Читать книгу Montparnasse - Thierry Sagnier - Страница 5

Prologue

The little man poked at the flames with a long-handled rake. The wind outside his rented villa ran to the southeast, carrying the greasy black smoke away from the neighbors and dispelling it quickly. The man sniffed at the fire’s aroma and wondered how many more days or hours they would let him ply his trade. Turning over a particularly thick hunk of meat and bone, he listened to it sizzle as a vein of fat hit red coals.

They were closing in. The man knew this, had made his peace with it, and longed for a resolution. He’d had an excellent run. The newspapers had spread his fame to the four corners of the country and beyond, and on a daily basis he was receiving letters from war widows and maiden women eager for the company of “a distinguished gentleman, polite, presentable, well-off and well-spoken, looking for a lady of like caliber to share his achievements, love and life.” The advertisement ran in the personal sections of 17 newspapers in France, and he had agonized over its composition, every word chosen for sincerity and discretion.

It was searing hot next to the oven. With the tines of the rake, he dragged a mass of backbone and ribs, then turned the rake over and smashed the bones before pushing the pieces under the coals. Next he dragged a pelvic girdle from the giant oven onto the floor where it smoked and emitted an acrid odor. He fetched a large hammer from a corner of the room and hit the bones twice. The girdle split with a cracking sound. A third and fourth blow shattered it completely. Sweeping up the debris with a twig broom, the man shoveled the shards back into the oven.

He had always relished the planning stages; the wording of the advertisements, the culling of letters and proposals, the selection process. The women were unfailingly the same. The older ones protected their assets, the younger ones their virginities. He took both, mostly with gentleness and an occasional harsh word when progress lagged. The meeting and wooing, the financial intricacies, the inevitable resolution, all these interested him far less than the development of a plan, the persuasive arguments of an avid suitor, and of course, the performance. The creation of the character—embodying the role of the would-be lover—was what truly excited him.

Now, it was nearly time for the next act.

He took seasoned oak logs from a stack near the door, threw them into the oven and waited until they burst into flame. Oak burned hot; it was the wood which had been used to burn heretics and Templars a few hundred years earlier. Though the man had no faith or religion, the historical detail pleased him.

He shut the oven’s door and removed the blacksmith’s apron he wore over his suit. In the upstairs bathroom, he carefully inspected his hands, fingernails, teeth, and hair, then applied a minute amount of wax to his beard and mustache. Satisfied that he could now see himself as the women did, he sat before the stack of letters on the kitchen table.