by Roald Dahl
Far into the small hours of the morning the machine buzzed and the boy worked. Drioli could remember that when the artist finally stepped back and said, ‘It is finished,’ there was daylight outside and the sound of people walking in the street.
‘I want to see it,’ Drioli said. The boy held up a mirror, at an angle, and Drioli craned his neck to look.
‘Good God!’ he cried. It was a startling sight. The whole of his back, from the top of the shoulders to the base of the spine, was a blaze of colour – gold and green and blue and black and scarlet. The tattoo was applied so heavily it looked almost like an impasto. The boy had followed as closely as possible the original brush strokes, filling them in solid, and it was marvellous the way he had made use of the spine and the protrusion of the shoulder blades so that they became part of the composition. What is more, he had somehow managed to achieve – even with this slow process – a certain spontaneity. The portrait was quite alive; it contained much of that twisted, tortured quality so characteristic of Soutine’s other work. It was not a good likeness. It was a mood rather than a likeness, the model’s face vague and tipsy, the background swirling around her head in a mass of dark-green curling strokes.
‘It’s tremendous!’
‘I rather like it myself.’ The boy stood back, examining it critically. ‘You know,’ he added, ‘I think it’s good enough for me to sign.’ And taking up the buzzer again, he inscribed his name in red ink on the right-hand side, over the place where Drioli’s kidney was.
The old man who was called Drioli was standing in a sort of trance, staring at the painting in the window of the picture-dealer’s shop. It had been so long ago, all that – almost as though it had happened in another life.
And the boy? What had become of him? He could remember now that after returning from the war – the first war – he had missed him and had questioned Josie.
‘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 round 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 a 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 bask yourself in the sun?’
Drioli looked up at him, rather startled.
‘Do you like fine food and red wine from the great châteaux 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 gloved 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 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.
The Princess and the Poacher
First published in Two Fables (1986)
Although Hengist was now eighteen years old, he still showed no desire to follow in his father’s trade of basket-weaving. He even refused to go out and collect the osiers from the riverbank. This saddened his parents greatly, but they were wise enough to know that it seldom pays to force a young lad to work at something when his heart is not in it.
In appearance, Hengist was an exceedingly unattractive youth. With his squat body, his short bandy legs, his extra-long arms and his crumpled face, he looked almost as though there might be a touch of the ape or the gorilla about him. He was certainly mighty strong. He could bend double a two-inch-thick iron bar with his hands alone, and once he had astonished an old carter whose horse had fallen into a ditch by lifting the animal out bodily in his arms and placing it back on the road.
Quite naturally, Hengist was interested in maidens fair. But as one might expect, no maidens, fair or otherwise, were interested in Hengist. He was a pleasant enough fellow, there was no doubt about that, but there is a limit to the degree of ugliness any woman can tolerate in a man. Hengist was well beyond that limit. In fact, his ugliness was so extreme that no female other than his mother would have a
nything to do with him. This was a great sorrow to the lad. It was also grossly unfair, because no man is responsible for his own looks.
Poor Hengist. Although he knew that every maid and every wench in the Kingdom was far beyond his reach for ever, he continued to long for them and lust after them with unabated passion. Whenever he spied a girl milking a cow or hanging out the washing, he would stop and stare and yearn most terribly to possess her.
Fortunately for him, he was soon to find another outlet for his energies. It had become a habit of his to take long walks in the countryside, through the forests and the glens, to cool his ardour, and over the ensuing weeks he began in some subtle way to fall in love with the landscape of the open air. He would spend his days roaming in deserted places, a silent, solitary, terribly uncouth figure, communing with nature. And thus, gradually and inevitably, he came to learn a great deal about the habits of animals and birds. He also discovered to his delight that he possessed the ability to move so silently through the forest that he could come within arm’s length of a timid creature like a hare or a deer before it was aware of his presence. This was not just from practice. It appeared to be a gift that had been bestowed upon him, a rare ability to merge into the landscape and suddenly to emerge again, almost like a ghost, when no man or bird or beast had seen him coming.
His family were very poor and they hardly ever tasted meat or game from one year to the next. Quite understandably, and quite soon, it dawned upon Hengist that he could very easily improve their lot, and indeed his own, by doing a little poaching. He began slowly, with a rabbit or a partridge once a week, but it was not long before the sheer pleasure and excitement of the chase took hold of him. Here, after all, was something he could do extraordinarily well. Poaching was an art. The thrill of creeping up on a crouching hare undetected or of snatching a roosting pheasant from a branch gave him a sense of satisfaction such as he had never known before. He became addicted to the sport.