My Chocolate Redeemer (28 page)

My Uncle Claude takes my arm and leads me over to one of the tables under the chestnut trees where, like all the other guests, we sit as if waiting for service.

‘You did this, didn't you? You set fire to the hotel.'

‘For the moment,' says my uncle with hateful, heavy calm, ‘your chocolate friend is in the position of the cat in the paradox to which the physicist Schrödinger gave his name over half a century ago. This paradox goes as follows. The cat (for which in this case read Redeemer) is put into a sealed box (for which read Priory Hotel). No one can see inside the box or open it, or in any way affect what will happen when the pellet of poison drops (for which read fire).'

‘Poison?'

‘Yes, a pellet of cyanide is suspended above a beaker of hydrochloric acid inside the box.'

‘With the cat?'

‘Exactly. Also inside the box is a radioactive element which, within the hour, may or may not send out a signal. If it does the pellet drops and the cat dies. If it doesn't, the cat lives.'

‘Two worlds?'

He nods. ‘Parallel worlds. If our observer discovered a dead cat then he and the late pussy constitute one possible world. This is what we call the observer effect. Quantum mechanics means that things keep flowing until we look at them, and when we look at them they stop. The host of possible universes simply flows on and the flow is everything until it's arrested by the observation of the enquiring human.'

‘So in another world the cat may live happily ever after?'

‘Yes.'

‘In other words we only find out about something when we interrupt?'

‘Quite so. But when we interrupt, the experiment is over. We've painted ourselves into the picture.'

I can see the firemen moving about through the smoke. They have broken a window on the second floor and a stream of smouldering, charred debris rains down. Chairs, books, pictures spattered with mud, sodden with water. The leather-bound books have a greasy brown look to them, like smoked mackerel, their pages licked into charred solid blocks and yet I recognise them easily despite this disfigurement. Here are the lives of the great dictators, Caesar, Hitler, Alexander the Great and Mussolini. And here also are the pictures of his musical wives: Viola, Tympany, Harp and Dulcimer, smiling bravely through cracked, seared, mud-flecked glass.

‘Have you found anything?' I call to the fireman at the window.

‘Nothing yet.'

‘They're all naked,' old Laveur whistles as he inspects the Redeemer's wives. ‘Come here Etienne,' he calls the butcher Brest, who splashes through the puddles and whistles his astonishment. ‘I think the monster enjoyed white meat,' Laveur says.

‘Pork above chicken if you ask me,' is Brest's opinion.

Old Granny Gramus, with the pointy chin and the copper sulphate eyes, speaks for all when she observes, ‘I believe it's an affliction of savages to be haunted by human flesh.'

The De La Salle sisters say nothing but I think they ought to pull their skirts over their heads and give way to wailing and keening.

‘These are pictures of his wives,' I explain carefully. ‘What you are actually looking at are photographs based on paintings by famous artists. French artists, some of them!'

Uncle Claude stands beside me and begins turning over the pictures and books with his toe as if they are little corpses, small dead bodies of squirrels or gophers or rats. ‘Yes, it does rather look as if these pictures are influenced by a number of European artistic styles. Isn't this Degas? This lady with her cheek turned to us while she dries herself with a towel?'

‘Yes, that's his first wife, Viola, posing in the manner of the Degas painting of a woman drying herself after her bath. You must have seen it on postcards. He has even gone to the trouble of getting an old tin bath. Next to her is Tympany, she's portrayed as a Roman Venus.'

We all look down on Tympany.

‘She looks more of a stocky German type, to me,' says the butcher Brest. ‘There are several hectares of flesh.'

‘At least she uses her hand to cover herself,' says Granny Gramus.

‘She's modelled on what was called the
Venus Pudica
.'

‘
Pudica
? I'll say.' Laveur laughs and the others join him. ‘Obviously some kind of African joke! Who would have thought that the chocolate one kept all this in his little room. I must say his taste is not bad, if somewhat florid. I prefer my cheese a little firmer than this.'

‘The word
Pudica
means “modest” – in Latin,' I tell Laveur.

‘Oh yes? Doesn't look very modest to me,' says Laveur.

‘It's very interesting. What we have here is a copy of a copy of a copy,' says Uncle Claude. ‘We see a photograph of a modern woman posing for a painting in the attitude of an idealised Greek goddess.' He turns another picture with his delicate little toe. ‘And who's this? She's more modest.'

‘Dulcimer, wife number two. She's a copy of St Ursula, a carving made by somebody called the Master of Elsloo in the early sixteenth century.'

‘A saint? In a blouse like that?' Now it's the turn of the elder of the De La Salle sisters, a woman so frail and thin, dressed in white lace which shakes when she speaks like the feathery, flimsy wings of flying ants.

‘I like the detail on this one,' says the butcher Brest as Uncle Claude unearths another picture. ‘I think her wings are actually very good. They look like real feathers. Are they real feathers? I'd guess at goose though of course they may be duck. Who is she, Bella?'

‘That's Harp, his third wife. She's seen here as Venus, after a painting by Correggio called
Mercury Instructing Cupid Before Venus.
'

‘Hey, that's him, the one in the funny hat, the jockey hat, that's the black fellow!' says old Laveur in astonishment. ‘And who's the little kid also with the wings?'

‘That's one of his sons. Playing Cupid,' I tell him.

‘I think it's the flesh that really catches your eye,' says the younger of the De La Salle sisters to the butcher Brest. ‘Let's be frank about this. We're all grown people. These so-called classical poses that painters talk these girls into are nothing more than disguises through which the audience of males look on. Voyeurs! That's what they're meant for! By dressing up a whore as the goddess Venus you can gape all you like under the cloak of culture.'

The butcher Brest has gone a muddy brown colour and is breathing hard. ‘I'd like you to know, Mademoiselle De La Salle and Monsieur le Maire, that what interests me about this picture is the question of accuracy – is it goose feathers or duck? I take pleasure from the accurate identification of such things, feathers, fur, flesh. It's my trade. I handle them daily. The very last thing to arouse me is the sight of flesh. A moment's thought will show you why. Butchers are like mortuary attendants. I suppose like painters too. They look on things in death all the time and death is cold and naked. I have a professional interest! May I take another look at the Venus? I think now they are probably duck feathers.'

But my uncle isn't listening, he is pulling at his lips as if he has swallowed something acid and it won't go down, or it has gone down and threatens to come straight up again.

‘Bella, what does this mean?'

And there in the mud I lie, at the end of Uncle Claude's pointed toe. It's the photograph the Redeemer took of me on the hot afternoon, when, despite the heat, he'd insisted on making a fire in the grate. I recline on the little green chaise longue. To my left the window with the curtain drawn back lets in the fierce lake light. At the corner of the window stands a small brown table carrying a white basin. My right arm drops over the edge of the chair, fingers extending almost to the green carpet. I can feel it now under my fingers as I look at myself, I can feel it like a skin or a fur, it is almost as if I can touch the short woollen hair of the green carpet straining upwards the way real hair does when it's charged with static electricity. My uncle and the others are staring at my open dress, at the bodice cut low, falling off the right shoulder. They're staring as well at my raised left knee climbing from my skirt. How flat my shoes look, and white. The fire warms my legs. I remember feeling the heat along the insides of my thighs. The little mirror I hold in my hand shows me the clouds drifting past the open window behind me, drifting past my face which is quiet and composed. Over to my right, kneeling on one leg before the fire which he is working up into a terrific blaze, is the Redeemer. He has his back to me and he ripples inside his dark red shirt as he feeds the flames with his left hand. His right hand holds the edge of the mantelpiece for support.

‘Always use your left hand to feed yourself,' I remember him telling me. ‘That at least is the custom in my country.'

And he uses his left hand to feed the fire.

Hot to the touch!

My uncle's voice is a wounded bellow:

‘Four wives he has – Viola, Tympany, Harp, Dulcimer – and now Bella! Wife number five!'

Disgust is a wonderful diversion. At first Uncle Claude doesn't notice the chattering, smoke-stained firefighters heading for their engine, stowing their hoses, gathering equipment. Only a few are left in the house punching holes in the windows. But clearly the worst is over. They're not looking for anyone. The people at the gate are moving off. Now the Angel and Father Duval are conferring anxiously with the firemen. The people in the Renault, the Citroën and the Deux-Chevaux have noticed. Look at the way they're yelling down their radios which, for once, they don't bother to hide. It's really exciting. I put on my earphones and stick a tape in the cassette, one of those dreamier numbers from an outfit called Jurassic, they've got these lovely, sliding, sucking rhythms that make you think of, oh, Father Christmas in petticoats, or the Pope in drag. And I'm so happy! It's at times like this when I can profess my love for you! It's miracle time. Do you hear? I can say now that there is you and only you and never a stand-in. You alone – you do all your own stunts!

Uncle Claude's noticed at last. He begins yelling at the firemen, ‘What do you mean he's not here? Are you telling me he melted maybe – and slipped through the cracks and disappeared? He
has
to be here. He can't be anywhere else!'

In the midst of all this the De La Salle sisters and the butcher Brest continue to argue.

‘The trouble with the women in these paintings,' complains the older De La Salle sister, ‘is that they know they're being looked at.'

‘You mean they want to be looked at?' Brest rejoins.

‘I mean they're painted by men for men. They show so much of themselves. If this weren't art, it would be disgusting.'

‘You are among nature's natural killers, Madame,' says Brest.

‘By men for men,' the De La Salle sister repeats.

This brings out the worst in Brest, or perhaps the best. He looks down at the portrait of the Redeemer and Harp as Mercury and Venus, and he licks his lips. ‘Do you know what this picture makes me feel, Madame? It makes me hungry, look at that flesh, the texture, it's like milk – you want to taste it!'

I think I'd like to record just what I told my uncle on this score. You'll see the particular advances I've been making in my study of particle physics, now that I've got the hang of it, now that I realise that the point about it is to make predictions which later experimental evidence will confirm. I offer the following on the subject of Schrödinger's cat, as explained to Uncle Claude:

‘Perhaps we've just added something to the history of particle physics. Maybe there are not just two parallel worlds with the cat and the observer alive in one world and dead in the other. Perhaps today we've stepped through a hole into a third world, a new dimension. Because when you think about it there aren't just two possibilities facing the cat, are there? It's not just a question of whether the radioactive element fires, the cyanide pellet drops into the acid and you get one dead cat – or if it doesn't, you don't. That's to say it's not a question of either/or, either the cat's alive or it's dead. There is another alternative which I'm surprised nobody's thought of until now: when the scientists inspect the box maybe there's no cat at all.'

‘Bella,' says my uncle speaking through his teeth. ‘There is
always
a cat. The only question is – alive or dead?'

‘Or escaped?'

Axe blades smash through wood and glass with a dry coughing sound and the splinters of glass land on the pavement below. Wherever a hole appears in a window, smoke pours out while we wait and watch. Many of the tables still have drinks on them, cocktails smelling slightly of peppermint, doubtless Emile's
coupe maison
, now returning to its original constituents which show up as different bands of colour in the large beakers Emile favours for his evening libations.

We suffer and our works look on; these drinks, the menus at the front gate, the very appearance of the tables beneath the trees all insist on business as usual. We make our engines and set them going. But when disaster strikes and removes the makers our works continue as if nothing has happened, go on inviting us to pleasure, or advertising happiness, mocking our expectations, our sheer bloody nerve. You started this, they say. Don't you still want to play? And this will happen on a much bigger scale one day, when our sun runs out of fuel and expands and roasts us all. Our engines will go on running, powered by varieties of energy as yet unthought of; they will play our tunes and show our pictures and talk to each other along their super-cooled ceramic synapses, telling the time, checking our credit ratings, measuring the weather which, by then, will have proved terminal. Even our cheapest music will survive us because it will doubtless have been taught to compose itself and will go on doing so; there will be singing robots, and brighter versions of groups like Oedema and Giuseppe and the Lambs will go on belting out their stuff to the stars as the noisy planet, lights blinking, floats through space like some deserted ship, a
Marie Celeste
of the solar system, music blasting out, television on and the trains still running for years, decades, after we have departed.