Zebra let Horace go and took several histrionic breaths. “Why does he always have to be so damned disrespectful?”
Horace slid back into his habitual cross-legged position, apparently unperturbed.
“Let’s all take a breather,” Pinto suggested. “Stretch. Go out on the porch and take in the air. Look at the stars.”
Zebra resumed his seat in the old armchair, his bony knees drawn up to his chest. “No,” he said. “Let’s push on. We’ve got our lead now. Let’s look at her site. Campbell would go for this, I’m sure. Let’s see what’s highlighted on Fondation Brigitte Bardot.”
Agnes looked on as Zebra, Perdita and Minnie all get out their smart phones and rapidly accessed the site.
“Hippophagy,” Zebra read out. “God! The ritual murder of horses in France. The seal hunt in Newfoundland and Labrador. Dancing bears in Bulgaria. Christ! These pictures make you sick. And bullfights. In France, for crying out loud, as if Spain wasn’t bad enough.”
“That’s right,” Perdita chimed in. “Not many people know about the French bullfights. When I was a teenager, my parents took me on a holiday to Provence. We went to a bullfight in Arles, in an old Roman coliseum. When the matador stabbed the bull, I threw up all over my shoes. I hate thinking about it.” She was trembling. Pablo put his arm around her.
“I think this is it,” Zebra cried, holding aloft his phone so that they could all see the graphic images of the bleeding bull fallen to its knees. “Let’s vote!” He was exultant.
Agnes, who could not help thinking of the chance to see Vincent’s Yellow House and the fields of sunflowers, voted yes, as did everyone but Horace.
Zebra’s face was bright with purpose. “I can rappel from the top tier of the coliseum down into the ring.”
“You’re absolutely nuts, fetish boy!” Horace barked. “What’s to stop you getting gored?”
“Light-weight body armour,” Zebra said confidently. “And as I rappel down, up go the banners in different parts of the stadium. Pinto and Agnes hold one up. Pablo and Perdita have another. Ewan and Gerhard have one. And Minnie, well, Minnie can manage one on her own.”
Agnes could see it all unfolding resplendent in her mind’s eye: Zebra’s dramatic flight down into the bullring to end the slaughter, the bright banners rising. This bracing, genuinely evangelical image would go around the world instantly. Their protest will go viral. How many millions of people would see and perceive in a flash what must be done? She had goose bumps at the idea.
“How about August?” suggested Zebra. “That should give us all time to book flights and find places to stay. But we’ll have to go separately — except Pablo and Perdita, of course. And leave the same way. We want to get in and out without anyone connecting us through our flight bookings. We want it quick and bold and complete and we don’t want anyone hurt.”
They all sat amazed. It was done then. They had a plan. But the last word was Horace’s. “You’re all absolutely nuts. Do you know how many holes your cockeyed scheme has in it? You’ll end up in a French prison for years. Or dead. May Day sure enough,” he added in a surly tone. “Didn’t any of you think of the undertones? Mayday! Mayday!” he cried in mock alarm. “It’s the international radio distress signal. Numbskulls.” He then left abruptly, screwing his finger into his right temple.
“Good riddance,” said Zebra, beginning immediately to search the Web for the perfect body armour, lightweight and impenetrable.
Agnes, rocking securely on her benign sea of whisky fumes, knew that all would be well. They would come through, do all they had to do, and be “safe as houses” as Nana used to say. Horace was bitter and twisted. The Ark had moral right behind them, and Campbell’s spirit over them, watching. He will keep us safe as houses, she repeated to herself in a drowsy bliss. She did not consider then all that had gone awry for Van Gogh inside his Yellow House, that domicile of fine fellowship and common endeavour of which he had long dreamed.
SEVENTEEN
The Alyscamps
IN MARSEILLE, AGNES STARED AT the Basilica’s bullet-ridden north wall. A lead plaque explained these holes would never be filled in. They are a testament to the World War II battle to liberate this sacred hill on which the cathedral stands. She had never before considered that stone might feel pain. Yet it was obvious these ragged wounds in the dark wall harboured raw memory. This stone was suffering just as palpably as the old men and women, hampered by arthritis and shortness of breath, whom she’d overtaken earlier, one after the other, as they laboured to climb the hundreds of steps up to the Basilica. They were coming to pray. She wondered again if she ought to have offered to help at least one of them, but perhaps their slow, penitent movement was part of their offering to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde.
Her guidebook told her that this was the most beloved of all Marseille’s churches, and that the people called it la Bonne Mère. The Good Mother, in the form of the statue atop the cupola, had watched over the whole city and its port for centuries. Secular tourists like her made the trek up to Marseille’s highest point for the sake of the panorama extending far over the tiny roofs to the ships’ masts; out to sea the horizon, a wavering, nebulous line, might be the aspirant breath of a sea-god. She fixed on the view below and all around her prompted more by the tourist’s duty than by wonder. She took off her sunglasses in an attempt to better study the city’s burgundy tiles and stone. A scimitar flash struck her eyes, which she immediately shielded again. The nasty headache returned.
She was badly hungover. She had not meant to drink so many whiskies on the plane, but the alcohol worked so superbly well in allaying her nervousness. She’d been apprehensive, not just about her first transatlantic flight, but also about the protest the Ark would stage in just four days. They had rehearsed the details of their plan so often she thought its components must be written like code in their bones. The schema was simple and flawless, forged as it was by their pure intent; nevertheless, a buzzing anxiety blighted her confidence. What if something went terribly wrong and there was another horrific debacle?
After the second whisky, she’d felt so ludicrously light of head and heart that even had the plane shuddered to a halt in the skies, it would not have fazed her. So potent were the effects of the alcohol in the passenger cabin’s rarefied air, the whisky vaporized all her fears.
Now she was paying the price. Her skin prickled. Her body and brain were made of parchment so thin every sensory impression impinged with a merciless intensity. A child’s cry drilled into her eardrum. His mother’s clinging, hot-pink rayon blouse, patched wet from his tears, was an object at once crass and overwhelmingly intimate, and Agnes turned her face away. Her eyes were still throbbing from their exposure to the Provencal sun. She went into the Basilica seeking a shadowy refuge and stood a moment letting her vision adjust — first to the vaulted gloom of the vast interior, then to the teeming images upon the walls. There were countless little ships, drawn and painted, carved in plaster and in wood: ex voto offerings given in thanks by sailors and passengers who had survived shipwrecks and storms at sea.
To the left and right of the main doors, people crowded around portraits of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints, each set in its own little alcove. Some worshippers were on their knees. Their lips moved soundlessly as they stared rapt at the framed holy faces above them. She felt both ill at ease in the presence of such fervency, and magnetized by the earnest and unquestioning belief she saw on every face, the frail and the elderly, the vigorous-looking young couples with their babies. She watched a young girl guiding a very old sightless woman toward an image of the Virgin Mary. The old lady’s progress across the uneven stone floor was tortoise-slow and tentative. But once she stood before the icon, and the girl helped position her so that she could kiss the ornate frame, the woman drew refreshment there which rendered her visibly stronger.
Blind faith. Agnes was envious. It was just such faith she needed in order to serve the Ark impeccably on this mission, in trusting obedience, wi
thout hesitation or fear of failure. She held tight to this idea as she made her way down and around the church’s outer aisles.
Once she was outside again, the world impinged a little less harshly. She resolved to drink no alcohol whatsoever that night so that she would be clear-headed and resilient for her train journey to Arles in the morning. If she stayed optimistic and well prepared, all would be well. Zebra’s brave leap down into the bullring would constitute an angelic descent. Backed by their raised banners, his controlled plummet to stop the butchery would make ripples around the world. Even if only a thousand people underwent a revolution of conscience as a result of their daring protest, whatever risks the Ark took would be amply repaid.
On her walk back to the hotel, she had to pick her way through the heaps of dog dirt that fouled the cobbled alleyways. The revolting sight and smell infected her mood. Marseille was not at all what she’d expected. The old stone buildings, squares and narrow streets all seemed begrimed, rough-edged and vulgar. She could not stop thinking of the wounds the machine guns had torn open in the Basilica wall. She sensed — through the soles of her feet and the pores of her skin — a hurt in the city that was ancient and obdurate. Was this simply because Marseille had stood so long on Earth, founded long before the birth of Christ? To endure is to gather pain?
But the city’s hurt was new as well. She witnessed the evidence of this when she flicked on the television in her hotel room and saw the lean, stoical faces of the Roma people, whom the government was expelling from Marseille. Her French was good enough to grasp that the president regarded the thousands of Roma living in Provence as a “criminal element.” The news report showed a Roma man inside a trailer shoving his belongings into a cheap carryall, while a stolid policeman in black observed his every move. The nightstick and a gun at the officer’s waist reminded her of the security guards at the animal laboratory. Why did these men always look as if they had been poured into the uniforms; that they were made of molten rubber rather than flesh and blood?
In the newscast’s final image, three thickset policemen with closely shaved heads stood with their backs to the camera, watching a bus full of Roma depart. Staring back at them through the bus window was a young Roma boy. His small face had not yet caught up with his adult-sized ears, but his expression was fully a man’s: wry and defiant. She guessed he had seen this look on the elders of his extended family countless times and would wear it again in his lifetime countless more.
Whenever she thought of this boy and the three thick-bodied guards surveying his deportation, a shape flitted across her mind. She sensed it might be the classic grim Spectre, brooding and unkillable. Was this the true spirit of History: the oppressive repetition of the same evils, generation after generation? This deliberate expulsion of thousands of people made her feel sick. It was not at all what she had expected of Provence, even if they did still indulge in the barbarity of bullfighting in Arles.
Was she asking too much to expect a little ecstasy on her first trip to Europe, a few moments of surrender to Van Gogh’s “yellow high note” or a transporting chambered quiet inside a Gothic cloister? Perhaps tomorrow, on the train to Arles, she would see the fields of jubilant colour that had transformed Van Gogh’s palette and helped him channel his manic energy into new forms: the sunflowers, the simple chairs with their seats of woven rushes, the spiralling cypresses that consort with the stars.
Next morning, through the window of the train, Provence yielded up the sublime at last. The sunflowers were a golden sea that flowed to the limits of her vision. As the train flashed by, she tried to catch their particular character, distinguishing the burnished from the pale, the stout stalks from the slender, the ones that inclined their heavy heads from those that bowed more deeply. As a company, they were prayerful and charged with an energy that quickened her faith. All shall be well. She wondered if this was how Vincent had felt as he made his way toward Arles.
Her pension had the same slatted wooden shutters as Vincent’s bedroom in the Yellow House. The walls of her room were not buttery like his, but a pleasing enough blend of terracotta and cream. She was thankful the bedspread was tasteful russet and royal blue stripes, and not one of the garish Provencal prints she had seen everywhere heaped at the street stalls.
Through her exploration of the town, she was already feeling more grounded, in part because many of the scenes were known terrain. She had seen his café, so familiar from the famous painting in which the open terrace is set with table and chairs beneath an indigo sky of parachuting stars. She was not surprised that she preferred the painted version to the reality, with its boisterous crowd of startlingly good-looking young travellers filling every seat. In the brash sunlight, the real café had none of the mysterious intimacy of the one on canvas, where several solitary tables and chairs appear to float invitingly above the indigo-brushed cobbles.
She thought longingly of those magical, empty painted chairs; looked at her tidy, tucked bed and wished Campbell was here. This was a mistake, because the wish brought on an invasive loneliness, that paradoxically grinding hollowness she had known all through her adolescence. She made a fist and pressed it into her belly. She could not afford to be undone by childish vulnerability. She wondered if any of the others had arrived in Arles. And if she should see one of them on the street — Pinto or Perdita or Minnie — could she manage to refrain from speaking to them?
To keep the mission as covert as possible, they had agreed to meet only once before the actual demonstration. Tomorrow at 2:00 PM, they would make their way individually to Sarcophagus Alley in the Alyscamps — the old Roman burial ground which lay beyond the city centre. They had wanted a meeting place not much frequented by tourists, and the Alyscamps, with its broad, treed avenue flanked by empty tombs on either side, satisfied that requirement. They’d be able to review the details of their plan without fear of being overheard or attracting unwanted attention. Until the meeting at the Alyscamp, they were to have absolutely no communication with one another. No emails or texting. Not even a furtive smile should they pass one another by chance. They did not want to leave any incriminating electronic or paper trail. When the demo was done, they were to get out of the coliseum as quickly as possible in case they were arrested for creating a disturbance. Once they were all safely out of France, the Ark would claim responsibility for the protest.
At the tourist office, Agnes learned she could get a bus to St. Remy and the mental asylum where Van Gogh spent just over a year. The hospital was set in the former monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a building over a thousand years old.
She arrived at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole just as a red bus was disgorging an organized tour group. The group’s guides, a man and woman in their fifties, already appeared harassed. Agnes caught them sending each other looks of mock desperation. There was obvious disaffection in the ranks, most of whom were senior citizens.
“Why couldn’t we just stay longer at McDonald’s?” someone whined.
Agnes had passed this establishment in her wandering around Arles the day before. The stench of hot animal fat hanging over the outdoor patio had stayed in her nostrils for minutes afterwards.
An elderly woman with thinning, orange hair plucked at the male guide’s shirt sleeve. “We’ll be safe in there, won’t we, Jerry? We won’t see any . . .?” She stopped and frowned.
Agnes wondered what word she had self-censored. Loonies? Crazy people? It had never occurred to her anyone would be nervous about the patients currently at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, which was still a working mental hospital specializing in art therapy. But there were definite signs of unease among the tour group now clustered about the two guides.
The female guide smiled rigidly: “Those of you who don’t want to see Van Gogh’s room in the hospital can stay here on the grounds or go back across the road to the Roman ruins.”
There was a general hum of approval. Several of them ambled back toward the bus. Agnes decided to wait and let those who had opted to enter the
building go in ahead of her. She very much wanted to be alone for this visit, and to give the setting, and particularly his room and its view, all due attention and respect. But she had forgotten how slowly older people sometimes moved, and in her impatience, found herself directly behind this group again in the lobby where they were scrutinizing a stone bust of Van Gogh.
“That’s not right,” one man loudly declared.
“What’s not right, Fred?”
“The ears. The statue has two ears.” He took a voluminous checked handkerchief from the pocket of his Bermuda shorts and pressed it to the side of his head, groaning.
“You’re a card, Fred.” His friend clapped him on the shoulder.
The two men laughed, as did the others in the group, although Agnes detected the odd strained tone. She took some comfort in the fact the tour leaders looked chagrined, rather than falsely merry.
Nevertheless, she could not shake off the offence in the contemptible jest, which raised a raw fury in her, and she had to battle to hold her tongue. What could be behind such insensitivity? Perhaps it was simply crude fear. Fred and his cohorts weren’t anxious they might be physically harmed. Their unease had its root in an atavistic terror of contagion. She knew how a full-fledged insanity can take a form so alien, yet magnetizing, you are in dread it will take you over. Like demonic possession.
At twelve, she’d seen a man rooted amidst the traffic; he appeared to believe he was a mechanical clock. “Tick tock. Tick tock,” he went. He moved his arms in a jerky clockwise fashion imitating the passing minutes. “Time, time, time,” he chanted. “Tick tock. Tick tock.” As the traffic flowed around him, car horns blaring, he remained oblivious, his blanched face fiercely intent on his clock-hood, his eyes unfocused.
Agnes had wondered what kind of terrible world he inhabited. She’d felt sorry and mortified for him, that he had so utterly lost his grip on how to behave in a public place. Yet as she’d stood watching, powerless to help, his tick-tock rhythms were so insistent she was afraid she might run into the middle of the road to join him, or start her own relentless time-mime where she stood. When she heard the police siren, she ran away, shaking her arms, trying to rid her body of those compulsive rhythms.
Hunting Piero Page 21