hell when he heard about Freddie. Almost like he was a kid brother, like you maybe."
"Thanks, Stanley. I think I just made an insulting mistake.
Regardless, there are a couple of gaps that have to be filled."
"What does that mean?"
"How did Mrs. de Vries know about me?"
In the shadows of the afternoon sunlight, Jean-Pierre Villier, his face unrecognizable, the nose twice its true size, his eyelids equally bulbous, his clothes tatters and rags, stumbled down the dark alley in Montparnasse. There were drunken bodies intermittently sitting on the cobblestones, their backs against the walls, most slumped, others having collapsed into fetal positions. He sang in an alcoholic, singsong cadence, the words slurred.
"Ecoutez, icoutez-gardez-vous, mes amis! I have heard from our dear companion jodelle-is anyone interested, or am I wasting my old breath?"
"Jodelle's crazy!" came a voice on the left.
"He gets us in trouble!" cried a voice from the right.
"Tell him to go to hell."
"I must find friends of his, he tells me it's important!"
"Go to the northern docks along the Seine, he sleeps better there, steals better there."
Jean-Pierre wandered up to the Quai des Tuileries, stopping at every darkened back street and alley he came across, plunging into each with essentially the same results.
"Old jodelle is a pig! He'doesn't share his wine!"
"He says he has friends in high places-where are they?"
"This great actor he says is his son-such shit!"
"I'm a drunk and I do not care any longer, but I don't burden my friends with lies."
And then, as Villier reached the loading piers above the Pont de I'Alma, he heard the first words of encouragement from a derelict old woman.
"Jodelle is mad, of course, but he is always nice to me. He brings me flowers-stolen flowers, naturally-and calls me a great actress. Can you believe that?"
"Yes, madame, I believe he means it."
"Then you are as mad as he is."
"Perhaps I am, for you are a lovely woman."
"Aiyee! .. . Your eyes! They are blue clouds in the sky. You are his ghost!"
"He is dead?"
"Who knows? Who are you?"
And finally, hours later, as the sun descended behind the tall structures of the Trocaero, he heard other words, shouted in another alley, far darker than any previous one.
"Who speaks of my friend, jodelle?"
"I do," yelled Villier, walking farther into the darkness of the narrow enclosure.
"Are you his friend?" he asked, kneeling beside the collapsed, disheveled beggar.
"I must find jodelle," continued Jean-Pierre, "and I have money for anyone who can help me! Here, look! Fifty francs."
"It's been a long time since I've seen fifty francs."
"See them now. Where is Jodelle, where did he go?"
"Oh, he said it was a secret-"
"But he told you."
"Oh, yes, we were like brothers-"
"I am his son. Tell me."
"The Loire Valley, a terrible man in the Loire Valley, that's all I know," whispered the derelict.
"No one knows who he is."
A silhouetted figure suddenly came out of the bright shaft of sunlight into the alley. He was a man of Jean Pierre size when the actor stood upright and was not hunched over as he was their.
"Why are you asking about old jodelle?" said the intruder.
"I have 'to find him, sit," replied Villier, his voice wheezing and tremulous.
"He owes me money, you see, and I've been looking for him for three days now."
"I'm afraid you won't collect the debt. Don't you read the newspapers?"
"Why spend what money I have to read about things that do not concern me? I can laugh over the comics in yesterday's thrown away paper, yesterday's or last week's."
"An old tramp identified as someone named Jodelle killed himself in a theater last night."
"Oh, that bastard! He owed me seven francs!"
"Who are you, old man?" asked the intruder, approaching Jean Pierre and studying him in the dim light of the alley.
"I am Auguste Renoir and I paint pictures. Then sometimes I am Monsieur Monet, and often the Dutchman Rembrandt. And in springtime I like to be Georges Seurat; in winter I'll be the cripple Toulouse-Lautrec-all those warm bordellos. Museums are wonderful places when it rains and is cold."
"Ah, you are an old fool!" The man turned and started walking toward the street as Villier hobbled rapidly after him.
"Monsieur!" cried the actor.
"What?" The man stopped.
"Since you were the bearer of this terrible news, I think you should pay me the seven francs."
"Why? What kind of logic is that?"
"You've stolen my hope."
"I stole what .. . ?"
Chapter Three
"Psychologically that makes sense. His obsession had nowhere to go but to destroy him. So?"