The childish face sat in a high collar of ruffled lace, and the boy’s small pudgy hands held reins that were slipped through the rat’s mouth.
“Do you like it?” the baboon’s voice asked from the other side of the room.
“It wasn’t made to be liked, I dunk.” The commissaris was still studying the painting. “Your work, Mr. Vleuten?”
“In a way. The combination is mine. The original is an illustration to a child’s tale and I enlarged it and worked in some of the details. I’ve done more work like this, more elaborate, but in the same vein, I would think.”
The baboon got up and pressed a button at the side of a large cupboard. A deep hum filled the room and the cupboard’s door swung open. The apparition mat rode out of the cupboard came straight at the sergeant, who jumped out of its way, but it changed direction and he had to jump again. The commissaris wasn’t able to determine the nature of the apparition immediately, he only knew he felt nauseated.
He followed it as it moved around and returned to the cupboard.
It was a structure of human bones, clipped together and held upright by a transparent plastic rod. The head seemed to be a cow’s skull, very old and moldy, with a gaping hole in its forehead framed in dry moss. Part of the skull was covered by a mask of frayed purple corduroy but the eye sockets and the long mouth with rows of pale yellow teeth had been left bare. The cupboard’s door closed and the hum stopped. The commissaris looked at the floor. A pair of rails had been sunk into the smooth polished boards, evidently the specter had ridden on a small cart powered by electricity.
“A toy,” the baboon said.
De Gier was staring at the cupboard door, his legs astride. Grijpstra stood next to the sergeant, bent slightly forward. Only the commissaris hadn’t moved, not even when the ghoul’s weapon, a rusted Sten gun, had brushed the back of his sleeve.
He sat down again. “You are an artist, Mr. Vleuten, and your creations are spectacular. I’m sure the municipal museum would be interested and give you space to exhibit. I’m interested too. What prompted you to make that structure?”
“A vision,” the baboon said slowly, “a vision when I was drunk. I don’t normally drink much, but I did happen to get very drunk some years ago and I passed out. My body stopped functioning but my mind worked well, too well, perhaps. The sensation was unpleasant. I wanted to go to sleep but I had been caught in a maelstrom. You probably know the experience. Dizziness, increasing until everything turns, not only what the mind experiences but the mind itself joins its reflections. A crazy dance, and in my case also macabre.”
The commissaris smiled. “If I remember correctly mat particular sensation doesn’t last too long. One gets sick and vomits and then there is nothing but sleep until the hangover the following day.”
“I didn’t get sick. I spent hours being part of the maelstrom, trying not to be sucked into the abyss that lurked at its bottom. I had everything against me that night. There was much to be seen although I didn’t want to see it. In the edge of the swirl different scenes were acted out and I was in all of them. The main actors, apart from myself, were a human skeleton with a masked cow’s head and a little boy riding his rat.”
It was the commissaris’s turn to get up and wander around the room and the baboon followed him. They were of about the same height, and Grijpstra leaned out of his chair to keep track of their moving shapes.
“So what have we caught now?” de Gier whispered.
“Shhh!”
“Normally a man would try to get away from his fears,” the commissaris was saying, “but you went to great trouble to picture them. It seems that you do the opposite of what is to be expected. The effort is deliberate?”
“Yes.”
“Like when you had the Camet and Company firm in the palm of your hand, so to speak, and you threw it away?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind a personal question?”
“No.”
“Patient, isn’t he?” de Gier’s voice said close to Grijpstra’s ear. Grijpstra’s hands made an irritated flapping movement in response.
“You have a nickname, Mr. Vleuten. You are called die baboon. It would seem to me that you wouldn’t like that nickname. A baboon is an ape. I would have expected pictures of baboons in this room, maybe even skeletons of baboons.”
The baboon laughed. “I have several mirrors here, I can see the baboon anytime I wish to, and often when I don’t wish to.” The laugh was relaxed and spread to the three detectives.
“True. Another question, something that interests me, it has nothing to do with why we are here. Your effort is to do the opposite of what is expected and your effort must require strength. It is easier to glide along the groove. You are exerting yourself to go against that movement, to break out of the groove altogether, perhaps. Does that effort get you anywhere?”
The baboon had come back to his chair and sat down. His flat strong hands rested on his knees. “An intriguing question.”
“Yes. Would you answer it?”
“Why not? But I don’t think I can. Perhaps the vision I tried to describe just now set me off. Everything was going so well at that time, you see. I was, in a way, making a career. I was selling unbelievable quantities of furniture. My income was based, in part, on commission, so I was earning a fair amount of money. On top of that I could have the business, the control of it, anyway. Bergen had weakened to the point where he was ready to have himself pushed out. Elaine wanted to marry me and it wouldn’t have been an impossible match, we are of the same age and I was fond of her. But nothing was happening.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Vleuten?”
“I was just driving a car, visiting customers, going home in the evenings, resting during the weekends. I had a boat, of course, and there were other pastimes, hobbies. I read, I painted a little. But still nothing was happening. I just moved along.”
“And you were bored?”
“No. I became bored after that drunken night. It seemed there was something else. But whatever that something else was, it was certainly frightening. The rat and the little boy, the skeleton threatening me. I don’t know whether you felt threatened just now, as it lunged at you from the cupboard. Perhaps to you it was just a silly shape like something you see at a carnival, something you scream at and then forget again. To me the shapes were much more, they came out of my own mind, out of the hidden part of my mind, and they were very strong. I was frightened throughout the vision, but I was also fascinated even while I was being tortured by the little boy-he isn’t as harmless as he looks, you know-and chased by his rat and even as the cow shape attacked me over and over again, hurting me badly every time. And it wasn’t just masochism. I don’t particularly enjoy being in pain, but yet…”
“You decided consciously to live with your fear? To deliberately recreate it?”
“I decided to try that. I’m not original. I’m quite content to follow ways already explored. I assume that you are acquainted with the work of Bosch, Breughel. There have been others, also now, the films of Fellini, for instance. And there are writers, poets, even composers…”
“Many who follow those paths go mad, Mr. Vleuten. They commit suicide, are found hanging in alleys, afloat in the canals, lifeless in gutters. We find them, our patrol cars bring them in and dump them in the morgue.”
The baboon’s chest expanded as he breathed. “No, the corpses you find have a different history. Drug addicts and alcoholics are caught in a groove too, they slip into habits like average citizens. I want to do something else, really do something, not to slip into a ready-made pattern that has, at the best, some moments of high perception but leads to utter degeneration eventually. The idea is not so bad perhaps; it’s romantic to be a tramp, I thought of that possibility. I even spent some time in Paris studying clochards, but I decided that their way of life is both uncomfortable and unnecessary and leads to what most lives lead to, a half-conscious dream that turns in a half-circle. The clochards I followed around had to beg or steal. I didn’t want to do that, even though the idea of being nothing, having nothing, not even a name, did appeal to me. But I wouldn’t want to break into some tourist’s car to be able to buy my next bottle or teaspoon of drugs. Why should I spoil another man’s vacation? The tourist has his rights too. I don’t quarrel with the ideals or lack of ideals of others. But it was interesting to live with the clochards for a while. Some of them were as sinister, as horrible, as my vision, but it seemed that I could prick through them. They were shadows, my vision was more real.”