Read the second installment.

CHAPTER VII

…The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate. But precisely because this is so it appears in one respect to be truly sagacious compared with us, namely in its peaceful, untroubled enjoyment of the present: its obvious composure often puts to shame our own frequently restless and discontented condition.

"That's me all right," said Dudu, and laid the slim volume of Schopenhauer's essays down once again in his lap.

For days Dudu had been pouring over On the Suffering of the World, which some student no doubt had left on the beach, determined to find some equation between his own dismal view of mankind and young Arthur Schopenhauer's. Flipping to the very front of the volume, as he had done countless times before, Dudu stared into the eyes of the neophyte philosopher: the engraver who in 1851 had rendered Arthur's image had given especial attention to the cherubic curls that wreathed the gentle head, as he had the sensual fullness of the mouth, but where one might have expected to find laughing eyes of an equal delicacy, one found two black conduits daring the reader to peer deeply into a world of an unimaginably vital pessimism. Dudu knew he hadn't glimpsed anything as yet within himself equal to this man's resolve.

He left the volume on the chaise upon which he had been sunning himself and went to stand at the far end of the balcony, where he could gaze diagonally across the street at the adjacent hotel. The windows of the suite on the corner a floor below theirs--rooms Golden Lamb retained for visiting business associates--were open. Dudu couldn't recall who had arrived most recently in Nice to sit, however briefly, at the court of Hugo. The loathsome Jerome Lombardi, idolater of his own involute ego, had decided against temporary quarters there, preferring a small flat of his own on a quieter street several blocks away. So what was Violette Desroches, whom Dudu knew to be engaged in an amour fou with Lombardi, doing standing at the window in the middle of the afternoon without any clothes on?

She shrieked and turned, her bottom imprinted redly with the hand of an unruly playmate. Violette was so like a child, as de Hauteville often said, but Dudu no longer found her immaturity as tedious as he once had. She had lately been endeared to him by her vulnerability and by the numbing confusion, unfailingly misread by others as dazed nonchalance, that compelled her to seek the attention of so many unworthy men. For Dudu, women were like trusting pets, constantly abused by their masters. He had occasionally felt the same about himself, only he had the strength and the cunning to infect those who held dominion over him with a sense of their own helplessness. Yes, perhaps they weren't so unlike. Perhaps Dudu had more in common with Violette than he was willing to admit. She was standing at the window again, smiling to herself.

That night, when he prayed, Dudu would again ask God to forgive him for so consistently misinterpreting life in its magnificent diversity. He would also ask Him to light the way, as He had for His only begotten Son, out of the dissolute quagmire of civilisation and into the wilderness of his own soul: when standing in that dark forest echoing with the plaintive cries of nature's kindred vanquished, Dudu knew himself to be capable of the purest and most unselfish acts of heroism.

Still gazing at the open window across the way, Dudu was mildly surprised to see Violette retreat from view and Charles Billingsley, Lady Duckworth's solicitor, step briefly into the sunlight, his nubbin of a penis protruding from between the pleats of his trousers as he brusquely closed the drapes.

*

The gates of Marseilles' most beautiful public garden were opened on Saturday after being closed for nearly a month. The racecourse rang with the cheers of three thousand spectators. The lake, freshly cleaned by the very newest vacuum apparatus, was filled with toy sailing boats and waders. Even the Chateau Borély and adjacent Musée d'Archéologie reported rec ord attendance by the end of the day. One would have thought that things had returned to normal on the Promenade de la Plage but, according to our reporter Phillipe Fraissinet, this was not the case. Fraissinet found an abundance of people who--because they carried binoculars and zoological books--initially appeared to be bird-watchers. But when he questioned them, he found they were not bird-watchers at all, but "Joey Watchers." "Joey Watching," apparently, is now all the rage. Maria Marchetti, aged eleven, said: "We believe that Joey is still alive. The police want us to believe that he's dead because they're tired of looking for him. But it just proves how smart Joey is." When another "Joey Watcher," who refused to be identified, was asked why he was throwing peanuts into the flowerbeds, he said: "For Joey. Them's Joey's peanuts."

Jerome's eyes misted over. The sympathetic faces he saw beaming out from the swamp of tiny black characters filled him with hope. Only that morning he had awakened with a start, having dreamt of Joey being led up a rickety set of steps to a miniature guillotine. Jerome lay the newspaper on the bar and gazed out the windows of the café onto what was surely the narrowest street in all of Nice. It was dark and safe in the café, while in the street every surface radiated anxiety. On a Sunday, no vehicle was allowed to block the alleyway before La Puce, and only those people who lived above the shops were seen passing, many of whom gathered casually on the little square before the Chapel of St. Giaume across from Jerome's flat for much of the day. As a boy he had often stood in such decrepit alleyways amongst the poor, the harsh sunlight turning their faces a glaring yellow, their eye-sockets an ultraviolet blue. This was how it had been in Marseilles, the city motionless and burnt raw on an August afternoon. Possibly only Duckie Duckworth could appreciate the poetry, abjectly empty and fragmented, that had consumed Jerome in that wearying place. Duckie had described Croydon, where she had gone alone on the train from Newcastle occasionally to visit her Aunt Helen, in terms antithetical but surprisingly similar to those Jerome would have used to describe Marseilles: the confusing sameness of various lightless neighbourhoods; valleys of wet atmosphere sliding over the streets; indistinct figures crowded damply together in the distance, then mysteriously retreating and dispersing with the swiftness of swallows; trees erupting like great dripping mops over walled sanctuaries. If one were to take away the water essential to these images, leaving only the bitter dryness of parched cloth, plaster, bolsters of dust, and spined leaves, one would have the environs of Les Quatre Chemins. Only the Jardin Zoologique had offered Jerome sufficient distraction to keep him from hiding from the world altogether.

Jerome remembered the Boulevard Cassini which divided the welcoming shadows of the Jardin Zoologique with a wide shock of white pavement. He remembered running from one end to the other like a terrified angel rushing to escape the fires of hell. Again, he felt his head thrust forward, arms thrust back, knees pumping nearly high enough to graze his chin. Tearing through the heat, hair flinging perspiration, eyes fierce and fuming as if he were about to leap blindly upon anyone in his path, Jerome had wanted to frighten only himself: with an unrestrained exuberance he would exhaust the ephemera that alighted upon him anywhere he sat or stood, like the fleas that infested the monkeys in their filthy cages.

When he turned away to rest his eyes and gazed into the shadowy depths of La Puce, Jerome saw the street before the café etched in black against an oblong of softly luminescent mauve. Turning back, his line of vision was immediately broken by Violette entering the café. As she drew closer, he realised that the bruise about her eye, dusted over liberally with flesh-coloured powder, could only be the result of a vicious blow intended to punish.

Violette lifted Jerome's glass from the bar, held it under her nose, and sniffed. "Calvados--yes, fine."

Jerome gestured for the owner Tontini to serve them. "Perhaps I shouldn't ask."

"Why not?" Violette replied, impatiently tapping the bar.

Jerome was silent. Tontini set a fresh glass on the bar for Violette and poured. Violette drank without relent. She stared at the empty glass. Tontini filled it again. Again she drank, then took a cigarette from her case, which Tontini lit. Jerome nodded "thank you," while Violette simply stared at Tontini until he left.

"It's what I want," she said. "I like having something to remember such occasions by. Something tender..." Violette went on in this vein for a good ten minutes, lighting each new cigarette with the one before. "So you see," she summed up, "contrary to your sentimental view of such matters, it hasn't anything to do whatsoever with whether I deserve it or not. Simply enough, it suits me." Suddenly indignant, she exhaled and added, "With whom? You're supposed to ask--with whom?!"

"Sorry. I was just thinking," said Jerome, "I was just thinking how awful it is for anyone to harm such a helpless little creature."

"I'm not quite so helpless as you might like to think."

"I didn't say that."

"You know, not everyone knows how to suffer quite so convincingly as you, and maybe they don't care to. I thought we were going for an early dinner. If you're too upset, I can do without." Violette stared out into the street, then placed her hand affectionately over Jerome's. "How do you know it wasn't Billingsley?"

Jerome stared at her, appalled.

"The Count's not the only so-called aristocrat who beggars the mind with his brutish stupidity." Violette smiled at Tontini and turned to leave, so that Jerome was obliged to follow her out into the street.

Billingsley looked tired. The Count knew he had been with Violette and was curious to know what he thought of her.

"Fancy a drink?" he asked, liking the babyish softness of the man, especially when compared with his own pithy thickness.

"Oh, indeed. I can't ever seem to drink enough in the aftermath of a great encounter. I've always been prone to hysteria after communing joyously with a woman."

As their taxi turned inland, away from the Baie des Anges, ostensibly in the direction of La Victoirine, the Count spied a small bar, one run by Algerians.

"Driver, here!" he ordered.

"Where?" asked the driver. "Not here?"

"You can fuck your mother's apples if you like," answered the Count, in his terrible French. "Yes, here."

Billinsgley gazed wanly from the cab at the façade of the shabby building. The sun, setting behind them in the harbour, now sent its last weak puffs of light, like an indolent lady's misspent powder, past the blasted corner and down the improbable alleyway that was their destination.

"I shouldn't think we'd find a very good drink here," offered Billingsley. "Really, it's not our sort of place. Is it?"

"It'll do," said the Count.

As they made their way from the taxi, through the children littering the pavement, and into the premises, where several grimy fans slowly clack-clacked overhead, the Count smugly informed Billingsley of his notoriety in that place:

"These are not simple people, as you might think. They are highly sophisticated. They understand what a man needs to quench his less civilised appetites."

"Ah," ventured Billingsley, "a few glasses of their generic spirits. I mean, what they themselves drink."

"Thirst is one thing," laughed the Count, "but the need to feel the liquid of a living body coursing through one's fingers is quite another!"

Billinsgley did not know what he meant, but nevertheless followed after him. The Count situated them at a table well back in the long blue-tiled room.

Looking around distractedly, Billingsley asked, "Do you come here often?"

"When the need possesses me," said the Count, and signalled for one of the Arabs behind the bar to serve them. "You'll only get tea here. I have the vodka in my bag."

"Oh," said Billinsgley, eyes searching.

Eventually, when the Count was quite satisfied with Billingsley's need, he brought out the bottle.

"Oh, go ahead, Charles, take it," scoffed the Count. "I've been there myself. That cunt can leave you wanting a lot more than drink."

Elbows wobbling on the table, the distraught man drank.

The Count ordered tea.

"Yes, that is good," grunted Billingsley, between deepening swallows.

When Billinsgley had finally calmed himself with a sufficiency of the vodka, he leaned affectionately into the Count and whispered, "She strikes me as being rather demented."

"I would have thought that was her foremost attraction!" the Count guffawed. "Surely you took the same pleasure in abusing her as the rest of us..."

"Oh, I don't believe I treated her quite that harshly," offered Billingsley.

"But it's what she likes," the Count assured him. "They all do. Only with some, one has to be a bit more debonair. One has to appear to be a little worried. But it's the worry in their eyes that serves to fully satisfy. With Violette, one never sees enough worry. Had I been her father, I would have taken my beautiful daughter out into the garden. I would have made her work. She would have learned to fear and respect me. There on her hands and knees, she would have learned to obey. Thus, one's desire comes. We inflict ourselves upon the useless bodies of these spoiled and arrogant children and their minds eventually become subservient to our own. They come to appreciate our desire, they succumb to our sovereignty..."

Billinsgley couldn't understand half of what the Count was saying, his language was just that archaic; it was an aberrative form of Billingsley's own, one that certainly hadn't been affected at either Oxford or Cambridge.

Realising he had gone off on a solitary flight of his own, the Count sought to hide his embarrassment. "In London, Hugo and I knew a delightful little girl named Morag who hadn't any idea what she was playing at. It cost her her life. Very sad indeed. "

"What happened?" Billingsley blearily inquired.

Strangely, the Count was blushing. "It couldn't be helped. One just gets carried away, doesn't one?"

"I wouldn't go on like that if I were you," Billingsley replied.

"So, you're not interested in what the Arab has to offer?" the Count chided him.

"I didn't say that," Billingsley stuttered out, then took up the vodka. "Don't worry, we can have another bottle fetched over from the Negresco."

Violette returned from powdering her nose. Beyond her advancing figure, the street outside the restaurant was now sunk in dusk. Their lunch had gone badly, as Jerome, his deepening concern for Violette eliciting nothing but ridicule, had drunk too much and become uncharacteristically acerbic. His cynicism, he accepted, was a direct result of his inability to reconcile himself to such an unreceptive attitude on the part of someone with whom he was intimately involved. Then there was the issue of her complete lack of interest in the fate of Fontana's monkey.

"How about a little Joey of your own?" he asked, as Violette slid in next to him on the banquette.

"I'm not about to carry out of wedlock," snapped Violette, "and I'm not about to ruin my prospects--which are absolutely swell at the moment--because of one little runt."

"What if the 'little runt' turned out to be exceptional?" Jerome pressed on.

"What bastard isn't?"

"I'm not talking about you factoring anything as mundane as a foetus. Not a human foetus," Jerome explained, solemnly.

Violette regarded him suspiciously. Rumours were stirring among the cast at La Victoirine that Lombardi was disassociative. He had himself complained of Duckie nagging him to see a doctor for his depression, as if this were such an outrageous idea. Violette glanced around La Croix du Mouton, hoping that no one of any consequence in Nice had overheard their conversation. The atmosphere in the restaurant was hazy with tobacco smoke and steam from the kitchen, and Violette felt the moisture gathering once more on her upper lip. As Jerome waited for her to respond, Violette felt the room closing in on her.

"Bishop Feydeau has taken it upon himself to bless all nine of the wondrous events to come," she dimly heard Jerome saying. "And the young mothers-to-be, who were only infants themselves ten weeks ago, are now wearing pretty little sundresses that would easily fit children of three or four years."

Jerome's mouth looked to be shaped in a smile at one moment and a grimace the next. As Violette drew closer to his face, trying to separate the sounds he was making from the sounds swarming over her from everywhere in La Croix du Mouton, she was overcome by a sense of déja vu. In the Church of St. Martin and St. Augustin, when she was just nine, Violette had gazed upon a depiction of the baby Jesus pinching his Mother's nipple as if picking a grape, but it was Jerome's precious monkey she now saw tormenting the Holy Mother's breast with delight. More perplexing still was the extended rush of pleasure she, the unworthy Violette Desroches, felt coursing sublimely throughout her entire body.

"My body has been made impure by men like you," came softly from her, as she swooned against Jerome's shoulder.

CHAPTER VIII

As his taxi passed the Negresco, each prominent architectural detail articulated in the night by strings of sparkling lights, Jerome glimpsed Duckie waiting under the hotel's canopy for a taxi of her own. As always in public, day or night, she wore her sunglasses. Jerome sped on to his flat across the square from the Chapel of St. Giaume, where Duckie would be joining him momentarily to discuss the changes he wanted to the script.

There wasn't sufficient time for a bath before Duckie arrived, so Jerome bathed his armpits and his feet--first tugging off socks damp with nervous perspiration--and splashed on a mixture of tap water and the cologne Violette had left behind the even ing before. Then the telephone rang. Jerome had a premonition it was his pal Delphine calling from Paris to ask if he were well, and whether he intended to abide by his contract with Golden Lamb, his last letter having voiced his dire misgivings about the morality of the enterprise. Raising the telephone to his ear, Jerome was prepared to be brief but grateful for her concern.

But it wasn't Delphine on the line, it was Violette, who said, "You know, I think I like you. If it makes any difference."

"It does," he replied.

"So we'll always be friends then, won't we? I've got to go now--pay-telephone."

There was the usual insect din, the connection terminated, and Jerome replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Duckie didn't knock. She breezed into the tiny barren living-room and threw her bulging leather bag onto the sofa.

"I imagine you left your script at the studio," she said, trying to decide whether she wanted to remove her hat and then have to go through the long arduous process of pinning it back onto her head or just--it was too much bother even to think about, so she glanced at herself in the mirror, making absolutely certain that she had in fact worn a hat.

"I don't need the script," said Jerome, fastening the cuffs of a fresh shirt while entering from the bedroom.

"You always look so nice," she said. "It must be your upbringing."

"Rather a bourgeois comment from a titled Lady, wouldn't you say?" Jerome went to open the window over-looking the square. The chapel at the far end of the square had its doors swung open. Myriad candles could be seen flickering in the gloom inside. Instantly the room filled with crisp salty air.

Ignoring Jerome's unchivalrous remark, Duckie admired the width of his back, the confidence of his movements, even the way his hair swept round the side of his head. "Brisk for a summer evening," she observed.

Now Jerome turned to address his misgivings about certain aspects of the script, but found Duckie slipping from the sofa. Once on the carpet, head struck back, heels pounding, she stuttered out, "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry..."

As her dress flew higher and her puckered white belly was bared, Jerome rushed into the kitchen. Suddenly remembering that, although let as furnished, the flat hadn't been supplied with cooking implements of any kind, he careered back towards the bedroom, hoping to find something there to wedge between Duckie's teeth. On the bedside table rested a Bible. It was small enough, but rather thick. Holding it hopefully in his hands, Jerome found that its cover was in an advanced state of disintegration. The crumbling leather would surely be gnawed to bits and rush into Duckie's windpipe. But what was he to do? Jerome rushed back into the living-room.

His wrist pressing down mightily on her forehead, Jerome tried his best not to break her nose, its bridge as fine and brittle as a clarinet reed, as he forced open her jaws and, with a gesture very like popping a slice of bread into a toaster, lodged the Bible between her teeth. Duckie immediately tore at it with her long fingernails. The pages flew in shreds about them. Her legs flew out and her heels kicked violently as if missing, again and again and again, the stirrups on her mount, run amuck, mouth foaming.

After this disconcerting event, which Duckie claimed had been predicated by a declaration of everlasting love by the Count, but which Jerome knew to be symptomatic of a tragic nervous disorder, they had briefly discussed only the film's ending, then gone on to dinner.

This had been Jerome's idea. He had even suggested that the Count join them, as such a congenial encounter, he had speculated lamely, might serve to dispel the acute anxiety with which Duckie was apparently infected. In reality, although Jerome was genuinely concerned about Duckie, he was more concerned about his own distracted state of mind, which had recently assumed an unrelieved greyness. He knew what malignant force of human nature had lowered this dismal cloud, but was too ashamed to admit it to anyone: he had become obsessed with Violette. Even Hugo de Hauteville, enlisting his most supreme powers of charm and cunning as his cast now progressed through rehearsal and on toward the first day of principal photography, failed consistently to enliven him. The other actors circling about him declaiming their lines, Jerome lay inertly, like a petulant sibling, upon his cot in the studio lounge. He could feel the hostility. Eventually they too would turn apathetic. When he was finally ready to put on Victor Didot's drab uniform, they wouldn't care whether he delivered his lines with conviction or not. But why should he feel obliged to take responsibility for this failure of spirit among his fellow-players? The fault was de Hauteville's. Hadn't it been the maestro's amorality that had convinced him of the amorality of the entire venture? So, dinner with Duckie and the Count, who always impressed him with their exceedingly own bleak outlook on life, seemed a good idea.

"He uses awfully much salt," Duckie remarked to Jerome, knowing the Count would be grateful for her concern.

"Pepper too," the Count assured her, wistfully.

As Jerome observed their behaviour, their eyes darting intermittently in his direction, he had the feeling that they both had already identified the malaise possessing him, perhaps even found it a topic for discussion. Had de Hauteville in his perversity revealed the premature union of Victor and Tati to them? Could it possibly matter to Duckie? And what of the Count's own distasteful dalliance with Violette? No, Jerome certainly wasn't about to confide in Duckie or the Count. Even if it had been a possibility--informing them with a sullen shrug that he had become helplessly fixated on the fledgling actress--it very likely would have only made matters worse.

"You really shouldn't spend quite so much time alone," said Duckie.

"Evidently, he never spends any leisure time with the other members of the cast," said the Count, as if Jerome weren't sitting there with them in La Croix du Mouton, the restaurant he had thoughtfully chosen for good luck.

"I'm preparing for my role as Victor. That's what I'm doing."

"Perhaps you should do more of that at the bloody moving pictures studios," said the Count.

"Or at least, please, give the appearance," Duckie added.

"I don't want to know them--the cast. Ask Hugo. He'll tell you. Familiarity and spontaneity simply can't co-exist in the minds of mediocre players like we have on board."

"Rather a privileged view, I'd say," said the Count.

"'Privileged' in what way?" Jerome asked.

"'Privileged' in that you know yourself to be superior and refuse to stoop to their level of contrivance," said Duckie, now blushing deeply.

"I'm sorry you feel this way." Jerome hadn't the strength, nor the will, to reassure them of his commitment to perfecting the role of Victor. "I suddenly feel very tired. Please, stay as late as you like, and have what you like. I'll no doubt see you both at the studio tomorrow."

Duckie, now extremely agitated and only wanting something stronger to drink, was unable to respond. The Count glanced up briefly, avoiding Jerome's gaze, and said, "Yes, perhaps that's for the best."

Jerome lay on his bed staring at the crumbling stucco wall across the alleyway. As he waited for Violette's knock on the door, he reflected on those events of the day which seemed to be most revealing of the complexity of his situation.

For instance, that morning he had heard the Count say, "I think she looks rather well in grey," commenting favourably on the drab sack the costumier had devised for Violette to wear in her scene with the ailing donkey. Jerome had seen the detestation swirl in Duckie's eyes as she had remarked, "No daughter of a fabulously wealthy orange plantation owner would wear such a thing." With that, the costumier had plucked an orange from his satchel and dropped it in Violette's pretty little hands. "Always contrast!" he snapped. "On the screen, it will read as a shimmering white globe, her sweet face hovering above. We will subconsciously identify her as the soothsayer she is revealed to be later in the picture! Oh my God!" Violette, naturally, had glowed with the attention.

Then, as usual, there was lunch at the Negresco. Jerome was growing tired of this ritual and had decided he would no longer say anything of consequence to de Hauteville about anyone associated with the production, neither would he reveal anything whatsoever about his affair with Violette. It had been chilly at the top of the hotel, a driving wet wind coming in off the sea. At that height, the balcony doors rattled. Dudu had laid a fire and moved the long table closer to the hearth. Noting that Jerome was especially quiet, and being in the mood for gossip, de Hauteville had started right in on his two favourite subjects.

According to him, Duckie and the Count sought their individual audiences with him more often now, unfailingly using the pretext of the production's various weaknesses, which were becoming more apparent every day, to gain entrance. Inevitably, each left the Negresco, having fretted for the better part of another evening over the other's anxieties, determined to end the unfulfilling intimacy they had somehow managed to sustain for so many years. But, de Hauteville assured Jerome, he would persist in playing Cupid, as this was one of his few simple joys in life. However, things had really got pretty bad. When de Hauteville had implored Duckie to try to appreciate that the Count had a functioning penis, like any other man, she had responded, "You must be joking. His escapades in Samoa have left him covered in warts." To which de Hauteville helpfully replied, "Surely they can be removed surgically." But Duckie had only sneered, "Not bloody likely, there wouldn't be anything left," snatched up her glass, and poured equal parts of its contents into her mouth and onto the rhinestone-studded collar of her jacket.

It certainly wasn't de Hauteville's intention to elicit such ugly consternation, he said, but Duckie and the Count had a gift for conjuring up the most dire and infantile emotion entirely on their own. If anything, he wanted to keep them striding dreamily onward in tandem, their eyes fixed on the ultimate confabulation of their empty lives: his masterpiece.

It occurred to Jerome that for de Hauteville he and Duckie and the Count now comprised a pliant triangle. Knowing the needs and desires of each, he tilted the triangle this way and that so that the little silver ball they all glimpsed from moment to moment never came to rest at any one point. And in the little silver ball, shining for all to see, was reflected the all too distracting form of Violette Desroches. Her mischief dancing gaily before them, de Hauteville would appear utterly enchanted and the triangle momentarily melt into the producer's silky palm. Then without warning, as if on some lunatic carnival ride, Jerome would find himself and Duckie and the Count all sliding helplessly one into the other.

Only Violette resisted the path to de Hauteville's door. As she put it, if she were to be approached again, to be scolded or penetrated with glee by de Hauteville, it would be at her beckoning. She would never return to the Negresco, not with Dudu hovering outside de Hauteville's bedroom door like a priest waiting to administer the last rites. Although Violette was knowledgeable about many things, she didn't know much about herself. She knew how to conjure that single droplet of dew that signals a man's ultimate surrender, but she didn't know anything about turning his torment to pleasure and making it her own. In her will to dominate, she dwelled only on the torment. And when she was unable to sustain her dominion through tantalisation and its congruent pain, she would, rather than admit her inadequacy, turn the torment upon herself. This she accomplished by enlisting the man's frustration, which inevitably led to violence or, less dangerously, extended forms of humiliation. And from these encounters, Violette always departed with her stoicism intact. But, Jerome knew, she would soon find herself bored with the distractions inflicted upon her by less ambitious men, like himself, and, after a respectable interval, call the impresario to her bedside.

No matter how degrading Jerome accepted his entanglement with Violette to be, he found himself waiting at his window nearly every evening for her to emerge from the Chapel of St. Giaume, where she always lit a candle for her dead mother before climbing the stairs to his door. There was her knock now, and he hadn't even managed to drag himself into the sitting-room to watch for her.

"You know, if we continue on this way," he said later, Violette sprawled across the bed, doll's legs spread, brand new coat still on, "there'll be nothing left of us by the time we're obliged to perform before the camera."

"What does it matter?" Violette groaned. "Love lasts only as long as it lasts."

"Does it last long enough with me?"

"Only when we don't touch beforehand."

"But otherwise, it's so impersonal."

"I wish I didn't know you at all. It would be so much nicer."

"May I touch you now?"

"If you must." Violette laboriously revealed her breasts to him, their fairy-white flesh bruised by another man's thumbs.

As Jerome watched her cross the square, past the door of the chapel, as always unlocked and open to the elements, he saw a figure emerge from under the darkened proscenium and follow her out onto the boulevard. The figure passed under the streetlamp at the corner. It was a man wearing a hat besmirched with what appeared to be pigeon droppings. As the man shuffled after Violette, he wilfully cast pages of the newspaper he was carrying onto the pavement, glancing back every so often to grin at the litter left in his wake. Then the man called out to her. It was only Dudu, obviously come to fetch her at de Hauteville's behest. They went off together in a taxi. Jerome watched after them, feeling sorry for Violette. The telephone rang.

"He's withdrawn into himself," said Duckie.

"But it had been going so well," Jerome replied.

"Not Sergei, Hugo!"

The unimaginable had occurred.

"Please," said Jerome, "tell me exactly what's happened."

"Lord Billingsley called. He said Hugo was ranting 'What's become of the fucking guarantee from Villiers Bank?!' And of course Charles hadn't any answer. He never does. He always has to telephone someone else. Hugo thinks things are taking too long and we're losing credibility with Frankel."

"So, are you?"

"How am I supposed to know? Hugo won't take Charles's calls, or Sergei's. So we thought maybe you would have a word with him."

"Why me?"

"Because you seem to be very much on the inside with Hugo!"

Jerome pictured Duckie sitting on her dishevelled bed, telephone in hand, her index-finger pointed at him. Whatever sensible thing he might say would, he was certain, strike her as inept, so he said nothing.

"Be like that then."

"Like what?"

"Unhelpful."

"Why not let Charles and Hugo work it out for themselves?"

"Because they're no longer speaking! Forget it, Jerome. Just go back to whatever you weren't doing."

What was he to say to that?

Duckie hung up.

Lost without de Hauteville's constant manipulation of their ineffectual lives, Duckie and the Count spent their time wandering aimlessly around the facilities at La Victoirine in drunken disarray. They longed for de Hauteville to recover his aplomb. Then the unthinkable occurred: de Hauteville invited Duckie and the Count and Jerome, to visit him ensemble. On the specified evening, nerves jangling, they found only Dudu reading the evening paper on the balcony. De Hauteville had left in a hurry, about an hour earlier, so said Dudu. He would be back in a few days. Duckie and the Count conjectured that de Hauteville was taking a much needed holiday, probably to recover his resolve before the filming began. Or perhaps he had gone to Rome to meet with the picture's problematic director. But Dudu, who had been eavesdropping as usual, denied this, saying Pietro Pollo was happily preparing his shooting-schedule entirely on his own. That's good, they all seemed to say, in so many words, and helped themselves to drinks. Ignoring the insolent Dudu, they then decided to go on to dinner together. They would settle themselves, at exorbitant expense, in the Negresco's dining room--on the Golden Lamb account. The occasion was much deserved, they all agreed.

While Duckie and the Count were in the bathroom together before going down to dinner, Dudu told Jerome what had sent de Hauteville off in such a flurry. He pointed to the evening paper. "He's sailing to Marseilles. It's this chap Fontana with the missing monkey. He and Hugo used to be chums, when Hugo was working for Gaumont-British in London."

"Oh." Jerome was staring down at Dudu's bare feet--his toenails were painted a very bright red.

Suddenly self-conscious, Dudu made a rounded clicking sound with his tongue, like a tin frog, and snapped his middle finger, in time with his tongue, against the newspaper. Jerome smiled nervously and turned to go.

"He's jealous of all the attention Fontana's getting," Dudu confided, his finger still snapping against the newspaper. "Thinks it's just a publicity stunt. So, what do you think? You have ideas about these things, don't you?"

"This man's a gossip columnist," Jerome replied, "what's he need with publicity?"

Dudu shrugged. "Maybe he wants to read about himself for a change."

CHAPTER IX

La Bonne Santé sat like a porcelain duck in the sea off the Promenade de la Plage. From his vantage on the bow, de Hauteville had an unobstructed view of the Parc Borély. It appeared that the racecourse situated to the west of the gardens, its longest stretch paralleling the Promenade, was being prepared to be re-opened to the public. Tiny figures in yellow moved in a long row diagonally across the turf, their movements consistent with the collection of rubbish. To the north, where the Avenue du Prado entered the roundabout at the Promenade, a circle of police cars glinted in the sun.

"What a fuss," sighed de Hauteville to himself, "and all because of that ridiculous Reynolds Fontana. The man's a menace."

At 4:30 that afternoon, de Hauteville asked the kitchen crew to clear away the luncheon buffet that had awaited Fontana and his entourage since 2:00. De Hauteville had never been certain how many would be ferried across the bay with his old friend--it didn't really matter--but he was certain that the celebrity now afforded Fontana was altogether inappropriate, if not indecent. Fontana's indecency had, in the past, always been curiously enlightening: his particularly nasty interpretation of society's actions, when juxtaposed against the squalor of his own life, revealed much about humanity in general. And de Hauteville had been amused by the paradoxical kindliness of Fontana's tormenting nature. Nothing of any mortal consequence ever resulted from Fontana's cruelty. Whereas most of his fellow columnists had resorted to slander at one point or another to maintain the interest of their readerships, Fontana had consistently relied on wit--he could make a tasteless fiesta out of a christening--to stave off the public's inevitable boredom with even the most flamboyant of gadabouts. De Hauteville was pleased--no, enormously pleased--that the malevolent intimations he himself had devised had wrought more genuine fear in his own enemies than anything Fontana could possibly conceive. This incident with the monkey however--series of incidents, really--was unconscionable. De Hauteville knew himself to be uncharacteristically embittered: he resented the originality of Reynolds Fontana's new-found fame.

At 6:30, de Hauteville went to his stateroom, removed his whites and lay naked on his bed for a nap. The golden vectors of sunlight that slanted through the blinds and played over his flesh brought with them the greatest joy. De Hauteville marvelled at the sinister beauty of his ageless limbs. Emitting a potpourri of delectable scents, his glands smouldering beneath the skin, the skin itself tingling with his touch, de Hauteville coaxed from his member an orgasm so mild as to be almost imperceptible, and cursed himself for not bringing Dudu along for the weekend. He then slept and dreamt of many miraculous events, but none equal to any one of the nine births destined to occur in Marseilles in less than six and a half months' time. The birth of Mr. Didot, he subconsciously knew, would never be so consecrated.

At 8:30 precisely, de Hauteville awoke with a start, his perspiration staining the sheets. In the dream, Reynolds Fontana had been coming along the Boulevard de Bonneveine with Joey on his shoulder and Jerome Lombardi at his side, the three whistling an aria de Hauteville dimly remembered from Puccini's Le Villi; all three were on their way to the skiff waiting to bring them to La Bonne Santé. Pondering the dream further, de Hauteville began to relax: surely Lombardi had remained in Nice, and surely no such potentially disastrous alliance had been formed. And yet, as de Hauteville bathed his face, he wondered what uncanny intuition had brought Lombardi and Fontana together to stroll the sunswept streets of his dozing mind so contentedly.

Now that he was apparently free for the evening, de Hauteville considered going ashore to sample the night-life of Marseilles, of which he was ignorant. He decided he would, but when he went above to have a glass or two of champagne and call for the skiff, there was Reynolds Fontana, sitting on the banquette in the ship's stern, drinking. At fifty or thereabouts, he was still handsome in his boyish way, but his fair skin was ruined. His neck was pleated like a turtle's. And his upper eyelids, bulging and soft as poached eggs, hung heavily upon his long, nearly colourless lashes. The skin below his equally pendulous lower lids appeared to have been branded countless times with a glowing length of very fine wire. Too much to smoke, too much to drink, and too much sun taken without sufficient lubrication--this was de Hauteville's conclusion. But Fontana's proud nose, his imposing brow, his wide confident lips, all remained infuriatingly intact, and the blue eyes were as penetrating as ever.

"I've never heard of anything so ridiculous!" guffawed Fontana, barely five minutes into their conversation. "The very idea, that you'd give this, this--what's her name?"

De Hauteville spoke the name softly, one might even have thought ashamedly: "Violette."

"Violette--" enunciated Fontana, with zest, "to your leading actor, as if conferring your blessing upon their adolescent rutting--it's utterly preposterous! Laughable even!"

"Well, it was done most discreetly, with neither one knowing what I was up to." De Hauteville gestured for more champagne to be poured. "And they're not exactly adolescents. Jerome's a mature male with a female companion waiting for him back in Paris

and--"

"Sounds like he can't function properly."

"He is unnaturally sensitive, but so was Jesus Christ, by most accounts. At any event, it was my intuition that the intimacy between them should conspire to bring a--what?--a reality to the screen that's never been seen before. I couldn't very well just have Victor standing there looking at Tati as if she were a smoked salmon sandwich, now could I?!"

"Bloody actors," said Fontana, and leered over the side, trying to fight back the nausea in his throat. He hadn't any stomach for the nautical life.

"She's still mine for the taking," said de Hauteville. "You can rest assured of that."

"I rest easy anyway," Fontana replied. "Actually, that's bollocks. I haven't had a proper night's sleep in weeks."

"Oh, spot of bother?" De Hauteville enjoyed ridiculing Fontana's tendency to jolly up his repartée with hackneyed English expressions.

"Then you know about Joey's women," said Fontana, staring coldly at his host.

"What a question. Everyone knows about Joey's women."

Fontana gazed up into the sky, then across the water at Marseilles. On the sea, night approached with admirable reticence, while in town the shadows deepened at once, as if by necessity, and one's businesslike outlook on life was transformed; passions stirred, frivolity reigned. Night would be upon those streets already. Deep in the Parc Borély his little friend would be hiding. Fontana imagined how the moonlight must look dappling Joey's silvery fur. Feeling whimsical, all that aerated alcohol stirring in his blood, he smiled and said, "The little scamp's quite the charmer."

"Quite the randy monkey, I'd say," snapped de Hauteville. His sense of fun had left him. "Filthy little subhuman beast."

"You don't know Joey."

"Never had the pleasure."

"He doesn't appeal just to the very young. He appeals to everyone. He has what you French would call je ne sais quoi."

"Maybe he should be playing Victor."

"You might consider giving him some small part, if I can ever find him and get him out of this miserable city," mumbled Fontana.

"What?" intoned de Hauteville.

Fontana lifted his empty glass for the steward to see. "Better not let Bishop Feydeau near your production."

"He wouldn't know what we're about." De Hauteville couldn't help but smirk.

"And what are you about exactly?"

Although he knew it would be unwise to reveal too much to a big mouth like Fontana, a smut-monger and would-be destroyer of reputations, de Hauteville also knew that Fontana essentially had nothing against him. Beyond that, he was begrudgingly curious to know if someone who has to appeal constantly to the public's worst instincts and appetites would find the picture's premise at all titillating.

"If you really want to know, we're about the transposition of the New Testament to modern day Nice."

"What on earth for?"

"Because the idea is sensational. And because the drama itself is nothing short of scandalous."

"I reckon it better be, when you're spending that kind of money."

"Failed Catholics will flock to see it, along with anyone else who has ever harboured a secret longing to see Our Lord behaving more like a normal man." Contented with this summary of the picture's irresistible appeal, de Hauteville happily concluded, "One can't fault a brilliant metaphor."

"No," said Fontana, then grimly added, "but one can find one's house, car, suit--self--in flames."

De Hauteville smiled impassively and gestured for both their glasses to be refilled.

"Trust me, I know," said Fontana, reached into the tattered briefcase by his feet, and laid a large black pistol on the table before them. "Religious zealots are the worst, especially when their god has been blasphemed."

De Hauteville was silent. He remembered now why Reynolds Fontana had been only an occasional ally in London: Fontana would offhandedly identify the pitfalls he saw as intrinsic to any de Hauteville scheme, and then watch as de Hauteville proceeded to tumble obliviously into them. But it was the casualness of Fontana's prescience that de Hauteville found most infuriating.

Fontana took a large mouthful of champagne and held it effervescing upon his tongue. This prolonging of one's enjoyment so deliberately, while others waited, de Hauteville found extremely annoying. Naturally, he was unaware of this tendency in himself.

At last, tilting the nearly empty flute at a precarious angle and delicately pressing it into a fold in his white flannel trousers, Fontana further cautioned his old friend:

"Hugo, you know, many men have perished due to such disrespect. Their fortunes are gobbled up in fines and legal fees and their reputations ruined. Take Baudelaire, for instance."

"Well, if Christ hadn't been the Son of God, if he'd been human like the rest of us, he would most certainly have been a man like Victor Didot!"

"An invention, nevertheless. Catholics and the like don't see their Lord as such, they see Him as infallible fact."

"I would have thought that was obvious. Maybe I should have done Joan of Arc instead."

"Maybe."

"Well, it's a little late now."

"I know."

The sky had turned a jewel-like purple, the sea a glossy black, when Hugo de Hauteville and Reynolds Fontana finally threw in the towel. As de Hauteville saw it, it had been a bout of tactical errors. Fontana would have said there had been no strategy of any merit on the part of either fighter, primarily because the event was only meant to be a friendly sparring match. De Hauteville summoned one of his crew to take Fontana back to the inlet at the end of the Avenue du Prado. There, Fontana would disembark and, as he put it, "take a last stroll through the Parc Borély, calling the name of my only true friend." This unguarded expression of love was, without calculation, the blow that sent de Hauteville reeling.