Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  ‘It wasn’t actually Minsk,’ the boy had said. ‘But quite near.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Smilovichi, about twelve miles away.’

  ‘Smilovichi!’ Drioli had shouted, embracing him again. ‘I walked there several times when I was a boy.’ Then he had sat down again, staring affectionately at the other’s face. ‘You know,’ he had said, ‘you don’t look like a western Russian. You’re like a Tartar, or a Kalmuck. You look exactly like a Kalmuck.’

  Now, standing in the studio, Drioli looked again at the boy as he took the glass of wine and tipped it down his throat in one swallow. Yes, he did have a face like a Kalmuck – very broad and high-cheeked, with a wide coarse nose. This broadness of the cheeks was accentuated by the ears which stood out sharply from the head. And then he had the narrow eyes, the black hair, the thick sullen mouth of a Kalmuck, but the hands – the hands were always a surprise, so small and white like a lady’s, with tiny thin fingers.

  ‘Give me some more,’ the boy said. ‘If we are to celebrate then let us do it properly.’

  Drioli distributed the wine and sat himself on a chair. The boy sat on the old couch with Drioli’s wife. The three bottles were placed on the floor between them.

  ‘Tonight we shall drink as much as we possibly can,’ Drioli said. ‘I am exceptionally rich. I think perhaps I should go out now and buy some more bottles. How many shall I get?’

  ‘Six more,’ the boy said. ‘Two for each.’

  ‘Good. I shall go now and fetch them.’

  ‘And I will help you.’

  In the nearest café Drioli bought six bottles of white wine, and they carried them back to the studio. They placed them on the floor in two rows, and Drioli fetched the corkscrew and pulled the corks, all six of them; then they sat down again and continued to drink.

  ‘It is only the very wealthy,’ Drioli said, ‘who can afford to celebrate in this manner.’

  ‘That is true,’ the boy said. ‘Isn’t that true, Josie?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How do you feel, Josie?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Will you leave Drioli and marry me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Beautiful wine,’ Drioli said. ‘It is a privilege to drink it.’

  Slowly, methodically, they set about getting themselves drunk. The process was routine, but all the same there was a certain ceremony to be observed, and a gravity to be maintained, and a great number of things to be said, then said again – and the wine must be praised, and the slowness was important too, so that there would be time to savour the three delicious stages of transition, especially (for Drioli) the one when he began to float and his feet did not really belong to him. That was the best period of them all – when he could look down at his feet and they were so far away that he would wonder what crazy person they might belong to and why they were lying around on the floor like that, in the distance.

  After a while, he got up to switch on the light. He was surprised to see that the feet came with him when he did this, especially because he couldn’t feel them touching the ground. It gave him a pleasant sensation of walking on air. Then he began wandering around the room, peeking slyly at the canvases stacked against the walls.

  ‘Listen,’ he said at length. ‘I have an idea.’ He came across and stood before the couch, swaying gently. ‘Listen, my little Kalmuck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have a tremendous idea. Are you listening?’

  ‘I’m listening to Josie.’

  ‘Listen to me, please. You are my friend – my ugly little Kalmuck from Minsk – and to me you are such an artist that I would like to have a picture, a lovely picture –’

  ‘Have them all. Take all you can find, but do not interrupt me when I am talking with your wife.’

  ‘No, no. Now listen. I mean a picture that I can have with me always… for ever… wherever I go… whatever happens… but always with me… a picture by you.’ He reached forward and shook the boy’s knee. ‘Now listen to me, please.’

  ‘Listen to him,’ the girl said.

  ‘It is this. I want you to paint a picture on my skin, on my back. Then I want you to tattoo over what you have painted so that it will be there always.’

  ‘You have crazy ideas.’

  ‘I will teach you how to use the tattoo. It is easy. A child could do it.’

  ‘I am not a child.’

  ‘Please…’

  ‘You are quite mad. What is it you want?’ The painter looked up into the slow, dark, wine-bright eyes of the other man. ‘What in heaven’s name is it you want?’

  ‘You could do it easily! You could! You could!’

  ‘You mean with the tattoo?’

  ‘Yes, with the tattoo! I will teach you in two minutes!’

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Are you saying I do not know what I am talking about?’

  No, the boy could not possibly be saying that because if anyone knew about the tattoo it was he – Drioli. Had he not, only last month, covered a man’s whole belly with the most wonderful and delicate design composed entirely of flowers? What about the client who had had so much hair upon his chest that he had done him a picture of a grizzly bear so designed that the hair on the chest became the furry coat of the bear? Could he not draw the likeness of a lady and position it with such subtlety upon a man’s arm that when the muscle of the arm was flexed the lady came to life and performed some astonishing contortions?

  ‘All I am saying,’ the boy told him, ‘is that you are drunk and this is a drunken idea.’

  ‘We could have Josie for a model. A study of Josie upon my back. Am I not entitled to a picture of my wife upon my back?’

  ‘Of Josie?’

  ‘Yes.’ Drioli knew he only had to mention his wife and the boy’s thick brown lips would loosen and begin to quiver.

  ‘No,’ the girl said.

  ‘Darling Josie, please. Take this bottle and finish it, then you will feel more generous. It is an enormous idea. Never in my life have I had such an idea before.’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘That he should make a picture of you upon my back. Am I not entitled to that?’

  ‘A picture of me?’

  ‘A nude study,’ the boy said. ‘It is an agreeable idea.’

  ‘Not nude,’ the girl said.

  ‘It is an enormous idea,’ Drioli said.

  ‘It’s a damn crazy idea,’ the girl said.

  ‘It is in any event an idea,’ the boy said. ‘It is an idea that calls for a celebration.’

  They emptied another bottle among them. Then the boy said, ‘It is no good. I could not possibly manage the tattoo. Instead, I will paint this picture on your back and you will have it with your so long as you do not take a bath and wash it off. If you never take a bath again in your life then you will have it always, as long as you live.’

  ‘No,’ Drioli said.

  ‘Yes – and on the day that you decide to take a bath I will know that you do not any longer value my picture. It will be a test of your admiration for my art.’

  ‘I do not like the idea,’ the girl said. ‘His admiration for your art is so great that he would be unclean for many years. Let us have the tattoo. But not nude.’

  ‘Then just the head,’ Drioli said.

  ‘I could not manage it.’

  ‘It is immensely simple. I will undertake to teach you in two minutes. You will see. I shall go now and fetch the instruments. The needles and the inks. I have inks of many different colours – as many different colours as you have paints, and far more beautiful…’

  ‘It is impossible.’

  ‘I have many inks. Have I not many different colours of inks, Josie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You will see,’ Drioli said. ‘I will go now and fetch them.’ He got up from his chair and walked unsteadily, but with determination, out of the room.

  In half an hour Drioli was back. ‘I have brought everything,’ he cried, w