The Mad and the Bad

7

The telephone woke Julie. As she picked up the receiver, she glanced at her watch. Six thirty-five. Her head ached; her mouth was dry.

“Am I waking you up?” came Hartog’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Would you be so good as to come down to my office?”

“Where is it?”

“Ground floor, door K. I’ll expect you. There’s coffee.”

“Fine.”

“You have ten minutes,” said the phone.

They hung up. Julie disentangled herself from the sheets, almost fell, and sat on the edge of the bed. She had a terrible hangover. She rubbed her eyes with her fists.

In the bathroom, the fluorescent tube over the sink shed a nasty oyster-hued light on her. Julie brushed her teeth, untangled her hair, and swallowed two Tofranils. No time to take a shower. She made herself up cursorily and went back into her room. Her little Hermes Baby typewriter was open on the table with a sheet of paper inserted in it. Julie leant over and read:

NEUILLY, 5 JUNE

Doctor Y. Rosenfeld

Château des Bauges

78-Gouzy

Dear Doctor,

I realize that I tried to put off leaving because. .

“Oh my God!” Julie muttered. “You must have been completely plastered!”

She tore the paper from the machine, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it into the cylindrical aluminum wastepaper basket. She opened the closet and slipped into black pants and a yellow blouse.

“You are going to get yourself canned,” she remarked.

She went and took the elevator. On the ground floor she had no difficulty finding door K. (The K, in gilded metal, stood out in relief in the middle.) Julie knocked. She heard Hartog’s voice within.

“Come in!”

The girl complied, closing the door behind her. The office was square, all white, with a white table cluttered with papers and files, a white chair, and two white leather armchairs and a matching reclining couch. Hartog was seated on the edge of the couch, talking on a telephone handset with a built-in dial and a long coiled cord. The redhead was unshaven. He wore a white nylon dressing gown over black-and-blue pajamas. He was smoking. A standing metal ashtray was beside him.

“I don’t give a damn about Goujon’s project,” he shouted into the phone. “I’ve told you what I want. I’ve sent you a sketch. That’s not enough? Shit!”

Julie hovered in the middle of the pale gray carpet. Hartog gestured for her to sit down. He dropped ash on the floor.

“He can stick it up his ass!” he yelled into the phone. “Walkways between the workers’ housing units, freeway up to the site. Costs? What costs? The costs are my business!”

Julie heard not coûts (costs) but coups (hits), and she understood strictly nothing.

“Good, that’s better. Call me the day after tomorrow in Munich.”

He rang off without saying goodbye and turned towards Julie. The redhead’s face was glistening. Sweat pearled at the roots of the seriously thinning hair on his liver-spotted cranium. He lit a Gitane from the butt of his last one.

“I asked for coffee! Where in the hell is my coffee?”

A knock at the door.

“Come in!”

The valet came in with coffee on a white tray.

“It’s high time, Georges,” grumbled the redhead.

“I had to make it myself,” said Georges in a rebellious tone of voice.

“How come? I pay a cook, don’t I?”

“Madame Boudiou is not at all well,” answered Georges. “She’s had a seizure. Almost swallowed her tongue again.”

“Put that down here and get out!”

“Yes, sir.”

Georges left the room. Hartog got to his feet and wiped his face with a black handkerchief. He went over to a side door and disappeared, though he remained within hearing distance.

“You were drunk last night,” he shouted.

“Possibly,” said Julie in a sullen tone. “I can’t remember anything.”

“Alcohol and tranquilizers, huh?” said the invisible millionaire in an oddly cheerful tone. “Better not make a habit of it. Not while you’re working.”

“I wasn’t working.”

“Okay. Pour the coffee, there’s a good girl.”

Julie served the coffee. Hartog reappeared wearing pants, his torso and feet bare. He was bandaged from waist to pectorals. He was holding a battery-powered electric shaver. He swatted the telephone.

“What a bunch of assholes!”

He rummaged through the papers piled on the table, extracted a large watercolor drawing, and spread it out noisily in front of Julie.

“Look. I was the one who made this plan. Can you read a city planner’s drawing?”

“No.”

The redhead looked crestfallen.

“Well, screw it.” He sighed. “I know it’s good.”

“Did you get me up at half past six in the morning just to show me your little drawings?”

Hartog took a swallow of coffee. He looked at Julie curiously.

“Quite the little rebel,” he observed. “I know all about you. Pickpocket. Arsonist. Congratulations.”

“Of course you do,” replied Julie. “It’s all in my file.”

“You, all you poor people, are just too stupid. You go about things in the dumbest way.”

“Everyone can’t inherit money.”

Hartog shrugged.

“For my part I do something with my inheritance. You people wouldn’t know what to do with one. You, Fuentès and company, people like you. What I do is create a work.”

“It’s all about money,” said Julie. “Money and little drawings.”

“Little drawings, little drawings,” Hartog repeated vaguely.

The lower part of his face was rigid. Pulling himself together, he took a three-part folder from his desk and shook it, causing a stream of 21 cm x 27 cm photographs to cascade out.

“A work-goddammit, a work!”

He was swearing but seemed calm. He struck his sternum with the flat of his hand. Perspiration trickled abnormally, obscenely down his hairless white body. The redhead stood up and turned his shaver on. Julie examined the photos distractedly. Houses. Buildings. On the back of each were noted place and date. Julie finished her coffee. Hartog switched his shaver off.

“Don’t you admire my work?”

“With lots of cash you can do whatever you want.”

“I create beauty,” said Hartog.

Julie did not bother to reply. The redhead put his shaver down without wiping it.

“I have some jobs for you,” he said in a suddenly altered tone of voice. “I’m taking a plane at eight o’clock. I’ll be gone for three days. You’ll have to manage without me. Mademoiselle Boyd, my secretary, will be here. You can call on her if you need funds.”

Julie nodded absently. She was looking at a photograph.

“This one I like,” she murmured. “Definitely.”

Hartog took the photo from her hands and scrutinized it. It showed an almost chaotic group of low buildings spread across a mountain crest. It looked as if ruins from various places had been assembled, linked up by more recent masonry, and added to over the years by fresh disordered elements. Between drystone walls and slate platforms were slung rickety catwalks, and here and there were sugarloaf structures never more than three or four meters tall. Vegetation flourished in patios, crannies, and roof corners.

A violent flush darkened Hartog’s features and spread visibly down his narrow torso as far as the bandage. The redhead scratched his scalp in agitation.

“You do have your nutty side,” observed Julie benevolently. “All this stuff here is your work, isn’t it?”

Hartog nodded. “My folly.”

“Do people like it?”

“My folly,” the redhead said again. “Folly-meaning, as you well know, a place of pleasure and fantasy. An aerie. .”

He seemed to regain his self-confidence as he talked.

“This is where I gave full rein to my imagination,” he said with satisfaction. “Perhaps it was even a bit childish. But every man needs a place to be alone, to get away from himself. The place is more restful for me than a Trappist monastery.”

A drop of perspiration fell from Hartog’s round forehead onto the glossy print. He tossed the picture towards the table and turned away. The photo fluttered, hovered, and fell into Julie’s lap.

“Would you like a drink?” asked Hartog, his back still turned.

“At this hour?”

“I’m having one. Feel free to help yourself.”

Leaning over a built-in panel, he was opening a minibar. The house was full of bars. A drinker’s paradise.

“Goodbye,” said Hartog without turning around.

Stiff-backed, glass in hand, he left through the side door, and Julie hesitated for a moment before pouring herself a brandy, which she downed, standing, in a single gulp, reminded of a time when, freezing cold at dawn, she would stand at a bar and wash down black coffee with four shots of calvados at the start of a day of wandering, tears, fatigue, and despair.