The surprising way in which Van Spreckdal had just appeared
to me threw me into a deep trance: "Yesterday," I said to myself
as I contemplated the pile of ducats sparkling in the sunshine,
"yesterday I formed the culpable intention of cutting my throat
for the lack of a few miserable schillings and today good fortune
smiles on me unbidden... A good job then I didn't open my
razor and, if ever the temptation to do away with myself overtakes
me again, I'll take care to put the thing off to the following day."
After these judicious reflexions, I sat down to finish the sketch.
Four strokes of the charcoal pencil and that would be that. But here
an unfathomable disappointment awaited me. I found it impossible
to make these four strokes. I had lost the thread of my inspiration
and the mysterious personage would not emerge from the limbo
of my brain. It was in vain that I evoked it, mapped it out, went
back to it -- it was no more in keeping with the whole than a
figure by Raphael would be in a David Teniers smoke-filled snug...
I was sweating cobs.
To cap it all Rap, in accordance with his habitual good manners,
opened the door without knocking, his eyes becoming glued to
my pile of ducats. Then he cried out in a voice like a yelp:
"Aha! I've caught you. Will you persist in telling me now, Mr
Painter, that you're short of money?..."
And his claw-like fingers advanced with that nervous trembling
that the sight of gold always arouses in misers.
For a few seconds I stood there stupefied.
The memory of all the open snubs that this individual had inflicted
on me, his covetous gaze, his insolent smile, everything about him
exasperated me. In a single bound I seized him and, pushing him
out of my bedroom with both hands, I flattened his nose with the
door.
This was all done with the crack and the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box.
But outside the old usurer was shrieking like an eagle:
"I want my money! Thief! I want my money!"
The other tenants were coming out of their rooms and asking
questions:
"What's wrong? What's happening?"
I opened the door again abruptly and dispatched a kick to the
spine of Mister Rap that promptly sent him reeling down more than
a score of stairs:
"That's what's happening!" I cried, beside myself. Then I locked
the door and bolted it while the laughs of my neighbours greeted
Mister Rap as he fell.
I was pleased with myself and rubbed my hands together joyfully.
This adventure had put new life into me. I went back to the task
in hand and was going to finish the sketch when my ears were
assailed by an out of the ordinary noise.
Rifle butts were being struck against the pavement... I looked
out of my window and saw three gendarmes, their carbines
grounded, their cocked hats crosswise, standing on guard at
the main entrance.
"Has that scoundrel Rap broken something?" I said to myself in
fear and trembling.
And see what a strange thing the human mind is: I, who had wanted
to cut my own throat just the previous day, shuddered to the marrow
of my bones when I reflected that I might well be hanged if Rap was
dead.
The stairwell filled with a hubbub of noises... There was a rising
tide of muffled footfalls, the metallic clink of weapons and brief
verbal exchanges.
Suddenly they tried to open my door. It was closed!
Then there was a general commotion.
"In the name of the law...open up!"
I got to my feet all of a-quiver, my legs virtually giving way under
me.
"Open up!" the same voice repeated.
Seeing that flight was impossible, I stumbled towards the door and
turned the key to unlock it.
Two fists instantly clamped themselves on my shoulders. A short
thickset man, smelling of wine, said to me:
"I'm arresting you!"
He was wearing a bottle-green frock coat buttoned up to the chin,
a stovepipe hat...had great brown sideburns...rings on all his fingers
and was called Passauf...
He was the chief of police.
Five bulldog heads adorned with flat caps, with long, sharp noses and
lower jaws protruding like hooks, were watching me from outside the
door.
"What do you want?" I asked Passauf.
"Come downstairs with us," he shouted out abruptly, motioning to one
of his men to grab me.
The latter dragged me out, more dead than alive, while the others
ransacked my room from top to bottom.
I went down, held up by my armpits, like a man in the third stage of
consumption...my hair flapping about my face and tripping with each
step I took.
They threw me into a hansom next to two strapping fellows who were
kind enough to show me the ends of two clubs attached to their wrists
by a leather strap....then the carriage set off.
I could hear following on behind us the running footsteps of all the
town's youngsters.
"What have I done?" I asked one of my guards.
He looked at his companion with a strange smile and said:
"Hans...he's asking what he's done!"
That smile made my blood run cold.
Soon the carriage was enveloped in deep shadow and the hooves of the
horses echoed under a vault. We were entering the Raspelhaus or
Penitentiary...I was escaping Rap's tender mercies only to end up in a
dungeon from which not many poor devils have had the opportunity to
extricate themselves.
Big dark courtyards; lines of windows just like in a hospital decked
with guttering; not so much as a tuft of grass or a festoon of ivy, not
even a weathervane in prospect...such were my new lodgings. It was
enough to make you tear your hair out by the fistful.
The policemen, accompanied by the jailer, showed me into a temporary
cell.
The jailer, if memory serves me right, was called Kasper Schlüssel
and, with his grey woollen bonnet, the stem of his pipe stuck between
his teeth and the bunch of keys on his belt, he came over to me like
the Owl god people worship in the Caribbean. He had his great round
gilded eyes that can see in the dark, his curved nose and his bull
neck.
Schlüssel locked me up with a minimum of fuss like a person putting
socks into a wardrobe, his mind elsewhere. As for me, my hands behind
my back, head bowed, I stood there for more than ten minutes without
moving from the spot. Then I looked at my cell. It had just been newly
whitewashed and its walls were still empty of graffiti, apart from a
gallows roughly drawn in one corner by the previous inmate. The light
came through a bull's-eye window situated nine or ten feet up from the
floor; the furniture consisted of a bale of straw and a bathtub.
I sat down on the straw, my hands around my knees, in a state of
dejection beggaring belief....
Almost simultaneously I heard Schlüssel crossing the corridor. He
re-opened the door of my cell and told me to follow him. He still had
as his attendants the two shillelagh men. Resolutely I dogged his
heels.
We passed through long galleries lit here and there by internal
windows. I perceived behind a grille the notorious Jick-Jack who
was due to be executed the following day. He was wearing a strait
jacket and singing in a raucous voice:
"I am the king of these mountains!"
When he saw me, he shouted:
"Yo, comrade! I'll keep a place for you at my right hand."
The two policemen and the Owl god exchanged smiles with one another
while I could feel goose bumps up and down my spine.