The Nickel Man
Page 16
When Bémolisant sat down again, he turned to his companion, who was mopping cold sweat from his brow. “The flight is consummated,” he said, in a dramatic tone.
The other started. “Are we being pursued?” he said, bewildered.
“Pursued! I certainly hope that nothing will be discovered. It will be as well, moreover, in order that no suspicion arises, if you go back there as usual.”
“Oh, I’d never dare! Just think! I’d have to answer the concierge’s incessant questions, give her news of the pretended patient, recommence what I did just now, lying impudently. It’s beyond my strength.”
“Do you want to ruin us, wretch? If you’re not seen again, people will become anxious; they’ll break down the door; they’ll discover everything. It’s absolutely necessary to go back…at least until we’ve found a solution to this inextricable situation. Furthermore, now I think about it, you’ve forgotten to erase the inscription that will attract all eyes to the blackboard. We’ve even omitted to copy it.”
“What’s the point, since we can’t decipher it?”
“We’re going to dry, damn it! I’m not going to admit defeat. A little energy, Pilesèche.”
“I will, I will…I’ll go to the laboratory…not today, but tomorrow, when I’ve recovered somewhat from all this emotion,” said Pilesèche, in a tone that contained more resignation than resolution.
After meditating for a while, the artist resumed speaking. “It’s no good,” he said. “I’ve thought hard, but everything I’ve just seen seems strange, and I can’t understand how the fellow came to bury himself in that vat. Tell me a little about the premises of the affair, as an examining magistrate might put it.”
“Don’t talk about examining magistrates! You’ll give me the shakes. Anyway, what can I tell you that you don’t know? Your uncle had a few manias, but nothing that allowed such a design to be foreseen. He was bad-tempered, not insane. I can only explain his final action by supposing that he wanted to carry out one last experiment on himself. He didn’t say anything about it to me. Ill, crippled by pain, he certainly felt that he was on the way out, and it was then that he manifested the desire to see you. You were his nephew and his godson—that’s only natural. How could I know that he’s planned everything to make you a witness to that sad spectacle?”
“I ought to have mistrusted that abrupt return to good sentiments.”
“What else can I tell you? Yesterday, I found him in a bad mood, as usual. I brought him eggs, hoping to make him eat, but he sent me packing, along with my eggs.”
“He was obviously not an easy patient.”
“He asked me for an electric bath...”
“My God, what’s that?”
“It’s the bath in which we found him, but instead of a metallic salt susceptible of yielding a galvanoplastic deposit, we normally put in pure water, simply sharpened with a little acid to increase its electrical conductivity.”
“Oh, very good! The traitor was preparing the execution of his sinister project.”
“Evidently. I’d hardly closed the door, no doubt, than he wrote the cryptogram that intrigued us so much and plunged himself into the bath, after having added nickel sulfate and ammonia.”
There’s one thing that I can’t explain. So long as he was conscious, he wouldn’t have been able to plunge completely under the water, where he would have choked—and yet we found him submerged, which would have been indispensable in any case for the deposit to form evenly over his entire body.”
“Oh, the explanation is quite simple. Didn’t you notice a small reservoir placed above the vat, the liquid from which was discharged through a rubber tube. Your uncle lay down first in such a way that his nostrils were above the surface of the water, and the flow coming from that small reservoir finished covering his face gradually. He would have had to be in the state of special catalepsy that I’ve mentioned to you by then, but he could put himself into it and he would have prepared himself for a long time by means of his experiments in hypnotism. It was sufficient for him to say to himself: at such a time, I’ll fall into catalepsy, for phenomenon to be realized by autosuggestion.”
“I see now how things must have happened, but that doesn’t change our situation. Try telling that to the police commissioner, and he’d laugh in your face. Listen, it’s necessary to work out what we’re going to do. We’ll take the cada....” He stopped and resumed: “…the parcel directly to my studio, but if you run into my wife, don’t say anything to her about this adventure. Above all, don’t say anything to my mother-in-law. You know how talkative women are; they’re easily led by the nose, so that if the police were to interrogate them, I don’t know how we’d get out of it.”
It was necessary to recruit a few more porters to take the box upstairs.
“It’s a bronze statue,” Bémolisant told them.
“It doesn’t astonish me anymore that it’s so heavy,” one of them replied.
The studio was situated on the floor above the apartment in which the artist’s family lived, so neither Madame Bémolisant nor her mother, Madame Legris, was able to see what was happening in the house.
When the two accomplices were alone in the large room in the middle of which the funereal package lay, they let their arms fall alongside their bodies with an enormous sigh of relief.
“Finally,” said Bémolisant, “We can breathe.”
“It’s only a respite, alas. It won’t be possible for us to hide Monsieur Grillard’s disappearance forever.”
“But thanks to our stratagem, at least we have time to think about it.”
“Shouldn’t we remove his metal envelope?” hazarded the laboratory assistant, “For after all, if he isn’t dead...”
“Get away! Now you’re believing in this nonsense. It’s one thing for toads to wall themselves up without coming to any harm…no, no, don’t worry; my uncle is well and truly defunct, and his cadaver is much less troublesome inside its nickel box than otherwise. If we don’t succeed in concealing him from all eyes, well, so far as everyone else in concerned, he’s a statue, nothing more.”
With these reflections, the nickel-plated man was removed from his vat and placed in a corner, lying down in his natural attitude. While Bémolisant searched for a serge curtain in order to hide him to the extent that it was possible, Pilesèche started rubbing the surface of the metal in order to polish it and complete the appearance of a piece of sculpture.
He had only just finished that task when someone knocked on the studio door.
“Perhaps it’s the police,” one of them whispered, fearfully.
“What if we don’t answer?” added the other, equally anxious.
“They’ll break down the door. It’s better to be bold.”
That boldness did not go as far as to calm their nerves, and they were both wearing singular expressions when Bémolisant went to open the door.
IV. In which an Influential Critic Intervenes in the Affair
Two men were waiting on the threshold, but the newcomers did not seem to justify so many apprehensions. They were perfect gentlemen, art lovers who had come to visit the studio.
“Baron d’Estrèchini!” exclaimed the artist, recognizing one of them.
“In person. You promised me, my dear, to show me some decadent sculpture. I’ve come to ask you to keep your promise, and I’ve brought Antoine Leroux, the influential critic, whom you’ll have to suborn…if he’ll allow himself to be.”
“Ah! Delighted,” said Bémolisant, still holding the door ajar. “Positively enchanted, but I don’t know if I can let you in. I...”
“What! Perhaps you have a model here at present?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“That doesn’t matter. All the models know us; we no longer intimidate them.” And without paying any further attention to the artist’s hesitation, he added: “Go in, Leroux.”
“After you, Baron.”
“Come, come—no ceremony on the threshold of the sanctuary.”
“It’s for this amiable fellow that you were going to turn us away?” queried the Baron, perceiving him.
“Not badly built for a model,” added the influential critic, looking him up and down with the eye of a connoisseur. “I haven’t seen him around. Good muscles…a little gauche, perhaps, but it’s up to the sculptor to rectify the pose.
“Let’s see these sculptures—show us!” said the Baron, pivoting on his heel and looking around.
The studio was cluttered with mounts and mock-ups. The two strangers started casually lifting up the damp cloths that were preventing the clay from drying out, but the sight of the masterpieces underneath failed to inspire any enthusiasm in the critic, who pursed his lips in a disapproving grimace that did not augur anything good.
Bémolisant had taken possession of the Baron, and was seeking to impregnate him with the extravagant principles of decadent sculpture.
“The goal of art, Monsieur,” he said, “is not merely to give a more or less faithful representation of our fragile terrestrial envelope. If it were, the animal painters, who are obsessed with realism of representation, would be the foremost among us. But art ought to aim higher, and, disengaging the human from that which is animal, ought to seek the soul in its hidden folds, to render it visible, tangible...”
“And sensible,” finished the influential critic, in a bantering tone, continuing to ferret around while the sculptor continued his discourse.
Terrified, Pilesèche saw Monsieur Leroux coming closer and closer to the nickel-plated man, over which he had hastily thrown a serge curtain. He would dearly have liked to draw his attention in another direction, but how?
Not without a similar anguish, Bémolisant had seen the critic progressing toward the terrible statue, and although he carried on talking, he had absolutely no idea what he was saying, being uniquely preoccupied with those movements. The Baron lent a sustained attention in vain to the nonsense in question; he could not extract any meaning from the string of words.
Suddenly, the critic, perceiving indistinct forms on the floor, enveloped by a serge curtain, lifted up a corner of the cloth.
Bémolisant could not suppress an exclamation. Pilesèche dropped an old plate, which smashed on the floor.
Antoine Leroux uttered an expressive: “Ah!” and took a step back, raising his lorgnon to his eyes. After a brief contemplation, he came, at a measured pace, to take the artist by the arm, and, smiling enthusiastically, said: “Oh, my dear, that’s not good of you…no, it’s not good to amuse us with bagatelles and these frightful mock-ups when you’re hiding a masterpiece in a corner. But it’s quite simply admirable! It’s marvelous! Better than that: it’s a revolution! Oh, if that’s decadent sculpture, I accept it; I acclaim it, and you can count one adept more.”
Emotionally, he took hold of both the artist’s hands and shook them vigorously. “Come,” he said to the Baron, finally. “Come and see this marvel.” And, dragging him toward the statue, which was gleaming under its white patina, he said: “Look at that! What vigor! And what simultaneous morbidity! How downcast that man is in his suffering! Nature could never have translated it with that precision of genius. It’s hollowed out by an energetic thumb, without weakness.” He turned to the poor artist. “It’s for a tomb, no doubt?”
“Yes, yes,” the latter hastened to reply. “It’s for a tomb.”
“And you’ve titled it…?”
“I haven’t titled it yet.”
“Oh! Don’t forget that a good title is half way to success.”
“But I don’t have any intention of exhibiting it.”
“Yes, I understand: a tomb is an intimate work. But an artist has a duty to himself and his century. A masterpiece is part of the patrimony of humankind. Oh, but you will exhibit it; moreover, I shall begin a campaign in my newspapers, and I promise you a prodigious, colossal, unprecedented success...”
“But I beg you…I’m frightened by the thought of the public paying attention to my humble person.”
“Damn! That’s the first time I’ve encountered such modesty combined with such talent. No, no, I shall force your hand. I’ll run to book the hall in the Rue de Sèze, and tomorrow morning you’ll hear my first beat of the tom-tom...”
A few minutes later, the visitors took their leave, and the influential critic was heard exclaiming, as they went downstairs: “A revolution, my dear, a veritable revolution in art!”
That scene had completely overwhelmed the two accomplices. They no longer knew where they were, if they were dreaming or awake. Events were dragging them away in a desperate whirlwind, and before they had been able to formulate a plan, or even measure the depth of the abyss open before their feet, they had slid into it invincibly, driven by blind fatality.
Who can tell? But for the arrival of those importunate visitors, they might perhaps have collected their scattered wits and found some means of announcing the entirely natural death of the poor uncle. Yes, that was what it had been necessary to do—but there was no more time.
And, on thinking that, everything that they had just done finally appeared to them as the height of absurdity.
It was while they were still in the laboratory that the solution was simple and easy. What they should have done was strip the cadaver of its metallic envelope by carefully dissolving the nickel; then they should have laid the body suitably washed, in the bed. Who, then, would have been astonished to learn of the death of an old man who had been at the end of his resources for a month?
Could the doctor called to issue the death certificate have found any disquieting particularities, even if he had done a complete autopsy? It hardly seemed probable.
So, the two men had been perfect imbeciles. They finally perceived that, too late to repair the damage.
And they looked at one another, desolate.
“My dear Pilesèche!”
“Monsieur Bémolisant!”
“We have to flee.”
“Do you think so?”
“I can’t, however, allow that man, that cadaver, to be exhibited in public...”
“Eh! How can you do otherwise? If we run away, people will wonder why. Let’s not attract investigation in our direction. You see, it’s me who’s being reasonable now. I can feel my courage coming back; I feel that I’m capable of the boldest designs, and if it’s necessary to be bold...”
He was abruptly interrupted; several raps sounded on the door, and in spite of his brilliant attestation of energy, Pilesèche went pale, anxiously seizing his feather duster, while Bémolisant went to open the door, fearfully.
The artist found himself face to face with his wife, who was anxious because he had not come down at the usual time for lunch.
“That’s true!” he replied. “I haven’t eaten!” He turned to the laboratory assistant. “Are you hungry, Pilesèche?” he added, in a desolate tone.
“I hadn’t noticed it.”
“Me neither—but it doesn’t matter. Would you like to have lunch with us, Pilesèche.”
“Ah! If you like.” He seemed to be saying: Are we not indissolubly linked to one another by this complicity in a crime…that we didn’t commit? Can one of us act without the other?
I am not even certain that, in the confusion of his ideas, he had not managed to convince himself that perhaps they were, in fact, guilty, albeit with attenuating circumstances, so great was the obsession pursuing them.
They went down to the floor below, where the Bémolisant studio was situated: a very modest apartment, redolent with the restricted means of its tenants.
Still preceded by Hélène, they went into the dining room, where Madame Legris, the mother-in-law, was already sitting at the laden table, feeding a baby sitting in a high chai
r.
“Finally, there you are!” she said, through pinched lips, peering at her son-in-law through her spectacles.
That simple sentence was pregnant with storms. Bémolisant bowed his head. It was necessary to reply, though. “Mother-in-law, I can explain...”
“I know that you always have excellent reasons, my son-in-law.”
“What do you expect? It’s necessary not to treat artists like other men. Art has its demands, to which its high priests must yield...”
“Oh, I’ve certainly perceived that, since I’ve had the honor of being the mother-in-law of a high priest of art.”
Hélène wanted to cut short a discussion that was threatening to turn bitter, and while Pilesèche hid himself as best he could behind his host, she said: “Maman, Népomucène has an excellent excuse today. You know that he’s been to see his poor Uncle Grillard, who is also his godfather.”
“Aha! The reconciliation scene! You can tell us all about it...”
Tell them all about it! The two men were in torment.
“How is your uncle?” the pitiless woman continued.
That was certainly a very indiscreet question, to which Bémolisant was not tempted to reply immediately. He went blank. He remembered, just in time, that he had not introduced his companion, and stood aside in order to allow him to appear.
“This is his assistant, Monsieur Pilesèche, whom I introduce to you, and who will be having lunch with us.”
“A guest! Oh, Monsieur, excuse us; my son-in-law never has others. He brings us guests without warning—that isn’t done! We have the greatest pleasure in receiving you, and we would have been glad to do so in a dignified fashion. You must take account of the unexpectedness...”
She stood up swiftly and ran to the kitchen, where Hélène was already cooking a supplementary omelet.
Pilesèche was confused. He stammered a few excuses, and would have liked to hide in a hole—but Bémolisant forced him to sit down, and a few minutes sufficed to restore good order.
When everyone was at table and had soothed the pangs of a hunger that could wait no longer, Madame Legris returned to the charge.