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Déjeuner celebre
I am at the height of my powers, and I shall be avenged. Hatred spurs great art, and I shall turn my passion to paint, and have my ironic revenge upon them. Though I am loath to let them live on, I will be famous someday, and they too will be remembered - through my work not theirs.
My craft is no temporal thing, no abstraction, no congregation of notes that die as soon as they are uttered. Only painting, sculpture, architecture and writing survive - music, dance, drama: all of them will fade.
And you have only to listen to this amateur quartet to know that that they will certainly fade - they stand in the living room and sing (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), but it is not music they produce.
No, it is not music, it is not art, and what is more, it disturbs my art. Every Wednesday night, and again all day Saturday, they meet next door and practise their singing. So much practice, and such tiny improvement! I chose this suburb so that I could paint in peace surrounded by pensioners and public servants, people with settled lives and orderly habits.
But not this lot: they are more anarchists than artists, and their mission is to ruin my Saturdays.
Last week, however, was even worse than usual. I think they were preparing for an eisteddfod, so they disturbed my Friday night as well with an extra session. I’d get tense on Wednesdays knowing they were coming that night, but I got just as tense that Friday when they suddenly began singing next door and I hadn’t had time to prepare for it!
Then they turned up early on the Saturday; and they must have had a champagne breakfast to warm up their throats, for their voices got louder and more raucous as the morning went on. Then I heard Bart announce in his loud baritone “Let’s sing this next one for Teddy.” They know how I hate to be called Teddy, it is so familiar and so Australian. My name is Edouard, but they always call me Teddy, certainly never Monsieur Manét.
“Yes, let’s,” called out Lindy, who owns the house. Lindy - what a dreadful diminutive, and what a sharp soprano voice she has - she could break glass with any note. And I think Bart had stayed overnight, so she hadn’t got much sleep, making her voice even more shrill than usual.
Then they sang a dreadful song about “Teddy’s Bare Picnic” or some such thing that I’d never heard before. Always they mock my accent and my name. I could barely paint for the rest of the morning, my hand shook so with rage and humiliation.
Around midday the noise grew louder and closer. I looked out my studio window and saw them processing outside, bearing baskets and bottles, solemnly intoning “Ergo bibamus”. They made their single-file way past the rotary hoist to sit near the above-ground pool. There they spread a cloth and sat down for a picnic lunch.
Though they had at last stopped singing, they kept talking while they ate, all at once and riotously, raucously. Twice I looked out the window, and saw them eating cold sausage, fromage, rolls, washing it down with more champagne - though I noticed Bart distained that, possibly as too French, and was drinking the local beer, Fourex.
The third time I looked out, Marshall (the bass) was already looking up. He waved a cheeky stick of celery at me and called “Bonjour, Teddy, Bon Appetit’”
If I’d been eating, I would have choked.
Two could play at this. I stormed out to the potting shed on the opposite side of the house. It was there I kept my lawn-mower, an Australian called Victa had invented it, how apropos. I pulled the cord several times until it roared in the shed like an explosion in a resonating chamber. The pots shook, one fell off the shelf and smashed on the concrete floor. With that blast, the second French Revolution had begun!
I pushed the mower round to the backyard, and began mowing in straight rows from about the middle of the yard towards the picknickers, being careful not to look at them. I knew though that they were watching me, for now their activity, conversation, had been made impossible. This Saturday, I was drowning them out.
I cut about a third of the backyard, then began to cut in the other direction, cross-hatching, like I had seen on Australian cricket pitches. Someone, I think Lindy, threw a French roll, but I ran over it - bread crumbs to feed the birds.
I began mowing in the first direction again, parallel with their fence, getting closer with every row. Now I could hear them yelling at me - all that practice at least gave them volume when they needed it.
“You frog bastard, go and mow somewhere else! Piss off home, you noisy merde! Turd!” I smiled a smile like the Mona Lisa, the jewel of our Louvre. Revenge was noisy but sweet . . .
and short-lived. They began to fight back.
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