Читать книгу Death on the Riviera - Ernest Elmore - Страница 9

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He was lounging that particular morning on the unmade divan-bed in a corner of the studio, viewing with distaste a large and impressive canvas set up on an easel in the centre of the room. For the last twenty minutes he’d been struggling to make up his mind just what the picture represented. Nesta’s demands to see his latest masterpiece had been growing more and more urgent and he couldn’t put her off any longer. And when Nesta looked at a picture the first thing she wanted to know was what it was about. In her opinion all the best pictures should tell a story, or, at least, bear a clear and appropriate label.

But, mon Dieu! A cod’s head capping the naked torso of a woman, balanced on two cactus leaves and garnished with a motif of lemons and spaghetti... Paul shrugged hopelessly.

Then, coming to a sudden decision, he sprang up, snatched his beret from a wall-hook, slunk down the back-stairs, and slipped out into the road through a gate let into the garden wall. Five minutes later, about half-way down the Avenue de Verdun, he swung left into the Rue Partouneaux. Presently he climbed the steps between the narrow, twisting alleyways of the Old Town and ducked under a massive archway into a little courtyard shaded by a looped and trailing vine. Without knocking, he pushed open a rickety green door and ascended an equally rickety staircase that gave directly into the room above.

At first, after the glare outside, he could see little. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he was aware of a troll-like figure squatting on an upturned box before a crudely constructed easel. On seeing Paul the midget creature sprang up and uttered a startled cry.

“M’sieur Latour!”

Paul smiled maliciously.

“You didn’t expect to see me, eh, Jacques?”

“No, M’sieur. The picture is not ready for you. I told you next week. Before then it is impossible. You must understand I am not a machine—”

Paul cut in brusquely:

“Eh bien! You fool, there’s no need to whine. I haven’t come for the picture.”

“No, M’sieur?”

“No, my friend. I’m here because I want to talk to you.”

“You’re not satisfied with my work—is that it, M’sieur?” The little fellow thumped his misshapen chest and burst out angrily: “There are limits to what even I can endure, M’sieur. You do not understand. The value of what I give to you—”

“Give to me!” Paul laughed sardonically. “Tell me, Jacques, how much did I pay you for your last incomparable chef-doeuvre?’

“Two thousand francs, M’sieur.”

“Exactly. Two thousand francs for a monstrosity of a canvas that isn’t worth two sous. And who the devil would buy your stuff if I didn’t? Answer me that.”

The hunchback shrugged despairingly.

“Hélas, M’sieur... it is not easy these days to—”

“Quite. So if you want to retain my patronage no more monstrosities. Understand, idiot? No more of this abstract, surrealist nonsense. From now on I want pictures that a child could understand. No more cod’s heads and spaghetti.”

“No, M’sieur.”

Paul gestured towards the canvas set precariously on the home-made easel.

“The new picture... what are you working on now?”

“It is a landscape, M’sieur.” He stepped aside obsequiously. “You like it, perhaps?” He gesticulated. “The composition, M’sieur?”

Paul studied the half-finished painting with a critical eye.

“It’s an improvement. I can recognize some cypress trees, a church and a stone wall.”

“It is ‘Le Monastère de l’Annonciade’, M’sieur.”

“Good. I know where I am with a picture like this. But this other... this horror... what does it mean? What am I to tell people when they ask me what it’s about? Can you tell me that, you bone-head?”

The hunchback considered the point for a moment, scratched his dark greasy hair and spat deftly through the open window into the courtyard below. Then abruptly his swarthy, hook-nosed features cracked into a grin.

“That is simple, M’sieur. Call it Le Cauchemar, the nightmare. For that is how it will doubtless appear to the ignorant and the stupid. Shall we say, perhaps, to your friends, M’sieur? But to those of us who see beyond, who have the vision...” Jacques Dufil shook his head sadly. “You will call for your new picture next week?”

“Next week,” nodded Paul.

The hunchback raised three fingers in the air and gazed at Paul enquiringly. Paul scowled, shook his head and with an insulting gesture jerked two fingers in the little fellow’s face.

With a fatalism born of much adversity, Jacques Dufil lifted his tortured shoulders and threw wide his hands. The obsequious smile was back on his twisted features, but as he thought of this nincompoop’s ignorant remarks about his beautiful pictures there was black hatred in his heart!