Free Cocaine by Pitigrilli Page A

bows.
    Two other gentlemen had come in with the astronomer.
    “The painter Triple Sec.”
    He was young, blond, thin, and trebly dry. More bows.
    “Dr Pancreas, of the Faculty of Medicine.”
    Bows and handshakes.
    On a sign from the hostess the five gentlemen moved towards a divan; the two Italians were invited to precede the three Frenchmen.
    The divan was so soft and well sprung that once one had sat on it one’s knees were at the height of one’s shoulders. To avoid assuming ungraceful positions there was no alternative to either getting up again or lying flat.
    The flunkey announced more guests.
    A rich industrialist, an antique dealer with several deposed kings among his clientèle, a blonde of indefinable age between thirty and sixty, a cocotte of recent vintage, more men, more women.
    One of the latter announced that M. — was playing in a tragedy of Corneille’s that evening and would be arriving later.
    An old gentleman apologized for the absence of a colleague who had had to go to Marseilles to perform an operation. The painter realized at once what lay behind this excuse. The surgeon, who was the master of an important masonic lodge, was never free on Thursdays.
    More guests arrived, and there were more introductions and more bows; and no one showed surprise at seeing anyone else there.
    Four flunkeys brought in about a hundred multi-colored cushions and piled them round the ladies sitting on the divans. At one end of the big circular room a smaller circle formed: an assembly of men, women, cushions, pink female shoulders, women’s hair-dos, wisps of cigarette smoke; the overhead light tinted everything pink and blue, turning the shadows greenish and violet.
    A great correctness of attitude gave a certain nobility to the promiscuousness of cushions, the huddle of limbs, the close proximity of austere elderly men in tails and women in revealing dresses.
    Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, was sheathed in darkness; her dark gray dress with greenish and bluish reflections clung to her form as if she were wearing tights; it was not trimmings or stitching that held the silk to the curves of her body. She was like a bronze nude or a basalt statue, but touching her would no doubt have revealed the adhesive softness of a vampire. There was not so much as a silk chemise between her dress and her skin; round her waist she had a green girdle, knotted in front, and the tassels at the two ends ended in two big emeralds. Her stockings were green, and so were her satin shoes and her fingernails.
    A kind of trapdoor opened, and a pale young man with a girlish face, carrying a violin in one hand and a bow in the other, emerged from below. The hostess signed to him, he disappeared again, and the trapdoor shut.
    Through the floor — and only then did its thinness become apparent — there rose the sound of soft, caressing music that seemed to come from great depths.
    This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you,” the painter Triple Sec said to the man beside him. “At the Grand Palais yesterday morning you said that a painting of mine was full of sublime falsities. The phrase struck me.”
    “Good gracious,” said the gentleman with the austere face of a maitre d’hôtel, “do you mean to say you were standing next to your picture?”
    “Of course he was,” said a woman with metallic blonde hair. The painter’s always near the picture just as the deceased’s close relatives are always near the hearse. If you want to say nasty things about a picture or someone who has just died, it’s better to keep your distance.”
    “And do you like the false in art?” the painter asked.
    The astronomer: Of course; only the false is beautiful. Crazy distortions, maddening contrasts, are the only means by which artists can produce any reaction in me. We’ve had enough of the truth, of life and realism. What I want of an artist is that he should be able to give me the illusion of walking city streets paved with stars with a