Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘You are a genius,’ she said.

‘Oh, come now.’

He cringed within himself as she impulsively threw her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

‘You darling!’ she exclaimed, and kissed him again.

Jürgen held his breath and waited for it to be over. The woman was fifty, heavy for her size and not well preserved. Facially she bore an unflattering resemblance to the actor Jon Voight. She had stale breath and bad taste in perfume. But she was rich, and Jürgen never repulsed money or anyone who came bearing it, however objectionable.

‘You think your husband will like it, then?’ he said as she released him.

‘He will adore it. When can I take it home?’

‘It should remain here another ten days, at least. But if you are really impatient to remove it to your home, I can have it taken there two or three days from now by someone who knows how to handle freshly-finished canvases. He can hang it for you, too.’

‘That would be splendid. Can you arrange that for me?’

‘Horst will be here later to pick up some other work. I will organize everything with him then, and call you to confirm.’

Marianne Edel took her coat from the stand by the window. Jürgen helped her put it on.

‘You are so well organized for an artist,’ she said. ‘And more of a thinker than I would have expected.’

‘A thinker?’ Jürgen smiled cautiously. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’ve told me so many interesting things on my visits here. And what you were saying just now, about memories, that is so haunting.’

If she had not been a client he would have laughed. In the circumstances he stared neutrally into his coffee cup. The observation about memories was entirely for effect. He had read some of it somewhere and made up the rest.

‘My husband says you’re the living image of Freud, you know.’

Jürgen looked at Frau Edel. ‘Freud?’

‘Your beard, the broad forehead – and the way you hold a paintbrush when you look at the canvas, it’s just the way Freud held a cigar.’

It was the first time he had been told he looked like a Jew, and it stung. He looked pointedly at his watch.

‘I must go,’ said Frau Edel. He accompanied her to the door. ‘Do call me as soon as you have made arrangements to have the portrait delivered.’

‘Of course.’

She kissed his cheek one more time before she left. He closed the door softly behind her, making a sour face at the panels.

‘Freud, indeed.’

The telephone rang. He hurried across and picked it up. It was his accountant’s secretary, reminding him of his appointment.

‘Tell him not to worry,’ he said, ‘I haven’t forgotten. ‘I’ll get there on time, I always do.’

There was a sharp tap on the door. Horst, he thought, or the Edel woman had forgotten something.

He crossed the studio and opened the door. A stranger was there, tall, blue-eyed, with very fair hair. He had a confident smile.

‘Herr Jürgen? I came for the package.’

‘I’m sorry? The package? There must be a mistake.’

‘That’s it.’ The young man pointed to a cardboard box halfway across the room.

‘No, it isn’t, I–’

The young man pushed past Jürgen and entered the studio. He stopped in front of the portrait of Marianne Edel, staring at it.

Jürgen came away from the door, frowning, confused.

‘That is rubbish,’ the young man said, still smiling.

‘Get out of here,’ Jürgen said. He took the young man by the arm. ‘Right this minute, or I call the police.’

The young man pulled his arm free and slipped the other hand into the pocket of his tweed jacket. He pulled out a black snub-nosed revolver.

‘Here is a fact, Uli Jürgen. In 1942 the painter Samuel Weiss was kicked out of his Berlin studio, two streets away from this spot, and his canvases and paints were thrown out of the windows on to the road. Weiss was then made to wear a placard listing his alleged crimes against humanity, and while he was paraded around the little park near his studio, the Nazis made a bonfire of all his paintings.’

The young man waved the gun at Jürgen, making him stand in front of the portrait of Marianne Edel.

‘Another fact. Samuel Weiss was estimated to be one of the foremost experimental painters of the thirties. His name was mentioned alongside those of Schwitters, Hodler and Kandinsky. He illuminated the world with his vision. You, on the other hand, call yourself a painter, an artist, and yet you have never displayed a talent for producing anything more elevated than sophisticated posters.’

‘What is your point?’ Jürgen demanded. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘Weiss finally died after being blinded and having his hands and his spirit broken in Belsen. That was his fate, after having lived his entire life in poverty. You, an ungifted hack, have brought no light into the world, have never been poor, and are about to die rich. My point, sir, is that everyday life bulges with sickening ironies.’

Jürgen had turned white.

‘Suppose you at least try to die the death of a true artist,’ the young man said.

‘I warn you,’ Jürgen said, ‘you will find yourself in great trouble.’

‘Not me, sir. I am not about to suffer like so many people have suffered at the hands of you and yours, your sidekicks, the brotherhood with its benighted faith in the power of thickheaded bullies to prevail.’

Jürgen felt his bowels loosen. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat. He remembered the telephone call from Viktor Kretzer, warning him to be on his guard.

‘Here is your chance of redemption, Uli Jürgen.’

The young man extended his arm suddenly, pointing the gun at a downward angle. He fired. Jürgen stood where he was, half-deafened. His right arm was numb and felt incredibly heavy. He looked down and saw half his hand was gone. Blood trickled freely on to the floorboards.

‘You are an artist,’ the young man said. ‘Try to think like one. This context is unbearable, yes? You paint with your right hand, it is the instrument of your expression. But it is gone. It cannot be used so your art is effectively silenced.’

‘You bastard,’ Jürgen said weakly.

‘Enmeshed in such catastrophe, what does the true artist wish for at once, as a matter of reaction?’

Jürgen stared at the bright intelligent eyes, the fixed smile, trying to read salvation from this nightmare. Pain suddenly surged along his arm and his stomach lurched. He doubled over and vomited.

‘So what does the true artist do? What can he want now, bereft of his raison d’être?’ The young man snapped his fingers. ‘If he is a determined artist who would wish to express himself in spite of the most major of setbacks, he would say, to hell with this, I will teach myself to paint with my other hand.’

In an instant his arm was outstretched and the gun pointing downwards. He fired a second time, blowing off the thumb and first two fingers of Jürgen’s left hand. Jürgen staggered back, reeled for a moment, then dropped to his knees in the puddle of his vomit.

‘Now we have the position of ultimate despair. Discount any deranged impulses to learn to paint with the feet or the mouth. You have lost the ability to express yourself. Can you feel that, the sense of loss, the black hole of despair?’

Jürgen tried to say something but managed only a grunt. Shock had put his body into tremor. Blood gathered in pools on the floor on either side of him.

‘You want to die. Am I right? You know life holds nothing for you any more. Tell me, Uli Jürgen, have I made you feel that?’

Jürgen looked at the end of the barrel, thinking how small it was, how insignificant for something so terrible.