CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Louvet, 2

THE LOUVETS’ BEDROOM: a sisal mat brought back from the Philippines, a 1930s dressing table entirely covered with tiny mirrors, a double bed covered with a printed spread of romantic inspiration, depicting a classical, pastoral scene: the nymph Io suckling her son Epaphos under the gentle protection of the god Mercury.

On the bedside table stands a so-called “pineapple” lamp (the body of the fruit is a blue marble – or, rather, imitation-marble – egg, the leaves and the remainder of the base are made of silvered metal); beside it, a grey phone fitted with an automatic answering device, and a photograph of Louvet, in a bamboo frame: he is seen barefoot, in grey denim trousers, with a bright-red nylon jacket open wide and revealing his hairy torso, strapped in the stern of a powerful outboard, very old-man-and-the-sea-like; he is leaning hard over, almost on his back, as he strives to pull from the water a sort of tuna of apparently remarkable size.

On the walls there are four pictures and a glass display case. The display case contains a collection of self-assembled scale models of antique military machines: battering-rams, the vinea which Alexander made use of at the siege of Tyre, the catapulta of the Syrians, which threw monstrous stones so many hundred feet, balistæ, pyroboli, scorpio which cast thousands of javelins, and flaming mirrors – such as Archimedes’ mirror, which ignited whole fleets in an instant – and columns armed with scythes carried on the backs of wild elephants.

The first picture is a facsimile of an advertising poster from the early 1900s: three figures are resting in a bower: a young man in white trousers and blue blazer, with a boater on his head and a silver-topped stick under his arm, holds a box of cigars in his hand, a pretty, painted box decorated with designs showing a globe, several medals, and an exhibition hall surrounded by unfurled, gold-bedecked flags. Another young man similarly dressed sits on a wickerwork pouf: with his hands in his trouser pockets and his black-shod feet stretched out in front of him, he holds between his lips, where it droops slightly, a long dull-grey cigar still in the early stage of combustion, that is to say with ash still intact on the end; beside him, on a round table with a polka-dot cloth, are some folded newspapers, a phonograph with an enormous loudspeaker which he appears to be listening to attentively, and a liqueur case, open, fitted with five gilt-capped flasks. A young woman, a rather mysterious blonde, wearing a thin and loose-fitting dress, is pouring the sixth flask, full of a uniformly brown liquid, into three stem glasses. At the very bottom, on the right, in thick yellow sunk characters, in the face known as “Auriol Champlevé”, much used in the last century, are written the words

The second picture portrays a bouquet of wild clematis, also known as Old Man’s Beard because beggars used to use it to treat minor facial sores.

The last two pictures are allegedly humorous caricatures of poor artistic quality representing very well-worn jokes. The first is entitled No Money? No Swiss: it depicts a mountaineer lost in the Alps, rescued by a Saint Bernard carrying what appears to be a little cask of life-saving rum, with a red cross painted on it. But the climber is amazed to find no rum in the cask: it is in fact a collecting box, with a caption beneath its coin-slot: Give Generously to the Red Cross!

The other cartoon is called The Right Recipe: in a grotesquely depicted restaurant an angry customer points to a hair in his soup. The head waiter, just as angry, has called out the chef to explain, but the latter puts his finger to his lips: “Ssh, or they’ll all be wanting one now!”