Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette [17]
“When I break this decanter of mine,” he said, “I’ll replace it with one with advertising on it.” He held out one of the glasses to Aimée, who reached for it with one hand as she continued toweling her hair with the other. “I am very interested in promotional items and free gifts,” continued the baron. “Also in trash. I have no income, you see, and a man with no income is bound to take a great interest in free gifts and trash.” He took a sip of brandy and clicked his tongue appreciatively. “Given the present state of the world, don’t you know, with the increase of constant capital as compared with variable capital, a whole stratum of the poor is bound to be unemployed and live off free gifts and trash, and occasionally off various government subsidies. Do you know what I am saying?”
“I am not sure,” said Aimée.
“Nor am I,” said the baron. “But excuse me, please, I hear the kettle whistling.”
He went off again through the small white door, leaving it open behind him.
“I’m glad I picked you up on the road,” he shouted from the kitchen. “I wanted to see you again. I think you are mysterious. Are you mysterious?”
Aimée made no reply. The baron reappeared with another tray holding tea and cups.
“Alas, I have neither milk nor sugar at present,” he said. “I must apologize for the condition in which I first appeared before you, I mean to say with my prick in my hand. It is I who must seem mysterious to you.”
“Not really,” said Aimée. “No big deal.”
They drank their tea and glared at each other in silence, standing very close, with their noses in their cups.
“I am not mysterious,” declared the baron at last. “I am an astronomer. Come, let me show you.”
He went ahead of Aimée through the small white door and led her up a narrow staircase. They came to the second floor. Aimée, who had not finished her drink, an excellent calvados, was holding her glass. As they went down a passageway, the baron pointed into a bare room with a camp bed and covers, a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling, and cases of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes piled up against the walls.
“My bedroom,” he said. “I’m not going to invite you in there to copulate; we are not well enough acquainted for that.” And he continued on down the passageway. Here too there were boxes of spirits and cartons of cigarettes. “Would you like a few cartons of English cigarettes?” he asked. “I have various dealings with the Bléville seamen.”
“No, thank you,” replied Aimée.
“And I win stuff off them at cards,” added the baron as he started up a very narrow spiral staircase at the end of the corridor. “I’m a very good player. And, frankly, they let me cheat. Because I make them laugh.”
The spiral staircase led up an angle tower. Through leaded windows of colored glass Aimée looked down over the rear of the garden, where rabbits were running in and out of rain-soaked hutches. Then they came into a circular room directly beneath the tower’s roof.
“Didn’t I tell you I was an astronomer?” the baron cried triumphantly. Although they had climbed the staircase quickly, he was not out of breath. Nor was Aimée.
There were apertures in the roof, mirrors, a variety of glasses and telescopes, and, strewn on rolling enameled tables reminiscent of those used in hospitals, papers covered with notations in very tiny but very legible handwriting. So far as Aimée could tell, these were calculations and vaguely poetic thoughts on celestial bodies. Through a stained-glass window the blue-tinged rooftops of Bléville could be seen