Photographs, then, began to be added to the stock of drawings in hell. Mostly they depicted young boys with erections. Their creator, an antifascist refugee called Alberto Senzacatso, lived in an artist’s studio on the top floor of a respectable building in Rue Caulaincourt. His models were occasionally to be encountered on the stairs, mostly the sons of the other residents, cheeky boys with roving eyes. Truth compels us to add that Alberto was not the sort of man to inspire repugnance, and might have resembled a fruit and vegetable wholesaler more than a maker of pornographic photographs if it had not been for the way his face lit up in a faintly mad way whenever he talked about his models. As a boy he had been force-fed with castor oil by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and from the severe diarrhoea that had followed he had been left with an anal obsession that verged on mania. His models, all volunteers, emerged tight-lipped from their posing sessions and returned to their families on the floors below. Alberto’s customers sometimes bumped into them on the landings and recognised the models who were the subjects of the very special photographs they had just purchased.
Their excitement can be imagined. The Italian lived alone in a studio stuffed with books and paintings. Open-minded and curious, he was writing a history of Mannerism which, after years of contemplation, he was hoping to reduce to three volumes of five hundred pages each. He counted a number of writers among his regular customers, whom he referred to only by their Christian names — Monsieur André, Monsieur Roger, Monsieur Julien — recognisable even to the uninitiated from the odd detail slyly slipped in by the garrulous photographer about their propensities. Two or three times he had been within a hair’s breadth of getting arrested, and Jean would find out later that he had succeeded in avoiding arrest by passing on details about his buyers. The police turned a blind eye and added to their files. Alberto showed no remorse. That was life, and staying in Paris was worth the occasional piece of information that in most cases was never used, the parties in question being protected by their standing and their periodic contributions to the Revue Littéraire de la Préfecture de Police,10 or in some cases their status as patrons of a non-profit-making organisation known as the Amicale des Gardiens de la Paix.11
Alberto was a good judge of character and understood straight away how disgusting Jean found his business. Handing over an envelope containing around twenty photographs in exchange for a sum of money, he would move quickly on to another subject, for preference one of his choosing, which at that time meant Il Bronzino, whom he referred to familiarly as Agnolo and with whose painting he had a relationship that can only be described as love. He even claimed to have unearthed a very late sketch for the portrait of Jean, the son of Eleanor of Toledo, at the flea market. This modest canvas sat on an easel, mostly concealed under a piece of velvet. He uncovered the picture to talk about Bronzino, as though he was inspired by the inquisitive gaze of the child with the round face, and the plump hand laid upon the brocade dress of the beautiful Eleanor. Listening to him, Jean realised that, underneath his crude, kinky exterior, innocence and passion remained, that it was unfair not to give him some credit for such feelings, and that clearly life demanded, if only out of a sense of justice, as much indulgence as Manichaeism. But what about La Garenne? A full-blown shit, without the slightest outward sign of anything that might be considered a redeeming feature. And yet there was one.
Sometimes in the afternoons, stifled and sickened by the gallery’s atmosphere, Jean slammed the door behind him and escaped to stroll the streets of Montmartre village, to breathe fresh air and banish the accumulated fetid vapours of hell. What he found most unendurable was not being able to see how he could get away from a society so fearfully turned in on itself. In Paris he knew only Jesús and Claude. And Madeleine, in her new life of affluence and suspect relations. The situations vacant in the newspapers were starting to offer work in Germany, but the world at war required specialists, die- and toolmakers … And to take the first job that came along, for the sake of being dramatic, would mean parting from Claude, which he could not bear. What would a single day without her be like? He would die of loneliness and fear of losing her, convinced that her charm and naivety would render her easy and innocent prey, forgetting in his blindness how much that lovely and tempting being had preserved of her own defences. But what she gave to him — however small it was — would she not give it to others? Did she really have a brother? One doubt led to another in a process that would be irreversible if he did not retrace his steps back to the start, to his trust in her candid and natural features. When, too unhappy to bear such thoughts alone, he opened his heart to Jesús, the Spaniard consoled him in his own way.
‘It’s true that the women are easily turnin’ into the ’ores!’ he said. ‘It’s subleemly true, and it’s a stupidity to make a man weep. En we, wha’ are we, the men? The sons of the ’ores, for sure! Claro! The women are in ou’ imáge! You, you is a good imáge. The wimmen in you’ life, they will be like you …’
‘What about Chantal?’
‘That one, se sowed ’erself to be a ’ore without knowin’ it. Don’ speak to me of ’er …’
Jean could not quite believe that Chantal had been a whore. The idea wounded his self-esteem, despite everything being over between them. No, she had lost her head, like a little country girl, and now she was making amends the fashionable way, going back to the land, and when all was said and done that was a laudable way to atone for a moment of madness with a gigolo in a red Delahaye convertible. He must not think about her. Not ever, despite all the memories lurking in the lanes of Montmartre that he kept stumbling across, surprised to find they were still so vivid.
When he returned from his brief forays away from the miasmas of the gallery, he would be greeted by La Garenne looking furious, but the gallery owner had kept his fury bottled up ever since he had been reminded that it was upon his salesman’s welfare that Jesús’s continued goodwill depended. It was Jean, too, who took care to deliver the fake Picassos and Utrillo from Jesús’s studio himself. Rudolf von Rocroy admired them and requested a few days to think about the purchase. When he returned to the gallery he was accompanied by a tall, severe-looking and haughty person. Jean learnt that this was Émile Dugard, an art critic who was highly regarded, whose services the German had enlisted. Dugard, showing no enthusiasm, examined minutely the signature and the composition of the sky over Rue Norvins and declared that the painting was a Utrillo from his early period, when he was still living under his mother’s influence. Subsequently, as he explained to Rocroy, who was listening attentively, Utrillo had weaned himself off alcohol but in the process had lost part of his genius and begun peopling his canvases with the famous little couple who walked hand in hand through the pale streets of Montmartre. As for the Picassos, there was absolutely no doubt about them either; they belonged to the so-called Synthetic Cubism era, almost monochrome, with different shades of brown playing off against each other. Rocroy left with the paintings. The following day Dugard presented himself at the gallery to collect his commission. Raised voices were heard coming from La Garenne’s office, and Dugard pretended to flounce out. If he had not achieved everything he had demanded this time, at least he had succeeded in agreeing the terms of his future services.