Framed

by Tonino Benacquista

  A man’s face with a half smile. He had better be of some use to me too.

  “. . . Issssshi . . . ffffford.”

  “Don’t get yourself worked up. Get some sleep, you’re still under the effects of the anaesthetic. Is there someone you’d like to see? They asked at your work if there was anyone we should contact in an emergency, but they couldn’t find any details. As soon as you can talk we’ll try and sort something out.”

  What anaesthetic? The cheek? And the idiot didn’t understand that it’s itching terribly under the bandage on my forehead, and he could so easily have lifted it up and wiped the sweat. I’m going to have to do it myself. My right arm has been immobilized, and my left hand is the only resource I have to try and reach my head. But it’s painfully difficult. The man takes my arm almost roughly and puts it back down.

  “Please don’t move. Is something uncomfortable? Is the bandage too tight?”

  It takes him three seconds to work out what’s upsetting me and to sponge my forehead and temples with a cold compress. I sigh with relief.

  “You sleep, I’ll come back in a few hours. We’ll be able to talk a bit.”

  We’ll be chatting in sign language. The anaesthetic he mentioned is the one in my cheek, the whole right side of my face isn’t responding at all. They must have stitched me back together. Soon I’ll be able to smell the staples. That shit must hurt. Maybe I’ll be disfigured. The boys at the academy will have a good laugh. And the gallery will be like a house of horrors. What day is it? Did it happen yesterday or this morning? I didn’t hear anything, no sirens, no shouting. I don’t remember any moment of impact; I must have passed out just before that great thing fell down. All the different areas of pain in my face are waking up, slowly. They are joining together, in unison, to make a single wound. I’ve just run my tongue over the inside of my cheek and got a mouthful of fluid. My mouth is raw. But that’s nothing. I want to cry out in pain but I can’t, I’d like to see what’s left of my face in a mirror but I can’t open my eyes, I’d like to run my fingers over every scratch but my arms are like lumps of lead along the sides of the bed. I need my whole body. I need to train every day, Langloff isn’t going to think I’m any good. He won’t want to work with me any more.

  My life is somewhere else.

  *

  “No one to contact?”

  “Ngoooo!!!”

  “Don’t get upset.”

  If he says that one more time, I’ll spit in his face. If need be, I’ll tear off the bandages. My left hand has come back, I’ve managed to scratch myself several times, but the right hand is bound up in a wad of gauze. And this prick in the white coverall is desperate to find someone to come and cry at my bedside. I’m an only child, my parents are in Biarritz, and I don’t want to worry them with all this. They’re old, they would go and make the journey just because some bastard tried to carve my face up. My father’s not the strong type and my mother . . . well, she’s a mother – enough said.

  “No family or a girlfriend? A friend? It might help you. I’ll give you a piece of paper, write down a phone number.”

  Help me what? Scream? Smash this place up?

  As he rummages through his pockets he turns away slightly and asks casually:

  “Are you left-handed?”

  A little surprised I grunt a no straightaway.

  “All right. I’ll take your left hand and help you write.”

  Before I can react, he is already in position slipping a pencil between my thumb and my index finger. I can feel my anger rising up my throat, and I growl at him more and more menacingly, but he brings the piece of paper up to my eye. I can hardly see a thing, I’ve never written anything with my left hand, and I don’t want to let anyone know where I am. But I would like to disembowel him. The pencil wouldn’t be up to the job. I stab the pencil lead manically at the paper and scribble a sequence of incredibly slow zigzags which run out of my control, skid off the edge of the paper and stop when I don’t want them to. I still haven’t formed a word with my useless hand. This is purely abstract.

  When I feel as if I’ve finished, the pencil slips and falls to the floor. I hope it looks something like what I intended. He reads it:

  IT HURTS

  “Yes, you’re in a lot of pain, you’re coming round, but I don’t understand what you put afterwards, an A, a P, then . . . is this an S?”

  Afterwards I wanted to put ARSEHOLE, but I gave up. I wave my hand to avoid the question.

  “I’ll call the nurse, and she’ll give you something. Try not to move too much.”

  Yes, I’m in pain and I don’t know anyone in Paris who might care about it. Is that really all that strange?

  “Listen, I don’t want to keep bothering you, I’ll ask you one last time to be sure you don’t want someone, so okay, you’re going to close your eye, once for yes, twice for no, alright?”

  To get the whole business over and done with I close my eye twice. There, it’s over, now they can look after my poor skin; my skull’s burning and it even feels as if all my teeth on the right hand side of my mouth have decided to join in. I can’t work out how to get away from this mask of pain any more. Give me a jab, send me to sleep, or I’m going to die!

  The nurse comes in, perhaps she’s going to save me. They exchange a look, I can’t see much; he seems to be shaking his head at her.

  “Double the dose of analgesics, nurse.”

  She reaches over to a piece of equipment I hadn’t noticed, a bottle hanging in the air. I give a little gasp of surprise. A drip . . . the tube has been inserted in my right arm for hours, and I haven’t felt a thing until now.

  “It’s a tranquillizer and keeps you hydrated,” he says.

  I try to pull out my right elbow and they both immediately hold it down on the bed. The girl even gave a little “hey!”. They look at each other again, without a word, but I do really get the feeling they’re saying something to each other. My right hand seems to be answering, in spite of the bandaging. I’d really like them to leave it alone. I don’t remember at what stage it was injured.

  “Could you call Monsieur Briançon please, nurse.”

  The doctor takes my blood pressure and another one comes in straightaway, as if he were waiting outside the door. They exchange a few words that I can’t hear, and the first one goes out without looking at me. The new one is younger and isn’t wearing coveralls. He sits down on the edge of the bed, very close to me.

  “Hello, Monsieur Andrieux, I’m Doctor Briançon, I’m a psychiatrist.”

  A what . . . ? I can’t hear very clearly.

  “You’ll be back on your feet soon, a week at the most. Your cheek has been stitched up. In a couple of days they’ll be able to take the bandages off your eyes, and your vision will be quite normal. In five or six days they’ll take the staples out, and you’ll be able to start talking again. In all you’ll be here about a fortnight to make sure everything starts healing nicely. At first we were afraid you were concussed, but we’re happy with your ECG.”

  A fortnight . . . another fortnight of this place? No way. Absolutely not a chance. If I have to, I’ll go to the academy mummified, deaf and mute, but I’ll go there. I wail at him, but I can tell that my reasoning doesn’t hold much water. I would like to ask him some questions, to explain my situation, to tell him I need all my reflexes. Billiards is special, you can lose a lot in a short space of time. I groan again and raise my arms, he gets up and comes over to the other side. I waggle the wad of bandaging to make him understand what I’m really worried about – my right hand.

  “Whaaaa . . . ssssappppe . . .”

  “Don’t try to talk. Put your arm back down. Please . . .”

  I do as I’m told.

  And something starts nibbling at my stomach. A new pain, strange and blank. It was the way he said “please”, I knew he really minded, not like the other doctor.

  “There was nothing we could do.”

  My face freezes. Nothing hurts anywhere anymore
except in my stomach. Burning like urgent diarrhoea or a bursting bladder. I need some silence.

  “When the sculpture fell it severed the wrist completely.”

  I’m missing something, he said “the” sculpture and “the” wrist, that all seems very precise. And clear. Severed the wrist completely. Severed. Severed completely. Completely. The wrist, severed, completely.

  “I’m so sorry . . .”

  Mute.

  My whole body has just emptied itself. Lava flowed over my thighs. My left eye closed of it own accord. Then opened again.

  He’s still there, not moving.

  There was a prickling feeling in my nose so I’ve started breathing through my mouth.

  “Your hand was too badly damaged . . . it was impossible even to attempt a graft.”

  He’s waiting.

  He’s wrong.

  I’m not a doctor . . . but he’s wrong. And I need silence.

  My left hand has been fumbling blindly on the bedside table and has found the pencil. Now it’s pointing it in the air. He understands, picks up the block of paper and puts it beneath the pencil.

  It scribbles shakily, more anarchic doodlings. This hand is just doing whatever comes into its head, and doesn’t give a damn about mine, about my poor dented head which can’t transmit a simple order, a word, just one word; and this thankless hand is exploiting the situation, refusing to interpret for me, it won’t do as it’s told, it’s making the decision, choosing this word, its first word. It’s taking its revenge, and I’m shaking all the more.

  Exhausted, I let it drop.

  He has watched our struggle closely and reads:

  LEAVE

  The door closes without a sound. The prickling stopped as soon as I could let the tears flow.

  *

  I sat up with a jolt in the night. I could feel nothing except for the hot and cold sweat plastered all over my body and then, almost immediately, there was a sharp stabbing around my navel. A burning between my kidneys. I couldn’t hold back my urine. With my mad hand I fumbled all around the bedside table, things fell to the ground, the water jug definitely, judging by the noise, but I didn’t succeed in switching on a light. But I really must see clearly, I must see it, I must touch it. It’s there, I can feel it right next to me, it wants to come up to my face, to stroke it, to recognize the outline of my nose and dry my eyes. With a sharp tug of my arm I pull it clear of the loop of fabric that was holding my wrist in place. My stomach is burning, the bandage is too tight, I groan, I can’t see a thing, my left hand won’t be able to undo the pin and the knot, I’m losing my patience, I open my mouth without worrying about the wound, nothing matters any more, I bite and scratch at the wad, tearing away as much as I can, I scream with rage and swallow a spurt of blood, I’m going to see it at last, it’s spreading its fingers as wide as possible to help me, from the inside, it’s doing its best, the bandage is loosening, and the wad unwinds onto the floor. I shake my arms like a man possessed, the needle from the drip comes out, that’s it, the hand is bare, now I can put it in my mouth and lick my fingers, close my fist and bang it on the wall, write down all the words I want to bellow out, in the dark. It brushes against my side, moving like a crazed spider, climbing up my neck . . .

  But I can’t feel it against my skin.

  The light is back on. Two women in white have thrown themselves at me, even though I screamed like a wild animal to keep them away.

  And I saw. At last.

  I saw that great spider, that feverish, intangible, invisible spider. Spread-eagled on a jagged stump. A spider that only I could see. And which frightened me alone.

  3

  In order to avoid the Place des Ternes, I got off at Courcelles. As I walked through the Parc Monceau I came across rows of children in blue uniforms, and I realized it was nearly springtime. Along one of the paths I felt I was about to lose my balance so I sat down on a bench. It happens every time I walk in the open air, without walls. Out in the open I feel lopsided. I don’t really know why, but it doesn’t last long, a few seconds, just time to catch my breath.

  My feet are cold. I should have bought myself some boots instead of this pair of loafers that don’t even cover my ankles. Boots would mean I don’t have to waste time on socks. I’ve started to loathe laces, and that’s not even the first thing you have to do in the morning.

  There’s a whole load of other things before that.

  Masses.

  I’ve only discovered that very recently. There are so many that I have to choose. Mind you, getting up is not as hard as waking up. It’s when I open my eyes that the toughest job of the day happens.

  As I went up the Avenue Friedland I looked at the time on a parking ticket machine. Half past ten. The summons said nine o’clock.

  There’s no rush. Since my convalescence, I’ve learned to take my time. When I came out of the Boucicaut Hospital I thought about going down to Biarritz, to my parents, to spend a month in physical and psychological rehabilitation, but I backed off at the first obstacle: showing myself to them. I didn’t even ring to tell them that my chances of becoming the man I would have liked to be were somewhat compromised. So, nothing; I waited at home, like a coward, for the stump to heal. While I was there I learned to swallow my pride and to admit that I was no longer a member of this fast-moving population. I’ve joined the ranks of the unsightly, the embarrassing and the clumsy. It takes a huge mental effort on my part to convince myself of this concept which is erased as soon as I fall asleep, then I find myself whole again, whole and kind and not thinking of doing any wrong.

  April 3. Hospital was a long time ago already. Coste and Liliane came to visit me, they unwrapped a few sweets for me and I waited, patiently, for them to leave. Jacques didn’t have the courage, and I’m grateful to him for that.

  I automatically stop by Monsieur Perez’s booth instead of going straight up to the gallery. He hasn’t seen me for more than a month, but behaves as if I handed the keys in yesterday. His smile comes to a sticky end, his eyes won’t hold my gaze and flit furtively over my pockets.

  “Antonio . . . Busy, busy in the gallery . . . so how are you, Antonio . . .?”

  “And you?”

  A car pulls into the courtyard, and Perez hurries over to it.

  “They’ll park anywhere . . . damn . . .”

  People I meet now fall into two categories: those who get it straightaway and those who pretend nothing’s happened. The first don’t know how to dismantle their handshake; the second, cunningly, invent different forms of greeting. They innovate. And I can’t think of anyone in Paris who would dare to give me a kiss to say hello.

  I’ve succeeded in delaying the reconstruction three times without a valid reason. Last week, when I received a real summons, I realized I shouldn’t take it too far. During my month’s convalescence I did it all by myself, my reconstruction.

  Reconstruction . . .

  If I had lost my hand in a car crash, under the wreckage of some Renault 16, they wouldn’t have kicked up all this fuss. But if it ends up pulverized under a hundredweight of contemporary art following the theft of a strange, yellow painting – public property, at that – people are bound to start wondering. The policeman at the hospital told me that I had definitely come through an attempted murder, because I should really have been hit full-on by that sculpture. And I would have been so much happier with the Renault wreck.

  What exactly does reconstruction mean? I’m no longer sure whether they have summoned the victim or the witness. Am I going to be forced to act out my hate? To simulate the brick wall which no one will see? To imply an invisible spider? I can still feel my hand. It’s hanging there, inside my empty sleeve. They said it could go on for a year, this illusion. The legless try to get up and walk, and are surprised when they fall over. People without arms rest their elbows on a table only to smack their noses on it. With me it’s knocking over cups of coffee when my stump bashes into them. Mind you, that’s if I’ve actually managed to mak
e some coffee. And that’s only the third activity in an interminable day.

  I recognize the policeman who came to see me in hospital. I have already forgotten his name and some bits of his specialist title, I didn’t even know it existed, the Central thingy of Thefts of Works and Whatsits of Art. He must be about the only person who can pronounce the thing in full. Lying in my bed, rigid with boredom, I asked him whether he considered murder to be one of the fine arts. He suggested coming back when I was properly awake. The next day he tried to get me to talk about the assailant, and the only description I could provide was that he was slow, polite and dressed like a gentleman. My only recollection. He found it a bit brief.

  “Superintendent Delmas,” he introduced himself, “we’ve been waiting for you.”

  Subtext: for the last hour and a half. I think I’m becoming more and more of a witness and less and less of a victim. Liliane is there too, next to Madame Coste, who won’t be rushing through for once. There are two other policemen wandering about the rooms looking at the new exhibition. I was supposed to have set it up. Jacques must have managed it on his own in this great forest of white plinths.

  No one has offered to shake my hand all morning. They have all anticipated this moment and have promised themselves they won’t make any blunders. Only Liliane attempted any sort of approach, holding her hand out towards my collar.

  “Do you want to take your coat off?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll get too hot.”

  “So what?”

  I wasn’t asked to be an actor. Delmas asked me the same questions as in hospital, but with movements this time. Here, no there, a bit further to the left, and the raincoat, it was under his arm not on, and any finger-prints? You’ll find some on the carpeting, I said, with the hand as an optional extra, to make things easier. Where was that hand, actually?

  They knew full well what had happened to the sculpture, though, it was stored in the depot along with thousands of other works of art waiting to be chosen by some town hall or provincial museum. That particular one was bound to go and liven up the gardens round a municipal swimming pool somewhere in France. I would probably have found it unnerving to see it here again, upright and threatening. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself studying the branch that amputated me. I really would have preferred the Renault. But the worst of it is that cars like that are put through crushers and made into works of art too. Not to mention the extremist artists who amputate their own limbs in avant-garde galleries in front of a small privileged audience. “Body Art” I think they call it. I have to say I get a bit lost with all these different forms of expression.