The speaker wore a black morning coat. He was plump and short and had a very white face. It was a flabby face with so much flesh upon it that the cheeks hung down on either side of the mouth in two fleshy collops, spanielwise. He came up close to Drioli and said again, ‘What is it you want?’
Drioli stood still.
‘If you please,’ the man was saying, ‘take yourself out of my gallery.’
‘Am I not permitted to look at the pictures?’
‘I have asked you to leave.’
Drioli stood his ground. He felt suddenly, overwhelmingly outraged.
‘Let us not have trouble,’ the man was saying. ‘Come on now, this way.’ He put a fat white paw on Drioli’s arm and began to push him firmly to the door.
That did it. ‘Take your goddam hands off me!’ Drioli shouted. His voice rang clear down the long gallery and all the heads jerked around as one – all the startled faces stared down the length of the room at the person who had made this noise. A flunkey came running over to help, and the two men tried to hustle Drioli through the door. The people stood still, watching the struggle. Their faces expressed only a mild interest, and seemed to be saying, ‘It’s all right. There’s no danger to us. It’s being taken care of.’
‘I, too!’ Drioli was shouting. ‘I, too, have a picture by this painter! He was my friend and I have a picture which he gave me!’
‘He’s mad.’
‘A lunatic. A raving lunatic’
‘Someone should call the police.’
With a rapid twist of the body Drioli suddenly jumped clear of the two men, and before anyone could stop him he was running down the gallery shouting, ‘I’ll show you! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!’ He flung off his overcoat, then his jacket and shirt, and he turned so that his naked back was towards the people.
‘There!’ he cried, breathing quickly. ‘You see? There it is!’
There was a sudden absolute silence in the room, each person arrested in what he was doing, standing motionless in a kind of shocked, uneasy bewilderment. They were staring at the tattooed picture. It was still there, the colours as bright as ever, but the old man’s back was thinner now, the shoulder blades protruded more sharply, and the effect, though not great, was to give the picture a curiously wrinkled, squashed appearance.
Somebody said, ‘My God, but it is!’
Then came the excitement and the noise of voices as the people surged forward to crowd around the old man.
‘It is unmistakable!’
‘His early manner, yes?’
‘It is fantastic, fantastic!’
‘And look, it is signed!’
‘Bend your shoulders forward, my friend, so that the picture stretches out flat.’
‘Old one, when was this done?’
‘In 1913,’ Drioli said, without turning around. ‘In the autumn of 1913.’
‘Who taught Soutine to tattoo?’
‘I taught him.’
‘And the woman?’
‘She was my wife.’
The gallery owner was pushing through the crowd towards Drioli. He was calm now, deadly serious, making a smile with his mouth. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I will buy it.’ Drioli could see the loose fat upon the face vibrating as he moved his jaw. ‘I said I will buy it, Monsieur.’
‘How can you buy it?’ Drioli asked softly.