Paul Varennes, shortly before he was overcome with madness, hotly insisted to Martin Ducasse, Director of the Louvre Museum, that he simply could not understand or explain what on God's blessed Earth was happening in the Louvre gallery where his one unique piece of art was hanging. Not at all.
And he was right. He could not understand it, but his piece was most definitely unique.
Paul's oeuvre was imitative chiefly of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Fauvists, and, though those styles were long outmoded, he still was able to earn not only francs but some considerable renown on much of his output, enough to buy blank canvases and oils (always dear), and with just enough left over for food and rent for his modest, sparsely furnished garret room in Monmartre. Initially he enjoyed capturing people, animals, landscapes, fetes, boulevard traffic, and other such slices of life already committed to immortality by luminaries like Degas, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Picasso, to name but a few, both in and outside of Paris, in just about any sort of weather, in any style he wished to paint in at the moment, though he soon out of boredom or frustration began to tire of those subjects and spent more time sitting and mulling other more brazen modern art styles he might employ. Indeed, he knew of the novelties of Dadaism and Surrealism, but for him the former seemed grotesquely anarchic, and the latter a daunting, shuddering way of peeping warily into the Wonderland behind our Subconscious and then laying bare to the world on canvas what was beheld, not always to the good.
One afternoon, as Paul sat lost in thought on his little stool in front of his empty easel, pensively pulling at and exhaling smoke through the stem of his smoldering meerschaum pipe, his eyes happened to wander to the half-a-dozen blank canvases, most of them various sizes of rectangles, leaning in a nearby dusty corner across from his other more copious collection of completed artworks. What finally arrested his gaze was the 15 by15 square inch canvas standing slightly apart from the others. Yes, a simple square, as yet untouched by any bedaubed brushes zipping across its snowy-white surface in lines, shapes and colors, in a clear violation of its purity and yet, what a new world to behold from the artist's own interpretations and imaginings! But Paul was not at all pondering what could be painted there but (and he sat bolt upright as Inspiration struck him) what may not be painted there. Nothing or...what gradually dawned on him...anything...everything! Simply put, he would leave the canvas view up to his audience's fertile imaginations, whether they be large or small, chaste or puerile, fantastical or pedestrian. They would "paint" the images while Paul would simply stand by and reap said audience's praises or criticisms. It was brilliant! True, it could be considered a mark of laziness in his artistry and even a lack of his own imagination, perhaps even aping a Ready-Made after Duchamp, and therefore become unoriginal, but he didn't care because it was still (as far as he knew without a priori experience) a New Idea--a New Modern Idea!
Paul had, for a time, set aside some cash apart from his customary expenses to one day pay for his dream to exhibit his artworks, alongside those of many other emergent artists, in the famed Louvre, but he did not keep a bank account and so, like a Gallic Silas Marner, secreted the money away in some empty bottles of Vin Mariani, Moet, Clicquot ("Mon Banques de Boheme," he called them), among others, and nestled them like fragile eggs in the floor beneath his humble bedframe. Soon enough an opportunity for such an exhibition presented itself, and a few months later a panoply of his and other painters' art temporarily enriched a section of the Grande Galerie's venerable walls, with his blank canvas piece displayed amongst them at above eye level, by design because it was currently his favorite and, shocking though his choice may seem to sneering critics and a fickle public, one he hoped would over time be embraced by Parisians, all of France, then the world at large, much like the Mona Lisa was. The gallery the paintings were displayed in was long and quite airy, with ornate cornices wrapped around the room just underneath vaulted concave skylights through which shone mottled sunbeams from a deep blue Parisian summer sky, and broad entryways at either end leading to other dignified galleries. As there were few visitors there at present Paul wandered away briefly from his own display to gaze at the other varied works behind slackened velvet ropes and chat amiably with some of his fellow daubers, until he noticed a young man staring dully but intently, his mouth slightly agape, at his own white, square masterpiece, and so strode briskly over to greet him and began a rather self-congratulatory, memorized speech about the painting in question, ceasing only when he noticed that the man seemed to not have heard a word he said.
"Monsieur? Are you all right?" Paul asked him.
No answer.
"Monsieur?"
No answer. Paul followed his gaze to the painting and back again. Does he see something in it? he thought. If so, why is it making him act like this? Act...hypnotized? He then saw a large knot of spectators had entered the gallery and were sidling closer to his display. He smiled and, turning his back to the young man, waited patiently for them to arrive as he twice mentally recited his speech about his "New Modern Art" inspiration, which, in fact, was the only painting of his that he had prepared a speech for, so certain was he that it would be the talk of the Louvre. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he'd nearly forgotten about the young man. Paul looked behind him, expecting him to have moved on to gawk at other paintings.
He was still there, still staring at it, eyes dull, mouth slack, just as before.
As much as he appreciated the young man's fascination with the painting, Paul suddenly wished he would just leave so a wide berth could be made for this new audience, and he grew a little irked at his continued presence. "Monsieur, could you--perhaps--?" he tentatively began, and by way of getting his attention gently touched the upper part of his arm, but then as sudden and startling as a flash of lightning, the young man ferally bared his teeth at Paul and angrily shoved him hard to the floor with a yell so thunderous it grasped the attentions of not only those persons in the gallery but ones outside of it, as well. In his jarred, perplexed state sprawled on the floor Paul soon saw a forest of trousered legs and flounced skirts quickly gathered in front of him and heard many whispers of concern and confusion from above. Fortunately a few male hands were lowered to help pull him up, one of which he gratefully accepted, but when his raised body had shifted to almost a squatting position, the hand abruptly released him and he thudded back down again. As he lay feeling sorer in body, Paul, now more bewildered than even angry or irritated, looked slowly up at the growing crowd above him. He counted perhaps ten to twenty people standing behind or on either side of the young man who had just pushed him down.
All of them were now staring stupidly at his white square canvas.
Paul didn't hoist himself to his feet, instead using them flagella-like to edge slowly away from the group, his eyes darting from them to the canvas then back again. What are they looking at? he wondered. What do they see there and, for God's sake...why can't I see it?! As he continued inching his way backwards to the gallery entrance, his thoughts consumed by the mystery surrounding his contribution, he saw others in the distance looking on in surprise and horror, some vehemently crossing themselves and dashing out even as more poured in to see what was happening and quickly fell prey to the painting's enigmatic allure. Paul soon realized the absurdity of crawling backwards on the floor, not the least because it was becoming uncomfortable, and steadily rose to his feet, only to be jerked up to his full height by Director Ducasse, who brusquely interrogated him as even more people pushed past them and packed the gallery. Paul's answers told at the very beginning failed to satisfy the Director, and he nearly jostled the poor man down again as he walked off in a huff towards a wildly gesticulating docent pressing a white handkerchief saturated with crimson blotches to his face.
Paul had done it, saw quite clearly that he had done it, that, in one afternoon no less, he'd gotten high recognition for his simple blank canvas, recognition that so many artists never acquire in their transient lifetimes. Watching the mad scene unfolding before him, he wished he could feel something of elation at blissful praises showered upon him, or even shrink at the slashing criticism he also expected to bear, but none of those were ever offered to him. Questions burbled and frothed in the seething cauldron of his mind as he dejectedly ensconced himself into a corner by the entryway and clutched at his tousled hair, his pinched face a study in incredible human strain.
W-what IS this? What do they see there? What do they see? What joys, sorrows, revelations...what? WHAT? And if they can see it, experience it, know it, and it's in my own, my pretty little opus--MINE! MINE! MINE!--then why can't I? Why can't I?
WHY CAN'T I?!
Lieutenant Pierre Allard mopped the perspiration from his brow as he stepped from the passenger side of the motorized Black Maria Sergeant Maurice Cadieux had driven along the Quai du Louvre, followed by half-a-dozen just like it, along with two bright red fire engines, and surveyed the activity at the Louvre's Pont du Carrousel arches as smartly uniformed young officers, numbering at least a hundred in total, emerged from the vehicles, and on an order barked at them by the Sergeant briskly formed a straight line on the torrid pavement.
"Sergeant, come here!" shouted Lieutenant Allard.
"Yes, sir?" said Sergeant Cadieux, briskly striding up to him.
"What the hell is going on here?"
"Sir?"
"We're keepers of the peace, correct? We quell riots and uprisings and whatnot, yes?"
"Er, yes, sir."
"Yes. Well, just what do you call that, then, Sergeant?"
Allard pointed to the scores of men, women and even some children thronged in front of and flanking the arches, facing the policemen but seemingly staring at them silently and dumbly with their mouths hanging partially open, uncouth and unwiped rivers of sweat trickling down their red faces.
"Hm, not really a riot, sir, or an uprising."
"Indeed."
"But they're the reasons we were dispatched here, sir."
"Yes, but so were those fire trucks, Sergeant, and I neither see nor smell any smoke here, and no flames are visible in the Louvre that I can tell. What of that, then?"
"I don't rightly know, sir."
"Well, if they're blocking an entrance to the Louvre like this, then they're causing a scene and disturbing the peace, so--." He stepped closer to the throng and at the top of his lungs bellowed, "All right, all of you! Disperse now or you will be placed under immediate arrest!"
No answer. Lieutenant Allard's brow furrowed in frustration, and as he opened his mouth to reiterate his command, about five more Parisians brushed past him to join those in front of the gate.
"What is going on here?!" the Lieutenant roared, the hot, thick silence offering no answers as he glanced round at the concerned Sergeant Cadieux, the stoic officers...and the hundreds of as yet unaffected citizens looking on anxiously from the Seine's Left Bank. As even more people crowded the gate, Lieutenant Allard realized the time needed for direct action was slipping away, and he shouted, "Enough of this! Sergeant, have the men clear the arches!"
"Yes,s-"
"No, officers, stop!" a man's distant voice admonished them. "Don't touch them!"
All looked around them for the speaker. "Who's that?!" demanded Lieutenant Allard. "Where are you?!"
"Over here! To your right!"
"Sir, there!" exclaimed the Sergeant, pointing to the farthest end of the wall.
They saw, from an open window in the Salon Carre, the upper body of Director Ducasse waving his arms frantically at them. Lieutenant Allard cried "Sergeant, with me!" as the two men ran over and stood beneath the window. "Hello, monsieur," the Sergeant said. "Do you need assistance coming out of there? Is there a fire? Those fire trucks there have ladders for--"
"Yes, yes, I asked for those when I rang you, but no, there's no fire, officers, and I do need help, but--" and he looked nervously behind him in the Salon. "Yes, I think it's all right for now."
"What's all right?" asked the Lieutenant. "And why can't we disperse those people? They're disturbing the peace!"
"Yes, I'll tell you, but--" Ducasse looked behind him again and sighed in frustration. "Could at least one of you come in here right now for an explanation? There's-there's something you ought to see."
The Lieutenant and Sergeant looked at each other and shrugged. "I'll go," said Allard. "Give the men water and ease for now."
Lieutenant Allard carefully shimmied up a borrowed ladder angled against the wall as Director Ducasse waited anxiously and subsequently assisted him, a bit awkwardly, through the tall window into the cool, lofty Salon Carre on the ground floor. Allard did not long deign to take in the magnificent wall-to-wall Italian Renaissance paintings of various dimensions, draped in sunlight shining through the oblong, concave skylight above, before he pulled a little notebook and pencil from his greatcoat pocket and mentally prepared his questions.
"Thank you for coming, Inspector...you and the other gendarmes...oh, and the firemen," Ducasse said breathlessly. "If we were in my office right now I'd offer you a drink, but--"
Allard half-smiled. "Perhaps later. And it's Lieutenant Allard, not Inspector."
Ducasse bowed slightly. "My apologies, sir. Oh, and I'm Martin Ducasse, Louvre Director. But please let's dispense with pleasantries because you ought to know straight away that...well..."
"Yes?"
"They become loud and violent if you touch them, Lieutenant. Any of them. And no, I don't know why. In fact, one of my docents nearly had a good portion of his face scratched by one of them. He's being treated in the hospital now."
"Good. So what was it that you wanted me to see?"
"In a word, that!" He pointed a trembling finger to the doorway opening into the Grand Galerie, now nearly saturated with people, all facing south, inching closer and closer to the Salon Carre as ever more joined them from outside. "And in there!" he said, pointing into the Salle Duchatel that was almost half-full of people also standing still and facing south."It's been reported to me that they're streaming in through the Rue de Rivoli and filling up the Tuleries Gardens. There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them!"
"My God! But, Monsieur Ducasse...what exactly are they doing?"
"I...really don't know for sure. The little I do know...well, you'd never believe me if I told you, Lieutenant. I'm not sure I believe it myself. Or understand it."
"Well, start with what you can tell me and keep it as succinct as possible. Maybe begin with what's causing all this."
"Of course." And as Allard carefully listened while taking extensive notes, Ducasse related all he witnessed and knew to be true from the last two hours: the curious flood of visitors in the museum, his confrontation with Paul Varennes, seeing to his injured docent, calling the authorities for help, finding himself trapped in the Salon Carre by the growing crowds, the authorities' arrival and, finally, to the present moment of them calmly discussing the situation.
"But wait," said Allard after Ducasse finished. "Did you say this Varennes...he told you it was his painting creating this chaos?"
"That particular 'painting' is just a blank canvas, some bit of Modernist nonsense," Ducasse scoffed. "But yes, it seems to be the thing they're drawn to, though in my opinion, Inspector, it's an unnatural draw! I mean, it's one thing to be enraptured by this object, but to act so uncivilly because of it? Unacceptable!"
"But...no, this is all happening because of that?"
Ducasse shrugged. "I don't know, Lieutenant, if it's God or the Devil, angels or demons, all a damned hoax or some kind of mass hysteria connected to that paint--no, blank canvas, and right now I really don't care! All I want right now is for all of these people removed from the Louvre! Including Varennes, if you can find him!"
"Submit a description of him and I will, but...if it's true what you said before, Director, that there may be thousands of people here, with more still arriving, then it will require many more than the hundred or so officers I have waiting outside. God, we may need the entire French army, in that case!"
"If it helps, Lieutenant, I have two ideas you may use to extricate them."
"And those are?"
"Simple. Either destroy the canvas or remove it entirely from the Grand Galerie,"
Allard laughed dryly. "Simple, if they don't attack you first."
"Perhaps. But it also comes down to first getting a volunteer close enough to the canvas to take it down, so...how brave are your men, Lieutenant?"
"Brave enough, but this may be a fool's errand and not worth the risk. Still, they'd probably volunteer just to get out of the heat." He chuckled and re-pocketed his pencil and notebook. "But I'll give your ideas due consideration, Monsieur Ducasse."
"Thank you, Lieutenant, that's all I...wait."
"What?"
"Do you hear that?"
"No, what is it?"
"Shh, listen!" And they stood quiet and mannequin-motionless while straining to hear the sound, which originated first as a distant rumble in the Grand Galerie, a sound rather droning, made at a moderate volume and without any discernible pitch, but becoming more familiar with each passing second. He couldn't speak for Director Ducasse's experiences with it, but Lieutenant Allard knew it well from hearing it on the streets, the radio, the cinema, even in his own household. It then occurred to him as it swelled in a wave through the hypnotized crowds outside the Salon Carre that it was not a sound he could ever remember hearing in the hushed dignity of an art museum.
Laughter.
They were laughing, all of them, and smiling, too, but without any sort of naturalness or reason. What was so funny all of a sudden? Was it something they had seen in the canvas? As much as Lieutenant Allard was absolutely at sea and frustrated about what was happening from the very start, it wasn't until this happened that he felt a tingle of fear through his body, a fear that did not dissipate when, almost as soon as they had begun laughing, after a duration of perhaps five minutes, the people in the Salle Duchatel and Grand Galerie turned and slowly marched en masse back out the ways they came. Allard and Ducasse glanced quizzically at each other before hearing Sergeant Cadieux's voice call up through the sultry air,
"Lieutenant, they're leaving the gate and walking to the river! Sir, why the hell are they laughing? What should we do?"
Allard, without hesitation, said to Ducasse, "Follow the ones in the Galerie out, but at a safe enough distance. Observe, but don't get too close."
Ducasse nodded. "Are you going back outside, Lieutenant?"
"Yes."
"Please be careful. Perhaps keep your distance, as well."
"I'll do my best, Director." As he moved to the ladder, he sighed and muttered, "God, what will happen now?"
It felt, to him, like a hundred years, or even a thousand or more, but in truth it was a little over an hour when Lieutenant Allard trudged dazedly back to the Louvre from the Seine riverbank, with an equally dazed Sergeant Cadieux trailing close behind him, nearly deaf to the terrified cries and shouts behind them. They made their way through the Pont du Carrousel arches and into the newly vacated Grande Galerie. As he entered, Lieutenant Allard closed his eyes and tilted up his face to feel the room's coolness, and, upon opening them, saw Director Ducasse frantically ordering his museum employees, some carrying ladders, to remove at least half-a-dozen or so paintings from the wall.
"Yes, now! All of them, all of them!" the Lieutenant heard him shout. "Yes, all of these are Varennes'! He is finished here! What? No, I don't care where they end up! Dump in the Seine with the rest of his victims! Just get them out of here now!" And Ducasse looked in his direction with a sneer of disgust, which he initially assumed was meant for him, though he thought they had gotten along amicably in the Salon Carre before. But when Ducasse noticed he and the Sergeant standing in the doorway, he bowed curtly and pointed down and to Allard's left side.
"Lieutenant! Behold Paul Varennes, murderer! Do with him what you will! The sooner the better!" The disgust flashed briefly to his face before he reverted his attention to his employees. Allard and Cadieux looked to where he pointed and were jolted at the sight of a man crouched in the corner clutching a mutilated white square canvas half covered by a smashed wooden frame. What especially startled them was how bloody and tooth-gnawed the frame was; Varennes had bitten into it so hard in an curious attempt to free the canvas that he not only broke off many of his front teeth but severely cut the inside of his mouth, causing him to hemorrhage more blood onto the canvas, which he was now tearing apart and ingesting piecemeal.
"What are they?!" he snarled at it before gobbling down another manageably small slice. "What are the secrets you shared with them, you slut?! What do you know? Tell me! TELL ME NOW!!"
For a moment Allard gaped at Varennes, not without a measure of disgust, as if he were a bewildering creature from another distant planet, but not as a murderer, as Ducasse alleged, then suddenly, decisively, said "Sergeant, this man is for Saltpetriere. Find some officers to put him into a Maria and dispatch him there. He's the least of our troubles now."
"Y-yes, sir," Cadieux answered softly.
Upon hearing this Varennes turned his blood-smeared face up them and with a brief flash of quiet sanity said, "I'll go quietly, officers, only please let me keep my beloved painting. I need to know what it hides from me when it could show everyone else! And devouring it is the only way I'll have my answers! Please!"
"You really shouldn't eat--"Allard began, then after heaving a deep, weary sigh said,"Fine, Monsieur Varennes. Fine."
After watching Sergeant Cadieux and two other officers silently escort Varennes, who clutched the remants of his artwork tightly to his chest, out of the Galerie, Allard stood alone and stared glumly down at the marble floor, pondering what he had just seen and would never forget. It briefly occurred to him that he should return to the riverside to assist in recovery somehow, but he knew it would have been futile, for it was all much bigger than him now. The Army, the Navy, every other gendarme in France...would even they have been enough to fix this? Allard's temples throbbed at the thought of it.
What happened was this:
Thousands indeed walked away from the Louvre tonelessly laughing, droning on like a swarm of locusts, smiling with faces arrested in vapid, gladsome rictuses, spreading apart as they headed down to various bridges spanning the river--the Pont Royal and the Pont Neuf, for example--even as a few policemen attempted to hold them back at the risk of great personal injuries, of which there were some, even though Allard had stentoriously ordered the men to be watchful but not touch them, to keep their guns holstered and cudgels sheathed. Very soon his blood ran icy cold as he and his men, along with those many saner eyewitnesses, watch as everyday citizens of Paris walk to the midpoint of each bridge and, without any hesitation, drop down like stones over the sides, their bodies crashing atop each other into the murky Seine, then bobbing lifelessly on its surface.
The 'siege' of the Louvre was over.
Allard would always remember later how all of the bodies fished out over many weeks and months still ghoulishly kept their plastered smiles, but in the widened still-gleeful eyes of their water-bloated faces were indications of an emergent fear, as if these poor souls reached awareness at the very end that the river was nowhere near where they expected to be that day. That observation alone made many usually stalwart officers retch. When the newspapers and radio reporters were informed by Director Ducasse, who was the only witness who could clearly relate what he was told via Paul Varennes of the origins of these mass drownings, it was, of course, too fantastical for them to even grasp. (A painting? A canvas? What? No!) So the story ultimately devolved into fictions that ranged from this somehow being a Free Love cult's mass suicide, to a rural French commune's apocalyptic mass suicide (the deaths were never viewed as involuntary), to simply a case of just many decent, God-fearing Parisians inexplicably and without cause or evidence drowned at the behest of the sinister Jews and the Bolsheviks, both of which groups numbered a few among the retrieved dead. What was so astonishing to Allard, even as he mulled it all over years later after his retirement to the Midi, was that, as shocking as these deaths had been in the 1920s, they were apparently too shocking for the collective French memory to grasp, and so in time melted into oblivion and mythology, only to somehow re-emerge in accusations against the Vichy government of mass murder by drowning of French Resistance members in the Seine, accusations that were inevitably unfounded and dismissed. As for Paul Varennes, his quasi-fame as an artist diminished and his name forgotten, and he languished quietly in Saltpetriere Hospital until his death in the 1950s, never having discovered or understood what so many people witnessed and died for in that one pale canvas.
As the hot, shimmering afternoon ebbed into a cool, twilit sunset Allard took a moment from pondering what all was next--the bodies removed, the many families notified and comforted, finding spaces for thousands of graves, remembrance--to glance up at the section of Galerie wall where the rest of Paul Varennes artworks were being removed, and looked at a spot where he imagined that canvas had hung. Then with the air of a man who had had quite enough of such things to last a lifetime, roughly shook his head as if coming out of a trance, and resolved to leave the deeper questions of this day's events for fools and philosophers--and madmen--to answer. If they ever could.
He then arrived at a brief coda to his thoughts, in an aphorism once told to him by his practical father, one which he'd believed long forgotten but was now flung rapidly into his consciousness like an English cricket ball. Simply:
"God answers with silence, Man with a shrug."
"Monsieur Ducasse!" Allard called, his voice cracking.
"Yes, Inspector?"
"I-I think I'll have that drink now."
DB/c.Sept-Dec. 2024
