‘Kiss Timmy,’ Laszlo offers. ‘Timmy’s broken. Kiss him, lady. Kiss him better.’
He thrusts the dog at a woman, who reels backwards, one hand flat on her belly and one across her mouth, denying the urge to vomit. Laszlo then thrusts the dog at her man as he intervenes.
‘Please, you kiss him,’ he begs in a voice from childhood or lunacy.
He proffers the dog to another man, who backs away, snatching his jacket off a chair. ‘Who’ll kiss Timmy better?’ In the middle of the bar he pirouettes unsteadily, holding out the dead dog. The bar empties, patrons wearing various expressions of pity or dread as they leave.
In this way, using the dead animal and his own unfortunate state, he clears the night owls from Lustre Lounge, before staggering down to Barbica Café and repeating the performance. When the alley is deserted, Laszlo returns to the doorway of Hell’s Kitchen and hands the dog to Winnie Blue. ‘Your turn,’ he says.
In Hell’s Kitchen Winnie Blue tilts his head to one side and, with the ceiling lights flaring on his scar tissue, he quietly offers the punters a chance to breathe life into his soulmate. Benji, he names the dog. Who’ll kiss Benji better? Behind Harry and Mireille’s backs people flee to nightspots where they won’t be required to resuscitate canines for madmen. Winnie touches the dog’s wet, cold nose to one woman’s neck and she screams.
Harry and Mireille turn to face the scream. There stands Laszlo Berg holding a black club. Beside him is a thug with his head craned sideways, his right ear touching his shoulder and a dead dog lying astride his left forearm with its head cradled in his hand. With his other hand the thug pulls a revolver from his belt. Both the thug and the dog have their tongues lolling, the one in imitation of the other.
But now the bar is cleared Winnie Blue lifts his head and retracts his tongue and flicks his eyebrows up and down twice to comment on the strange things a bloke is required to do.
‘Go and sit on the floor in the kitchen until I tell you to come out,’ he tells the bar owner. ‘You do that and you’re safe. Middle of the floor.’
Laszlo pouts and looks Harry up and down, as if there might be some clue as to where the lad went wrong. ‘Greenface has resurfaced, the repercussions of which eventuality we have discussed.’
He pauses to give Harry a chance to explain. When he doesn’t say anything Laszlo goes on. ‘We’re all worse off. Don’t think I walk away without my own share of troubles. I’m in the soup as well. True, you’re about to become an artifact, as promised, but the difference between you and me is you’re a stupid bastard who deserves it.’
Laszlo rests the club on his shoulder. ‘You really couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me you don’t deserve this, could you?’ Without looking away from Harry he says, ‘Winston, do your bit for the evolution of mankind by killing these dumb bastards before they have a chance to propagate their dangerously stupid genes.’
Mireille stands, staring at Laszlo, her nostrils flaring. ‘Leave him alone. He’s just a young man I hired. I have done this to you. Snuff out my genes. They are worthless. Better off gone. They are yours, after all.’
‘What? What are mine?’ Laszlo asks, shaking his head, slightly annoyed.
‘My genes are yours. I am your daughter.’
Laszlo rolls his eyes at this absurdity. ‘Voilà. Like a rabbit from a hat – a daughter. Go ahead and kill me, but you should know I am your … daughter. Oh, that’s good. That’s Shakespeare. That’s Oedipus Rex. You’ve studied the classics, haven’t you?’
‘I am, you know.’ She smiles wistfully, nods.
‘Oh, you are? Does your mother know?’
‘She does.’
‘Well, let’s get acquainted. Does she have a name?’
‘She does.’
‘And it is?’
‘You refer to her as “Greenface”, I notice.’
At this, a shade of confusion crosses Laszlo’s face. ‘I was talking about a painting.’
‘A portrait.’ Mireille nods.
As she says this, a window breaks down in the alley. They stop to listen. Some moments later another window breaks, louder this time. In the diminuendo rain of glass there is laughter. They wait. This destruction, getting closer, seems to portend a visitor – a giant, wending his way towards them through the flimsy walls of the city.
The Stinking Pariahs have followed Laszlo from the Savage Club. Bam Hecker, wearing his helmet and leathers, hooks his fingers through the mesh of the roller-shutter beside his head and groans thoughtfully and rattles the shutter. Adjacent to the roller-shutter, on the corner of Centre Way and Collins Street, is a luggage shop. He stands in front of its window and headbutts the glass and walks through it, laughing amid the splash and flow of the thousand triangulations, as if this were some showground experience he’d paid a buck to play. Kicking through the luggage he steps up to the shop window that looks on to Centre Way, before headbutting it and stepping through it, laughing again in the shower of glass. Once in the alley he removes his helmet and shakes the slivers of glass from his long hair. The other Stinking Pariahs follow him through the luggage shop into the alley.
Winnie Blue assumes a killer’s face – a sneer of white, false teeth amid sallow skin, eyebrows glowered low over his eyes. He moves to the door of Hell’s Kitchen to greet whoever the hell these pissants might turn out to be. When he sees it is the Stinking Pariahs he moves back into the room and lays his gun on a table. There are six of them. Giants in this delicately furnished space.
Bam blinks at Winnie Blue. ‘That dog a dead dog?’ he asks. Winnie Blue gives a barely perceptible nod.
‘That your party trick, is it? A dead dog?’
‘It’s not mine.’
‘You don’t have much spirituality, do you? Squiring a dead dog round town. What’s your name?’
‘Winnie Blue.’
‘Winnie Blue? Like the smoke? Bad for your health?’
‘That’s right.’
Two Stinking Pariahs are holding handguns. Another has a shotgun pointed at Winnie Blue.
‘You ever been avenged by a dead dog, Winnie Blue?’ Bam asks. Winnie Blue doesn’t respond. ‘Avenge the dead dog, Low Billy.’ Gently, with utmost respect for the deceased, Low Billy Low takes the dead dog from Winnie Blue. He pats its head and tells it ‘Good boy,’ and tickles its throat. Then he holds its mouth to Winnie Blue’s ear and clamps down on it with both hands. The yellowed canines click audibly as they meet through the flesh. Winnie Blue sucks a breath while Low Billy Low continues to clamp the dog’s jaws on his ear. Holding its head in both his hands he begins shaking it like a dog shakes itself to tear its prey, the dog’s torso swinging like a pendulous adornment. Low Billy Low begins to growl, Winnie Blue to moan softly – even in this pain he’s aware he’s at the mercy of the Stinking Pariahs and he’d better mind his manners. He tries to move his head in time with the thrashing dog, but it comes away holding a ragged chunk of ear in its mouth.
‘Yow,’ Bam says.
‘Terriers,’ Low Billy Low smiles. ‘Manic.’ He plucks the chunk of ear from the dog’s mouth and stuffs it in Winnie Blue’s shirt pocket.
Winnie Blue is panting, cradling his ear, blood dripping into his palm.
‘Ever been privately bit by a dead dog?’ Bam asks him.
‘Privately?’
‘On your privates.’
‘Man, I don’t know anything about this, apart from getting paid to whack these dudes,’ he points to Harry and Mireille. ‘By him.’ He points to Laszlo. ‘I didn’t know the Pariahs were involved, man. I wouldn’t have taken the job.’
Bam turns to Laszlo. ‘You ripped off a mate of mine.’
‘No.’ He nods at Harry and Mireille. ‘It was these two.’
‘Down the line is down the line, man. I can’t track every insult back to Adam.’
‘They ripped us all off. I’m in the process of redressing the problem now. Everything will be straightened out, all debts paid, all damages made good.’ Laszlo flicks his fin
gers at Bam, at the inconsequentiality of the problem before them.
Anger crosses Bam’s face. He doesn’t like this man making judgements on the importance of these matters. He looks to Harry and Mireille and back at Laszlo. ‘She makes no mention of those dudes and redressing them. But you … Well, she’s got that Prussian blood, you know, warlike and miffed and prone to episodes of vengeance. Insults washed away in gore. It’s their culture – bloody revenge. The Italians make grappa and salami. The Prussians make restitution. So, here we are. The Stinking Pariahs. Instruments of that Prussian girl’s traditional ways.’ He steps forwards and gently unwraps Laszlo’s fingers from the shaft of his club.
‘What if she sold that painting to the Hell’s Angels, man? Or the Bandidos, or some bad fucker, instead of drooling over it like an art fan? She’d be getting killed herself now, wouldn’t she? You didn’t worry about that, did you?’ Bam shakes his head in admonishment. He hefts the club once, twice, impressed.
Mireille seems to know what is about to happen before anyone else. She leaps between them, backing up against Laszlo, reaching behind herself to take hold of him. ‘Do not hurt him. I have the money. I will pay his debt.’ Behind her, Laszlo’s face, until now replete with scorn, is marked with the lines of a deep bewilderment.
‘You didn’t hear all that about blood revenge?’ Bam asks.
‘But surely you would want the money in preference? We have it,’ she implores, her eyes blinking, blaring desperation. ‘It is close. We will get it.’
‘Okay,’ Bam nods, ‘Yes. You go and get it. We’ll wait here. You have an hour.’
Mireille starts towards the door. Harry knows this isn’t how it’s going to work. The Stinking Pariahs are not going to wait here for money and risk the cops showing up. Laszlo knows it, too. He sits heavily in a chair, resigned to what is to come.
‘Come on,’ she takes Harry’s hand and pulls him with her.
When they reach the top of the stairs Laszlo calls to her, ‘Greenface? Dora Maar?’
She stops and turns and looks at him, and a smile starts wonkily on her face before she contains it and simply nods. Bam, in a magnanimous attempt not to intrude on this apparently private moment, looks down at a table beside him.
As they emerge into the alley they hear Bam’s voice from the open windows of Hell’s Kitchen above, echoing out into the alleyway. ‘Why paint a chick with a green face? No one has a green face. Looks like a crocodile or a snake.’
Laszlo’s voice answers tiredly. ‘Well, there you are. It tells us something of ourselves. Crocodiles … snakes.’
‘Yeah? Well, I’m not an art connoisseur, so I missed the message. But you are an art connoisseur who understood the message, and you’re more crocodile and snake than the rest of us. So I say her lesson is wasted on you, and probably wasted on everybody. I doubt I’ll even go to the gallery to see her. No point.’
Laszlo is uninterested. ‘The gallery director will be crestfallen to have missed the subhuman detritus demographic.’
Harry and Mireille hear three rapid, muffled shots. Then a fourth, loud and sharp. Harry has a vision of Bam standing over Laszlo’s prone body shooting down at him, delivering the coup de grâce. Mireille blinks up at the window of Hell’s Kitchen, shocked. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Harry links his arm through hers and pulls her walking, then running, out of the alley.
‘I did not want his death and I do not need the money. But to let him see, here I am. And who I am. And what he did. The suffering he caused. Revenge. I admit to wanting revenge. It is not a worthy thing to wish for, I know. But at least I wished it for someone else. I wished it for my mother. If you had seen the dead life she lived …’
In the big room overlooking Port Phillip Bay, Mireille sits down hard on the sofa and runs her hands up the back of her head through her hair and looks at the ceiling. Her face screws up with a reluctance to tell Harry what he wants to know. Then she nods, accepting it is his right. ‘Since I have made this your business, I will tell you of it.’
‘Laszlo was once a bohemian. This was a long time ago, before I was born. I have seen photos. He had black hair slicked back with lavender pomade, and mutton-chop sideboards, and he smoked a long-stemmed pipe. He wore loose flannel trousers up around his belly and a tight vest of mohair, topped always with a black leather coat to his knees. He hung around, leaning on walls with a foot up behind him on the brickwork, watching the passing Parisians, wanting to be watched in return. Hoping to be reviled, I suppose, and feared, by the working people whirling past headlong in their endeavour.
‘He had been known to paint, but not by nineteen thirty-seven. He had been known to sculpt, but no longer. He wrote some poems, the best refrains stolen, and then stolen again from him so wantonly by poets of his acquaintance that he no longer wrote or stole poems. It was clear there was no money in poems.
‘In truth, by the mid thirties he was a courtier of successful artists. He found more artful ways to praise their art than anyone else could, and for this sycophancy he was called a connoisseur and taken under the wing of the beau monde and fed scraps off their table. He ran errands and procured opium and delivered smarm of such naked virginity that famous artists felt discovered afresh; they felt young again, on the verge of success.
‘This is how he found his way to Picasso’s studio. It was almost impossible, by 1937, to throw Picasso a compliment he had not heard. But Laszlo said to him, “I would rather spill my seed before Woman in an Armchair than make love to Claudette Colbert.” Woman in an Armchair is a painting. Mlle Colbert was a famous beauty of the day, and everyone, but everyone, wanted to make love to her. Picasso was tickled to have created a woman more desirable than Claudette Colbert. It was as though God and Pablo had each entered their girl in a beauty pageant and Pablo’s girl had won.
‘Laszlo became his cheerleader of choice at once. And soon enough Picasso came to depend upon him, for compliments, for opium, for hashish, to buy his groceries, to walk his poodle; he became Picasso’s – how would you say … squire … yes, his Sancho Panza. Picasso admired Quixote.
‘Laszlo had become addicted to opium. Picasso was an occasional user himself and he carved Laszlo an opium pipe from jade and amber. Its constant refilling made Laszlo deeply in debt to his supplier, a nightclub and opium-den owner named Django Meinheer, who was a Jew and a homosexual, which must have frustrated the Nazis when they could kill him only once in Buchenwald some years later.
‘As an addict, Laszlo’s compliments lost their edge and, before long, Picasso consigned him to outer darkness, telling him never to enter his milieu or give opinion about his work again. Django Meinheer, now Laszlo was no longer backed by Picasso, began making threats. He knew bad people. He had to be paid. And the only thing of value Laszlo still owned was a key to Picasso’s studio.
‘So, a month after being exiled, Laszlo snuck into Picasso’s studio and stole the painting that we know as Weeping Woman. The painting of Dora Maar feigning the grief of war, the horror of Guernica. Laszlo must have felt he had a claim to the Weeping Woman because he stole only that painting. Picasso’s studio was vast and littered with work. He had canvases leaning against walls, up against one another like pages in books. Benches laden with unfired pots covered with centaurs and fish. Huge unfinished canvases aloft on easels and bull skulls grimacing at the ceiling. But Laszlo stole the Weeping Woman. Only the Weeping Woman.’
‘Laszlo stole it from Picasso? Who told you all this?’ Harry asks Mireille.
‘My mother. She was there – you will see.
‘Stopping at many cafés along the way, talking to the woman rolled up under his arm, Laszlo made his way to the Palais de Noctambules. By the time he got there he was triumphant with wine and he unfurled her before the massive mustachioed doorman and nodded towards her tortured visage and confided, “I did this … with my penis.”
‘The big man leant down and adopted a similarly confidential tone, “Have you washed? With turpentine? Or is it sti
ll green? I won’t allow you in with a green penis.”
‘The Palais de Noctambules was a nightclub where European royalty rubbed shoulders with bohemians; a place princes went to fondle courtesans. Everyone was there that night, including Braque. Laszlo, having satisfied the doorman his penis wasn’t green, entered. He unrolled the canvas before Braque, who was by now handsomely white-haired, with kindly lines around his eyes formed by the satisfaction of many years in the pantheon of genius.
‘“My cock did this,” Laszlo told him. “Picasso will tell you it was the Luftwaffe. He will tell you it is Guernica. But it was my cock.”
‘“Your cock?” Braque asked.
‘“This is a painting of Dora Maar as I made love to her.” They stared at the canvas Laszlo unrolled. The tortured green head of the Weeping Woman.
‘“Everyone will blame Herman Goering. But it wasn’t fat Herman. Dora isn’t weeping, she is climaxing. Picasso will tell you it is an indictment of fascism … but it is his lady, in her throes.”
‘“Dora Maar? In her throes?” Braque asked.
‘“Moaning the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in mindless ecstasy.”
‘“It doesn’t look like ecstasy,” Braque said.
‘Laszlo laughed amid the gurgle of opium pipes. “You haven’t much experience of ecstasy, perhaps?”
‘Braque ignored this insult. He tilted his head to see her from another angle, her lime-green flesh, her eyes pressed together, her nose on the left of her head where an ear should be. Could all this deformity be caused by pleasure? An orgasm? Was this his great rival’s depiction of ecstasy?
Stealing Picasso Page 19
