The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome by Serge Brussolo Read Free Book Online

stepping over the gilt frames and slipping away shamefully, head down, struggling against the occasional draft. That was how they had left for exile, for oblivion—through the artists’ entrance at whose end awaited the terrible light of day. A light thatwould devour their colors once protected by carefully calibrated gloom. One after another, they had gone, as painting became an obsolete, piddling activity forgotten by the public. The landscapes, the coronations, the great battles, the depositions of Christ, the allegories had all emptied themselves of their subjects, their crowds, their nymphs. Only trees and objects had remained frozen on the canvas, too dumb to realize their hour of glory had passed. Or too prideful to consider it. Upon exiting the museum, the figures hadn’t known what to do, had started walking in circles, giving way when shoved by a gust of wind. Those whose varnish was still intact had resisted the rain, while others had quickly begun to mold, to come undone. To withstand the wind that blew on the museum esplanade, they’d wound themselves round benches, great flapping oriflammes with knotted legs. The sun had gone to work on them then, bleaching colors, roasting varnish, hardening the fibers of old canvases. The faces of Madonnas, Christs, Generals of the Empire had slowly been erased; pink had turned gray, pigments exhausted by centuries of survival had faded. Eyes and mouths had grown progressively paler until there was nothing left in the forecourt but strips of white, vaguely anthropomorphic canvas which were mistaken for bits of tarp wind had torn from a scaffolding. Yes, that was how the museum’s inhabitants had met their fate, the tenants of famous paintings, victims of a consumption to which no one had paid the slightest mind. David made his way forward step by step, like a burglar expecting at any minute to be pinned to the wall by a floodlight beam. He shivered at the slightest sound, an eye out for ghosts of the art of yesteryear.Phantoms here didn’t hide beneath bedsheets like their ancestors in Gothic novels, but beneath painted canvases. They slipped behind a crate, stole through tears in plastic sheeting to delude themselves that they were still hanging on the wall, the object of everyone’s attention …
    David shook himself to dispel the phantasmagoria assailing him. There were no ghosts, no straying images. If the frames were empty, it was because the paintings they once displayed had been relinquished to the naïve rapacity of junk dealers, nothing more.
    He threw a quick look over his shoulder. He wasn’t allowed in this part of the building. From here on out was the quarantined sector; only veterinarians were allowed to move around freely there.
    At the end of the corridor, a fat man jammed into a less than immaculate lab coat kept watch from his perch on a stool. Arms crossed over his chest, he shifted from one butt cheek to the other, trying vainly to find a comfortable position. His red eyes bore witness to a desperate lack of sleep; all he wanted was to be in bed. David had been betting on the night shift’s general fatigue. Relief was still an hour away, and a long night’s duty had dulled their watchfulness. He had to take advantage of this slackened attention.
    “Yeah,” grumbled the man at the sight of a visitor suddenly emerging from the tunnel of the shadowy corridor. “What is it?”
    David pulled a twenty from his pocket, rolled it up lengthwise, and, for kicks, began whistling through it as if it were a flute. The fat man watched him without any show of impatience.
    “Yesterday,” the younger man said at last. “Around eight. A girl from psych section, with a bun and a pinched-looking mouth?”
    “Oh yeah,” the fat man snickered. “Piehole? That’s what we call her. She’s no barrel of laughs. Probably frigid. That mouth isn’t the only thing of hers that’s pinched tight.”
    Grabbing the sign-in sheet, he ran a soiled finger down the