his guest rather than at the Chiang Mai Guest House. We had some splendid dinners at his house.

Once Theo asked if I would come to Chiang Mai to proof read a translation of a biography for a German book publisher that wanted to publish a book on Theo’s paintings. My Schooner Third Sea was at the time in Samoa and I had invited my nephew Robert Stedman to join me in Bangkok to help buy supplies for the voyage from Pago Pago to Honolulu. Robert had taken off for a few months before starting college and I wanted to give him all the exposure he could get. Time was precious but I figured this was a good chance for Robert to meet someone who was truly interesting and at the same time give Theo a helping hand. I cabled Theo and he said to bring Robert. Robert and I took the night train to Chiang Mai.

Theo and Robert got along great. Robert knew his grammar and turned to with enthusiasm to Theo’s manuscript. I was surprised when he questioned Theo about certain passages, for I feared that Theo might explode, but he didn’t. They worked out the pages together.

Every evening at the dinner table, and after Yattlie had retired, Robert’s eyes would turn large as saucers as Theo expounded on his travels. I recall one episode where Theo talked about his retiring for the night in a native hut in the New Hebrides, with the tapa drape covering the door slid open slightly, and the chief appeared with the words, “For you him big fella.” And at that he shoved a naive girl into the room. Of course Robert, being young and gullible, wanted to know what happened next, which Theo told him with unabashed enthusiasm. That was, of course, after Yattlie had left the room and gone to bed. Exuberantly, Robert asked, “Why didn’t you put that in your biography?”

“What, you want me to be ruined,” Theo said and laughed. Robert thought for a while, and then said, “Then what happened?” and Theo went on to tell another tale. When we left two weeks later, after helping with his biography, Theo gave Robert a painting and a line drawing of a teak carving he had made for my schooner.

What I thought would be a few days turned out to be a two-week sojourn. I checked over the final copy of Theo’s bio and Robert and I were finished. Theo thanked us, gave us a big, memorable feast and sent us off. Back in Bangkok, Robert and I concluded buying our nautical supplies, and flew to Samoa where the schooner was waiting. Now to come was another experience for Robert-sailing the high seas. Robert had all the exposure a young man could possibly get, and then some. I wondered if I might have made a mistake bringing him to Asia. I feared he would no longer be content returning to the humdrum life of a college student in California, not after meeting Theo and discovering the South Seas.

I came to know many of Theo’s friends over the years, from Hans Oplander, a German businessman who was the best man at Theo’s wedding, to Prince Sandith Rangsit of the Thai royal family who originally invited Theo to live in Thailand. There were many others too: James Michener, Rolf Van Buren and Roman Polanski, and artists Antonio Blanco, Arie Smith, Han Snel, and stores of writers and journalists, all who have added to Theo’s remarkable story.

When I first met Theo in Chiang Mai, I knew he had lived more than twenty years on Bali and that he had left a wife and daughter there, but little else did I know about him. When he was living with Yattlie at Wat Suan Dok, he mentioned he was born in 1908. That would have made him fifty-eight at the time. Yattlie had to be in her late teens.

Theo had little to show for his years of painting but that didn’t bother him. He was happy and enjoyed life to its fullest, money or no money in the bank. On my second trip to Chiang Mai, a few months after meeting him, I bought one of his oils, a portrait of a Thai girl, and I wrote my first story about him, the first of many dozens that were to follow, including a chapter in my book Asian Portraits.

When I was outfitting my Schooner Third Sea, he became excited as a child about the project. He even considered joining me on a cruise to Tahiti, and maybe Prince Sandith would come too. To show his excitement, he carved two huge teak storyboards for the saloon and many smaller pieces to adorn the hatches, and he gave me a painting of a nude Thai lady to hang in the galley. The friendship that was slowly developing between us was one that would last for the next two decades, until Theo’s death.

You often hear the expression “he is the last of his kind.” No expression could be more fitting to Theo Meier than the last of his kind. Who today can follow in the footsteps of Gauguin to Tahiti and the Marquesas, who can sail aboard a trading schooner to islands of the South Seas, who can live with cannibals on a savage island in the New Hebrides, who can walk with an easel strapped to his back across China dominated by warlords, who can live among lovely ladies on tropical Bali for twenty years and who can dwell for another twenty years in northern Thailand. Theo was a man who befriended, and painted, everyone from street sweepers to royalty. Later in his life, writers came from afar to write about him, and photographers came to photograph his paintings. In time his name became synonymous with Bali and Thailand. His paintings that once sold for a few dollars now go on the auction block for up to a hundred thousand dollars and more.

This is Theo’s story taken from his journal and from his private papers and letters that he entrusted to me, and from our many long talks that lasted late into the night. And I interviewed and taped dozens of people who knew 1heo. I began writing Painted in the Tropics soon after Theo’s death. I had disagreements with some, including Yattlie, Theo’s wife, about the book’s content. Do I tell about his carousing ways and do I tell why he left Bali. Why, actually, did Theo ever leave Switzerland in the first place? Do I please some by glossing over the facts to protect names, or do I stick to the truth.

But of what value is a biography if it is not the truth? Truth is the viewpoint on how I see it.

Painted in the Tropics did take a great deal of research, not only in Bali but in Basel as well, and time was needed to find out why he left Bali and that lovely Balinese wife. Questions had to be answered.

Chapter 2
FORGOTTEN IN CHIANG MAI
Bangkok, Spring 1966

In spring 1966, having been caught by the spell of tropical Asia, and not wanting to leave, I was offered a job in Bangkok by Roy Howard, the Sales Director of Thai Airways International, Thailand’s national carrier, to serve as travel correspondent for the airline with the task of writing a weekly travel feature for the Bangkok World. The World was an English language newspaper that didn’t pay much, but in the mid-1960s, it didn’t require much to live in Bangkok, nor were any of us overworked. All I needed to do was to prepare one weekly travel column for the paper. I had a small flat on the top floor of an old apartment house near the newspaper, an old World War II jeep to drive around in, and plenty of time to myself I traveled all about Asia gathering material for my stories and books that I later wrote.

I was behind my desk at the newspaper one afternoon, getting ready to go out and report on the nightlife, when Willy Mettler came bounding into the office, all excited. “I have a great story for you,” he said, shouting. He was wringing wet. “It’s great, really great,” he announced again, waiting for my comment.

I couldn’t let myself become excited with Willy’s enthusiasm for stories. Willy was a Swiss photographer. I had met him four years earlier in southern Spain and was partly responsible for his being in Southeast Asia. I got him assigned as photographer on an overland expedition from Europe to Singapore, and when he a hard time responding for I was still half asleep. “I have a room for you at the Chiang Mai Guest House,” he said. I knew the guesthouse and liked the place, a sprawling cluster of lovely old teak buildings on the peaceful Ping River that flows right through the middle of the town. The thought of a cool bath, sluicing myself with dippers of water from a large Shanghai jar, was welcoming, but Willy said that would have to wait. “We go to Theo’s first,” he insisted.

“Theo lives with his wife near Wat Suan Dok,” Willy shouted over the clamor as he motioned for me to follow him through the mass of people waiting to greet arriving passengers. So Theo has a new wife I thought. I was thinking maybe he had gone back to his Balinese wife but obviously that hadn’t happened. Who was this new wife? A model too?

We made our way past the taxi and trishaw stands to the roadside where the trishaws waited. Willy had engaged a driver who frantically waved when he saw us. Willy motioned for me to be seated, and instructed me to put my canvas bag and a camera case on my lap, but the driver protested when Willy attempted to sit next to me. He insisted Willy take another trishaw. Willy was obstinate as ever and vehemently objected but he was forced, after a five-minute harangue, to give in. It was well that he did. There was hardly space for one passenger let along two, plus all my bags, “It’s not far,” Willy shouted from his trishaw as he took the lead.

“They cheat us.”

It was still early as we set out with the sun just behind the horizon; the tropic heat had not yet descended upon the city. Early morning in tropical Chiang Mai, when the light is still soft and filters down through the trees, is most pleasant. Once away from the railway station, the cacophonous whine of thousands of motorcycles and trishaws was left behind. With Willy leading the way I followed close behind, enjoying the slow moving scenery drifting by. Street vendors had yet to set up their portable stalls along the streets, and there were still a few early-morning monks slowly returning to their temples after seeking their alms. Passers-by greeted the monks with cupped hands and bowed to let them pass. The monks, some mere boys, seemed not to notice them. In the distance, when the trees gave way, we could just make out bluish-gray mountains that lay to the west of town. We crossed over a murky moat and entered the ancient walled city through a stone gate, the very same gate through which centuries before war elephants returning from victory once marched. Now it was vehicular traffic, and an endless phalanx of bicycles that vied for positions through the narrow opening.

On the green mass of Doi Soothe, the main centerpiece to the old city, Wat Suan Dok appeared with crystalline clarity through the morning air. We caught the low rays of the morning sun as Willy pointed out the temple with a surrounding low wall supported by rows of fine elephant buttresses. We made a sharp turn to the right and entered a narrow alley. My trishaw came to a halt in front of a low, timeworn wall. Through a wooded gate I could see an unpainted old-style Thai house elevated high off the ground on posts. The dirt yard had been swept clean with broom marks in the dust still visible. On top a set of steps that led to the house two people stood waiting. It was too far to make out faces but I presumed one would be Theo Meier.

“This is where Theo lives,” Willy announced victoriously and instructed me to pay the drivers, and how much to give them, which I did out of habit.

We entered the yard and while I stood at the foot of the stairway, Willy started up the steps and turned and said, “Come, come.” I hesitated, taking the time to look up at our host. It was Theo, no doubt, with a woman at his side. She was grinning.

Now it was Theo who called out. “Yes, yes, do come up,” he said. He spoke with a heavy German accent. When I reached the top landing, he said, “I am Theo, Theo Meier.” And then turning to the woman, he added, “This is Yattlie, my wife. Her family calls here Liliat but I prefer Yattlie.” She was Thai, dressed in an ill- fitting western dress. She greeted Willy and me in broken English.

I have to admit, at that first sight of Theo, I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting someone totally different. Perhaps after picturing him in my mind on Bali, where I first heard his name, and where I had seen his lovely Balinese wife, I expected a more dashing character, maybe not handsome, but at least debonair. He was none of these. I found not an eccentric South Sea island painter with uncut hair and a mad look in his eye, but on the contrary a very sober-looking gentleman in his mid-fifties. He was dean-shaven, with short hair, wore knee length shorts and a faded batik shirt. Except for a strong Shan cheroot he was smoking, he could easily have passed for a Swiss banker on holiday. He was very polite, extended both his hands in a warm welcome and even before we were seated motioned for the servant girls to bring us drinks.

“Mekong,” he said when a lithe hill tribe servant girl arrived with a tray of drinks. He took a drink from the tray and handed me a tall glass filled to the brim with Mekong whiskey and soda. A slice of fresh lemon floated on the top. “Foreigners don’t like Mekong-and-soda,” he was quick to say, “but you can have a Singha beer if you want.”

I assured him I drank Mekong-and-soda.

“Good,” he continued, and then in detail explained the secret to making a good Mekong. “Much soda,” he said, “and ice. You need soda and ice.”

We took seats on a wide verandah.

“You come to make a story on me,” he blurted out. “Good. What you want to know?” I was too taken back to respond immediately. It was all I could do to hold back my anger at Willy Mettler. No doubt he had passed me off as an important and well-known journalist who traveled from afar to see him. I knew Willy all too well. He had done this before.

“You came all the way from America,” Theo said. What else did Willy tell him, that I was with the National Geographic?

“From America,” I said. “Yes, originally.” I could see Willy wince.

“You write for Life Magazine!” Theo continued.

I was wrong. Willy didn’t tell him National Geographic; he had told him Life.

“Not exactly,” I said. ‘Tm with the Bangkok World.”

“He writes for Life too,” Willy interrupted.

“The World, the World, good newspaper,” Theo said. “They did reportage on me before.”

“They did,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Willy had forced me into a corner. I had to get out. “I’ll have to look it up when I get back,” I continued. “I didn’t come up to write about you. I just wanted to meet you.”

“Good, good,” he said. Idle words, I thought. It wasn’t good.

He sounded disappointed. I regretted that I hadn’t done my homework on Theo before I came. At that first meeting, I knew little about him. I gathered, from looking around, that in spite of his living on Bali for more than twenty years, he was still a struggling artist. Struggling perhaps, but he wasn’t idle which was evident. Paintings hung everywhere, along two inside walls of the verandah, and in the hallway that led to the verandah. In rooms farther in the house I could make out more paintings. Most were oils; a few were sketches and line drawings. I wanted so much to study the paintings but I didn’t dare appear over-zealous, especially after admitting I came only to meet him and not to write about him as the artist. I had to sneak glances whenever I could, when he turned to talk to Willy, or when he gave orders to his servant girls. My chance did come later, when Yattlie came and called him outside into the garden to confront with a wood carver. Theo stood up and excused himself. “Look around,” he said and left. Willy and I were alone.

Willy ran off into the house somewhere and I was left to myself to look around. Suddenly I felt as though I were walking through a tropical garden. Colors came alive, dancing all about me. The paintings did not seem real, more surreal. I had seen nothing like them before: he painted brilliant landscapes, with ultramarine background, glistening ochre and splashes of heavy green. The still lifes were a mixture of vermilion and orange yellow. The portraits burst out in shades of red, with shadows of purple. Each painting, whether landscape or portrait, had been touched with the mood of the tropics, generously lavished with emerald greens and a mixtures of delicate verdure of lush vegetation.

Theo returned from the garden and excused himself He had work to do but wanted to know if there was anything he could do for me. He had been the perfect host, with years of practice entertaining foreigners who had come seeking him out. Each visitor was a potential customer for a painting, and painters without selling their canvases cannot survive. I felt that Theo would have preferred doing something else rather than making idle talk with Willy and me. Regretfully, I didn’t have enough money to buy one of his paintings. I would have liked to help him out.

We bid good-bye to Theo Meier and his wife and at the end of the lane caught a baht bus into town. Willy took the night train to Bangkok and I decided to linger a day or two longer in Chiang Mai. I had dinner in the market place and returned to my room at the Chiang Mai Guest House. I lay in bed thinking about Theo Meier. I was deeply impressed with him, mostly for his sincerity, but I was disappointed that I didn’t get to know anything more about him now than I did before I met him. I had learned nothing about why he left Bali, the thing I wanted to know most. Maybe if I gave it time, came back in a few weeks, did a story on him, then

I could learn more. His life was certainly intriguing. I’d check with the editor at Bangkok World. There had to be a few magazines that might be interested in Theo’s story. With a proper interview, I just might get to know the real Theo Meier.

THE ABANDONED WIFE
Bali, Indonesia, 1959

It was by mere chance that I saw Theo Meier’s wife, especially under the circumstances in which it occurred. It was on the island of Bali in August 1959.

I had no intention whatsoever of going to Bali. Coincidence took me there. I was living in Tahiti, attempting to write the great American novel, but was finding it an impossible place to work with all the diversions the island has to offer. I don’t know how the likes of Charles Nordoff and James Norman Hall did it and were able to produce the Bounty Trilogy. In my case, I had resigned myself to the fact that I had to move on to an environment more conducive to writing and was planning to leave Tahiti when one afternoon, while sitting with friends at Viama’s Cafe along the waterfront, a white sail appeared on the horizon.

Even from a distance, we could see this was no ordinary yacht. The rig was that of a schooner, but not one of those battered and bruised lusty trading schooners that operated in French Polynesia in those days. This was a sleek, trim yacht with a white hull that glistened in the sun. You knew at first sight she was not a vessel that smelled of copra and diesel. She tacked once under full sail past the entrance, dropped sails and under power entered the harbor. She was a magnificent vessel, a magnificent yacht flying American colors. She caught the attention of everyone on the quay that afternoon.

Schooner Northwinds, her name proudly displayed across the stern, had no sooner dropped anchor and warped her stern up to the quay when we learned that the skipper, a wealthy lumber man from Oregon, was taking his family-with his wife’s sister and her husband and their two kids-on a tour of the South Pacific. We also learned the skipper was looking for a tutor for the five children. Having spent a few years as a schoolteacher before turning writer, I applied for the position and was accepted. I spent the next six months aboard Northwinds, fulfilling dreams, sailing to forgotten islands, dropping anchor in forbidden ports that one only reads about in the classics.

Indeed, there can be no better dream come true than sailing the South Seas aboard a sailing schooner, bringing up new landfalls, new ports, and new experiences. As exciting as the tales of sailing the South Seas might be though, it has little to do with the story of Theo Meier, except for one important thing-art. Ed Delongo, the skipper owner, was looking for local art in the Pacific, which I learned only after we had set sail some months before.

But he was a hundred years too late. In civilizing the islanders, the missionaries destroyed the islanders’ culture, their traditions, their dance, their music, and their art. We sailed from one island chain to another, picking up an occasional carving, shunning their seashell artifacts and their coconut and bamboo handicrafts. From Fiji, we sailed to Port Vila in the New Hebrides, a muddled condominium governed by France and Great Britain, where, like Polynesia, their art and culture were lost. Captain Delongo searched long and hard for carvings, but was able only to find a few “story boards” and titikis too large to take aboard Northwinds. He had these shipped back to Portland. But not all was lost. At the Yacht Club in Port Vila, he heard an intriguing story about a South Sea island painter who had once lived in the New Hebrides and was now living on Bali, only a short sail beyond the New Hebrides. “He was character,” the old timer at the yacht club said. ”A painter he was, here in Port Vila many years ago, and the last we heard, he now lives in Bali.” The man thought for a moment. “His name is Meier, Theo Meier. You should look him up. He went through the islands painting the natives, getting into all kinds of trouble.”

A month later Northwinds sailed into Berroa Harbor on the lovely island of Bali. We spent our days and evenings victims of the island and the Balinese. In those days, long before tourists, there were no guidebooks or tour guides and you were pretty much on your own, so to speak. Fortunately, our skipper, blessed with a benevolent nature, made friends and we were constantly invited out to dinners and celebrations of every sort. But to his disappointment, Theo Meier no longer lived on Bali. He had left only a month or two before our arrival. He had departed suddenly, they said, but why he left was a mystery, a subject of much talk in the island. Some said he was practicing medicine and got into trouble with the authorities; others believed he was selling drugs to the natives. They even inferred that he had collaborated with the Japanese during the war and his past was catching up with him. Other artists said he had a falling out with President Sukarno who had him and other painters deported. Next, we heard that his Balinese wife had tried to poison him, and he lost face and had to leave. Whatever it was that compelled Theo Meier to leave Bali, he did it in a mighty hurry, and leaving behind his beautiful island wife.

We were on Bali about a week, getting ready to depart, when one afternoon I decided to take a walk into the hills above the village of Ubud. It was then that I saw her.

I had left Ubud and followed a path that led up a steep climb to the hills. Somewhere far above, I heard, was a beautiful temple. “You must see it,” the Balinese told me.

The path led through a thickly wooded area where a forest of banyan trees grew. How magnificent was this forest, perhaps even magical. Banyan trees are beautiful, and they grow with such grandeur and strength. When one sees them as I did that day, there is little wonder that the Balinese believe the forest where they grow are sacred. Here in the dark expanse of shade, the legend goes, their gods triumph. For one to stop and rest among them a while is to be akin with nature, or to be with the gods themselves. The forest, green and damp and heavy with the scent of decay, is especially welcoming in late afternoons, when the tropical downpour of heat is most fierce, and here in the cool shade, the world seems to be still. I found a place to sit and rest at the roots of a spreading banyan tree. Pencil-thin shafts of sunlight filtered down through the foliage and flecked the forest floor in delicate patches of gold. The sounds that came to me, at first, were inconsequential, until I minded them. Birds unseen in the deep foliage above sang cryptically to one another. There were sounds of insects, unfamiliar, suddenly breaking the stillness, loud and shrill at first, and then stopping, abruptly as they began. A dog yapping, barely audible, I could hear in a distant village. An occasional leaf fluttered earthward, catching a ray of slanted light, disappeared and then reappearing until it became lost among purple shadows beyond.

When you sit there long enough, among this tranquil splendor of a Bali afternoon, you begin wondering if it is real, if perhaps the Balinese gods did create the universe, as the Balinese so believe. You wonder if your senses are deceiving you, as I wondered when I heard, very faintly, the echo of a gong somewhere far off. A gong in the forest! Could it be? In an instant, more it was clearer, and louder, and mingled now with faraway voices. Then came the sound of a flute, and another, and more gongs. The yapping of the dog that seemed so distant was now closer, and grew louder. My peace and joy of the forest were being disturbed by something strange and bewildering, something mysterious and unfathomable, as Bali itself is, especially for one like me who had only been on the island a week.

And as I sat there, my back pressed against the gnarled roots of the banyan tree, perplexed and uncertain, and the sounds grew more distinct, there came into view far down the sun-flecked path, a column of marchers, led by men and boys. I watched them grow from fuzzy silhouettes into focus, like a camera zooming in on its subject. I could see them clearly now, all wearing sarongs, white sarongs, and around their wastes were scarlet cummerbunds fastened with rich buckles carved in gold. They wore headbands; these too all white, and pointed at the crown. Those in the lead carried towering bamboo poles, bent over in sweeping arches by the weight of flowing pennants attached to their ends. More marchers followed, boys carrying gaily-colored umbrellas suspended high above their heads on long slender poles. The music, gongs and flutes, accompanied by a chorus of singing, grew louder and louder in intensity until it became almost deafening.

Young children ran with the dogs alongside the procession, laughing and shouting and calling out to one another, adding to the noise and cacophony of sound. The procession passed, the music and singing dinned, gradually, and presently a line of women in single file came up behind the marchers. Unlike the men who wore white, they were dressed in brightly colored batik sarongs, and in place of headbands like the men wore, they carried upon their heads towering pillars of food, with tiny plaited baskets, heaped with cakes and sweets, and others with tropical fruit. These I learned later were offerings to the gods, and what I was witnessing was a religious procession heading to one of their temples further up the mountainside.

Then I saw her!

To say she was beautiful would be an understatement. She possessed something more than beauty itself. There was almost an ethereal quality about her, some intangible mystical quality that only the gods of Bali could have created. She was, perhaps to the eye, perfect. To see her, as I did that first time, marching in a religious procession above the hills of Ubud, she appeared, it seemed, more aberration than real, a living goddess. And then she too was gone and I was alone.

The image of that beautiful face, that lovely graceful body, those lines of elegant perfection, they were etched forever in my mind. I thought she would be gone forever and would remain only as a vision. But I would see her later, in the village of Ubud. As circumstances were to prove, she was flesh and blood and not a goddess. She was, in fact, the island wife of a foreign artist. She was his, to be loved, to be held, and, for the artist that he was, to be painted and made eternal, for all to see for all time to come. They said her name was Madepergi, and her husband was Theo Meier. The two had lived in Iseh on the far side of the island, but for some reason he had left Bali a short time before. He had abandoned his beautiful wife. How could that be?

What fate doomed the artist to leave her, to leave her and his Bali that he had so loved, a Bali that had been his home, his life’s blood and his spirit, for more than half his lifetime? And a woman who was also the mother of his child?

– Harold Stephens

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

We know well the story. An artist struggles a lifetime, earning perhaps only a crust of bread, forever on the brink of starvation, but never giving up. Then one day, long after he has gone to meet his maker, his works are discovered. Vincent Van Gogh died in poverty, having sold only one painting in his lifetime, and yet at a Christie’s auction years after he died, one of his oils sold for US$80 million. Paul Gauguin was so poor when he died in the Marquesas in French Polynesia, the caretaker of the house where he lived didn’t have enough money to keep up his gravesite. Yet, look what his paintings sell for today. Unlike Van Gogh and Gauguin, Theo Meier did have marginal success with the sale of his paintings when he was alive, and he did live rather well in his traditional Thai house in Chiang Mai, but I am sure even Theo would be overwhelmed by how the price of his paintings has sky-rocketed, as have the works of many expat artists who lived on Bali in that era.

I have not written his book to dwell on the struggles of one man, nor is it a postmortem evaluation of his work, except where it touches upon his character. Not everyone who sees Theo’s paintings likes them. Some think his paintings are too simple, almost child-like; others take them to be complex; and there are those who think there is something extremely sensual about them. The Japanese thought this when they invaded the Dutch East Indies and, upon seeing his work, confiscated all of his paintings of nude women and shipped them, supposedly, back to Japan. Theo never forgave the Japanese.

Most striking about Theo’s paintings are the lively colors. They seem to leap out of the canvas. When I first saw a Theo painting, I was immediately reminded of Gauguin. I recall seeing my first Gauguin at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., long before I ever went to Tahiti. I did not particularity care for his style, his crudeness, nor his choice of colors, the reds and greens and purples. To me they clashed together in a kind of cacophony of colors. His shadows looked like anything but shadows. The Tahitians he painted appeared flat, and unanimated. Then I went to Tahiti and spent time on the island, and I became very fond of Gauguin’s work. He had captured the essence of the islands

and the people. In time this same thing happened to me with Theo’s work. To use the old cliché, his work grew upon me. It grew upon me because I came to better understand the Balinese and the Thais, and with Theo’s work I was later to realize that here was art presented like I had not seen it before. One can walk into a gallery with thousands of paintings, walk up to one, and say with conviction, “This is a Theo Meier!”

I am aware that some critics who read Painted in the Tropics may come down hard on me. This is oftentimes the case with biographies, but with Theo it is ever more so. The reason, Theo was a personal friend and he told me things I wouldn’t dare print were he alive. Yet, from a personal perspective, I feel he wanted them told. In my interviews with friends who knew him (many tape recordings) no two recollections are the same. For example, when Theo wanted to marry Yatdie, Prince Sandith, his old friend who invited him to come live in Thailand, told me he was the one who went to Hua Hin to negotiate the dowry to be paid to Yattlie’s family. In a taped interview, Hans Oplander claimed he was the one who went to Hua Him to meet with Yattlie’s family. There were other inconsistencies, like the name of Theo’s Thai wife. She has gone by many names but to simplify matters, I settled on the name Yattlie. In this and in many other instances, in the final analysis I had to make the decision what to print, with the hope that readers will understand. I can say, honestly, I was, in all cases, after the truth, even though truth often hurt.

So much said, this is the story of Theo Meier, the last of his kind. Truly, there can be no other like him, not in this generation or in generations to come.

Harold Stephens…