The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome

by Serge BRUSSOLO

  They reached the end of the gallery at last. The painting in its heavy gilded frame suddenly seemed as vast and unbudgeable as a building façade. It was a gigantic work executed in a very eighteenth-century style that packed in a mind-boggling hodgepodge of men, cannons, horses, foot soldiers, and cavalry. Smoke from salvos hovered in an acrid layer over the landscape, and entire battalions maneuvered in its shadow. From one side of the frame to the other, thousands of miniature men were busy running, charging, dying, and each of them had been painted with an almost hallucinatory eye for detail. Nothing had been left out: not the bicornes, the buttons on the frock coats, the insignia on the uniforms. Each soldier had a face distinct from that of his companions, entirely his own. And each face reflected a specific emotion: fear, anger, rage, cowardice, despair, exhaustion. It was a fabulous work of truly terrifying mastery. Black-jacketed guardsmen confronted red-jacketed guardsmen in a tumultuous and pitiless contest in the middle of a muddy field that the pounding of artillery had turned into a lunar landscape. All those swords, those pikes, gave off a wounding gleam. A cavalry charge hurtled down a hillside, sending chunks of peat flying; cannonballs tore through the air, fleeing to meet mounts, shattering the breastplates of riders, scattering heads and limbs in their wake. David blinked, dumbfounded by so much turmoil.

  All three of them were breathing hard. The painting was a window onto another world, a well from which rose a fearsome draft that threatened to knock them off their feet at any moment. The frame seemed a rim they didn’t dare lean on, for fear it might suddenly crumble. David knelt slowly, praying the parquet wouldn’t creak at the touch of his knees. Jorgo had opened his satchel and pulled out a bulging medical kit, which he unrolled on the floor, revealing bottles, vials, and syringes. How many people were there? David thought frantically. How many animals? Hundreds … thousands? Suddenly he realized he’d dreamed too big. Even with all three of them, they’d have a hard time wrapping up in twenty minutes. Nadia had already grabbed a syringe, stuck it into a bottle. Jorgo grabbed a big spray bottle full of topical anesthetic solution and began squirting the painting to numb its skin. But the haze floating over the battlefield tended to catch the fine droplets.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Nadia asked, taking a step toward the painting, syringe in hand. “David? We can still go right now, leave all this behind. This is too big for us. It’s not going to end well.”

  His thoughts exactly, but then, bracing himself against his fear, he filled his syringe in turn and moved toward the bottom right corner of the painting. A horse there had been struck by a hail of bullets, its rider toppling backward, futilely brandishing his saber. A handsome bit of painting in which the hooves of the slaughtered animal reared and struck at the smoke in a kind of whirlwind where a few ghostly figures could be glimpsed. The black holes in the man’s breastplate clearly indicated that he would be dead before he hit the ground. Foot soldiers were running round the horse, bayonets lowered. Their eyes were closed. The great mêlée boiling over the crucible of the plain pitted companies of somnambulists against each other, whose lethal acts were carried out in the heart of a deep slumber. David leaned forward, looking for generals atop the traditional hillock overlooking the carnage. They were also sleeping, feet in stirrups, only pretending to survey the struggle, and their horses were sleeping too, knees locked in equine fashion. It was as if some enchantment had struck them in mid-action, suspending the flow of time, arresting them in unconsciousness like the courtiers in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Nadia appeared to register no surprise at the spectacle. Leaning on the edge of the tediously ornamented frame, she’d already jabbed a horse in the thigh, injecting a few drops of sedative into the substance of the painting.

  “Maintain a light touch,” she whispered. “The important thing is not to wake them up. Watch out—the haze is keeping the local anesthetic from settling in right.”

  “But—” David stammered. “They’re all sleeping! Did you see that? It’s incredible—a battle where all the soldiers have their eyes closed! You can’t tell until you’re right up close to it! It must be some kind of allegory, right?”

  “What the hell are you babbling about?” Nadia snapped. “They’ve got their eyes closed because it’s nighttime—time to sleep! Down here paintings need sleep too, just like people. Stop babbling and drug them. If we don’t put them all under, they’ll wake up with a start as soon as we start moving the painting.”

  She did not stop inoculating as she spoke. The tip of the syringe came and went like the stinger on some insatiable insect. She pricked horses in the croup, men in the shoulder, devoting only one or two seconds to each. Jorgo was doing the same. He’d tackled the other half of the painting and was working on the enemy army, anesthetizing squadrons on the march, charging horses. When the syringe was empty, he pierced the rubber seal on another bottle and filled it back up.

  “They’re light sleepers,” Nadia whispered, a fine sweat gleaming on her brow. “It’s a very old painting, which means it doesn’t need much sleep. Plus, the period frame is crippled with rheumatism, which the crossbeams in back can feel. That means the work could wake up at any moment, and in a bad mood. You can imagine the problems that would cause …”

  David couldn’t imagine a thing. He found himself suddenly paralyzed with terror, and the syringe between his fingers began to shake. Finally, he made up his mind to inject the great rearing horse, repeating to himself, This is madness! Sheer madness! When the needle sank into a soft, fibrous mass reminiscent of striated muscle, he almost let out a cry of horror. It was as if he’d just injected a real horse. A … real? horse, but two-dimensional, and no more than four inches tall.

  “Faster!” Nadia panted, “faster!” She was right. Why was he wasting time being astonished? He was in the dream world, and anything was possible. Anything!

  “This is a very powerful tranquilizer. Don’t use too much,” the young woman repeated. “Two drops for horses, one for people—that’s enough. Get it right, or you’ll poison them. If they die, they’ll rot; a black patch will form on the painting’s surface and oxidation from decomposition will make a hole in the canvas. If that happens, the painting will be worthless.”

  David felt his pulse swelling the veins at his temple. Briefly, he tried to imagine the death of a figure in a painting: first the colors fading away, then the bristling blisters of fermenting paint, mushrooms forming beneath the glaze. An ugly little rot that spread like sickness from the foot of a tree and ended up making a personshaped hole …

  He jabbed and jabbed, trying to be as fast and efficient as his companions. He was abruptly ashamed to have dragged them into such folly, ashamed of abusing his influence over them. They’d obeyed without protest, like docile slaves, resigned as soldiers who make it a point of honor never to challenge an order. Lost in these thoughts, he jabbed a horse too hard; for a split second, its eye opened. The flash of white from the painting’s surface made David back up a few steps, hair standing up on the back of his neck, but already the eyelid had closed again.

  “Ten minutes,” Nadia announced, her voice flat. Empty bottles of tranquilizer piled up at the foot of the painting. Jorgo swore. He’d just snapped his needle on a cavalryman’s breastplate. David could no longer see what he was doing. He jabbed, jabbed, and jabbed away, saturating the canvas even as he tried to control the force of the plunger. Two drops for animals, one drop for people … but there were so many men, so many horses! And the dead? The ones lying in the mud, a shattered sword in their hands? And the animals gutted by bullets? Did he have to drug them too? Not daring to interrupt Nadia with stupid questions, he jabbed at random, knocking out the living and the dead alike. The painting blurred before him. All those tiny bodies in uniform, in serried ranks, those sleepwalkers halted in the middle of a killing blow, bayonet brandished, saber raised, not even taking a seat at night to rest their weary bodies.

  In the same emotionless voice, Nadia continued to lay out the curious rules governing the l
ives of paintings. “If you see a horse or a man lie down, it means you’ve given them too much. They won’t necessarily die, but if they make it, there’s no guarantee they’ll take up the exact position they were in before they passed out. So you understand the scope of what I’m saying: if so much as one figure, a single figure, changes position, we’ll find ourselves with a different painting on our hands—a fake, a copy. If just one of these soldiers leaves his spot and crawls into a ditch to sleep better, The Battle of Kanstädt will no longer match up with pictures in art history books or museum catalogs. You get me? Make sure none of these soldiers collapses when you pull out your needle. If that happens, try to force them back up by massaging the canvas top to bottom with the tip of your finger. Usually that’s enough; reflex kicks in, and they instinctively assume their poses again.”

  David’s head was buzzing. From the nervous sweat moistening his palms, he knew the distancing powder wasn’t working anymore. He needed to stop what he was doing and take a pill, but he didn’t dare break the rhythm. He couldn’t afford the luxury. Still, he feared a nightmare might form and capsize the operation. This was the first time he’d ever mounted a theft of such scope; till now, he’d just been a small-time hoodlum robbing window displays, local jewelry stores. The painting was something else, the guarantee of a magnificent object, a work as powerful as that of Soler Mahus. This time, he wouldn’t go back up carrying a mere knickknack doomed to die in quarantine. No container would be big enough to accommodate the product of his dream. The museum would have to take exceptional measures, dispatch all its specialists on the double … Marianne could keep her advice, her sermons, and go back to sleeping in her suitcase like a good little boarder. This time, there would be no more doubting his talent; the great dream on Bliss Plaza would be but a bouquet of wilted daisies beside what he was about to snatch from the deep.

  “Ow!” The needle had slipped along a saber blade and plunged too deeply into the torso of a standard-bearer with a powder-blackened face. A fraction of a second after pressing on the plunger, David distinctly saw the tiny figure’s eye open, burning with rage.

  “Five minutes,” Nadia announced. A dark rivulet stained her T-shirt between her breasts. Jorgo’s face was glistening as if rubbed with oil.

  “Quick—we have to take the canvas down,” the young woman ordered. “We’ll have just enough time to get out of here before the electric eyes come out of their trance.”

  Jorgo had taken out a razor and began cutting the canvas along the frame. Nadia did the same. The varnish-covered painting resisted the blades.

  “David!” the young woman hissed. There’s a ladder in the closet. We’ll need it to cut across the top of the painting.”

  David shook himself, dropped the syringe, and turned toward the closet, but it seemed to leap back like a timid animal afraid to be touched. That was a bad sign. Such distortions of perspective signaled the embryonic formation of a nightmare. With a feverish hand, he groped for his drugs. His nerves were crackling like short-circuiting high-tension wires. He took a quick sniff of distancing powder from the back of his hand. The icy burn ravaged his nasal cavity and exploded in his brain, lodging like a harpoon in the middle of his head. The closet door drew obediently closer. He opened it and took out a window washer’s stepladder. He went blank, lost some time. When he opened his eyes again, Nadia and Jorgo were laying the giant canvas on the floor.

  “To roll it up,” the young woman explained, “like a rug.” The notion seemed so out of place that David burst out laughing.

  “You’re starting to take off,” Nadia snapped aggressively. “Try to control your dream instead of letting it carry you away!”

  She was absolutely right. Besides, he felt calmer already, cooler. Suddenly, the painting seemed almost ugly to him, without interest. Was it even worth stealing?

  Nadia and Jorgo picked up the rolled canvas, each taking an end on one shoulder. With a firm step, they headed up the long hall leading to the exit.

  “Two minutes,” the young woman whispered dully. David couldn’t understand why she was so scared. The things you could get done in two minutes! For instance … They were running now, pounding the parquet, filling the building with the rumble of a stampede. Nadia was staring at the electric eye overlooking the entrance. The metal eyelid was rising very slowly, with an interminable creak. With a desperate burst of speed they ran for the exit, tripping over the doorsill and tumbling head over heels down the stairs. The moment they hit the broad slabs of the esplanade, sprawling, the optical sensor raised its protective lid with a sharp click, coming out of its slumber to resume surveillance.

  “It worked!” Jorgo exulted. Nadia silenced him with a wave. The canvas had unrolled coming down the stairs, and now lay spread in the middle of the plaza, a great gleaming rug with frayed edges. Puddles from the last shower (when had it rained? David had no memory of it) trickled iridescent water over its surface. David would’ve liked to know if contact with liquid risked damaging the painting, but not a word came from his mouth. The cold night wind made his teeth chatter, suddenly making him realize his clothes were so soaked he could’ve wrung sweat from them. The moisture assaulted his nerves, wrecking the powder’s effect; he got to his feet, feeling instead like he’d landed heavily on them. Migraine pains went shooting through his skull. He staggered, fought to stay upright while Nadia and Jorgo struggled with the drenched canvas. Nadia was losing her cool, insulting Jorgo in a low voice because he was slow to lift the painting from the puddle where it was steeping.

  “Take it easy!” David cried. “The varnish protects the colors. They won’t run that easily.”

  “You don’t get it!” the young woman hissed. “The cold water’ll wake the soldiers! Jesus Christ! It’s like tossing a bucket of water at their faces!”

  David rushed forward, not sure he really understood the new danger. Grabbing the canvas by one of its sides, he tried to lift it from the ground. But it was abnormally heavy, and he could make out confused movements on its surface … White spots, myriad tiny white spots. Eyes. Thousands of eyes, opening one after the next. Suddenly, those eyes were all he could see, piercing the darkness of the sullied varnish.

  “It’s the cold water,” Nadia panted. “Shit! Shit! Shit! It’s cancelled out the tranquilizer. Now they’re going to be angry. We’ll never get the painting to the car.”

  David felt the claws of nightmare sink into the flesh of his shoulders. Everything was going off the rails; he could feel it. So close, and yet … less than fifty yards lay between them and the car. He wanted to get ahold of the canvas, but it was like grabbing a handful of pincushions. The foot soldiers’ bayonets massed at the edge of the painting had just pierced his fingers. A muddled noise rose from the image, whose surface puckered, wrinkled, like living flesh shot through with shivers.

  “Out of the way!” Nadia cried, pulling him back. “It’s dangerous. They’re going to defend themselves!”

  But David clung to his loot, determined not to be deprived. He understood her warning only when a tiny cannonball tore through his jacket and whistled by his ear. A cannonball from one of the thousand cannons depicted in the painting. A cannonball about the size of a bullet, which had come less than an inch away from blowing his head off.

  “C’mon,” Nadia begged, tugging at his sleeve. “It’s fucked now. We can’t take it anymore. It’s that antivandalism treatment they give famous works—it makes them able to defend themselves in case of theft, or attack … sometimes even a bad review. It’ll shoot at anything that moves, and the noise will bring the cops. C’mon, it’s over. We have to run.”

  David remained frozen, shoulders hunched. Now the salvos were rolling round the esplanade, getting louder with each echo. It was like a firing squad had set up shop right in front of the museum, executing statues and the columns of the peristyle. The cannonballs ricocheted, yowling, while the smell of burnt powder rose from the canvas. Like his companions, David was flattened on the ground, not daring to lif
t his head. Nightmare, he thought. It ended up happening anyway, even though everything seemed to be going so well. And why were there puddles of icy water on the esplanade? Had it rained without his knowing … or was the vault of the sky beginning to give way beneath the pressure, letting the sea seep into the dream world?

  Jorgo had begun crawling toward the car where Professor Zenios was waving at them desperately. The wail of a police siren burst out from the far end of the avenue. In a few seconds, the flashing lights could be seen … David straightened up, teeth clenched, and made one last move for the painting. This time, a cannonball tore through his eyebrow, and his face was drowned in blood.

  “We’ll come back!” Nadia sobbed against his temple “We’ll give it another shot sometime. C’mon! C’mon!”

  He let himself be dragged away. They were almost off the esplanade when Jorgo crumpled, a black hole between his shoulder blades. The kid collapsed, mouth open, not even trying to cushion the fall, and lay there without moving.

  “Jorgo!” Nadia screamed hysterically. “Jorgo!”

  David didn’t know what to do. The beelike buzzing was driving him crazy. He saw the thousand little barrels of cannons spitting flames in their direction. The projectiles slammed into the car, spiderwebbing the windows. Instinctively, he backpedaled to lift the kid and sling him across his shoulders. Jorgo weighed almost nothing, and the outline of his body was already fading, as if the dream were striking him from its list of characters. Nadia jerked as she opened the door. David saw her eyebrows go up in an expression of disbelief. Then the young woman leaned against the car and opened her jacket. She was bleeding. A black stain was blossoming rapidly across her belly.

  “No!” David roared. “I won’t have it! This is my dream! I’m in control here! I won’t have it!”

  He made a desperate effort to regain mastery of the oneiric machinery quickly escaping him. It was like trying to grab a bolting horse by the mane to halt its frenzied course. The animal kept hurtling along, impervious to pain, fleeing toward the cliff at a gallop that struck sparks from the stones.