Death Sentences (14 page)

If Who May said he could do it, he could-a chill ran through Breton as he thought about it.

After all, he was the one who had created a "mirror" with words.

He had hung up the phone but couldn't remember when.

He became aware that he was staring into space, slumped deep into the chair in his study.

A chill ran down his spine.

He hurried off to the bedroom where Elisa awaited him.

All night long-he tossed and turned with nightmares, awakening at dawn drenched in sweat. He couldn't remember ever feeling so wretched.

And so he had made his way to Place Blanche.

He sat down at this table at exactly three o'clock.

An hour-

(Who May, your time's up.)

Breton raised his head.

He reached for his glass and drank down the wine in a gulp.

It was utterly flavorless to him.

Yet the glass of wine washed something away. He felt his spirits lifting.

(So that's it. The matter's settled.)

He pondered.

(He wasn't going to show. Such a thing ... even for Who May ... is just not possible. It was all illusion and delusion on his part.)

A trace of a smile appeared on Breton's lips.

He stood up.

Oddly, he no longer felt the cold.

(Who May.)

Breton summoned him in his mind.

(You truly produced something astonishing. But that was the end of it. Duchamp was right after all. You made a "mirror" of words, but what then? That was as far as it went. That's as far as your "special abilities" could go-)

Breton left the cafe.

He crossed Place Blanche and headed home.

(Indeed, there was no reason to be afraid ... writing time? ... "Gold of Time"? ... But you couldn't deliver after all, Who May. It's all over. Or maybe I should use your turn of phrase and say, You're cured.)

Duchamp's conclusions came to mind.

The demon possessing him must have fled. No doubt of it. Making "time" with words proved too large a delusion for even a demon to bear.

The cold wind continued to blow relentlessly.

Yet Breton's cheeks felt pleasantly warm. And the icy chill in his heart seemed to melt away.

(Indeed, now is not the time to fight each other over illusions. Today we have to face up to reality-the reality of the postwar world-)

Breton held his head high in the cold wind.

(Yes, indeed!)

At that time-

Breton had no way of knowing.

But he was mistaken.

Who May had already written "Gold of Time."

But there was good reason why he could not deliver it to Breton. He was already dead by then.

Well, it is not exactly true that he died.

His heart was still beating. But he had lost consciousness and all physical responses.

He was but a lump of flesh, faintly breathing, his head resting on the manuscript that he had just finished, his large eyes open wide.

Late that night, his roommate, an Italian art student, returned drunk to the apartment and found him in that condition. He called the police.

Who May was taken at once to the hospital.

Judging from his condition, the doctors suspected that he had been taking some sort of drug.

The police searched Who May's room. But nothing turned up.

Although they thoroughly interrogated the art student who had found him, he knew absolutely nothing.

The student had known Who May fairly well. He had heard that Who May's father was in America. He knew of no other relatives except the father.

Ultimately, the responsibility for Who May fell to him.

His name was Enrico Caldocchi. He had only recently come to France. He had gained fairly good conversational skills but almost no reading skills.

He initially thought that the document that Who May had left was a will.

The policeman took a look, shrugged his shoulders, and rejected the idea.

"It's a poem of some kind. It makes no sense to me."

Three days later-

Who May's heart stopped without his ever regaining consciousness.

Even though he'd been told it was just a poem, Caldocchi still thought that there had to be some sort of will or testament in it.

Caldocchi thus went through the letters addressed to Who May, thinking to send the poem to someone who had been close to him.

He knew that the father was in America.

So he first looked for letters from America. There were three of them.

Caldocchi then wrote out a number of copies of the poem left by Who May. He couldn't read French, but it was easy enough for him to write the words. The handwriting was very neat and easy to read.

He also made a number of copies for other people who seemed to have been friends with Who May.

He then put them in envelopes and addressed them.

After mailing them, Caldocchi decided that his responsibility ended there.

He called a secondhand store to get rid of Who May's personal belongings.

With the few francs he received, he went out into Montmartre and drank a toast to his departed friend.

4

March 3, 1948-

Philippe Sadeico received an envelope.

The sender's name was Enrico Caldocchi. The name wasn't familiar. Thinking that it could be from one of his customers, he opened it.

Sadeico owned a small restaurant on the Boulevard de Magenta. It was nothing fancy but had a reputation for good food. A lot of the young people in theater came there, and every night at closing time the place was still jumping.

He often received letters from customers, either appreciative or apologetic.

Sadeico had no interest in theater or the arts. But he was fond of these young people, and they were fond of him in return.

But that was not the kind of letter he pulled from the envelope.

At the top of the page was written "The Gold of Time." And then Who May.

(Who May ... that's right!)

Sadeico remembered.

The youth, the stepson of that businessman, Jean-Pierre Carron. The memory gave Sadeico a jolt.

With a furtive glance at the bedroom where his wife slept, he stuffed the letter in his pocket.

Who May's mother was a highly sought-after prostitute. An Oriental woman. Both Carron and Sadeico had been customers of hers.

But she was dead now.

Carron was a bachelor. He'd been quite the playboy at the time.

He had adopted her son.

It was obvious what he had in mind. Who May was as beautiful as his mother. He had a lovely physique. Carron had a reputation for swinging both ways.

Sadeico felt no aversion to beautiful boys either.

He had invited Carron and his son to his restaurant many times.

He hadn't been able to get between them.

Carron and Who May seemed to get along very well together.

Sadeico was persistent, nonetheless, and wrote a number of letters to Who May.

When the Nazis invaded, however, father and son fled for America. He hadn't heard from them since.

What on earth could Who May want of him now? What's more, the letter had been sent to him by someone else. Caldocchi ... clearly an Italian name.

(Surely ... he can't intend to blackmail me, to expose me for some wrong.)

Sadeico became uneasy.

"Hey, I am going out for a while!"

Calling to his wife, he hurried out.

It was less than a three-minute walk to the restaurant.

The boy on janitorial duty had already begun cleaning up the restaurant.

Sadeico sat at one of the tables and pulled the letter out of his pocket with trepidation.

"The Gold of Time"-

He had no idea what that meant.

He began reading nonetheless.

"The shade of the shadow of light. The depths of the depth of light. Equinoctial tipping of light. Around behind light, at the time it arrives here. Time is gold. Gold itself has the same aspect as time...."

Before he had read half of the first page, his head began to throb in pain.

(What is he getting at?)

He felt angry.

A code? Or some sort of poem?

(Come on!)

Nobody was about to get Sadeico to read a poem. Let alone something incomprehensible like this that didn't even seem like a proper poem.

Maybe Who May had lost his mind?

Probably one of his friends sent it to him to let him know.

(Whatever it is ... ugh!)

Sadeico put the letter back in his pocket.

(I don't get it. Nothing to do with me.)

The mother probably had some sort of illness. She passed it along to the son, and now it's finally starting to show.

Sadeico felt a chill run down his spine.

(It's not funny. In that case, I too ...)

He suddenly wanted to take a leak. He stood up and went to the back of the restaurant.

While he pissed, he looked at his thing and shivered again.

He felt thoroughly depressed.

When he went back into the restaurant, a customer was coming in.

It was Jacques Lesage. He was a member of an avant-garde theater group. He often showed up at Sadeico's place. Today he was too early. Nothing was ready yet.

"Sorry, Jacques. At this hour, we're not cooking. Only cold plates," Sadeico said.

"That's fine with me. Whatever you can give me. I haven't eaten all day."

"Too much to drink again?"

Laughing, Sadeico went into the kitchen.

Fresh bread had just arrived.

He put some cheese and sausage on a plate with it and carried that and a glass of wine to Lesage's table.

"Thanks."

He immediately started to dig in.

"By the way, Jacques." He suddenly had an idea and took the letter from his pocket. "What do you think of this?"

"Just give it a read for me. I can't make heads or tails of it. I can only assume that he's crazy."

Lesage took the letter.

Chewing all the while, he started to peruse it.

At that moment, his young assistant called Sadeico from the kitchen.

Sadeico left the table and went inside.

The cleanup was finished. Sadeico gave the boy his pay for the day and came back into the table area.

Lesage was still reading the letter. Even though he'd come in with an empty stomach, he had forgotten all about the food in front of him. He wore a blank expression on his face.

Sadeico began to feel uneasy again.

"What do you think? What's it about?"

In response, Lesage shook his head from side to side a couple of times. Then finally he looked up.

"Who is this ... Who May?"

"Just a name. The son of a friend."

"This son ... is he a poet?"

"A poet? So you think this is a poem after all?" Sadeico asked, feeling somewhat relieved.

"A poem ... it is ... certainly ... but then I am not sure

"That's only natural. He's crazy, I'm sure of it."

Lesage just shook his head.

"Where is he living now?"

"I really don't know. I only know that he fled to America with his father before the Nazis came. But I don't know if he's come back, or if he's still there. This letter arrived out of the blue, this morning, addressed to me."

Lesage went on shaking his head. Then he spoke.

"This ... letter, or ... whatever, do you mind if I keep it?"

Sadeico frowned.

"I don't mind. But ... well ... is there anything, anything written there that might be compromising for me?"

"Anything about you? No, nothing at all. It's hard to describe ... but no, in any case ... there's someone I'd like to show this to."

"It's okay, then," Sadeico nodded. "Just take it, fine by me."

Lesage jumped to his feet.

Without a word, he ran out.

The bread and cheese were still on the table, half eaten.

"What the hell!?"

Sadeico cursed.

"They're all crazy!"

By the end of the day, however, Sadeico had forgotten all about it. It had been an unusually busy day.

The same day, March 3, in the afternoon-

A young man came to visit Antonin Artaud at the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine.

A member of an avant-garde theater group, he had appeared in some of Artaud's plays staged by his group. It wasn't the first time that he had paid Artaud a visit.

After his attack in Dublin in 1937, Artaud spent most of the next ten years locked away in asylums, but two years previ ously, through the efforts of friends, among them Breton, he had been released from medical incarceration.

He had been transferred from the psychiatric hospital in Rodez to this clinic.

Even while in the clinic, Artaud remained exceedingly active. The previous year he had published "Van Gogh, le suicide de la societe," which was awarded the Prix Sainte-Beuve.

His condition had stabilized, and it appeared that it would continue to improve.

On that day, the weather was fine, and Artaud greeted his visitor in high spirits.

The young man stayed with Artaud for about an hour and then returned home.

The next day-

Artaud was found dead, sitting in his chair in his room at the clinic.

Actually, when the nurse found him, he was still breathing. Staring at the ceiling, he was actually still breathing. His heart was still beating.