A Silver Ring in the Ear

by Tony Duvert

  …

  ‘Now face down! It’s time for bed,’ explains one of the toughs.

  The bed that was thus proposed to the illustrious biologist was a kind of cement niche, laid into the ground, five feet four inches long, sixteen inches wide and twelve inches high. A kind of walled-up coffin, very narrow. The only way to get in was through one of the ends, which were closed off by a metal grille.

  ‘Get in there feet first, idiot, if you want to breathe,’ one tough says politely.

  …

  ‘We’ll be back in three days to start the torture,’ says the adolescent casually. And thus they all leave Dr. Brunet, buried alive.

  …Such was the waking dream that Philippe now constructed around his stepfather, in that Neuilly house, the house of the Brissets, where he was imprisoned for the holidays. From time to time he asks himself whether he might introduce other family members into this dream: he would very much like to see Marc crucified or burned alive. That could wait for another evening.

  XIX

  “Miaow,” said Gabriel de Lorsange gently.

  The cat, hearing this, deigned to turn its head and look at him.

  “Miaow,” repeated Gabriel.

  The cat raised its backside. Gabriel took advantage of this to verify that it wasn’t a tom-cat. The pretty balls of cats, lifted like prunes on a tree, made him despair.

  “Miaow?”

  Gabriel gathered the cat’s loins by softly taking them in his two hands. The cat stood up and outlined, with its head turned, the action of biting the man’s hand. But it did not bite, it rippled, and, tail waving, it ran from Gabriel and sat down two feet away.

  “Miaow,” begged Lorsange.

  The cat gave him a cold stare.

  “Oh dash it, they give me the shits!”

  Gabriel got up from his bench and left the square. He took out of his pocket the little Aubade slip, which was salmon pink, and examined it without unfolding it too much – for fear of intriguing the passers-by.

  XX

  “They’re mad, it’s too expensive,” thought Julien Sorel. “One can no longer have an evening out in a gay bar, and besides, the dearer it is the more old rubbish there is.”

  Nevertheless, the Black Hole had the reputation of being one of the most active night bars in Paris. But sixty francs for two drops of alcohol! Julien looked around him. The obscurity dotted with red lights improved no one’s appearance: it even made the fixed grins of the fashionable poufs worse. The Lourdes grotto when the Catholic scraps come there to try their favourite grimaces.

  But the back-room of the Black Hole is famous. Julien, having consumed his two slugs of bad alcohol, made for the end of the bar.

  A swing door, saloon type, and he reached obscurity. There there were many more clients, and many fewer red lights. Only one, perhaps. Towels could be distinguished by the horizontal stripes on a few unoccupied military mattresses. Almost everyone was standing.

  Julien got a hard on, undressed, and rolled his clothing into a ball. He moved forward between the bodies, pushing a cluster of fuckers, and threading past the suckers. His cock was grabbed as he passed, since he bore it high, like a satyr. He continued on his way, without discouraging any one. He had, at the end, caught sight of what he liked best.

  Straps hung from the ceiling, and a man was attached to them by his four members, his bum below, his hands and feet in the air. Several naked clients were occupying themselves with him. He was sturdy, probably small, but with a vigorous appearance. A head resting on his stomach hid his sexual organs.

  Julien walked around the scene, and finally saw something that could attract him.

  …

  Troubled, Julien studied the man’s face: and he recognised Peter, the Brisset’s domestic servant.

  For once his sexual life and his job had blended. He decided to wait for Peter to be released. He dropped down and sucked the little fellow who was busy with the Englishman.

  “Have a glass, it will revive you!” said Julien, catching Peter by the elbow. Both of them had dressed and were sitting at the bar.

  “I noticed you just now,” said Peter roughly. “You really give me the shits. Do your investigating somewhere else, you’re really a pest. You’re really… But you give me the shits, little bastard.”

  “Two Jack Daniels,” ordered Julien Sorel. “Little bastard, the bourbon will change your dirty habits.”

  “Yes, you’re a cop, all right. But that’s no reason to insult me, all right,” said Peter.

  Inspector Sorel noted that Peter was almost dead-drunk. He at once hoped that the Englishman would finally start talking.

  “All right, I’m sorry,” said Julien. “I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t mean to insult you. No, I swear!”

  “So, lousy cop, what are you doing in this place. This place for real men, lousy cop. Not traitors like you,” said Peter, exaggerating the tone. But he was drinking his bourbon with enthusiasm.

  “Me? I came” (lied Sorel) “for the place where you were. The four straps, etc. I swear.”

  “Oh, you’re modern I see,” whispered Peter, very sceptically. “You’re a cop who recoils from nothing.”

  “I was gay before becoming a cop, you great idiot. There’s no call for abuse.”

  “You’re not sincere,” affirmed Peter, completely drunk. “You’re not a sincere chap. You can’t be. You’re wedged. You’re nobody. I shit on you.”

  “Fine, be like that,” said Julien calmly. You think we choose our jobs. Did you choose your own?”

  “Take that back, it’s not bad that dirty piss of dirty yankee facho.”

  “All right.”

  Julien Sorel ordered two more Jack Daniels, explaining to Peter that it was Faulkner’s favourite whisky: but Peter was turning around to see who was coming in and leaving behnd them, and didn’t hear. He saw though that his glass was now full, and whistled at it, gesturing:

  “So, you’re a boozer, eh, cop?” he said.

  “Everyone drinks, you have to live well,” said Julien.

  The red lights were now giving them the faces of furies. But calm ones.

  “No, that’s rubbish. That’s not life. It’s not that at all.”

  “No, for sure,” said Julien. “You know, it was a shame just now, There were too many people around you. Otherwise you and I…”

  “My balls,” groaned Peter, standing up. “Your mouth is fucked up. It doesn’t fool me. Don’t lie to me. No, poor little shitty cop. No, so tell me frankly what you want.”

  Julien Sorel sensed that Peter was ripe.

  “Brisset’s last patient. Who was it?”

  “Well that fucker Renou, lousy fool!” cried Peter, who in his movement of indignation lost his equilibrium, tried to catch onto a little table, knocked it over and fell to the floor.

  Julien helped him gently back. Monseigneur Renou was the archbishop of V___.

  XXI

  “I’ve discovered something strange,” declared Inspector Sorel in a triumphant tone, as he sat down in the big boss’s office.

  Sorel had dared to put on a canary yellow shirt, a crushed strawberry tie, and a turquoise blazer, over a discreet pair of black trousers. Superintendent Renal weighed him up with irony:

  “Something strange?” she repeated. “Really? I suppose it’s a parrot. He seems to have a very original air. Does he talk, my boy?”

  The inspector ignored this reference to his clothing. He was going to show the boss that the balloon had moved.

  “Archbishop Renou,” he replied.

  “Archbishop… Ah, I understand,” said la Renal. “My congratulations, Mr. Sorel. I see that now we no longer have anything to hide from each other.”

  Sorel uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again the other way round. He waited. The superintendent was meditating, her face impassive.

  The silence continued rather a long time, even. In the end Sorel risked saying:

  “Frankly, madam, I would have thought that the patients who were hidde
n from me were more important than that. Ministers, I don’t know… a president of the Cabinet. But a vicar… I find that much mystery has been made about nothing very important.”

  Relieved, superintendent Renal sat back in her pivoting cheir, and smiled:

  “Not a vicar, my boy. An archbishop. One of the best families of France. Few men of the Church have more connections than he. Monseigneur… well, you know who, is utterly untouchable. Professor Brisset had several patients of the same type. Do you understand, Sorel? Not the sort of importance that makes a fuss in the newspapers. No. Nothing like that. No: the untouchables, get that word into your skull.”

  “Yes. That exists, does it, in a republic?”

  “We haven’t guillotined many of our kings since Louis XVI,” laughed the superintendent.

  “Nor even any minor royal wrens,” remarked Julien Sorel, inspired.

  “Obviously you like birds,” said Madame Renal. “The colour of your tie would appeal to me a lot, in a shirt shop… But may I know for which investigation you’ve disguised yourself as an ara? If it’s with the intenton of going off to interrogate Monseigneur, um, I fear you will not be well received.”

  “Do you mean to say that, were I to change my clothes, he would receive me?” asked Sorel, very surprised.

  “But why not? In our times, my boy, throwing people out is no longer the done thing. One always accepts a visitor. But simply, there are a thousand and one ways of receiving, and I will be astonished if the one you get pleases you…”

  “Fine, madam; do I try, or not?”

  “Try, inspector. Try! But on that point, no more violet vests, I implore you. And your trousers are too tight.”

  XXII

  Monseigneur Renou made a very agreeable impression on Julien Sorel.

  He was forty-seven years old, but did not look more than thirty-five. Slim, rather muscular, of medium height, with a comely face, Monseigneur Renou was a man both simple and affable, whose eyes radiated both intelligence and cordiality. He was wearing a plain grey suit and a pullover with a white roll neck. Only a ruby on his finger, mounted on a rich golden ring, marked out his special status.

  “I wanted to speak to you without delay,” he told Sorel. “This death has crushed me profoundly, as it has discomposed all those who knew and loved Professor Brisset.”

  Sorel gave no answer: he had just been thinking that, for a man who so much loved Brisset, the archbishop had remained very quiet when the psychiatrist bad been killed.

  “Had you been seeing the professor for long?” Inspector Sorel asked in the end.

  “No, actually no. Last winter I had been suffering from overwork, insomnia, and minor nervous troubles. I was recommended to consult Professor Brisset. I made an appointment. I discovered an excellent man and an unmatched practitioner. I wanted to be cured quickly: I don’t have the time to be ill. The professor thought that if we had frequent conversations that would be more effective than any medication: and he was right, inspector. In my duties, the responsibilities, that I have, one is condemned to a certain form of solitude, of silence.”

  “I have been told that Professor Brisset was extremely anticlerical,” ventured Sorel timidly.

  Monseigneur Renou smiled:

  “A doctor does not judge his patients, inspector. And I, for my part, have a profound and sad tenderness towards unbelievers. Clearly we never discussed religion, nor the church, nor God. For a rather strained nervous system, it would be useless, I think, to move Heaven and earth.”

  “Was your treatment complete at the time when the professor was the victim of that…”

  “That distressing act. Your question is rather indiscreet! You know, I was not exactly ill, and in the end I took an extreme pleasure in those conversations with a man of such rare intelligence. We live regrettably in an age when beings hardly listen to one another.”

  Julien, who was rather disgusted by this preachy talk, decided to go into the attack:

  “So, Monseigneur, you were the last of Professor Brisset’s patients. The last to see him alive.”

  “Yes,” replied Archbishop Renou drily.

  “…And, according to the autopsy report, the time of his death and the time of your departure could exactly coincide.”

  Renou gritted his teeth, stroked a cheek, and then abruptly relaxed and smiled:

  “I see your problem, inspector. And I willingly pardon your impertinence. Here is my answer, which will be formal and will not change: I had no part in the death of Professor Brisset. We will finish our conversation there, if you please.”

  XXIII

  “Look,” said Gabriel, “you can take it back, it’s too big! Much too big! Two people will fit in that. It’s not the right size. You never looked at it, upon my word!”

  He threw the tiny rose-salmon slip onto Julien’s knees. Julien picked it up and unfolded it.

  “I didn’t calculate well,” he admitted. “But I assure you that for ladies they don’t make them any smaller. Besides, I ask myself which woman could wear that one. It would cover only a quarter of their bum. Women’s bums give me the horrors!”

  He grimaced in exaggeration. Gabriel shrugged his shoulders:

  “When one doesn’t like women, one has no liking of their bums. You understand nothing about that, of course. Come on, sit down, it must be ready. I warn you that everything is spoilt, my mind was elsewhere.”

  Gabriel brought a deep-frozen quiche lorraine, which he had cooked in the oven.

  “It’s true that you’re in a strange mood, pal.” said Julien, looking hungry.

  “I have no appetite. It’s bothering me.”

  “If you tell me?… Is it because of the slip?”

  “Pff. What’s that got to do with me? They’re all the same, cows. Another one, at Square Baudelaire, slipped through my paws. Time-wasters, yes. No, Julien, that’s not it. Nothing to do with those bitches.”

  Julien filled the wine glasses, like an attentive husband. He gorged himself on the quiche; he adored the burnt cream; but he forced himself to retain a caring and compassionate attitude. He said:

  “It’s some time since you did any letter copying, Gabriel. That’s been bothering me, but I didn’t dare question you about it.”

  “You’re drinking too much at the moment, old chap,” replied Gabriel distractedly.

  Julien took some more wine. Lorsange, though, had not touched his glass. He had never been much of a drinker.

  “Fatigue,” said Julien. “I’m knackered. Always the same investigation. It never ends. I’ve no talent. I’m rubbish.”

  Gabriel got up, took away the remains of the quiche and put them in the bin; Julien had eaten mostly crust and left the gummy part. They would not buy it again.

  “Since you manage to understand that, it means you’re a talented cop!” said Lorsange, placing a burning dish on the table. Julien glanced at it.

  “You exaggerate, Gaby, it’s very clear what it is.”

  Stuffed tomatoes; full of water, they had burst.

  “And the stuffing is a pure stew thing. The butcher is fed up with me. He makes this for the celebs, I bet you.”

  “I’m dying of hunger. When I’ve got the blues I stuff myself up to the ears, I eat everything! I’m not like you,” said Julien. “You must try, Gaby. That smells good. Perhaps that will revive you.”

  “But I’m not depressed,” said Gabriel de Lorsange. “Absolutely not.”

  “You made a start with the profession of killer, then. Is that it? Gaby. I sense that that’s it. You’ve accepted. You’ve knocked some fellow off. Gaby. I have a right to know the truth. We don’t hide anything from each other, Gaby. Are you a killer?”

  “No,” said Gabriel. “I didn’t take it up. I swear to you. No, Julien, it’s much worse than that.”

  “Worse than that? You’re driving me crazy. Tell me, I beg you!”

  Despite this pathos, Julien Sorel had been busily mixing on his plate crushed stuffing, tomatoes in gruel, and tomato juice w
ith yeux gras: he relished the whole, and mixed it with strong mustard. The result pleased him. He borrowed the serving spoon to make the mixture firmer.

  “Worse than anything,” Gabriel said at last. “Listen to me, Julien: I’m going into the theatre.”

  Julien stopped eating, and gazed at him in stupefaction, then got up enthusiastically and came over to embrace Gabriel and throw him to the floor.

  “The theatre! That’s sensational! That’s formidable! Gabriel! My big kid! It’s what I’ve always dreamed of for you!”

  “Not at all,” said Gabriel, who did not share any part of the elation of Julien, whom he pushed gently away. The policeman sat down again.

  “It’s a dirty business,” Gabriel went on. “A real trap.”

  “But why?”

  “Firstly, there’s a fellow I’m obliged to fuck every time I go there, a stage-manager, or director, I don’t know what… and then a silly actress, in her sixties, who makes passes at me round every corner,.. and then, Julien, you won’t be able to imagine this, but I get stage-fright! It’s not the part they gave me, normally any one could play it as well as me. No. I’m frightened, quite simply. I’m full of fright. Worse than if some one was shooting at me.”

  “But the part? What are you playing?”

  “Wait on,” murmured Gabriel, alerted. “I used the hot oven, and there’s a tart cooking.”

  “Bugger the tart!” objected Sorel.

  Gabriel opened his eyes wide in resignation:

  “All right. It’s evening, in an inn. There are people who come in, and then they talk. I don’t remember what they talk about. They’re the actors. There are five of us, we’re behind, we’re the customers. Two of them are eating, it’s in the seventeenth century you understand. And the other three are sleeping, they’re on benches, either that or on the floor. I’m sleeping, right. They put me on a big cross-bench. It’s in the costume of that era. Julien! and I have to snore non-stop. Very loudly. I’m the only one that can be heard, Juju, just me! So you can understand how scared I am.”