Someone Like You

by Roald Dahl

  ‘Where is my little Kalmuck?’

  ‘He is gone,’ she had answered. ‘I do not know where, but I heard it said that a dealer had taken him up and sent him away to Céret to make more paintings.’

  ‘Perhaps he will return.’

  ‘Perhaps he will. Who knows?’

  That was the last time they had mentioned him. Shortly afterwards they had moved to Le Havre where there were more sailors and business was better. The old man smiled as he remembered Le Havre. Those were the pleasant years, the years between the wars, with the small shop near the docks and the comfortable rooms and always enough work, with every day three, four, five sailors coming and wanting pictures on their arms. Those were truly the pleasant years.

  Then had come the second war, and Josie being killed, and the Germans arriving, and that was the finish of his business. No one had wanted pictures on their arms any more after that. And by that time he was too old for any other kind of work. In desperation he had made his way back to Paris, hoping vaguely that things would be easier in the big city. But they were not.

  And now, after the war was over, he possessed neither the means nor the energy to start up his small business again. It wasn’t very easy for an old man to know what to do, especially when one did not like to beg. Yet how else could he keep alive?

  Well, he thought, still staring at the picture. So that is my little Kalmuck. And how quickly the sight of one small object such as this can stir the memory. Up to a few moments ago he had even forgotten that he had a tattoo on his back. It had been ages since he had thought about it. He put his face closer to the window and looked into the gallery. On the walls he could see many other pictures and all seemed to be the work of the same artist. There were a great number of people strolling around. Obviously it was a special exhibition.

  On a sudden impulse, Drioli turned, pushed open the door of the gallery and went in.

  It was a long room with a thick wine-coloured carpet, and by God how beautiful and warm it was! There were all these people strolling about looking at the pictures, well-washed dignified people, each of whom held a catalogue in the hand. Drioli stood just inside the door, nervously glancing around, wondering whether he dared go forward and mingle with this crowd. But before he had had time to gather his courage, he heard a voice beside him saying, ‘What is it you want?’

  The speaker wore a black morning coat. He was plump and short and had a very white face. It was a flabby face with so much flesh upon it that the cheeks hung down on either side of the mouth in two fleshy collops, spanielwise. He came up close to Drioli and said again, ‘What is it you want?’

  Drioli stood still.

  ‘If you please,’ the man was saying, ‘take yourself out of my gallery.’

  ‘Am I not permitted to look at the pictures?’

  ‘I have asked you to leave.’

  Drioli stood his ground. He felt suddenly, overwhelmingly outraged.

  ‘Let us not have trouble,’ the man was saying. ‘Come on now, this way.’ He put a fat white paw on Drioli’s arm and began to push him firmly to the door.

  That did it. ‘Take your goddam hands off me!’ Drioli shouted. His voice rang clear down the long gallery and all the heads jerked around as one – all the startled faces stared down the length of the room at the person who had made this noise. A flunkey came running over to help, and the two men tried to hustle Drioli through the door. The people stood still, watching the struggle. Their faces expressed only a mild interest, and seemed to be saying, ‘It’s all right. There’s no danger to us. It’s being taken care of.’

  ‘I, too!’ Drioli was shouting. ‘I, too, have a picture by this painter! He was my friend and I have a picture which he gave me!’

  ‘He’s mad.’

  ‘A lunatic. A raving lunatic’

  ‘Someone should call the police.’

  With a rapid twist of the body Drioli suddenly jumped clear of the two men, and before anyone could stop him he was running down the gallery shouting, ‘I’ll show you! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!’ He flung off his overcoat, then his jacket and shirt, and he turned so that his naked back was towards the people.

  ‘There!’ he cried, breathing quickly. ‘You see? There it is!’

  There was a sudden absolute silence in the room, each person arrested in what he was doing, standing motionless in a kind of shocked, uneasy bewilderment. They were staring at the tattooed picture. It was still there, the colours as bright as ever, but the old man’s back was thinner now, the shoulder blades protruded more sharply, and the effect, though not great, was to give the picture a curiously wrinkled, squashed appearance.

  Somebody said, ‘My God, but it is!’

  Then came the excitement and the noise of voices as the people surged forward to crowd around the old man.

  ‘It is unmistakable!’

  ‘His early manner, yes?’

  ‘It is fantastic, fantastic!’

  ‘And look, it is signed!’

  ‘Bend your shoulders forward, my friend, so that the picture stretches out flat.’

  ‘Old one, when was this done?’

  ‘In 1913,’ Drioli said, without turning around. ‘In the autumn of 1913.’

  ‘Who taught Soutine to tattoo?’

  ‘I taught him.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘She was my wife.’

  The gallery owner was pushing through the crowd towards Drioli. He was calm now, deadly serious, making a smile with his mouth. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I will buy it.’ Drioli could see the loose fat upon the face vibrating as he moved his jaw. ‘I said I will buy it, Monsieur.’

  ‘How can you buy it?’ Drioli asked softly.

  ‘I will give two hundred thousand francs for it.’ The dealer’s eyes were small and dark, the wings of his broad nose-base were beginning to quiver.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ someone murmured in the crowd. ‘It is worth twenty times as much.’

  Drioli opened his mouth to speak. No words came, so he shut it; then he opened it again and said slowly, ‘But how can I sell it?’ He lifted his hands, let them drop loosely to his sides. ‘Monsieur, how can I possibly sell it?’ All the sadness in the world was in his voice.

  ‘Yes!’ they were saying in the crowd. ‘How can he sell it? It is part of himself!’

  ‘Listen,’ the dealer said, coming up close. ‘I will help you. I will make you rich. Together we shall make some private arrangement over this picture, no?’

  Drioli watched him with slow, apprehensive eyes. ‘But how can you buy it, Monsieur? What will you do with it when you have bought it? Where will you keep it? Where will you keep it tonight? And where tomorrow?’

  ‘Ah, where will I keep it? Yes, where will I keep it? Now, where will I keep it? Well, now…’ The dealer stroked the bridge of his nose with a fat white finger. ‘It would seem,’ he said, ‘that if I take the picture, I take you also. That is a disadvantage.’ He paused and stroked his nose again. ‘The picture itself is of no value until you are dead. How old are you, my friend?’

  ‘Sixty-one.’

  ‘But you are perhaps not very robust, no?’ The dealer lowered the hand from his nose and looked Drioli up and down, slowly, like a farmer appraising an old horse.

  ‘I do not like this,’ Drioli said, edging away. ‘Quite honestly, Monsieur, I do not like it.’ He edged straight into the arms of a tall man who put out his hands and caught him gently by the shoulders. Drioli glanced around and apologized. The man smiled down at him, patting one of the old fellow’s naked shoulders reassuringly with a hand encased in a canary-coloured glove.

  ‘Listen, my friend,’ the stranger said, still smiling. ‘Do you like to swim and to bask yourself in the sun?’

  Drioli looked up at him, rather startled.

  ‘Do you like fine food and red wine from the great chateaux of Bordeaux?’ The man was still smiling, showing strong white teeth with a flash of gold among them. He spoke in a soft coaxing manner, one glove
d hand still resting on Drioli’s shoulder. ‘Do you like such things?’

  ‘Well – yes,’ Drioli answered, still greatly perplexed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the company of beautiful women?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And a cupboard full of suits and shirts made to your own personal measurements? It would seem that you are a little lacking for clothes.’

  Drioli watched this suave man, waiting for the rest of the proposition.

  ‘Have you ever had a shoe constructed especially for your own foot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would like that?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘And a man who will shave you in the mornings and trim your hair?’

  Drioli simply stood and gaped.

  ‘And a plump attractive girl to manicure the nails of your fingers?’

  Someone in the crowd giggled.

  ‘And a bell beside your bed to summon a maid to bring your breakfast in the morning? Would you like these things, my friend? Do they appeal to you?’

  Drioli stood still and looked at him.

  ‘You see, I am the owner of the Hotel Bristol in Cannes. I now invite you to come down there and live as my guest for for the rest of your life in luxury and comfort.’ The man paused, allowing his listener time to savour this cheerful prospect.

  ‘Your only duty – shall I call it your pleasure – will be to spend your time on my beach in bathing trunks, walking among my guests, sunning yourself, swimming, drinking cocktails. You would like that?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Don’t you see – all the guests will thus be able to observe this fascinating picture by Soutine. You will become famous, and men will say, “Look, there is the fellow with ten million francs upon his back.” You like this idea, Monsieur? It pleases you?’

  Drioli looked up at the tall man in the canary gloves, still wondering whether this was some sort of a joke. ‘It is a comical idea,’ he said slowly. ‘But do you really mean it?’

  ‘Of course I mean it.’

  ‘Wait,’ the dealer interrupted. ‘See here, old one. Here is the answer to our problem. I will buy the picture, and I will arrange with a surgeon to remove the skin from your back, and then you will be able to go off on your own and enjoy the great sum of money I shall give you for it.’

  ‘With no skin on my back?’

  ‘No, no, please! You misunderstand. This surgeon will put a new piece of skin in the place of the old one. It is simple.’

  ‘Could he do that?’

  ‘There is nothing to it.’

  ‘Impossible!’ said the man with the canary gloves. ‘He’s too old for such a major skin-grafting operation. It would kill him. It would kill you, my friend.’

  ‘It would kill me?’

  ‘Naturally. You would never survive. Only the picture would come through.’

  ‘In the name of God!’ Drioli cried. He looked around aghast at the faces of the people watching him, and in the silence that followed, another man’s voice, speaking quietly from the back of the group, could be heard saying, ‘Perhaps, if one were to offer this old man enough money, he might consent to kill himself on the spot. Who knows?’ A few people sniggered. The dealer moved his feet uneasily on the carpet.

  Then the hand in the canary glove was tapping Drioli again upon the shoulder. ‘Come on,’ the man was saying, smiling his broad white smile. ‘You and I will go and have a good dinner and we can talk about it some more while we eat, How’s that? Are you hungry?’

  Drioli watched him, frowning. He didn’t like the man’s long flexible neck, or the way he craned it forward at you when he spoke, like a snake.

  ‘Roast duck and Chambertin,’ the man was saying. He put a rich succulent accent on the words, splashing them out with his tongue. ‘And perhaps a soufflé aux marrons, light and frothy.’

  Drioli’s eyes turned up towards the ceiling, his lips became loose and wet. One could see the poor old fellow beginning literally to drool at the mouth.

  ‘How do you like your duck?’ the man went on. ‘Do you like it very brown and crisp outside, or shall it be…’

  ‘I am coming,’ Drioli said quickly. Already he had picked up his shirt and was pulling it frantically over his head. ‘Wait for me, Monsieur. I am coming.’ And within a minute he had disappeared out of the gallery with his new patron.

  It wasn’t more than a few weeks later that a picture by Soutine, of a woman’s head, painted in an unusual manner, nicely framed and heavily varnished, turned up for sale in Buenos Aires. That – and the fact that there is no hotel in Cannes called Bristol – causes one to wonder a little, and to pray for the old man’s health, and to hope fervently that wherever he may be at this moment, there is a plump attractive girl to manicure the nails of his fingers, and a maid to bring him his breakfast in bed in the mornings.

  Poison

  It must have been around midnight when I drove home, and as I approached the gates of the bungalow I switched off the headlamps of the car so the beam wouldn’t swing in through the window of the side bedroom and wake Harry Pope. But I needn’t have bothered. Coming up the drive I noticed his light was still on, so he was awake anyway – unless perhaps he’d dropped off while reading.

  I parked the car and went up the five steps to the balcony, counting each step carefully in the dark so I wouldn’t take an extra one which wasn’t there when I got to the top. I crossed the balcony, pushed through the screen doors into the house itself and switched on the light in the hall. I went across to the door of Harry’s room, opened it quietly, and looked in.

  He was lying on the bed and I could see he was awake. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even turn his head towards me, but I heard him say, ‘Timber, Timber, come here.’

  He spoke slowly, whispering each word carefully, separately, and I pushed the door right open and started to go quickly across the room.

  ‘Stop. Wait a moment, Timber.’ I could hardly hear what he was saying. He seemed to be straining enormously to get the words out.

  ‘What’s the matter, Harry?’

  ‘Sshhh!’ he whispered. ‘Sshhh! For God’s sake don’t make a noise. Take your shoes off before you come nearer. Please do as I say, Timber,’

  The way he was speaking reminded me of George Barling after he got shot in the stomach when he stood leaning against a crate containing a spare aeroplane engine, holding both hands on his stomach and saying things about the German pilot in just the same hoarse straining half whisper Harry was using now.

  ‘Quickly, Timber, but take your shoes off first.’

  I couldn’t understand about taking off the shoes but I figured that if he was as ill as he sounded I’d better humour him, so I bent down and removed the shoes and left them in the middle of the floor. Then I went over to his bed.

  ‘Don’t touch the bed! For God’s sake don’t touch the bed!’ He was still speaking like he’d been shot in the stomach and I could see him lying there on his back with a single sheet covering three-quarters of his body. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas with blue, brown, and white stripes, and he was sweating terribly. It was a hot night and I was sweating a little myself, but not like Harry. His whole face was wet and the pillow around his head was sodden with moisture. It looked like a bad go of malaria to me.

  ‘What is it, Harry?’

  ‘A krait,’ he said.

  ‘A krait! Oh, my God! Where’d it bite you? How long ago?’

  ‘Shut up,’ he whispered.

  ‘Listen, Harry,’ I said, and I leaned forward and touched his shoulder. ‘We’ve got to be quick. Come on now, quickly, tell me where it bit you.’ He was lying there very still and tense as though he was holding on to himself hard because of sharp pain.

  ‘I haven’t been bitten,’ he whispered. ‘Not yet. It’s on my stomach. Lying there asleep.’

  I took a quick pace backwards. I couldn’t help it, and I stared at his stomach or rather at the sheet that covered it. The sheet was rumpled i
n several places and it was impossible to tell if there was anything underneath.

  ‘You don’t really mean there’s a krait lying on your stomach now?’

  ‘I swear it.’

  ‘How did it get there?’ I shouldn’t have asked the question because it was easy to see he wasn’t fooling. I should have told him to keep quiet.

  ‘I was reading,’ Harry said, and he spoke very slowly, taking each word in turn and speaking it carefully so as not to move the muscles of his stomach. ‘Lying on my back reading and I felt something on my chest, behind the book. Sort of tickling. Then out of the corner of my eye saw this little krait sliding over my pyjamas. Small, about ten inches. Knew I mustn’t move. Couldn’t have anyway. Lay there watching it. Thought it would go over top of the sheet.’ Harry paused and was silent for a few moments. His eyes looked down along his body towards the place where the sheet covered his stomach, and I could see he was watching to make sure his whispering wasn’t disturbing the thing that lay there.

  ‘There was a fold in the sheet,’ he said, speaking more slowly than ever now and so softly I had to lean close to hear him. ‘See it, it’s still there. It went under that. I could feel it through my pyjamas, moving on my stomach. Then it stopped moving and now it’s lying there in the warmth. Probably asleep. I’ve been waiting for you.’ He raised his eyes and looked at me.

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Hours,’ he whispered. ‘Hours and bloody hours and hours. I can’t keep still much longer. I’ve been wanting to cough.’

  There was not much doubt about the truth of Harry’s story. As a matter of fact it wasn’t a surprising thing for a krait to do. They hang around people’s houses and they go for the warm places. The surprising thing was that Harry hadn’t been bitten. The bite is quite deadly except sometimes when you catch it at once and they kill a fair number of people each year in Bengal, mostly in the villages.

  ‘All right, Harry,’ I said, and now I was whispering too. ‘Don’t move and don’t talk any more unless you have to. You know it won’t bite unless it’s frightened. We’ll fix it in no time.’