oiled.
The commissaris said that de Gier understood French and was always looking for nothing, '…and as you said that Daumal denies.
Charlie concentrated on de Gier. 'You know what I liked that Daumal said? No? Then I will tell you.'
He help up a hand until he was sure he had de Gier's attention. 'This is beautiful I think. Je vais,' Daumal said, 'vers un avenir qui n'existe pas, laissant derriere moi a chaque instant un nouve. au cadavre.' Would you translate that?'
De Gier asked Charlie to repeat the phrase.
Charlie obliged.
'I go,' de Gier translated, 'toward a future that doesn't exist, leaving behind me, at every instant, a new corpse.'
'Beautiful,' Charlie said. He pointed at the elevator decorated as a Victoria boudoir. 'I had all eight of Daumal's published books there. In various editions. I don't have them now. I only kept he Mont Analogue, the one Daumal didn't finish.'
The commissaris looked back at the elevator. 'This is the way it's going to stay?'
'Is anything going to stay the way it is, ever?' Charlie asked.
'Your next project?'
'I have shelves holding up human skulls in mind,' Charlie said. 'I found some on Canal Street. Party stuff for Halloween, but good strong plastic. I knocked holes in them, tied them together and hung them in the river. I'll take them out in a month. Then I'll line them up on the shelves, out of order, some upside down, some on their sides. Make it look like Guatemala. Have a tape recorder play a Charlie Haden ballad whenever the elevator is activated.' He peered into de Gier's face. 'You like Charlie Haden?'
De Gier did.
'What does he play?'
'Charlie Haden plays double bass, sir.'
Charlie held de Gier lovingly by the shoulders. 'You're not applying for discipleship, are you? I don't teach, you know.' He kept smiling and winking. 'Just kidding, just kidding. Maybe I won't do the skulls at all, let them rot in the river.' He looked cheerful. 'What do you think of my other idea? A display of plywood dolls, flat like regular people, no depth to those dolls, have a piece of string dangling between their legs, yank the string and we're all waving and smiling.'
The commissaris, still looking back at the elevator, discovered a framed colored-in photograph of a red-haired woman with green eyes and milky skin hung from a metal bar.
'Carolien,' Charlie said. 'Bert's girlfriend. Now that Bert is dead I thought I would put that up, Bert's better side…'
The commissaris stepped back into the elevator to study the picture.
'It isn't really Carolien,' Charlie said. 'I found it in a junkyard the day I identified Bert's remains at the morgue. But she does look what Bert told me she looked like. I thought maybe he loved her.'
Charlie led the way to his quarters through another empty hallway lined with scrubbed red bricks. 'I live here, top story. Bert had the rest of the building. I may rent his part out, or donate it as a shelter.'
'I heard,' de Gier said, 'you helped him with his mail orders. The book business. You don't plan to pursue that?'
Charlie shrugged. 'Nah.'
A dog was waiting in Charlie's open doorway.
'Hi, Kali,' de Gier said.
The German shepherd, wagging her bushy tail slowly, offered the commissaris a paw and barked twice, solemnly and clearly. It greeted de Gier likewise. The dog pulled her paw back and walked ahead of the detectives, looking back to make sure they followed.
Charlie explained that his home used to be a factory loft, that he'd renovated. He had put in the hardwood floor himself, using remnants sold off by a nearby lumberyard. The plastered walls were filled in some, then whitewashed. The solid mahogany roof beams were cleaned up with steel wool before varnishing, so that the gleaming old wood contrasted nicely with the heavy pine boards supported by the beams.
Several large easy chairs, a couch and a round dining table with unmatched chairs took their positions as museum objects representing disparate styles. A kitchen stove, two refrigerators and a washer and dryer, together with cupboards and open shelves, all dissimilar but sprayed the same off-white color, were lined up along the vast room's back wall. All furniture and appliances were clean and seemed to be in working order.
'Found it all,' Charlie said. 'All you need in Tribeca is a handcart and some free time. I found the handcart too.'
The bedroom was an open garret at the end of the room, reachable via a metal circular staircase. An old- fashioned iron bathtub stood on a platform built out of heavy packing cases. A reading lamp was bent over the tub. A TV and VCR combination was set up to provide easy viewing for the bather.
'Entertainment corner,' Charlie said.
The commissaris, accompanied by Kali, walked through the room-hall, rather. 'You like empty walls?'
'Walls of the soul,' Charlie said.
'Beg pardon?'
'Better to keep them empty.'
The commissaris looked puzzled.
'But emptiness can be frightening,' Charlie said. 'The restless eye, you know. Always wants something to glance at.' He looked at de Gier. 'Do you read Sanskrit?'
De Gier did not.
'Neither do I,' Charlie said. 'Maybe I should cover the walls with Arabic script, that's quite artistic, all those scribbles and loops. Sanskrit is more odd, though.'
The commissaris looked bewildered.
'Arabic,' Charlie said. 'Texts from the Koran. I know little about Islam, the less the better. Writing in unreadable hieroglyphs is Termeer's idea, by the way.'
'Ah.'
'Yes,' Charlie said. 'It wouldn't be difficult. I photocopy some good-looking Arabic texts up at Columbia University, or the Asia Society maybe, enlarge them, then imitate the writing by hand all over that empty wall.' He waved widely. 'Real big. I have the space there.'
'That will inspire you?' de Gier asked.
'A faded purple shade on that broken white,' Charlie said. 'What was that? Inspire? Sure. I should think so.'
'But Sanskrit texts would inspire you too?'
'As long as I can't read them,' Charlie said. 'Otherwise I would get caught up in surface meaning.' He looked at the commissaris worriedly. 'You know what I mean?'
The commissaris scratched Kali between her furry ears. She growled, not unkindly, them pushed him gently into one of the easy chairs. 'And then you will whitewash those inspiring, but, to you, in the first instance anyway, incomprehensible, texts away again?'
Charlie watched his empty wall pensively. 'Yes, after a while. Could be years, in fact, but I wouldn't keep them there forever. They would get old.'
'You might even learn to read them.' The com-missaris laughed. 'That's de Gier's problem too. How are you doing with your Spanish text, Rinus?'
De Gier had read his Alvaro Mutis novel in the subway that morning, without understanding much of what the writer was saying. Losing out on meaning he had been able to appreciate the poetry of Mutis's balanced and musical phrasing. 'But when I looked at the pages again I did gain some meaning.'
'Right.' Charlie nodded. 'I probably would top, looking at my Sanskrit texts from the bathtub. I'd get curious, go back to the library, do some studying. Reflecting.' He shook his head sadly. 'As I said, get caught up in their kind of, what's the word, comrnonsensical side?'
'Then what?' the commissaris asked.
De Gier looked too. 'Paint it over. Books get lost. Walls get covered.'
