Prince Svechin had said, rolling his Rs; and that her mouth, like that of all her peers, had something of the baseness that turns litmus paper blue.
As the prince believed in magnetism and boasted that he possessed the “gift,” Holmes even had to suffer through the prince laying hands on his neck, an experience that, several years later, he claimed as the moment he had lost his last tuft of hair.
In Car 5, Grimod was approached by a sickly-looking Russian who charitably began to comfort him about his race by sharing with him a mathematical proof of the non-existence of Hell. Having established that mankind had appeared in the year 200,000 B.C., approximately, he calculated the number of humans who had lived on Earth up to our time.
“By applying to these givens the rule of compound interest,” he explained, “I have reached the figure of 75 billion deceased. If we grant, with some indulgence, that all white Christians have been saved, maybe 5% of this number, there are 71 billion 250 million of the damned currently burning in Hell. Knowing that the average volume of a human, counting everyone from newborns to adults, is about a twentieth of a cubic meter, the weight of the damned would constitute a volume seven times greater than the Earth itself! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this means Hell is a mathematical impossibility. As for the resurrection of the body, for the same reasons, allow me to laugh for a moment . . .”
Which he did, with his lips pursed, exhaling in short bursts of air that made his nose run.
“Admit it,” he continued, having blown his nose, “admit it’s enough to make you chuckle! Let’s be serious: the soul is made of a colorless, etheric gas, that’s as far as I’m willing to go. As for the Bible, it contains the most perfect treatise on gasometry there is, but nothing more, we agree, don’t we?”
Grimod readily agreed, while the Russian shook his hand with the enthusiasm of someone who had just saved a man’s life. Grimod took his leave, happy to see Shylock approaching. Together again, they were going into the bar car when they nearly walked into a person who froze at the sight of them, seeming to hesitate, then slipped past them into the corridor without even acknowledging them. Holmes only had time to take in his bowler hat and the black beard that was eating his face; Grimod noted his short stature and his detachable collar, glossy with use; but both of them noticed his tacky glasses with blue lenses. This incongruity, they noted admiringly, had prevented them from studying other, more significant details. As they sat down, they vowed to find out more about this gentleman.
The waitress who came to take their order left them speechless, a twenty-two-year-old Ukrainian whose name, Yva, was embroidered in red italics at the top of her apron. Her maid outfit, though spartan, could hide neither the military at-attention of her bosom nor the profile of her rear. One of those young women so instinctively seductive, thought Holmes, that every man who saw her walk by had no choice but to fix himself to her heels the way one dog sticks to another’s asshole. The end of what looked like a tendril of bindweed was poking up from her blouse, rising up her neck to just below her ear.
“Did you see?” said Holmes when she had left.
“The tattoo?”
“Yes. It’s rather unusual . . . I would be willing to give my whole body to see the rest of it!”
“It’s not all that impressive,” came Canterel’s voice from behind them.
A towel over his shoulders, his hair wet, he was sweating in a mauve silk robe.
“Martial! Where were you?”
“In the fitness room. I needed to unwind a bit.”
The waitress passed by, tray in hand.
“Ah! Yva, Yva!” said Canterel in a low voice.
She turned her head and gave him a quick wink.
Holmes was staring, open-mouthed.
“Don’t tell me you . . .”
“Yes, my dear. But as you see, I survived the terror of Russian sex!”
“How the devil did you manage that?”
“Let us say that I gave my whole body. And added a little from my pocket, to be honest. Two hundred rubles; I have no idea how many ducats that is.”
“The tattoo?” asked Grimod, smiling.
“A giant octopus whose tentacles are curled suggestively around her body. The work of a Japanese artist. Very frightening, I must confess, especially around its beak . . .”
Holmes forced himself to swallow.
“And what did you do with her?”
“What one normally does with an octopus: I harpooned her. And now, you’ll excuse me, but I must change for dinner.”
At this moment, a man sitting near them stood up.
“If I may, you did well: the octopus is a sucking monster, a favorite of the Demon! Allow me to introduce myself: Hégésippe Petiot, Belgian by birth, municipal official by profession, missionary by calling, prophet and Russian Orthodox by divine revelation.”
“Good lord!” Canterel exclaimed, taking a step back. “Good evening to you all, I’m going to take a shower.”
It did not take long for Holmes and Grimod, trapped by Yva returning with their scotches, to envy him for escaping so quickly. This fellow was dreadful! He was explaining how, while walking down Rue de Rome in Paris one November day, he had seen in the distance a terrible black cloud that had appeared to be announcing great wonders.
“And thus an unknown force,” he said, “instructed me in a terrible voice: Look, Petiot, look! Turn your face toward the celestial machine!”
Petrified in the rain that had begun to fall, he had seen the cloud open up with a great crash; out of it came a dry, pale figure, flanked by a blazing squid and a hedgehog on which were speared a multitude of appetizing olives stuffed with pimentos.
“The apparition spoke to me: ‘Tremble, Petiot, and quake! I died over six months ago, and am now resurrected!’”
Unaccustomed to seeing the dead resurrected in the clouds, our man indeed shuddered from his head to his toes and found the courage to ask his name: “Don’t question me, you wretch!” the phantom had responded. “You already know me. I am . . . Bournissac! The accountant-god brought unjustly to court, but now aided by Saint Joan of France, patron of bad poets, who will return all this to order.”
This Bournissac had been caught in the act of embezzling six months earlier and had committed suicide to spare his family the disgrace of a trial.
“Then,” continued Petiot, “Bournissac and Joan of Arc informed me that, in my capacity as a prophet inspired by them, and as a moral Mamluk, I would one day be allowed to advise and guide the future Archimandrake of all the Russias.”
The theophany was then reabsorbed and compressed into a white rhinoceros that had touched down lightly on the Rue de Rome before running off down the pavement. Hégésippe Petiot had thus developed a calling as an apostle that displeased his dear wife, but which overshadowed everything regardless.
“As for my wife’s unthinkable opposition, Bournissac and Joan of Arc ordered me
