Orange Is...

A solitary black figure stands two-thirds of the way up a hill and stares not at the countryside steeped in beauty but at the task ahead of him. Long blades of green and gold cover the hill, shimmering and dancing in the breeze, interrupted only by the vast expanse of blue above. The figure sees nothing, feels nothing.

While the springtime sun of Southern France is famed for its mildness and congeniality, it appears that today the golden orb is bearing down on the land in full ferocity. The figure is hardly surprised at this. The heavens seldom hold favour for thieves.

His clothing does not help matters. He wears a white shirt, blanketed by a charcoal suit, vest included, underneath of which is tucked a navy tie. His cuffs are linked in gold. His left wrist is wrapped in silver adorned with a pale watch face. His black boots shine, reflecting his surroundings. There is not a wrinkle in his clothes. There is not a hair out of place on his greying mane. There is, however, a twinge of regret on his brow as he reaches into his jacket pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the flow of sweat amassing on his right temple.

The thief is an ageing man with ageing traditions. He believes in the importance of dressing professionally for a job. It would feel wrong to break with tradition for this, his final job, his magnum opus. The weight of the sun’s heat continues to press down upon him, his breathing heavy. Each rise and fall of his shoulders is a reminder of his fleeting youth. This job is an opportunity to finish his career on a high, not only in the brazenness of walking into a room, stealing an artwork off of the wall, and walking back out again, but also in the fact that he is stealing it for the right reasons. This theft is not business; it is strictly personal. He feels there is poetry in this, his redemption.

Thus, it is with conviction that he takes one more deep breath, adjusts his tie and continues wading through the thick grass toward the cottage at the top of the hill.

The crunch of the gravel pathway beneath the thief’s boots signals the end of the climb. Here, the sea of green and gold flattens out and becomes populated with haphazard bursts of red poppies. Bees drone, navigating purple hazes of wisteria hanging from an ageing pergola. The flowers graze the thief’s shoulders as the air sweetens with the honeysuckle scent of the yellow broom flowers that flank the two sides of the cottage. From behind, cypress trees stand tall, firm, and green, leering down upon the stranger in their midst. The thief’s eyes do not wander. He knows grandeur is a distraction. The galleries, the private estates, the artworks themselves entice and mesmerise the eyes until you break the trance and notice the glint of silver locking your wrists together. The thief does not consider the sights and scents and sounds of the garden; he thinks only of two eyes, wide and green, looking up at him.

Reaching the end of the pathway brings the cottage into proper view for the first time. It is small and simple, built in stone and built in history and built in contradiction. It is timeless, yet it is ancient. It is isolated, yet it is welcoming. It is unassuming, yet it stands strong.

A boy sits on a bench in front of the entrance. He can’t be more than seventeen, with hair shaved close to his scalp and a gold earring looped on one ear. His neck cranes down at an awkward angle, eyes glued to his phone. The thief’s approach casts a shadow over the device and the boy’s face slowly pans up, disinterested and vague.

The thief draws a five euro note from his jacket pocket and thrusts it toward the boy.

“One ticket for the gallery, please.”

The boy snags the money and nods his head, indicating the wooden door around the cottage’s west side through which to enter. The thief marches ever forward to his goal as the boy pockets the cash and skulks through the front entrance of the cottage.

Gripping the rusted door handle and pulling, the thief enters his arena. He knew he would not find glamour and intrigue here. There are no cameras, no glass cases, no guards. The only remnant of an alarm system is the creak of the long cedar floorboards echoing out in the silence beneath the thief’s polished boots. Light is dim, pouring in from three windows, all smudged and surrounded by dilapidated shutters with faded and chipped blue paint.

The furniture across the room is in a similar state. It is an eclectic collection unified only in being worn and weary. Two bright armchairs, one mustard-yellow, the other one deep purple, sit in collection with a wooden stool and a stained ottoman beside a table with a coffee machine and an assortment of mugs. Chests of drawers, bedside tables and a small desk sit strewn around the room, each supporting small wire stands holding up paintings.

The walls are similarly sporadic, adorned with paintings of varying shapes and sizes. Seasides, horses, still lifes. It is a collection of pleasant mediocrity. Hanging on the back wall next to a white door with a crystal handle leading to another room is a large tapestry depicting a creature that seems to be a cross between a goat and an Irish Wolfhound.

The thief’s eyes circle the room before coming to rest on his prize. It isn’t an entirely difficult task as the painting he approaches is larger than the others and in a position of reverence, taking up a large portion of one of the walls. The image also holds the sole distinction of being framed.

The frame itself is bronze and beautiful, but the painting steals all attention. A watercolour work, at its base it is clear that the painting depicted two figures from their torsos upward, arms around one another’s backs. As the viewer’s eyes move up toward the figures’ necks, however, their faces become warped and ghastly. The left-most figure’s expression is flipped over itself to gaze toward the top left corner with an agape jaw whilst the other’s expression droops toward the bottom right. They both sit there, forever frozen in horror and misery, a tinge of deep orange pervading all of the canvas.

The thief is not aware his arm is outstretched until his hand grazes the side of the frame.

“Bonjour, monsieur! Mon petit-fils me dit que tu es là pour la galerie.”

The voice cuts through the silence, sending a jolt across the room and up the thief’s spine. The floorboards had failed to convey that another had entered the room, a fact the thief finds unsurprising as he spins on his heel, moving his outstretched hand to comb through his hair, because the old man on the other side of the room is part of the furniture.

He is hunched and gaunt, holding a cane though not leaning on it. His clothing is bright and characterful, a pink cardigan, bright blue pants and purple brogues. His chin sports a neat tuft of white atop skin that has been leathered by the sun, with an array of freckles and moles decorating his cheeks. His head is bare and adorned with a red chequered newsboy cap. His eyes are shielded by sunglasses.

“Monsieur?” the old man says again, his brow developing lines of confusion as his head bobbles around the room, searching.

“Uh, parlez-vous anglis?” the thief asks, cheeks reddening.

Thirteen years in Paris had done nothing to abate his Englishness. Despite the many faces he has worn he remains an English man with an English complexion and a healthy English embarrassment over his abysmal knowledge of any language other than the King’s English.

“Ah, I see” the old man smiles knowingly, his head turning to zero in on his audience. “Perhaps I should have guessed that you would be the phone caller from earlier. The mysterious Arthur Blake.”

The thief smiles at the moniker he has chosen to wear today.

“Luckily, my English is near perfect” he adds with a warm smile. “Allow me to introduce myself as Paul Pacalet, the owner of this humble little cottage”.

The thief knew Paul’s name. The thief knew Paul owned the cottage. The thief knew his grandson collected tickets outside the front of the building because the thief does his research. However, there was one fact that the thief had not uncovered prior to his arrival.

“Pardon my asking” he begins, steadying a tremor in his voice. “Are you… are you blind, monsieur?”

The old man’s grin grows wider still.

“Ah, you are perceptive, mon ami. And now you get to share in the confusion and confoundment that most feel when they first visit my little home. The blind gallerist.”

The thief swallows hard at this new reality. He had not contended with stealing from the blind. In his mind, he pictures the green eyes. A floorboard creaks, revealing the silence the two men stand in.

“If I may, Monsieur Pacalet, what would a blind man know of art?”

The old man’s smile thins into a wry line. He taps his cane methodically and shuffles forward, placing himself into the purple armchair. A gesture toward the mustard seat sees the thief take his own reluctant position.

“It is a question I have received before. I have been blind since birth. It is not uncommon to assume that art, like so many other things, is simply shut off to me. That is not the case.”

The cane taps resolutely into the floor to emphasise the words of the final sentence.

“From travels, both my own and those of others who end up on this doorstep, I have come to understand that art in its many shapes and sizes is chaos, confusion, unity, and mystery. My joy in art is that when I talk to others, I know that I am not broken. Sight does not serve to yield some higher understanding. I can hear about each painting in this room in a myriad of ways. I haven’t seen red, but I know that it is warmth and rage and power and destruction and embrace. I can’t gaze upon the sky but I know that blue is freedom and opportunity. Blue is righteousness. Yet blue is also something altogether softer and smaller and sadder.  Blue is loneliness. I can’t behold gold, but I can feel it on my back when I walk in my garden and I can understand why gold is glory and why gold is bliss. But I also know that gold is greed and gold is downfall.”

Electricity pours from the lips of the blind man and fills the room with the liveliness and vigour, imbued by the beauty he is devoted to yet will never behold. Despite himself, the thief is shackled to the armchair, focused on Pacalet’s sermon.

“I do not need sight to understand that art is more than mere lines on a page. The greatest and most common tragedy on earth is that of the masses who are given the gift of sight and yet see nothing at all.”  

There blind man stops for breath. And then the energy in the room shifts.

“Now, Monsieur Blake, I would like to ask you what you make of that painting over there.”

The cane points straight toward the thief’s prize. Along the entire train trip, taxi ride, week’s stay in the nearby village, and afternoon walk up the hill the thief had not felt a moment of concern for himself. At Paul Pacalet’s words, trepidation begins to creep upon his spine.

“Well” the man calling himself Arthur Blake offers, “I don’t really know much of art.”

The gallerist does not require sight to see through the man opposite him.

“Perhaps it is too abstract. Tell me of any painting in this room you would like to.”

The thief mutters something about horses and sailing boats that even Paul Pacalet’s heightened hearing fails to understand. The room begins to feel cold.

“There is something confusing to me about a man who travels to this little hidden spot all the way from England.”

“I live in Paris, actually.”

“Forgive me, Monsieur. I would have expected slightly better French.” There is no smile on Paul Pacalet’s face now. He is all cold, all rigid.

“Nonetheless, French, English, American, it matters not. This place is barely known. We mostly cater to locals who come for a coffee and to keep me company. We do not profit. We only tend to charge admission to tourists and we receive very few, particularly from abroad. The ones who do arrive hear from a friend of a friend or from someone in the village. We do not have a website. We do not have reviews. We do not even open if I do not feel like it. And so I find it curious that a stranger dressed in such a fashion as my grandson has described, having spent the past week asking questions about me to my friends in the village, would come to this little cottage and tell me he knows nothing of art. Tell me why you are here.”

Peeled-off sunglasses reveal two milky white eyes that bore into the gallery’s intruder. The thief considers his position. Honour does not exist amongst thieves, but it lives within some. In the silence, the thief finds honesty.

“I am here to steal one of your paintings, Monsieur Pacalet.”

The gallerist does not express concern. “The art thief who knows nothing about art. It appears we are both contradictions.” He swings his cane wildly about the room. “There is nothing of value here.”

The thief thinks about the girl with the green eyes. The girl with the dark hair. The girl with the curling smile with the scent of chocolate on his lips.

“I have been sent here by the daughter of the artist of that painting.” There is futility in him pointing, yet the old man understands, the colour draining from his face.

“She has no claim,” Paul Pacalet begins.

“Her father was the artist, your father his gallerist. Despite their close friendship, your father stole the painting away in a fit, creating much distress for the family. I am here to return it,” the thief cuts him off defiantly.

For the first time, the old man falters. The cane thuds to the floor, bouncing and rolling away as Paul Pacalet gasps for air for a few moments before he and the thief and the room around them settle back into silence.

“Is that truly what she believes?” Paul rasps.

The thief thinks back to the girl with the green eyes. Gazing into those lakes of emerald, lakes of teal. The thief knows liars. For a man such as himself, lying is a reflex. The girl was no liar. Green is honesty, the thief thinks. Green is truth.

“Yes.”

The gallerist slumps further into his seat at the weight of the words. His brow bears the weight of sorrow.

“That is not the whole truth.”

“Monsieur” the thief begins.

“My father did take the painting.” It is the gallerist’s turn to cuts off the other, his voice rising. “It was an act of weak revenge upon a man he had worked with, a man he had befriended, a man he had loved and who loved him back. The same man who painted them both as two pals, two brothers. The same man who trivialised their relationship down into something flat and bland and colourless. The same man who told my father he would be marrying another. He grabbed a pot of orange-stained water, threw it over the painting and ran out with it under his arm.”

The old man with the milky eyes sits up further in his purple chair. Purple with contempt. Purple with betrayal.

“My father fled and found himself in the little cottage we are in now. And when he unpacked, he found that his only possessions were the painting and the pain and the anguish. He shut them away in this very room. He found a job, he found a wife, he found a son and for a while I think he really did find an escape.”

Tragedy holds the thief in his place, staring at the figures in the painting. Their expressions of horror burning into his mind.

“And then one day, the pain and anguish consumed him fully, and he decided to put a silver bullet inside a silver holster and fire that silver bullet into his head.”

Paul Pacalet trembles under the strain of unyielding grief, an agony that has not abated in the years and decades since.

“Silver is pain” he chokes. “Silver is regret, silver is mistakes. I have spent years asking others to explain that image to me. To get some answers. Yet still, I do not understand.”

The old man trails off and sobs silently in his seat.

The thief stands above him, staring at his target. The truth lies obscured underneath the orange. The two men sit side by side in catastrophe. Their eyes never to meet. Their smiles never to return. Their souls twisted by betrayal.

Without another word, the thief leaves the painting on the wall, leaves the old man in the chair, and leaves the room.

Outside, the thief is greeted with dusk, orange brilliance emanating from the sky and bathing the countryside in its glow. In the morning, he will need to start contending with breaking the heart of the girl with the green eyes. For now, he basks in colour.

Orange is tragedy, he thinks. Orange is sorrow.