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Adieu Gioconda

Ronald M. Wade

    Bertrand’s feet hurt terribly but Montparnasse was only a few blocks away so he pressed on trying to ignore the pain. He had walked all the way from the Louvre because the Metro was no longer running and the wait for a bus seemed interminable. He kept his eyes straight ahead hoping no one would take note of him but not being a particularly noticeable man, he needn’t have worried. He stood only eight inches over five feet and had a middle-aged paunch. His hairline receded slightly and the remainder had attained a muddy, indistinctive color. His modest mustache, flecked with gray, lacked a single exciting or mysterious characteristic. His face, which seemed to droop sadly, was not handsome but yet not ugly enough to discomfit its viewers and cause them to remember it. He wore an undistinguished, gray greatcoat which concealed his uniform.
    The Metro had broken down first and made getting a seat or a hanging strap on a bus a difficult thing. Then the buses had come less and less frequently. The talk at the museum was that the maintenance technicians had walked out and the authorities could not get them back to work despite the arrest of their union leaders. After that, the buses began to break down and their numbers grew fewer and fewer. Those that had broken down in the streets had not been hauled away. They were street relics, their pathetic message of hopelessness overshadowing the few people still busying about Paris, attempting to look engaged in important work but not so important they caught the eye of the religious police.
    Bertrand and his friends had heard rumors that the Shariah government, at a loss about things mechnical, was going to call in Germans to do the repair and maintenance work, but the industrious, scrubbed, efficient Germans never materialized. The buses’ flaking, rusting hulks remained where their engines had died or their transmissions had stripped and from where the disappointed and defeated passengers were obliged to walk away.
    Bertrand suddenly stopped walking and paused. In his haste to quickly get away from the museum with his prize, he had not given a thought to the finality of his departure, grasping the truth that he would never return to the museum. He turned and looked back the way he had come, remembering.
    The museum, together with his beloved Cecily, had been his entire life for over thirty years. But when the government changed to something that disdained the thing he valued so highly, the solidity of the relationship, the pride of being even a small part of something great, something world-famous, had started to wane, to slip away. He and his colleagues watched the dusky, dark-eyed and robed official visitors frowning as they viewed treasures of incalculable value. He felt it within his chest and his stomach; something had drained from his body in a flow that could not be staunched.
    When the Grand Ayatollah Khalizad died suddenly Bertrand’s friend Andre had said, “I fear our way of life went to the grave with Khalizad.” They all knew the feared fundamentalist Askariya eagerly awaited the time when he could rule in the moderate Khalizad’s place and impose rigorous religious regulations on the country.
    It had not been a week later when Andre had walked into the almost deserted Etruscan exhibit looking as if he were suffering a heart attack.
    Andre had walked quickly up to Bertrand and said in a low voice, “I just heard on the radio that Askariya has taken power.” His voiced started to crack when he added, “Everything we hold dear is about to be taken from us.”
    Bertrand’s bowels had seemed to turn to water. He tried to think of words to console his friend but he could not. His throat tightened as he said, “We must be brave.”
    He had not sounded convincing even to himself.
    As he continued walking toward his home, Bertrand passed uncollected, seemingly endless piles of stinking trash and garbage, sometime walking into the street where the detritus blocked the sidewalk. He walked past the empty storefront where DePuy had run his wine shop for over twenty years before the Sharian National Party took power and forcibly reduced the number of wine shops. The store was empty and the odor of stale wine assailed his nose as he passed by. Someone had swept up the broken glass but the wine had soaked into the ground and pavement and puddles of it had dried in the gutter. Its stench combined with that of the garbage to remind the passersby of what Paris had become.
    At last, Bertrand rounded the corner to Montparnasse and headed for Number Fifty. Despite the coolness of the day, he was perspiring but he dared not remove his greatcoat until he was inside and out of sight. He no longer trusted anyone, not even his neighbor Gambrell with whom he used to drink wine after work.
    Madam LeFevre, the building manager, was standing on the steps talking to a neighbor when he reached the building and mounted the steps. “Good day,” she said, eyeing his flushed face and sweaty brow suspiciously. “You are home early today.”
    “It was a slow day,” Bertrand replied. “The management gave some of us with seniority some time off.”
    Bertrand thought he had lied poorly when her suspicious expression deepened. He gave her a forced smile and hurried inside, climbing the stairs to his apartment quickly.
    Inside his apartment, he locked the door, removed a bundle from his inside overcoat pocket and tossed the coat onto the chaise. He put the bundle on his bed and, with the greatest care, unwrapped a scarf from around the delicate figure. He paused for a moment to admire his prize, a figurine of a nude woman a little over a foot tall. It was unofficially known to art patrons as the “Lemnos Venus” for the place where it was found. An Etruscan artist had lovingly crafted her of Bucchero clay over two thousand years before.
    Of all the thousands of famous treasures the Louvre embraced, the little-known figurine had always been Bertrand’s favorite. Whenever possible, he had stopped by the case to admire it, the delicate workmanship, the curves of the body, and the ethereal expression on the figure’s face. Over the course of years, he had begun to think of it as his own. Sometime after the death of his beloved Cecily, he had taken to stopping by the case each morning to wish the figure good morning and at closing time to wish her a good evening.
    Bertrand went to his closet and took some tissue paper from a box. He carefully wrapped the figurine in tissue, several layers of it. He then shoved the bed toward the window. Where the headboard had stood, he pried at a board in the floor with his penknife. He eased the board up enough so he could seize it with his fingertips and pull it up. Bertrand took the figure from the bed and carefully placed it in the recess. He paused and said, “Sleep well my little one. I will watch over you.” With that, he replaced the board and shoved the bed back into place.
    Only then did he stop to remove his tie and sodden shirt and wipe the moisture from his face. He put on a fresh shirt then went to his cupboard and took out a bottle of wine, his last one. He poured a few sips into a glass and sat in his favorite chair, kicking off his shoes. He sighed as the pain in his feet subsided and he thought back over the morning’s events.
    It was Andre’s face that came to his mind’s eye. Andre was almost running toward him across the Etruscan Exhibit, pale as death.
    “They are smashing the Aphrodite of Milos with sledge hammers!” he cried, his eyes wide in disbelief. He stopped, facing Bertrand, buried his face in his hands and began sobbing uncontrollably.
    Bertrand heard crashes and loud voices from the hallway. The moment he dreaded had arrived. The masterpiece, hewn from marble by Alexandros of Antioch, partly because of its missing arms, was one of the most widely recognized sculptures in the civilized world. Because of that fame, it had been chosen to be the first to go.
     The Ayatollah Askariya had made it plain long before that “obscenities” such as the Aphrodite, with its bare breasts and erotic message as well as Erhart’s Saint Mary Magdelene and other similar works could not be tolerated. It had been widely known he chafed at the tolerance of his predecessor.
    In his head, Bertrand had mentally rehearsed his next movements a dozen times. He turned and forced himself to walk away calmly among the growing confusion, being careful not to attract attention. Patrons and museum personnel were running by to see for themselves the horror of which they been told. With the noise and bustle to cover his movements, he walked to the case that housed the smaller Etruscan works, key in hand. Keeping his movements leisurely and without haste, as if performing a routine duty, he unlocked the case, reached in, took the figurine, concealed it under his jacket and walked to the cloakroom at his usual pace. He could not be sure that hostile eyes had not noticed. Those underlings, hired from among the faithful ostensibly to sweep, clean and polish, had watched with their dark eyes even when two of the old employees spoke quietly together or when anyone did anything out of the ordinary.
    Wrapping the Venus in his scarf, Bertrand had placed her in the capacious inside pocket of his overcoat. A few minutes later, he had slipped out of the employees’ entrance and turned his steps toward home without wasting time waiting for a bus.
     He sipped his wine slowly and closed his eyes, dabbed at the perspiration on his brow and let his racing heart slow. A frantic knock at his door jarred him back to alertness. He frowned, got to his feet and opened the door. It was Gambrell in a state of excitement. His hands were trembling.
    “Bertrand,” he said breathlessly. “I thought I heard you come in. Are you watching the television?”
    “No,” Bertrand answered, puzzled.
    “They are burning the vineyards,” Gambrell rasped in disbelief.
    Bertrand turned and walked across the room to the television and turned it on. Before the picture became visible, they heard the excited voice of the news announcer.
    “This is the scene at Bourgogne. The meeting place of the wine growers’ association is in flames as are the vineyards surrounding this complex.”
    The screen lit up, showing billowing clouds of smoke. The scene switched to a vineyard where men were running between the rows of vines with torches.
    The announcer continued. “The Ayatollah Askariya, leader of the Sharian National Party, said that the decadence tolerated by his predecessor could not be allowed and that the nation must be purified of evil in all its forms. According to a dispatch I have just received, the same is happening in the Loire Valley and in the Bordeaux vineyards.”
    Bertrand reached out and turned off the television angrily. He looked at Gambrell and said just above a whisper, “I am leaving. “They are destroying the national treasures at the Louvre, I no longer have a place to work. I am going to take what I can carry and leave this cesspool.”
    “What will you do, where will you go?” Gambrell asked despairingly.
    “I don’t know,” Bertrand answered wearily. “Perhaps in some land which has not yet been defiled I can find a place that needs an experienced curator.”
    “But where?” Gambrell asked. “I heard that the Americans have closed their borders with armed men. Germany won’t have us. You can no longer get into Switzerland. Spain is being torn apart by the Ayatollahs and ...”
    The sound of screeching tires from the front of the building interrupted Gambrell. He rushed to the window and looked out.
    “My God,” he cried. “It’s the Religious Police, they are coming in here. Why do they come here?” he asked, turning to look at Bertrand.
    Bertrand’s sudden pallor and stricken expression gave him away.
    “What have you done, Bertrand?” Gambrell cried. Then, aware that his own situation was perilous, his eyes widened. He turned without speaking and ran out the door down the hall to his own apartment.
    His running footsteps still rang in the hall when Bertrand heard Madame LeFevre directing the police to his door. The police rushed up the stair and through his open door brandishing truncheons. Bertrand stood silently, his back to the kitchen, not moving. The one-in-charge officiously planted himself in front of him so close that the policeman’s foul breath assailed him.
    “You are charged with stealing an art object from the place of your employment, an object condemned under the law,” the policeman growled in poor French. “Where is it?”
    “I know not of what you speak,” Bertrand answered calmly.
    The man hit Bertrand on the side of the head with his truncheon. Bertrand’s knees started to buckle and he staggered back but he put his left hand on the kitchen table and steadied himself.
    “Where is it?” the policeman shouted.
    “I know nothing,” Bertrand said, struggling to keep his feet and to refocus his eyes.
    The one-in-charge turned and shouted orders in Arabic. The men started jerking open drawers and scattering their contents about the room. They opened the wardrobes and tore the clothing out, shaking it and throwing it to the floor. They opened the drawers containing Cecily’s lingerie and scattered the garments muttering to one another in obscene tones and laughing.
    Bertrand set his jaw and turned his eyes away. It was then he saw his bread knife on the kitchen table. It was very old, its blade shortened and thinned by years of sharpening. He clutched it quickly and put it up his sleeve.
    The police upended his furniture and ripped the cushions open. They pulled the mattress from the bed and sliced it open, scattering the stuffing. Bertrand stood silently, fingering the swelling on the side of his face.
    The one-in-charge swaggered to the denuded bed, shoved it three feet with his foot and closely surveyed the wood floor underneath with a practiced eye.
    He pointed at the board that concealed Bertrand’s hiding place and shouted orders. Two of the men worried at the board, finally pulled it up and produced the tissue-wrapped figurine. One of them tore the tissue away and handed it to the one-in-charge.
    Bertrand, trembling in rage, let the knife drop from his sleeve into his palm.
    The swarthy supervisor swaggered across the room with his prize and confronted Bertrand. Leaning into Bertrand’s face and leering obscenely, he held up the figurine and asked insinuatingly, “You were going to keep this Satan’s doll for your own pleasure?”
    “Go to hell,” Bertrand spat.
    The policeman grimaced in a leering smile. Staring into Bertrand’s face, he raised the figurine and dashed it to the floor, smashing it to bits.
    As the fragments scattered about the room, Bertrand, in one quick swing of his arm, slashed the man across the chest.
    Taken by surprise by what appeared to be a non-aggressive, meek French clerk, the policeman cried out and his eyes seemed to start from their sockets. His hands went to his chest and he staggered back, crying out in Arabic as blood ran between his fingers. His men roared in astonishment.
    The one-in-charge sank to the floor as his knees buckled and his minions came alive, knocking Bertrand to the floor, kicking his body and pummeling his head and shoulders with their truncheons. The beating continued without let up until the injured man spoke. Holding his bloody palms out in front of his face, he cried out, “You will be beheaded for this!” At his words the men paused in their beating.
    Bertrand smiled, blood staining his teeth. He coughed and raised his head to see the bloodied supervisor and spoke through bleeding lips, “What does it matter? The world has already ended.”
    The policemen stared at him not understanding,
    Bertrand smiled again and said, “I will miss nothing.”

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