Amid the whiplash curves and tangled miseries of the fifth arrondissement Merle espied her.
The young lady who came out of the old Louis townhouse was wearing a long black cloak and beret in a becoming shade of green. Her heels clicking on the cobble stone street, Merle followed her with critiquing eyes. If it pleased him to note she could walk properly, he didn’t have long to wait for her return: still holding up well in spite of being encumbered by two boulangerie bags of shopping.
From his discreet post Merle watched her as she put the bags down on the pavement and rang the bell.
“Monsieur.”
Then she did a nice trick. Pushing the door with the best part of her behind, she picked up her shopping again and stepped over the threshold. Ankle poised in black stocking.
With a cursory glance up and down and over the street, Merle crossed the road and made his approach.
He was in luck; the young lady had left the door on the latch.
If the hall was in virtual darkness, he could make out damp patches going up the walls under flaking paint. Although he was wearing light shoes, he pulled them up to stop them echoing on the stone floor.
Passing the lift, which was rather grand in the old style with a seat and fading red upholstery, Merle took the stairs, one at a time. Holding the banisters which were worn and broken in places making him think the residents must have been happy with its uncared for charm. The banisters, worn and broken in places lent it all a certain, un-cared for charm.
The window on the landing was not locked. He undid the catch and carefully lifted from the bottom. Holding up the window (since the sash was broken) he stepped over the sill and onto the ledge. Taking advantage of a branch that was hanging near the window, he steadied himself and walked along the ledge toward the balcony.
The scene that greeted his eyes through the French windows was one of unexpected pleasures. The young lady was leaning over the bed. She had on a particularly short skirt (even if he could not see the tops of her black stockings). In her hand was a needle she was administering to a pair of sad-looking buttocks, lying over a combination of pillows, that clenched and unclenched.
The young lady turned; Merle stepped back from the window.
When he looked again, the nurse was assisting a grey-haired man into a wheelchair. As the young nurse lifted, the grey-haired man grimaced and gripped the sides of the wheelchair. He eased his way into the seat and asked the nurse to bring over a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses.
The grey-haired man was speaking in French, but with a recognisable American accent.
“Ca va bien?”
“Si, ca va bien.”
The grey-haired man smiled up at the young lady.
“Sophie,” he said. “Tu es un jeune fille beaucoup gentile.”
She laughed and declared with calculated coquetry:
“Monsieur, tu es un vieux garcon beaucoup gentile.”
The young woman turned the wheelchair about and wheeled the grey-haired man out of the room.
Merle smiled to himself.
If it was just like a film, he thought, the production values were rather on the cheap – indeed shoddy side.
“What is going on, monsieur? It makes no sense to me.”
Patiently the man in the wheelchair explained.
There were only two windows, and a projecting veranda outside. Thick iron bars impeding ventilation. There was barely enough room for two or three men, but documents claimed that there were more than a hundred pressed in that locked cell.
“What happened to the prisoners, monsieur?”
“They died from suffocation. Though many people later denied it and said it was just colonial propaganda.”
“And what does it mean, monsieur?”
The man in the wheelchair seemed to hesitate.
“Personally, I believe the title gives us a clue. The artist, of course, is not known and so no one cares. In his inner torment there is equivalence with torture, suffocation, in a darkened room.
“Also, it is important, the fact that it is a lithograph. Pain is always replicated. Suffering, as it were, to the nth degree.”
The man in the wheelchair was staring at the girl as she looked away.
“It is always the same with these unknown artists. They come to sad, even despicable ends but this is the advantage for the collector when he finds himself wandering the flea market on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Monsieur had a lucky break.”
“And a good eye. One always needs a good eye, Sophie.”
Merle watched them as the man took her hand, and the young nurse – out of sympathy – stroked his shoulder. Was it, he wondered, true that he had a vindictive streak?
“You will come tomorrow,” said the old man.
“Of course, Monsieur. At the usual time.”
Merle turned his attention the room.
The furniture was indeed rather solid looking. There was a cupboard. One of those old cupboards on solid, if bowed legs, as were the marble topped side tables.
A checkers board was lying on the bed; a pack of cards were spread out on a board in a game of patience; the jack of hearts had been placed over queen of clubs, but Merle could find nothing to combine with the exposed six and nine.
He looked down at the letter knife with the ornate handle, which was resting on the pile of correspondence…. There were boxes of pills on the bedside table: heart condition, diabetes… In the name of Mr. Green. Almost he picked up one of the boxes and put it in his pocket.
“Au revoir, monsieur.”
“Au revoir, Sophie.”
The front door closed.
Merle stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway.
In a thrice, it seemed, he was standing in the passage between the two tall bookcases watching the old man manoeuvre his wheelchair back and forth to affect the turn. The effort left him a little breathless: a bout de souffle.
He looked up. And although it seemed that nothing untoward was happening, the man in the wheelchair did not look best pleased to see him. If there was a flicker of recognition, he did not speak, but continued to stare out of his thick horn-rimmed glasses.
As for Merle himself, he made no advances, but stood clutching the handle of the letter knife that was protruding from his coat pocket.
It occurred to him that he would have liked to make some kind of overture. And yet his voice remained in his throat; he was a prisoner of expectation. And he had come to see an old friend – in his mind’s eye; he thought they had something to say to each other, but now he could see it was quite foolish, his expectation.
The other man was resolutely uninterested, even when he turned to what they might have had in common.
To his delight the spine of a book had caught his eye.
Quoting verbatim, Merle’s voice became more confident, loud, as if suddenly remembering his part in this shoddy production.
“All men dream if not equally… Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men…”
The man in the wheelchair said nothing.
Barely had it begun than the conversation reached an incurable impasse. If it was quite pointless to carry on, Merle still had the letter knife in his pocket. He went into the sitting room where the painting was hanging and – with the expertise of a chef’s assistant – he began to cut it out of its frame.
“I thought you might like to give it to me,” he said. “As a parting gift.”
“Take it,” the other said, finally. “Take what you want. Go.”
Turning as if to obey, Merle remembered he had a further act to perform.
The Tenormin!
He took the pills out of his pocket and put them down on one of the shelves. The shelf was just beyond the reach of the man in the wheelchair whose eyes were flashing. In act of what might be construed as deliberate sadism, Merle left by the front door, bowing.
Three days later, it was reported in the crime news of Le Quotidien, Merle was arrested for breaking and entry into the apartment of a rich American ex-patriot and recluse, Hadley Green. In his possession was a rolled-up canvas and letter knife; Merle claimed the cursed painting – according to Le Quotidien – a bleak abstract – had been a gift from his former lover. The petty criminal, Merle, under investigation for man slaughter, had persuaded a well-known Parisian psychiatrist, Jules Arnaut, that he was suffering from a personality disorder. If it was any consolation to the recluse’s heir Sophie Arnaud, the Black Hole of Calcutta was sold via Hyperion, an obscure charity with PO Box in New York traceable to a bank in the British Virgin Islands to a dealer in London and subsequently forgotten in a warehouse crate.