An Disgruntled Writer

Paris of the present day was much changed; it had lost all touch with the magic of the Lost Generation. Either that or the charms Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Porter musingly reported of had never existed. She had been a fickle, unprofitable muse for his days - the City of Lights, its avenues, sights and even French belles blended into the background cacophony of a dilettante's neurosis. The money was spent. Writing had not gone. Time, labour were proven fruitless.

'You are artist, come here for Parisian passion,' the café baristas often fancied by morning. 'T'es large. Paris est plus belle sous la pluie. Oui?'

'Oui.'

An ignorant skip across the pond. Usually he wandered about at day, attempted letters in the night. Montmartre, Sacred Heart, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre-Dame, Arc de Triomphe, d'Orsay, Rodin, Champs-Élysées, Seine et cetera. Then after dusk walking alone, finding somewhat sketchy establishments off the main blocks. Sitting in solitude, every table darkly lit under dim radiative light. Candles always burning, antiquated fixtures aglow and only one barman present to wait on the few lonely phantoms sucked in out of their dreary crepuscular discomforts; those buoyed isles gathered in collective solitude, brought by apparent telekinetic gravity to where desperate energies and diffusive auras could meld like the billowing of smoking gases becoming one, then doing nothing else. Idle souls.

He drank pernods, vermouth and occasionally rotted absinthe if the haunt of a given night had an old dusty bottle stowed away, and wrote over-stated prose. You could have called it rotten as well. The entire reservoir of creative writing was siphoned dry, all available incubators umbilically attached to existing psychointellectual pre-frontal intensifiers. This morbid fellow felt he had been late to the punch at every step. There was not storyline variation, original story nor sensibility of prose for him to envision, elicit and bleed unto parchment from the swelling fury of his poet's heart.

What he wrote felt unclean and secondhand copied, like spontaneous recollection or the disembodied manifestation of a deceased artist's hand. Stuffy. Crusty. Garrulous. A cheap imitation of the authors he so admired. Couldn't stand a dime to Wilde or Conrad. Instead infested with grandiose delusions like many a modern wordsmith; moths burning out their brains, aiming to storm the proverbial castle, but in madness dying by the light.

In a fit of ill-temper he crumpled a sheet, tossed it to the floor. Immediately the barkeep had taken notice. Indeed everyone certainly had, though most cared not enough to bother with taking a glance. It was only as if an anomaly of animation had spilled into their shade-saturated purgatory, stony statues harkened to remember biology. A soft, nearly imperceptible flutter barely cautioning mere, unconscious perspectives. Such as the sequence played out in slow motion, spectrally longing.

'Bonjour,' said the barkeep. 'Comment ça va?'

'I suffer. You wouldn't by chance have any laudanum?'

'No.'

In the peculiar dark and fell silence, these variables seemed to echo together in a ponderous otherworldliness. A surrealist's coveted hallucinogenic atmosphere, unspecified whether dream or nightmare. It had been ages since the man had had any daydreams, himself.

'Why discard your precious words - what are you sufferer of?'

'White. Male. Straight. Such a writer can no longer make a living. It is considered taboo to publish. They're probably censoring me right now.'

'You have a wistful neurasthenia. Like novelists of the old world.'

'You Golden Age thinking-,' he stopped short of cunt. 'Sorry about the litter. I'll make sure we find our way to the trash.'

'It's no problem. Always nice to see characters like you. I bring you coffee soon, cis.'

'Comique. Merci.'

When the barkeep brought over a mug of black roast he was already back at his rages. The genial steward placed it gently down aside the letters, holding out a cigarette. Writer took the fag in his mouth, acknowledged with a tilt of the head once it was lit. Afterward he watched the aproned, potbellied fellow meander back to the bar with a limp to his gait. Burdened, chastened by his vocation, frenetic-minded, he wrote choice words blunt and swift, blowing fumes, burning the roof of his mouth without much care. Thus holding at bay the inevitable, for he could sensate the sting of fiery light beginning to swallow him in whole, headfirst, apocalyptical, coming on suddenly like regurgitation of flu; another trade-lobotomized insect he was.

'I'm sure you will figure something out,' said the barkeep.

'If I wasn't a hack.'

'Still, misery does not suit you.'

'After awhile, you start to wear it just fine.'

The barkeep looked at him deprecatingly, not unkindly. Writer penned a few pages through the next hour, practicing in the form of free association well past the point of absurdity. Whatever else went on in the café during that time, he would've failed under interrogation. Those others there were remaining, copulating cups, this place their dungeon sanctuary. A pre-death chamber, haven besought by the self-ostracized undead.

Feet bootless under the table, he dragged a heel over the lower bricks in the wall beside him. Having observed this some time, eventually he rapped the side of a foot harder, moments later clipped his toes off an area seeming somewhat delicate. When again he pushed against it, a lone fragile block collapsed in, betraying busted mortar.

'Shit mason.'

He reached beneath, feeling a hand into the lowly crevice. Behind the dislodged brick he felt something smaller, stiff, papery. Writer worked it free, pulled it out, then brought it up only enough that he could see it below the tabletop. In the dull, lurid light he realized it to be a book of some sort; a palm-sized notebook with a musty black binding. Opened, its sheaves were stained and olden beige like medieval parchment, frail as geriatric skin. Unable to read even a scribble, he blew off the dusty leaves, flitting the pages slowly.

It was very old, consisting mostly of isolated sentences in poorly German freehand and sketches that were in bad taste. He had to scan to the middle to find anything of consequence; a few pages there detailed a ledger of some sort, titles printed in Deutsche on one side and in a smaller margin opposite a three, four or five-digit number. He had no idea what it meant, although a deep inner archaeological stirring like a specialist excavator exhuming a site of high-cultured importance. At the back of the digest, in small font in a column at the bottom of the page was the name of a town and address. Wedged into the dislocated spine, was a tiny brass key.

He dusted off his socks, put boots back on and stood from the table. The book he concealed behind his back, tucking it inside belt and beneath sweatshirt. Writer felt excitable stirrings. A phasic shift had taken place, the morose state he found himself in the past few months, fading already.

'Heading off now?' the barkeep asked.

'I should get some rest. Thanks for the hospitality.'

'Nothing. Bonne nuit.'

***

It was a bleak early spring dawn when he boarded the train two days hence. At the purchasing of his train ticket, he lamented bank account statement's decline to four digits centered by a decimal. The town, hours southeast of the renowned love city by rail, was almost all the way down into le Midi. There was no going back now, in lieu a fresh adventure, outcome unspecified - a journey extricated, extrapolated from woe.

He would never return to Paris save perhaps for his belongings. The pride of an indignant writer simply would not allow it. Instead, as he embarked the cabin nigh three hours later there was the new idea of backpacking (as a hitchhiker) and a grand pilgrimage. Many great journeyman artists made their peregrinations across the land, broke and unsolicited. Maybe that was what he had to do before achieving the success that rightfully awaited him.

'Bonsoir,' the stewardess greeted, at the exit. 'Did you find everything easily in your compartment?'

'Yes, thank you. Have a good day.'

'Salut.'

It was well into the day when he found the proper street that would lead to the residence indicated in the black notebook. The route led out into the country, along a single-file laneway with an enormous hedge and dirt walking trail opposite. Houses were few and far in between, every so often another propped up on the horizon, people even more seldom. When later he arrived, it did not take any time to realize the place was long abandoned. Woods fell in, natural enclosure overtaking the old road, hedge, pathway.

The front door was unlocked, partly smashed in. Writer went in cautiously, making sure the coast was clear before doing so. Just about everything within was broken, dilapidated. Kitchen cabinets hung on hinges and floors looked ready to cave in. Decades had past since it was last habituated; most recently it seemed to have served as a makeshift hunting camp.

There was the kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms that were empty except for ruinous bedframes, mattresses. Down a stair through the kitchen was a cavernous cellar and mothballed crawlspace. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out anywhere. The place was stripped bare.

After an hour or so he sat, pondering on the living room carpet. It was threadbare frill, spanned about entirety of the floor. For lack of any better ideas, given the context he decided to take a gander underneath. Initially a storm of dust, dirt swirled into the air, mingling with stale, rot smell, burnt his eyes. Then he saw it. Bingo.

The boons of his curiosity yielded a trapdoor with an inlaid lockbox. He grabbed the key, inserted it in the tray, unlocked, flipped off the lid. There was yet another lock, with a scroll pad. Writer searched throughout the notebook, analyzing feverishly. Eventually he discovered a page with a faded, sixteen-digit code, blocked into sections of four separated by dashes.

Eureka. It took. He heaved the trapdoor ajar, stared down into nothing. A chill draft flooded out of the darkness. What else for it, now. Getting flashlight out of backpack, writer started in.

'Fuck sake. What is all this.'

Several barrel-sized wooden crates lined the backwall, burlap sacks slightly larger than plastic grocery bags tucked beneath. Center of the room was an oak table, large swastika carved across its surface. Writer bypassed it, went directly for the age-old hidden mysteries slightly beyond.

He found a prybar to peal off the crate-tops. To his amazement each was full of painted masterpieces, many of which could have sworn he had seen on television, in catalogues. The sacks contained hoarded mounds of non-legal tender franc coins. However one of the sacks, only about half-filled, was comprised of British pounds. There must've been thousands worth.

By the time he got back to the station his muscles were screaming. Absolutely zero of the immaculately-framed artworks would fit. Writer got in a blue kiosk at the platform; he found the phone number for a local heritage museum close by, only a few agricultural villages away.

'Hello,' he said to the woman who answered. 'I am calling to report the finding of lost, significant artifacts.'

'Sorry. What is it you've found?'

'Stolen works of art. Nazis treasure.'

'Wow. Okay. Where are you, sir?'

He gave her the name of the town, address.

'I know this place quite well. Are you still there, monsieur?'

'Yes, of course.'

'In the town, I mean.'

'Oh, no I'm not.'

'May I ask your name for our records?'

'That's alright, thanks.'

'Pour nom?'

'Don't worry about that. I'm not an art thief.'

'Pardon?'

'Au revoir.'

What a fine afternoon. Now back to Paris, at least to gather his things. Found money granted new legs. Fresh breath of air. He elected to keep the book, too. Upon further inspection there were more locations, addresses scrawled out in microscopic font. What was even more, writer felt he might even write well again.

The End