«My God!» he said to Foiral. «Just look at it!» Foiral looked at it. There was nothing wrong.
«Here have I,» said the mad Jack, «been walking up and down these goddam Pyrenees for weeks — meadows, birch trees, pine trees, waterfalls — green as a dish of haricots verts! And here's what I've been looking for all the time. Why did no one tell me?»
There's a damned question to answer! However, madmen answer themselves. Foiral thumped his mule and started off down the track, but the mad fellow fell in step beside him.
«What is it, for God's sake?» said he. «A bit of Spain strayed over the frontier, or what? Might be a crater in the moon. No water, I suppose? God, look at that ring of red hills! Look at that pink and yellow land! Are those villages down there? Or the bones of some creatures that have died?»
«I like it,» he said. «I like the way the fig trees burst out of the rock. I like the way the seeds are bursting out of the figs. Ever heard of surrealism? This is surrealism come to life. What are those? Cork forests? They look like petrified ogres. Excellent ogres, who bleed when these impudent mortals flay you, with my little brush, on my little piece of canvas, I shall restore to you an important part of your life!»
Foiral, by no means devout, took the sensible precaution of crossing himself. The fellow went on and on, all the way down, two or three kilometres, Foiral answering with a «yes,» a «no,» and a grunt. «This is my country!» cried the lunatic. «It's made for me. Glad I didn't go to Morocco! Is this your village? Wonderful! Look at those houses — three, four stories. Why do they look as if they'd been piled up by cave-dwellers, cave-dwellers who couldn't find a cliff? Or are they caves from which the cliff has crumbled away, leaving them uneasy in the sunlight, huddling together? Why don't you have any windows? I like that yellow belfry. Sort of Spanish. I like the way the bell hangs in that iron cage. Black as your hat. Dead. Maybe that's why it's so quiet here. Dead noise, gibbeted against the blue! Ha! Ha! You're not amused, eh? You don't care for surrealism? So much the worse, my friend, because you're the stuff that sort of dream is made of. I like the black clothes all you people wear. Spanish touch again, I suppose? It makes you look like holes in the light.»
«Goodbye,» said Foiral.
«Wait a minute,» said the stranger. «Where can I put up in this village? Is there an inn?»
«No,» said Foiral, turning into his yard.
«Hell!» said the stranger. «I suppose someone has a room I can sleep in?»
«No,» said Foiral.
That set the fellow back a bit. «Well,» said he at last, «I'll have to look around, anyway.»
So he went up the street. Foiral saw him talking to Madame Arago, and she was shaking her head. Then he saw him trying it on at the baker's, and the baker shook his head as well. However, he bought a loaf there, and some cheese and wine from Barilles. He sat down on the bench outside and ate it; then he went pottering off up the slope.
Foiral thought he'd keep an eye on him, so he followed to the top of the village, where he could see all over the hillside. The fellow was just mooning about; he picked up nothing, he did nothing. Then he began to drift over to the little farm-house, where the well is, a few hundred yards above the rest of the houses.
This happened to be Foiral's property, through his wife: a good place, if they'd had a son to live in it. Seeing the stranger edging that way, Foiral followed, not too fast, you understand, and not too slow either. Sure enough, when he got there, there was the fellow peering through the chinks in the shutters, even trying the door. He might have been up to anything.
He looked round as Foiral came up. «Nobody lives here?» he said.
«No,» said Foiral.
«Who does it belong to?» said the stranger.
Foiral hardly knew what to say. In the end he had to admit it was his.
«Will you rent it to me?» said the stranger.
«What's that?» said Foiral.
«I want the house for six months,» said the stranger.
«What for?» said Foiral.
«Damn it!» said the stranger. «To live in.»
«Why?» said Foiral.
The stranger holds up his hand. He picks hold of the thumb. He says, very slowly, «I am an artist, a painter.»
«Yes,» says Foiral.
Then the stranger lays hold of his forefinger. «I can work here. I like it. I like the view. I like those two ilex trees.»
«Very good,» says Foiral.
Then the stranger takes hold of his middle finger. «I want to stay here six months.»
«Yes,» says Foiral.
Then the stranger takes hold of his third finger. «In this house. Which, I may say, on this yellow ground, looks interestingly like a die on a desert. Or does it look like a skull?»
«Ah!» says Foiral.
Then the stranger takes hold of his little finger, and he says, «How much — do you want — to let me — live and work — in this house — for six months?»
«Why?» says Foiral.
At this the stranger began to stamp up and down. They had quite an argument. Foiral clinched the matter by saying that people didn't rent houses in that part of the world; everyone had his own.
«It is necessary,» said the stranger, grinding his teeth, «for me to paint pictures here.»
«So much the worse,» said Foiral.
The stranger uttered a number of cries in some foreign gibberish, possibly that of hell itself. «I see your soul,» said he, «as a small and exceedingly sterile black marble, on a waste of burning white alkali.»
Foiral, holding his two middle fingers under his thumb, extended the first and fourth in the direction of the stranger, careless of whether he gave offence.
«What will you take for the shack?» said the stranger. «Maybe I'll buy it.»
It was quite a relief to Foiral to find that after all he was just a plain, simple, ordinary lunatic. Without a proper pair of pants to his backside, he was offering to buy this excellent sound house, for which Foiral would have asked twenty thousand francs, had there been anyone of whom to ask it.
«Come on,» said the stranger. «How much?»
Foiral, thinking he had wasted enough time, and not objecting to an agreeable sensation, said, «Forty thousand.»
Said the stranger, «I'll give you thirty-five.»
Foiral laughed heartily.
«That's a good laugh,» said the stranger. «I should like to paint a laugh like that. I should express it by a melange of the roots of recently extracted teeth. Well, what about it? Thirty-five? I can pay you a deposit right now.» And, pulling out a wallet, this Croesus among madmen rustled one, two, three, four, five thousand-franc notes under Foiral's nose.
«It'll leave me dead broke,» he said. «Still, I expect I can sell it again?»
«If God wills, »said Foiral.
«Anyway, I could come here now and then,» said the other. «My God! I can paint a showful of pictures here in six months. New York'll go crazy. Then I'll come back here and paint another show.»
Foiral, ravished with joy, ceased attempting to understand. He began to praise his house furiously: he dragged the man inside, showed him the oven, banged the walls, made him look up the chimney, into the shed, down the well —«All right. All right,» said the stranger. «That's grand. Everything's grand. Whitewash the walls. Find me some woman to come and clean and cook. I'll go back to Perpignan and turn up in a week with my things. Listen, I want that table chucked in, two or three of the chairs, and the bedstead. I'll get the rest. Here's your deposit.»
«No, no,» said Foiral. «Everything must be done properly, before witnesses. Then, when the lawyer comes, he can make out the papers. Come back with me. I'll call Arago, he's a very honest man. Guis, very honest. Vigne, honest as the good earth. And a bottle of old wine. I have it. It shall cost nothing.»
