The Language Of Bees Part 3

M Cantelet's investigator was immediately dispatched to Ste Chapelle, but Damian was gone. Cantelet and others searched all of France, but the trail was cold: No gallery, no artist, no member of the Bohemian underworld had heard news of Damian Adler since January. Even Mycroft failed to locate his nephew.

Holmes' lovely, lost son vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

Until one summer evening in August 1924, when he stood in the middle of our stone terrace and said h.e.l.lo to his father.

The Tool (2): A Tool that is shaped and used a.s.sumes a A Tool that is shaped and used a.s.sumes a Power of its own. This Testimony is a Tool a history, and a guide, that its Power may work on others.

Testimony, I:2

MY HAND WAS STILL BRACED ON Holmes' ARM, where I had steadied myself after walking into him, and I felt the shudder of effort run through him: Being controlled is nowhere near the same as being unfeeling.

But he could not control his voice, not entirely; when he spoke he was hoa.r.s.e as a man roused from a long sleep. "G.o.d, boy. I thought you were dead."

"Yes," Damian said simply. "I'm sorry."

Holmes started towards him, his hand coming out; instead of taking it, Damian stepped forward and embraced him. After the briefest hesitation, Holmes returned the greeting, with a fervour that would have astonished all but a very few of his intimates. Indeed, one might have thought Holmes had instigated the gesture, with Damian its more reluctant partic.i.p.ant.

I moved towards the house, so as to leave them to their greetings, but the two men broke apart and Damian turned in my direction.

"And, Step-Mama," he said, coming forward to plant a very French kiss on my cheek.

"Call me Mary," I said firmly.

"I've come from London," he said to his father, by way of explanation. "Uncle Mycroft caught me up on your news. When he told me you were en route en route from New York, I decided to come down last night and wait for you-he sent along a note to your helpful young housekeeper, so she wouldn't set the dogs on me." from New York, I decided to come down last night and wait for you-he sent along a note to your helpful young housekeeper, so she wouldn't set the dogs on me."

I'd heard precisely five words out of him at our first meeting, but I found now that his accent was as charming as the easy flow of his words-there was French at its base, overlaid with American English and something more clipped: Chinese? His clothing was a similar melange, the canvas jacket homespun and local whereas the s.h.i.+rt had travelled a long, hard way from its beginnings. His shoes were, I thought, Italian, although not bespoke.

The dogs were a figure of speech-Mycroft knew we had no dogs. The housekeeper, however, was not, and I thought the reason Damian mentioned her was that he had noticed her standing in the door to the house: Lulu had her strengths, but silence and discretion were not among them, and it would not take a long acquaintance with her to realise that it was best to watch one's tongue when she was near.

"Pardon the interruption," she said, "but I've fixed supper. Would you like to eat, or shall I put it into the ice-box?"

I spoke up, overriding Holmes' wave of dismissal. "h.e.l.lo, Lulu, how are you? Dinner would be greatly appreciated, thank you. Shall we come now?"

"If you like," she said gratefully. And as the table had been laid and the food already in its serving bowls, it would clearly have been a vexation had we said, No, thank you.

Mrs Hudson would have marked our homecoming with Windsor soup, a roast, potatoes, gravy, three vegetables, and a heavy pudding; she would have been red of face, and waves of heat would have pulsed from the kitchen doorway. Lulu, on the other hand, began with an interesting cold Spanish soup of finely chopped tomatoes and cuc.u.mber, then set down paper-thin slices of cold roast beef dressed with mustard and horseradish, a bowl of Cos leaves tossed with a light vinaigrette, and a platter of beetroot slices drizzled with pureed herbs-Lulu's aunt ran the nearby Monk's Tun inn, and the aunt's teaching was why I, for one, was willing to put up with Lulu's tendency to gab. from the kitchen doorway. Lulu, on the other hand, began with an interesting cold Spanish soup of finely chopped tomatoes and cuc.u.mber, then set down paper-thin slices of cold roast beef dressed with mustard and horseradish, a bowl of Cos leaves tossed with a light vinaigrette, and a platter of beetroot slices drizzled with pureed herbs-Lulu's aunt ran the nearby Monk's Tun inn, and the aunt's teaching was why I, for one, was willing to put up with Lulu's tendency to gab.

The two men ate what was before them, although I doubt either could have described it later. I, however, took second helpings of most, winning a beatific look as Lulu pa.s.sed through with another platter.

In the presence of food and servants, conversation went from the summer's weather to Mycroft's health and then London's art world. Of Mycroft, Damian knew little, apart from finding his uncle looking well, but it seemed that he had been in the city long enough to converse knowledgeably about the last.

As he sat at our table and held up his end of the small-talk, I began to sense that somewhere beneath his deliberate ease and charm lurked the edginess we had seen before. On reflection, this would hardly be surprising: Their first meeting had ended on a note of pure animosity, and if neither of them was about to bring it up, nor were they about to forget it.

I decided that what Damian was doing with his friendly shallow chatter was to ill.u.s.trate that he had grown up, to show Holmes that the natural resentment of a boy whose father had failed him had been replaced by a man's mature willingness to forgive, and to start again. That it was being done deliberately did not necessarily mean it was insincere.

Thirty-five minutes of surface conversation was as much as Holmes could bear. When my fork had transferred the last morsel of salad to my tongue, he waited until he saw me swallow, then stood.

"We'll take our coffee on the terrace, Miss Whiteneck, then you may go home."

"And thank you for that fine supper, Lulu," I added.

"Er, quite." Holmes caught up three gla.s.ses and a decanter on his way out of the door.

I followed with a pair of silver candelabras that I set on the stones between the chairs; the air was so still, their flames scarcely moved. The summer odours of lavender and jasmine combined with the musk of honey from the candles and after a minute, with the sharp tang of coffee. Lulu set the tray on the table, then retreated to the kitchen to do the was.h.i.+ng-up. By unspoken agreement, while she remained within earshot, we sat and drank and listened to the rumour of waves against the distant cliffs.

I watched our visitor out of the corner of my eye, as, I am sure, did Holmes. The years had brought substance to the man, while the beard, and the candle-light, transformed his fragile beauty into something sharp, almost dangerous. More than mere weight, however, he had gained a.s.surance: Bohemian or no, this was a man that eyes would follow, both women's and men's.

Lucifer, I'd thought him earlier, and I sat now with my coffee and mused over the idea. Originally, Lucifer was the name of Venus at dawn (Vesper being the planet at dusk). The prophet Isaiah had used the morning star's transient brilliance as a metaphor for a magnificent and oppressive Babylonian king who, once the true sun rose across the land, would fade to insignificance. Jewish and Christian thought elaborated on Isaiah's pa.s.sage, building up an entire mythology around the person of Lucifer, fallen prince of angels, beloved of G.o.d, brought low by pride. Lucifer is, one might say, a failed Christ: Where Jesus of Nazareth bowed willingly to Pilate's condemnation, accepting crucifixion as the will of G.o.d, Lucifer refused to submit: Subjecting himself to his inferiors, he declared, would be to deny the greatness of the G.o.d who made, loved, and chose him.

The story of Lucifer was, I reflected, a window on fathers and sons that Sigmund Freud might spend some time investigating.

The kitchen clatter had ceased. We now heard the sound of the front door opening, and closing; in response, Damian stood up and shrugged his coat onto the back of the chair, dropping his cravat over it and turning up his sleeves as he sat again. His left forearm bore a dragon tattoo, sinuous and in full colour. He hadn't had that when we had seen him before, I thought. He also hadn't had the muscle that rippled beneath it. it and turning up his sleeves as he sat again. His left forearm bore a dragon tattoo, sinuous and in full colour. He hadn't had that when we had seen him before, I thought. He also hadn't had the muscle that rippled beneath it.

Holmes set his empty cup on the table. "You've been in the East," he said. "Hong Kong?"

"Shanghai. How...?"

"The cut of your trousers, the silk of the cravat, the colour in that tattoo. How long have you been there?"

"Years." He took out an enamelled cigarette case and a box of vestas: If he was anything like his father, tobacco signalled a lengthy tale.

The match flared and was pulled into the tobacco, then he shook it out and dropped it in the saucer.

"You remember meeting Helene?" he asked us.

"Mme Longchamps, yes. The gallery owner."

"She was a great deal more than that. She was my saviour. She died, just after Christmas 1919. I was ... I had been going through a bad time. They ran in a kind of cycle, the bad times did, usually lasting two or three months before I grew sufficiently disgusted with myself to crawl back and let her nurse me to health. I no doubt contributed to her death-she was ill, with the influenza, but when I sent her a message to say I wanted to come home, she nonetheless got into a taxi and came to get me. A week later, I was sober and she was dead.

"I stayed for her funeral, and then I simply walked away. I knew that if I remained in Paris, I wouldn't last the year. And although a part of me felt that might be for the best, to remove my sorry self from the world, at the same time I felt I owed Helene a life. So I saw her into the ground and then I turned and walked across town to the Gare de Lyon, and boarded a train for Ma.r.s.eilles.

"The sort of s.h.i.+p that will take on a man with neither suitcase nor ident.i.ty papers is fairly primitive, but I found one, the Bella Acqua Bella Acqua, and signed on to work my way across the globe. No drugs, no parties, no paints, nothing but hard work, bad food, sea air, and a drawing pad for entertainment.

"I grew brown, I grew muscle, and at night-you can't imagine the dreams I'd had, before, but under that regimen, I'd fall into my bunk and sleep like a baby. Do you know what a blessing sleep can be?" dreams I'd had, before, but under that regimen, I'd fall into my bunk and sleep like a baby. Do you know what a blessing sleep can be?"

"Yes," Holmes said.

Damian's question had been rhetorical, but at Holmes' answer he paused to squint at him through the smoke, then gave a thoughtful nod. "So, six months: across the Atlantic, working our way down the coast of Brazil, taking on rum and coir in one place, trading the rum for timber in another, buying hides farther down, transporting the odd pa.s.senger who might have needed to leave a town quickly and without notice-whatever took the Captain's fancy. We rounded the Horn and worked our way up Chile to Mexico and San Diego, then set off across the Pacific. The Hawaiis, j.a.pan.

"Finally, we came to Shanghai. Have you been there?"

"Once, briefly."

"A seething ma.s.s of corruption and vice-I think you'd enjoy the straight-forward criminality of the place. I found it filled with temptation, which you'd have thought a poor choice for a man in my position, but I was hungry to join the world again.

"With nothing to spend my pay on, I'd acc.u.mulated enough to take a small room in a ... well, I thought at first it was simply one of the compounds they have in the city-Wong houses, they're called, with a number of units set into a series of courtyards, and a single entrance from the street. Within a day or two I couldn't help noticing that there were rather a lot of young girls living there who had a series of older male visitors. The whole houses, they're called, with a number of units set into a series of courtyards, and a single entrance from the street. Within a day or two I couldn't help noticing that there were rather a lot of young girls living there who had a series of older male visitors. The whole Wong Wong was one pleasure-house compound. I eventually found out that my landlord had three such, and made a habit of installing one or two large young men in each to help keep the peace. He may have expected that I should eventually become a client myself, but in fact his girls were little more than children, and my taste has never run in that direction. I became a sort of brother to them, and they could practice their English and come to me with problems. I took a job in the afternoons, was.h.i.+ng dishes in a noodle shop. It paid a pittance-I still had no ident.i.ty papers, so my choice was limited-but it gave me two meals a day and mornings free. was one pleasure-house compound. I eventually found out that my landlord had three such, and made a habit of installing one or two large young men in each to help keep the peace. He may have expected that I should eventually become a client myself, but in fact his girls were little more than children, and my taste has never run in that direction. I became a sort of brother to them, and they could practice their English and come to me with problems. I took a job in the afternoons, was.h.i.+ng dishes in a noodle shop. It paid a pittance-I still had no ident.i.ty papers, so my choice was limited-but it gave me two meals a day and mornings free.

"The mornings I needed for the light, because I'd started to paint again. Er, I think you knew, that...?"

For the first time, the young man's self-a.s.surance faltered, with the question of what his father had or had not known. Holmes rose and walked into the house; Damian gave me a sharp look that called to mind his father's hawk-like arrogance, but I could only shrug.

Holmes came back carrying a flat object a foot wide and eighteen inches tall. He set it on the stones, propping it upright against an unoccupied chair.

"That's his?" I exclaimed. "That's yours?"

The unsigned painting had hung for years on a wall of Holmes' laboratory upstairs, a puzzle to me, although I'd caught him studying it from time to time. Holmes owned little art, and had showed no interest, before or since, in a thing as jarringly modern-weird, even-as this one.

Damian picked it up to examine it by candle-light; his expression softened, although I could not tell what he thought of the painting, or of finding it here. "Yes, this is one of mine. From before the War."

"I was told 1913," Holmes agreed.

"I would have been nineteen. Imagine, being nineteen. It's not bad, considering. How do you come to have it?"

"It came on the market in March 1920."

Damian turned his hawk-gaze on Holmes. "It was one of Helene's?"

"Yes."

Damian put the painting down again, and we all three studied it.

The canvas showed a bizarre dream-image of the sort that came to be called Surrealism. In technique it was masterful, closely worked and as detailed as a photograph. Its background was an English landscape: neat fields set inside hedgerows, a lane with a bicycle, a cow in the distance. On the horizon, white lines described the chalk cliffs where the South Downs fell into the Channel-not far from where we sat. In the foreground was a table, the weave of its spotless white cloth clearly shown, and on the cloth rested an object from a madman's nightmare: Its front half was an everyday English tea-pot, blue and white porcelain, but the back of it became a huge, distorted honeybee, every hair painted with precision, its wings set to quiver, its stinger exaggerated into a tea-pot's handle, throbbing with menace. white porcelain, but the back of it became a huge, distorted honeybee, every hair painted with precision, its wings set to quiver, its stinger exaggerated into a tea-pot's handle, throbbing with menace.

I'd thought it an oddity, but now it was a revelation: At nineteen, a year after his mother's death, Damian had definitely known who his father was. He had known of Holmes' beekeeping avocation in his so-called retirement. He had painted this as a portrait of the famous man who had, to his mind, coldly abandoned mother and child. He had painted it with the consummate skill of a man, impelled by the fury of a scorned adolescent.

The Father (1): The boy knew no earthly father. He was The boy knew no earthly father. He was raised by the feminine, moon-lit side of his race. All men were his father, all women his mother.

Testimony, I:3

SO," SAID HOLMES. "SHANGHAI."

"Yes." Damian took a breath, either summoning his thoughts, or rousing his determination. "As I said, you might think the city was the very worst place for a man vulnerable to temptation, but after my long sobriety aboard the Bella Acqua Bella Acqua, it was as if my body came to value its natural state, and my mind found the tight-rope act of daily life in Shanghai exhilarating. It was a challenge simply to walk down the street for a newspaper, pa.s.sing two gin-joints, an opium den, and the Sikh who sold bhang bhang from a tray. from a tray.

"And there was another reason Shanghai felt right. Do you know Andre Breton?"

"I have heard of him," Holmes replied. "The self-appointed spokesman for the movement known as Surrealism."

"Now, yes. During the War, Andre worked at the hospital in Nantes, where he came to adapt certain psychological theories of Sigmund Freud to treat victims of sh.e.l.l-shock. That was where I met him, after I... after I was injured. Freud to treat victims of sh.e.l.l-shock. That was where I met him, after I... after I was injured.

"Andre's idea was that if one could break through the madness of sh.e.l.l-shock and regain access to the unconscious mind, the conscious and the unconscious might, as it were, join forces, and wholeness would be regained. He used what he calls automatism, a pure up-welling of dream-thought and dream-images, without the guidance of rational or even aesthetic concern, in various forms of art: writing, painting, sculpting, drama.

"Before long, it became clear that automatism was not merely a source of healing damaged minds, but a philosophy of life, a means of bringing together the separate realities of the human experience. Anyone who has spent time on the Front knows that, when one lifts his head from a barrage and finds dead people all around, there is a moment when life is immeasurably sweet and intensely real. In a similar way, the shock of the unexpected in a piece of art can forge a momentary link between light and dark, rationality and madness, matter-of-factness and absurdity, beauty and obscenity.

"As you see in that painting, I'd already been feeling my way in that direction before the War-the Dada movement, although Dadaism was intellectual and political compared to what Andre had in mind.

"Shanghai-and particularly, being a foreigner in Shanghai-might have been purposefully designed by Andre to ill.u.s.trate and encourage the 'surrealist' impulse. Every moment there possesses an air of peculiarity, every corner brings a new gem of crystal-clear absurdity. My landlord, it turned out, was a policeman with a side business of child prost.i.tutes. One of his girls used to sit in the courtyard playing the guitar and telling me of her dream to become a Catholic nun, once she had finished putting her older brother through university. The head of the missionary school where I taught for a while spent his every lunch-hour with an opium pipe. One discovered purity in the gutters and filth in the glittering shop-windows, every hour of every day.

"I found Shanghai to be the very essence of Surrealist doctrine: If the world is mad, then the maddest man is the most sane.

"So: I became sane by embracing madness. I became intoxicated by sobriety. I moved from one job to another, earning just enough to keep me fed, sheltered, and in paint. I walked and walked, I learned the language, I opened my eyes in wonder. And the images simply poured out of me. sobriety. I moved from one job to another, earning just enough to keep me fed, sheltered, and in paint. I walked and walked, I learned the language, I opened my eyes in wonder. And the images simply poured out of me.

"What I painted were intensely realistic renderings of impossibility. As one of the catalogues put it, I was their 'Max Ernst of the East.'

"Yes, within two years, I was in a catalogue. Let me tell you how that came about."

Holmes stirred in his chair, betraying a trace of tension. I saw the non-committal look on his face, and realised, as surely as if he had murmured it into my ear, that Damian wasn't here by accident. I don't know why it took so long to put it together-Damian's almost dutiful embrace; the lengthy formal narrative in place of conversation; even his presence the moment we arrived-but I finally saw that Damian had come here to Suss.e.x, not to establish contact with his family, but because he wanted something.

Whatever he was after, Holmes' slight motion confirmed that we were circling in towards it now.

"I'd been there less than a year, painting furiously all the while, when a friend gathered up half a dozen paintings and took them into the International Settlement. She'd asked around, you know, to find which of the Western art galleries might be interested in my sort of thing. When she came back, she brought more money than I'd seen in years.

"Before I knew it, I was popular. More than popular, I was a Sensation, the darling of Shanghai's international set, proof that one did not need to live in Paris or Berlin to be avante-garde avante-garde. At the drop of a hat, I had money, I had a house, a studio, servants-and I had problems.

"I'd managed to balance myself against the temptations of the city while I was poor. But success proved a greater madness than I could manage. One night I was at a party and dope was going around, and I reached for it, the first time in three years.

"And again, Yolanda saved me. She physically slapped the stuff out of my hand and dragged me away from the party.

"However, I haven't told you about Yolanda. She's the reason ... No, I should start at the beginning, so it all ties together." He took a deep draught from his gla.s.s and crushed out the half-smoked cigarette, then fiddled with the case; in another minute, his fingertips would begin to pluck at his b.u.t.tons.

"I'd met Yolanda my first week in Shanghai. She worked in a bar down the street from my Wong Wong, but I met her in the courtyard outside of my room. She was visiting one of my neighbours-one of my landlord's girls, who was ill. Yolanda is Chinese, and although she worked in a bar and hadn't much education, she spoke good English because her family was Christian and sent her to the missionary school until she was eleven.

"Then her father died, and when she was sixteen, she found herself out on the streets. She went through a period of what she called 'hating herself.' She drank, did any kind of dope offered her, and-well, suffice to say she lived a pretty wild life." He did not look at Holmes, who sat with his fingers steepled to his lips. Damian played with the catch of his enamelled case and pressed on.

"The self-hate period lasted for a year, until one day she woke up a little more sober than usual, and she knew that one morning she would not wake up at all, unless someone dragged her out of it. She didn't think she had the will to rescue herself, so she went to the missionaries, and told them they had to save her."

He must have caught something of my reaction, because he gave me a crooked smile. "You like the image? Little painted bar-girl standing at the door to the local Christian do-gooders, throwing herself at them as you would a glove in a challenge.

"And give them credit, they tried their best. She stayed with them for three months until their rules became too much for her-but then, instead of giving up, she walked down the road to the Buddhist temple. She lasted a month there. And then it was a s.h.i.+nto shrine, followed by some stray Hindus, then American Spiritualists. One after another, she worked her way through half the religions of the world, only at some point, it became more a hobby than a necessity. She went back to her bar, but only to serve drinks, and during her free hours she continued to sample the rich buffet of temples and churches and meeting places Shanghai has to offer. she continued to sample the rich buffet of temples and churches and meeting places Shanghai has to offer.

"Until one day she encountered an odd French-American-English painter in the run-down house where one of her childhood friends was dying of syphilis. He saw a tiny little thing dressed in a tartan skirt, a Chinese silk blouse, a moulting rabbit-fur jacket, and a French beret, with cropped hair and painted eyes. She saw a tall, thin foreigner reeking of turpentine and blinking as if he'd just come from a cave.

"'You need to eat,' she said. 'Take me to lunch.'