Hunting Piero

by Wendy MacIntyre

  Her voice rebounded off the high ceiling. She called again, tried the door again. She wondered if the woman was perhaps in the washroom — there must surely be a toilet somewhere in the building — but for some reason could not hear Agnes calling? She searched for another door and discovered one behind the wooden staircase. It too was securely locked. She hammered on it repeatedly. “Is there anyone in there?”

  It was now 1:20. She ran upstairs to look for another exit. All she found was the stage set’s mocking fake blue door and a skylight through which she could see the very top of one of the arena’s grim stone arches. She had the absurd idea that if she could unlatch the skylight and clamber up (but on what?) she could then escape. But the drop down from the roof would be precipitous even if she managed to stagger out there on the slippery tiles. She would fall, break her arms and legs, and conceivably her neck.

  She thought again of Zebra swinging down with his wire and harness — a potentially lethal instrument, prone to slippage. She must get out of here. She suppressed, with some difficulty, the childish urge to direct a vicious kick at the bed that was not a bed, but a confection that had seduced her into standing and staring too long, flattering herself she grasped the significance of its blatant fakery. She was trapped here as a result of her own self-indulgence.

  She remembered the mistakes the woman had made in trying to calculate her change; how she had obviously been in some mental or physical discomfort. If she had lost count of the Euros that easily, then why not of the number of visitors who were actually in the museum when she left and locked the door? The paramount question was when the woman would return. It occurred to Agnes that she might have missed some clue. Was there a sign on the door with the time the museum would reopen? In fact, there was — a discreet white card suspended from a delicate gilt chain. A little dangling ghost that would announce her fate once she flipped over its blank face. The revealed message was hand-written in a faux antique style with an excess of spidery flourishes: Ouvert: 14:00.

  She felt sick. By the time the woman returned, Zebra and the others would be in their seats and primed for action. By the time she got inside the arena — assuming she was allowed to enter that late — it was unlikely she would be able to spot Pinto and Minnie easily in the stands. And if she arrived coincident with Zeke’s fall, she might witness the catastrophe she wanted more than anything to prevent.

  The gory pictures came so thick and fast she had to press her forehead against the cool pane of glass to subdue their hot tumult:

  Zeke misjudging his arc and toppling into an elderly couple who fell forward with sharp birdlike cries into the row of spectators below them.

  Zeke’s abrupt descent triggering a tsunami of panic in the stands.

  Zeke impaling himself on the bull’s horns.

  Zeke falling into the matador and the bull trampling them both.

  Pandemonium. Tear gas. Night sticks.

  The bull leaping into the stands in its blind terror.

  Agnes, in her own unseeing panic, began banging on the door with both fists. But the few people who passed could apparently neither see nor hear her. A man in an indigo shirt with a red tie did glance up at her quizzically; then he smiled bemusedly and moved on.

  Perhaps the museum custodian was well known in Arles for her absentmindedness and had locked in visitors before. Agnes clutched at the meagre hope the man in the blue shirt would return shortly with the woman to liberate her.

  Time in the little room turned thick as Van Gogh’s layered impasto. She paced the bare wooden floor, considering, and then rejecting, the idea of using one of the metal stands, with its overpriced art cards, to smash the glass pane in the door. She soon discovered that these ungainly wrought-iron trees were in any case firmly bolted to the floor.

  Several times she nearly yielded to the urge to text Minnie with whom she should now be sitting. At least she could explain her predicament. She did not want her friends to think she had defected out of cowardice. But the agreed-upon ban was absolute: Ark members must not communicate with one another electronically until at least a month after the deed was done, and then only in language suitably oblique or coded.

  To calm herself, she tried sitting at the table and took out her notebook and pen. She began to doodle, and found herself writing the name Van Gogh, scoring the paper so violently each pen stroke was like a knife slit. She wondered if this fateful confinement would breed in her an irrational aversion to the painter and his work.

  She went again to the door to hammer on the glass, which was so thickly reinforced her fists were soon bruised and sore. She retreated and checked her watch. Unbelievably, it was 2:15. She felt like screaming.

  It was then she heard the whoop and wail of a siren, and then another, looping and entangling with the first. Her hands and feet were very cold. All her blood seemed to have rushed to her heart which was lurching in her chest. The Museum was too far down the street for her to see what was happening, but she had no doubt what the sirens signified. Zeke had made his leap. She began to pace, first one diagonal and then another, across the floor. At the diagonals’ intersection, she stopped and wrung her hands, imploring whatever kindly powers resided in Arles, please do not let anyone be badly injured.

  It was in this stance that the museum custodian found her as she unlocked the door. She looked at Agnes in astonishment and began to apologize: “Mademoiselle, je suis desolée . . .”

  Agnes fled out and down the steps; then came to a halt, frozen by what she saw. A solid wall of police cars blocked both the street and the sidewalk at the main entrance to the arena. She was at first disoriented by the flashing red lights on the black roofs, like blood splashing on her retina. Then, in the centre of the police bulwark, she was able to make out a solitary white ambulance. She got as close as she could before a policeman waved her back, flourishing his baton. She retreated to stand with a clutch of onlookers who had come out of their homes and shops, pulled by curiosity or concern.

  She braced herself against the arena wall and stood on tiptoe straining to see who would emerge from the main gate. Behind gritted teeth she hummed her frenzied little plaint. Do not let anyone be too badly hurt. Too badly hurt. Too badly. Do not let them take Zeke away. Lock Zeke away. Hurt Zeke. Too badly hurt. Do not let . . .

  She was wringing her hands again. Then came an eerie sound, like a moaning wind caught in a gutter and then freed, and caught again. She rose on her toes as far as she was able and saw two things. Leading the stream of people coming out of the arena was an ambulance attendant in olive green carrying a small figure in his arms. Beside him was a woman whose long black hair was in disarray. Her shockingly pale face looked at first oddly disfigured. It took Agnes a moment to grasp it was the woman’s wide-open mouth which created the illusion of a black hole dug into her dreadful pallor. It was she who was the source of the unearthly sound. The people trailing behind her picked up her lowest note; then doubled and trebled it to create a mournful chorus, struck through by darker notes of indignation and rage.

  “Mon fils,” the woman cried, “mon fils.”

  We did this, Agnes told herself. We caused this unspeakable pain. And if the child is dead?

  She clung to the minute possibility the child’s condition had nothing to do with Zebra. Perhaps the little boy tumbled out of his seat and banged his head. Perhaps, like Van Gogh, he was prone to epileptic fits. Or he was suffering anaphylactic shock as a result of a wasp sting.

  A multitude of such explanations presented themselves. As much as she wanted to embrace them, she recognized they were each and every one a delusion. Why would all these police cars be here unless there had been some wrong-doing? She shrank from the word “crime.”

  Then she spied Minnie, still in her chimpanzee mask, her strong, bare arms stiffly resisting the two grimfaced policemen who grasped her elbows on either side, propelling her forward. Perdita and Pablo, in keeping with their Quaker quietude, followed submissively with their police escort. Their ey
es were lowered. Their animal masks dangled from their wrists.

  “Minnie! Pablo! Perdita!” She dashed toward the phalanx of police cars just as the ambulance siren started up. Once again, the belligerent police officer waved her away, his nightstick mere inches from her face. She waited a moment until he turned to watch the ambulance depart, then tried to get between the two closest cars to reach her friends. This time he made contact, pushing her back hard with his stick against her right shoulder. She fell on the pavement, bumping her head. Someone came to help her up but she was too dazed to tell whether it was a man or woman. She registered only that the hand which grasped hers to pull her up was strong, warm and dry. A large hand. Perhaps a man then?

  Perhaps it was the police officer himself. Whoever it was did not tarry, but left her leaning against the wall of the arena, where she waited for her visual field to reassemble itself. Here were the constituent molecules sure enough, but they did not dance nor did they cohere in any familiar shape. A swarm of black specks came at her singly and then in a mass. She had seen pictures of these nasty winged things on Ancient Greek pottery. These were the Furies which pursued Orestes after he murdered his mother, an inescapable curse and proof of guilt. Their ceaseless pricking of the conscience will ultimately drive the sinner mad. The only conceivable relief is through a penitential deed as rigorous as it is perilous.

  And what could the Ark possibly do as penance if the child died or remained comatose, forever beyond his mother’s reach? She rubbed at her eyes viciously in an aggressive effort to see clearly again. She must try to find Pinto. She must learn where Zebra was and what had happened — and what the police were likely to do with Minnie, Pablo and Perdita. She had not seen either Gerhard or Ewan and hoped they had got away.

  When her vision cleared, she saw she was under surveillance. The policeman who had shoved her was watching her closely, together with one of his colleagues. They were frowning at her, with their shoulders thrust forward, as if constraining a violence they would far rather unleash. She thought of the young Roma boy staring out the bus window so defiantly at the two bull-headed officers, and knew that at this instant she could summon no equivalent bravery. She did not want to be hurt. Her body’s memory was still too fresh from the scattershot pain inflicted by the security guards’ stun gun at the laboratory, and the agonized act of witness that followed so soon after.

  She turned away from the officers’ contemptuous gaze and started to make her way back around the huge ellipse of the arena where she hoped to catch sight of Pinto or Ewan amidst the emerging crowd. She was surprised at the sponginess of the pavement whenever she set her foot down and at the fact she was listing, even when she stood still. She must have hit her head harder than she’d first thought, although she was fairly certain she had not suffered anything as serious as a concussion.

  What if it was only the guilt slowing her, turning her blood sluggish? Why did people used to say “yellow,” she wondered, when they taunted others with cowardice? Was that what she was at the core? She rationalized that even if she could find the police station now, she was in no fit state to make a plea on behalf of her friends. People were giving her odd looks and she assumed this was because she was still swaying on her feet. Snatches of their conversation penetrated the fug in her brain. She picked up ugly sounds like “bêtise,” “sotisse,” “fou,” “idiot.” The tormenting Furies taking verbal form.

  Whether the speakers intended these words for her or whatever had transpired in the arena was irrelevant. It was all one. She was part of the organism that had spawned this abomination.

  And if the child died, they would all have blood on their hands. They would be tainted for the rest of their lives. They had utterly botched it. They had not even saved the bull, who doubtless would be trotted out tomorrow for his date with ritual slaughter.

  Her head was throbbing. The flickering black specks had returned. The Furies were tenacious. And what of poor Zebra? If she was suffering this sharp-clawed remorse, what was Zeke going through? She had to help him and the others somehow. But first, she had to sleep off the headache and the shakiness. Just a couple of hours prone with her head on a pillow.

  Somehow she managed to find the street with her hotel. She curled on the bed in a fetal position and put her hands over her eyes to try to fend off the spectral assault. She was sure the black Furies were capable of creeping under her lids, piercing her retina and from there laying siege to the yielding coils of her brain. She needed a solid rampart, a protective image to gather about her. She tried summoning Campbell, but he came to her headless, his hands scarlet with his own gore. Then she remembered the plane tree under which she and Minnie had stood waiting, still innocent then. It was a canopy, a fastness, a giant distinguished by its subtle multi-coloured bark and its drape of soft greenery, each leaf a little boat to carry her safely over this awful blood-flecked frothing sea that was tilting so dangerously inside her skull. A boat. A little vessel the colour of Pinto’s shirt.

  When she woke, there was a violet tinge to the light seeping through the slatted shutters. How long had she slept? She was shaken to see that it was shortly after five, which meant she had been unconscious for nearly two and a half hours. Anything could have happened in that time — to the child or to Zeke.

  Her head was still sore from her fall, but she was no longer beset by the dizzy confusion. She checked her phone on the unlikely chance someone in the Ark had texted her. There were no new messages. She felt very alone and frightened. She must act and started by changing her T-shirt, which held the acrid stink of her afternoon’s anxious fear. Then, on her tourist map of Arles, she located the gendarmerie. The station was southeast of the Place de la République. It would be a long and disquieting walk.

  Once she was outside, the pellucid late afternoon light helped her reorder her thoughts. Since she was much closer to the Alyscamps than she was to the police station, shouldn’t she try there first? The cemetery was after all their “safe house” in some sense. If anyone of them left at liberty were desperate to connect, wasn’t the Alyscamps where they would go?

  She arrived at the cemetery half an hour before the gates were due to close. Except for a uniformed guard, who stood smoking a very strong-smelling cigarette, the grounds were empty. In case the guard was watching, she deliberately slowed her pace as she walked down Sarcophagus Alley to the church of Saint-Honorat. If there was no one inside, she would go immediately to the police station.

  At first she did not see him, so extreme was the contrast between the clear-edged daylight and the church’s crepuscular interior. He appeared to take shape gradually as if emerging from a granular fog. She had some initial doubts that the person standing with his back to her was indeed Pinto. He seemed strangely shrunken.

  “Pinto?” Her voice sounded tinny.

  He turned slowly, without speaking. His face was so distorted — the mouth agape, the eyes mere slits — that she only just managed to muffle a cry of alarm. His chest was heaving, the noise that came out of his mouth more like an ox’s bellow than any human utterance.

  She rushed to close the gap between them and seized both his hands.

  “Can you tell me what has happened?” These words cost her great effort. She was trying not to scream or to sink at his feet weeping.

  He grasped her hands so tightly, she winced. The fact he had hurt her apparently surprised him. He looked deeply distressed and, at the same time, more like himself.

  “Sorry, Agnes. Sorry. I’ve been waiting here for hours. I was beginning to think I would never see you again.”

  She was perplexed and even more frightened than before. Was he so distraught he had lost track of time? How could he possibly have been waiting for hours?

  “I got locked inside the little museum across the street. By the time the woman came back to let me out, the police blockade was up. I saw the boy being carried out and put in the ambulance. And I saw the police with Minnie. How is the boy, Pinto? Do you know? Was anyone e
lse hurt? And where is Zeke?”

  He looked down at her vaguely, shaking his head slowly as if he could not understand what she was saying. It occurred to her that he might think she was lying. How unlikely was her story about being locked inside a museum? Did he believe her to be a coward? Was he badly disappointed in her?

  “Something terrible has happened, Agnes. Something terrible, my dear.”

  “Oh, my God! Tell me, Pinto. Tell me, please.”

  “Not the boy,” he said. “Not the child. The boy is all right. Zeke fell into him; knocked the poor little kid over. It was apparently the shock, the fright as much as anything, that made him faint. The boy didn’t hit his head. I know this for certain. The concierge at my hotel told me.” He nodded glumly. “It’s not the boy, Agnes. It’s not the boy.”

  “Thank God. What then?” she asked impatiently. “Have they arrested Zebra?”

  He looked at her but did not seem to hear her question.

  “Pinto!” She grabbed his wrists to try to bring him back from wherever he had retreated.

  “Zeke’s dead, Agnes,” he told her. “He killed himself.”

  He lowered himself onto the stone floor, settled his huge frame between a whole urn and a halved one. He brought his knees to his chest and began to make harrowing sounds, the utterance of a wild grief that would never know containment and would forever confound all attempts to move beyond it.

  She had heard these inarticulate mouthings once before — when she stood outside his bedroom door the morning after Campbell was killed. Pinto was grunting, snuffling, groaning. His lamentation made the unbelievable true. It could not be. But it was. An onrushing blackness was in her mouth and then her head. She swayed badly on her feet.

  Even with his head lowered to his knees, Pinto seemed to sense her imbalance and reached out to steady her. She sat on the floor directly in front of him, trying to banish the hurtling images in her brain. A magpie beat itself to death against a barn door. Naked, emaciated bodies with skull-like heads were shovelled into a shallow trench. She saw Zeke thrown on top of this mass of tangled limbs. She must rescue him.