Tales of the Unexpected

the tattoo, for instance. Now,
that
was a mad thing if ever there was one. How had it started? Ah, yes – he had got rich one day, that was it, and he had bought lots of wine. He could see himself now as he entered the studio with the parcel of bottles under his arm – the boy sitting before the easel, and his (Drioli’s) own wife standing in the centre of the room, posing for her picture.
    ‘Tonight we shall celebrate,’ he said. ‘We shall have a little celebration, us three.’
    ‘What is it that we celebrate?’ the boy asked, without looking up. ‘Is it that you have decided to divorce your wife so she can marry me?’
    ‘No,’ Drioli said. ‘We celebrate because today I have made a great sum of money with my work.’
    ‘And I have made nothing. We can celebrate that also.’
    ‘If you like.’ Drioli was standing by the table unwrapping the parcel. He felt tired and he wanted to get at the wine. Nine clients in one day was all very nice, but it could play hell with a man’s eyes. He had never done as many as nine before. Nine boozy soldiers – and the remarkable thing was that no fewer than seven of them had been able to pay in cash. This had made him extremely rich. But the work was terrible on the eyes. Drioli’s eyes were half closed from fatigue, the whites streaked with little connecting lines of red; and about an inch behind each eyeball there was a small concentration of pain. But it was evening now and he was wealthy as a pig, and in the parcel there were three bottles – one for his wife, one for his friend, and one for him. He had found the corkscrew and was drawing the corks from the bottles, each making a small plop as it came out.
    The boy put down his brush. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘How can one work with all this going on?’
    The girl came across the room to look at the painting. Drioli came over also, holding a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other.
    ‘No!’ the boy shouted, blazing up suddenly. ‘Please – no!’ He snatched the canvas from the easel and stood it against the wall. But Drioli had seen it.
    ‘I like it.’
    ‘It’s terrible.’
    ‘It’s marvellous. Like all the others that you do, it’s marvellous. I love them all.’
    ‘The trouble is,’ the boy said, scowling, ‘that in themselves they are not nourishing. I cannot eat them.’
    ‘But still they are marvellous.’ Drioli handed him a tumblerful of the pale-yellow wine. ‘Drink it,’ he said. ‘It will make you happy.’
    Never, he thought, had he known a more unhappy person, or one with a gloomier face. He had spotted him in a café some seven months before, drinking alone, and because he had looked like a Russian or some sort of an Asiatic, Drioli had sat down at his table and talked.
    ‘You are a Russian?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Where from?’
    ‘Minsk.’
    Drioli had jumped up and embraced him, crying that he too had been born in that city.
    ‘It wasn’t actually Minsk,’ the boy had said. ‘But quite near.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Smilovichi, about twelve miles away.’
    ‘Smilovichi!’ Drioli had shouted, embracing him again. ‘I walked there several times when I was a boy.’ Then he had sat down again, staring affectionately at the other’s face. ‘You know,’ he had said, ‘you don’t look like a western Russian. You’re like a Tartar, or a Kalmuck. You look exactly like a Kalmuck.’
    Now, standing in the studio, Drioli looked again at the boy as he took the glass of wine and tipped it down his throat in one swallow. Yes, he did have a face like a Kalmuck – very broad and high-cheeked, with a wide coarse nose. This broadness of the cheeks was accentuated by the ears which stood out sharply from the head. And then he had the narrow eyes, the black hair, the thick sullen mouth of a Kalmuck, but the hands – the hands were always a surprise, so small and white like a lady’s, with tiny thin fingers.
    ‘Give me some more,’ the boy said. ‘If we are to celebrate then let us do it properly.’
    Drioli distributed the wine and sat himself on a chair. The boy sat on the old couch with Drioli’s wife. The three bottles were placed on the floor between them.
    ‘Tonight we shall drink as much as we possibly can,’ Drioli said. ‘I am exceptionally rich. I think perhaps I should go out now and buy some more bottles. How many shall I get?’
    ‘Six more,’ the boy said. ‘Two for each.’
    ‘Good. I shall go now and fetch them.’
    ‘And I will help you.’
    In the