The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God Page 17

  Breathe in, breathe out; don’t look Ernst in the eye, lest he see your fury. Don’t spastically clench and unclench your fist in a manner which suggests the strong desire to strangle…

  “Renaud, give me a moment to catch my breath. You’re walking too fast.”

  They stopped. Wilhelm leaned on a light pole and closed his eyes, trying to clear his head. “I believe I owe you an explanation, Renaud.”

  Renaud maintained his façade. “Wilhelm, take your time. You’ve been through a great loss…”

  He paused, not knowing how to continue because he had no idea what Wilhelm had told Marie Lombard. And frankly, he didn’t care. Wilhelm Ernst was an idiot, and only his money kept Renaud from telling him that.

  That, and the beating he would receive.

  Wilhelm squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “There’s a lot more to this than I’ve told you, Renaud. I only pray that you not think me mad.”

  Oh, you’re mad all right, but mostly you’re an idiot.

  Renaud inhaled and held it, screaming inside, but gracious outside.

  “Tell me what’s vexing you, my friend. You can always talk to me.”

  “I went to Munich to try to quit drinking. I got a letter from my sisters saying that Uli had become an embarrassment. I left with the excuse that I was seeing to my younger brother. But really, I wanted to get away from my drinking, from my phony life here…”

  Renaud nodded involuntarily and then stopped himself. “Whatever do you mean, Wilhelm?”

  “I don’t care, Renaud. I’m a fraud, I know it. Everyone knows it; it’s all right. I really just… don’t care anymore. I think that for the first time in my life, I’m seeing clearly, on the cusp of really understanding, but…”

  Renaud watched him stare out into the street, oblivious to the carriages, to the entire city whirling around him. He smiled. All he would have to do was shove the idiot in front of one of those carriages. Such a glorious sight, but alas, Renaud thought, I’m no killer.

  “You feel that you may have amnesia. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  Wilhelm shook his head vacantly. “I got to Munich, I talked to my sisters… and then nothing until… Uli’s funeral.”

  Renaud didn’t say anything. He was trying to think of something compassionate, but he didn’t have anything. Drunks like Wilhelm were an unfortunate fact of Renaud’s life. He learned to tolerate it and never cast aspersions, but he detested every pathetic one of them.

  Wilhelm continued, “I don’t remember a goddamn thing from that week, Renaud. Nothing. But I knew, I knew as if I had seen every last one of them, I knew that Uli’s paintings were evil. And I know… they tell a story. They tell the story of that missing week.”

  Mr. Ernst, you are a pants pissing cretin.

  Renaud asked quietly, “Wilhelm, are you going to be able to do this exhibition? I need to know now.”

  Wilhelm finally looked at Renaud with an odd expression of resolve. “You have my word, Renaud, my quest is only a part of this. We will give Uli the recognition that he truly deserves.”

  ***

  Renaud paced back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire. He shook his head and muttered under his breath. Wilhelm was in the storeroom again, studying Uli’s single painting. He sat for an hour, staring catatonically, not moving a muscle. When he emerged from his meditation, he came to him and said, “Renaud, this one was painted during that week… I’m certain of it. Let me show you how I know.”

  Wilhelm dragged Renaud to the storeroom and pointed to several spots on the canvas where the paint was thin and the canvas appeared to have been creased roughly. “Renaud, I took this painting off its easel and smashed it, shattering the frame. I beat the canvas against the floor until it was limp in my hand. They must have had it reframed.”

  Renaud inhaled, held it, and exhaled. “This is one of your memories that is coming back?”

  Wilhelm nodded, looking excited. “Yes, I was in a rage. I threw my glass against the wall… I was angry at Uli… but I don’t know what for.”

  Perhaps this was the sort of inanity that drove him to the noose…

  “I’m sure it will all come back soon, Wilhelm.”

  Renaud pressed in to look at the canvas. Wilhelm was right, there were patches and creases that could be attributed to rough handling. Renaud thought this was part of Uli’s technique, a kind of deliberate attempt to make the painting look old and weathered. Despite what Wilhelm was blathering about, he hadn’t changed his mind. Wilhelm Ernst was a pathological fool salving his guilt for being blind drunk during the crucial days before his brother’s suicide.

  Renaud acted like he was listening, nodded at the right times and said supportive nothings, while counting the seconds until Wilhelm Ernst was out of his life. The paintings should arrive in two days, and the showing would be in the next week. In the meantime, he was having special lighting installed and the entirety of the space repainted. This show would establish the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire as the premier gallery of modern art. He would make a lot of money. He excused himself to go and handle some of the important details of the upcoming show. In reality, he just wanted to be away from Ernst.

  He paced, planning, gesticulating, calculating. He turned, he paced, he turned again, and right in front of him was Madame Lombard. She was stone-faced, but still the tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked up at Renaud and shook her head. Then she started sobbing uncontrollably.

  ***

  The line of gawkers in front of the sprawling tenement extended down the city block to the second storey where she lived. A man at the door to her residence collected coppers for the privilege of gazing at the real life grand guignol within. They weren’t displaying Gilles Lombard’s gruesome corpse, but rather his gruesome life. Another man yelled and rang a bell for one and all to come and see and marvel in horror.

  It was almost a year since Gilles Lombard died, and Marie fell woefully behind on her rents to the landlord. This was his way of clearing her debts; this was her penance. Even Renaud was taken aback by the callousness. Her home, and all of her memories, secrets, and shame displayed to the mob.

  Renaud said, “We must stop this…”

  But even as he said the words, he realized their futility. There was a mob here, feeding on the very wrongness of what was happening. They held no vendetta against Marie or her dead husband, but mobs thirsted for tragedy, pain, and terrible ends.

  Wilhelm asked, “Marie, can you go get your… socialists to help you?”

  She scoffed and cried out in anger, “Mr. Ernst, the man ringing the bell like a carnival barker is the head of our socialist collective. They’re in on it. They said this was to punish Gilles for his lapse into superstition, but really… they are here to steal.”

  Renaud shook his head. “That can’t be…”

  Wilhelm nodded, thinking. “Then at least we know how to get what we want.”

  Marie and Renaud watched him push up the stairs past the curses of the gathered Frenchmen. But they were French, and he was German, and he was much bigger than them. He walked directly to the man with the bell and made a deal.

  ***

  Marie sat cross-legged on the floor, clutching the simple dress she wore on the day she married Gilles Lombard. Their apartment was tiny, full of the small things they did have, and so evocative of what they didn’t have. The socialist collective should’ve been her defense, but it turned on her when she ceased to be convenient. Her salvation came in the unlikely form of a wealthy German drunk. His money sent the parasites packing and revealed them for what they were.

  Renaud left to have a carriage sent to retrieve Gilles’ later paintings. The mob was dispersed by the socialist enforcers shoving along the workers waiting for the promised gory spectacle. That left Marie alone with Ernst.

  There were a lot of paintings. Wilhelm looked through them quickly, then set them up for individual viewing. He still stared at the first one like a profes
sor pondering a complex formula. He walked around it, looked at it from multiple angles, even turned it upside down, but the grasping expression never left his face.

  Marie had only met a handful of wealthy people in her life, and Wilhelm certainly had their traits. He exuded a generalized lack of concern for others. He appraised people only for their utility, but as ultimately disposable. She knew his true aim was owning Gilles’ paintings, but there was a glimmer of a real moral interest, albeit hesitant and perplexed, as if he didn’t know why he cared, just that he did. He seemed a man blindfolded, trying to assemble a puzzle only he knew about, and by touch alone.

  He paused from his meditation. “Marie, I want you to know that when these are sold, I intend that you should have my share. Renaud will get his, of course, but…”

  Marie whispered, “Why would you do this for me? Why would you care?”

  Tears came to Wilhelm’s eyes. “I could have saved Uli, I know it! Something happened, something terrible… and I failed. And because I failed, Uli killed himself, just as Gilles did.”

  Marie looked down. “You are kind to me, Mr. Ernst, but they were different men. I’m no beggar, even though today I begged…”

  She began to cry deeply and painfully.

  Wilhelm nodded and looked at the painting, a simulacrum of thousands in Muslim garb bowing in prayer around a lonely tree with a young blonde girl hanging from a noose. What such a terrifying image could mean, he didn’t know. It was horrible, and just like Uli’s work it conjured Goya, Bosch and Brughels, but only as a first point of reference. It was in a category all of its own, save for Uli’s work.

  Wilhelm said, “If there is something that I can do to atone for what I did, or did not do, then please accept it.”

  Marie nodded in acquiescence. “I cannot turn this down, but Wilhelm, regardless of your class… these deaths are not your fault.”

  A haunted look crossed Wilhelm’s face as he glanced towards the painting again. “Marie, I think that there is some greater thing that I failed to prevent, and I fear that these images are only of its shadow.”

  ***

  Wilhelm walked from the bar to the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire. He received word from Renaud that the day had finally come. Uli’s paintings had arrived. The message said to wait until the evening because the gallery would be setting up for the display.

  His mind fixed on a single point, like a chessmaster seeing three moves into the future. He would view the paintings and, like the Stations of the Cross, they would tell the story. They would explain how Uli went from vapid socialite to mad prophet. They would tell whether his drinking was erasing entire weeks. They would tell whether the lurking fear hovering over his life was indeed a reality.

  The very air of the city seemed more alive today. The colors were more vivid, richer. Light would come back into his world as these black clouds parted. Yes! Soon, all of this would be behind him, he could put Uli to rest one way or another.

  As he walked, he pondered Gilles Lombard’s paintings and how they might fit into this mad puzzle. So far, Wilhelm decided his artwork fell into four categories. The first category was a dull, drab and boring series of socialist artwork depicting a world takeover by factory workers. This was supposed to imply utopia. It just didn’t look that way. They showed the grinding lives of workers on one hand, then a violent overthrow of their masters, then the world in flame and ruin, then pictures of noble-looking workers, victorious. No explanation of how the world went from inferno to paradise or what this paradise entailed. All in all, dumb, unimaginative, and executed with a barely average level of skill.

  The second category focused repeatedly on an absolutely minimalist landscape. It was an eternal stone plain, flat and featureless, the sky covered by a solid curtain of black, boiling clouds. This motif repeated, the same plain, the same sky, from different angles and perspectives. Wilhelm came to think of this as Gilles’ abstract landscape series. It was clearly painted by the same hand as the boring socialist art, but the transition was jarring. This was where Gilles’ artwork became worthy of exhibition. His previous work was probably worth hanging at a workers’ union hall with a bunch of other similar stuff, but it wasn’t worth any money.

  But these landscapes, the maddening minimalism of it, the starkness of it… it was stunning.

  The third category was just as dramatic a departure as the transition from his first to the second category. But while the first transition was a welcome improvement, this third category was not. It was Grand Guignol at least, but again, Grand Guignol was only a point of reference. It was simply an evil category unto itself.

  It was a series of simulacra of Gilles progressing towards some end. They were self-portraits, but self-portraits composed of children and animals, cats and dogs, torn apart and reassembled into Gilles Lombard. They were the elements; he was the sculpture. These were the paintings the socialists displayed to the mob.

  The fourth category was another abrupt jump. They were painted in the same style, but were images of the prosaic. The painting of the little boy that looked like Carsten peering through a keyhole was one such painting. While the third group of paintings was viscerally horrifying, the fourth category was equally as evocative, but without anything shocking about them. It was all in the colors and angles… just like Uli’s paintings.

  Soon, just as soon as I’m there, I’ll know and I’ll see and there will be nothing standing between me and my memories…

  Wilhelm carried the “device” under his arm in a box. It consisted of three pieces: a candleholder with a curved mirror, similar to stage lighting; the frame; and the ugly three-angled piece that rotated in the slightest breeze. It really was genius, just as Marie Lombard said. The pieces were so exact the angular device barely contacted the frame. Wilhelm couldn’t figure out how it didn’t fall. With the candle lit, it cast a mesmerizing shadow. Renaud planned on setting it up on a pedestal in the gallery. He thought it should be part of the display, even though it was a sculpture and not a painting.

  ***

  As usual, Renaud paced back and forth in front of the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire. He gesticulated, his lips moved, and he caught himself saying, “You don’t understand!” He saw his reflection in the windows. His hair disheveled, his clothes in disarray, like a Bedlam inmate in a dandy’s attire.

  He had never wanted to hide and drink the clock around before, and this scared him. What should be a simple matter of displaying paintings for rich snobs had turned into an exercise in not killing anyone. He’d suffered Wilhelm Ernst for weeks, his daily appearances, his cryptic nonsense. He watched the opportunity to buy Gilles Lombard’s paintings slip away, only to see Ernst right the ship and add the paintings to Uli’s much anticipated display. But these sudden reversals of fortune began a strange unraveling of his nerves.

  Renaud thought himself a rationalist, an atheist in a world of uncultured cavemen, but the last days had shaken his faith in his faithlessness. The exhibition was two days away, and everything had gone impossibly wrong. So far, upwards of thirty workmen had quit, sometimes after just a few hours on the job. They told crazy tales of paintings watching them and figures moving about on the canvasses. Two of them fell off ladders and blamed devilry in the pictures. His two personal assistants, women who slept with him to attain their position, had quit. Both flatly declared the paintings evil.

  All of this would have been infuriating and set him against the lot of them if he wasn’t convinced it was true in his heart, if not in his mind.

  These paintings were haunted!

  Logically, he knew this was superstition, something Mr. Darwin would label an atavistic throwback. But no man could call the paintings anything less than absolutely disorienting and disturbing. Just walking down the aisles between them was dizzying. He knew this was just an effect of the dissonant interplay of angles and geometry, of terrible colors and hues.

  Haunted.

  Several years before, Renaud was wounded in the Battle of Gravelotte in
the very beginning of the Franco-Prussian War. The cannon fire from both sides shattered the village. No one had ever seen destruction like that. It was his sincere belief that man had truly created the weapons to destroy mankind entirely, to literally unleash hell. While being carried away on a stretcher, he was left with the impression that if there wasn’t a real devil before, there certainly was one now, as if Satan guided man from Cain to Napoleon III, instructing him in his crafts, so he could be born into the world.

  Renaud knew this was madness. Only a madman denies God but acknowledges the Devil. So he blocked this from his mind, pushing it to the back so it never intruded. Over time, he forgot about the war and the shattered village. But these paintings showed him something old and wise that knew the dead world that lay at the end, and the twisted bodies lying in its craters. Something hungry, patient, and poised. Something that would howl at the moon when the art galleries and cathedrals were no more…

  Stop! Stop it! You are not that kind of man and these are just paintings!

  But it wasn’t just artwork haunting the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire, it was the legacy of the painters themselves. Both men had undergone radical transformations from boring and mundane works to shocking and outré. And their shocking and outré works were finished with an almost impossible level of mastery. They transformed and killed themselves, and they did it in two different cities simultaneously.

  The sign in front of the exhibition read: The Twin Angels of the Apocalypse, The Mysteries of Uli Ernst and Gilles Lombard. Uli Ernst July 6 1862 - August 15 1897. Gilles Lombard September 8 1861 - August 15 1897.

  In the last year of each of these men’s lives, they had produced their summa and committed suicide on the exact same day. In two different cities, in two different countries.

  Some of the workmen went to the local parish and came back with a priest. He was a man Renaud knew; in fact, he was officially on the rolls of that church. Needless to say, his attendance was nil, but still he knew the priest well. They both served in the war, both were second sons of bourgeois families, both lovers of art and philosophy. The priest was actually an enthusiastic supporter of modern art.