Framed

by Tonino Benacquista

  “Aren’t you afraid of anything? What if you’ve been wrong all along?”

  “Impossible. You’d never guess how my inquiry began, it was when I was reading the catalogue with a friend: there was a reproduction of two collages, one dated 1911, the other 1923, and they both featured the same design of wallpaper – twelve years apart! There are other blunders like that. The only thing I don’t have is the name of the forger.”

  “Do you think one of his artists could have done this for him?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  I thought of one individual – a cynical, spiteful one who spends his time sniggering about his benefactor.

  “Could it be Linnel?”

  “I don’t think so. It would be too perfect for my file. When you have an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre you don’t get involved with this sort of thing.”

  I asked her dozens of questions, in a feverish jumble, trying every way I could to connect our two stories – Morand, Alfonso, the Objectivists – and everything became confused in my head.

  “Don’t get so worked up, the two things may have nothing to do with each other.”

  “I’ll offer you a deal. You give me information, and I’ll take care of Delarge.”

  “What?”

  “We could work as a team. You’re a journalist, you’ll be able to get into places I don’t have access to. You look for all the possible connections between Linnel and Morand.”

  “Oh yes, very funny. What do I get out of this, then? And where should I go, anyway?”

  “To the Beaux-Arts. They both went through the place, and at the same time, apparently.”

  “And what are you going to be up to in the meantime?”

  “Me? Nothing. I’ll wait like a good boy. But if there’s any connection between your story and mine, you’ll have everything to gain from it. I’ll go and negotiate with Delarge.”

  “Negotiate what?”

  “An interview. The sort of interview you’ll never do.”

  The go-getting young journalist is beginning to express serious doubts about my mental state. Now at last I find her beautiful and perhaps a little vulnerable, and that has put a shred of normality back into the conversation. She is thinking very quickly.

  “And how can you prove that you won’t forget about me?”

  She doesn’t wait for an answer but carries on in a quieter voice: “I want to know the forger’s name. Look everywhere, get him to cough up some proof, some written proof, something I can publish. After the article’s appeared in print there will be a trial, I’ve been promised it often enough, and that would be one more piece of evidence to show to the court. Irrefutable proof. But that isn’t all, I want something else too.”

  Now I was the one looking at her differently.

  “I want an exclusive on your story. Everything. I want to be the first person to talk about it. I can already see my article for September. I’ll go to the Beaux-Arts tomorrow. Call me, at home.”

  I left her, not knowing which of the two of us was the more brutally driven.

  *

  I didn’t have to give my door the ritual kick, it opened with the first turn of the key and it sent a shiver through my hand. I no longer bolt it but I never forget to turn the key a second time. I waited, on the doorstep, for something to happen. From the corridor I felt with my hand to switch on the ceiling light, and I risked a glimpse inside.

  Nothing. Not a sound, no sign of a visitor. The mess all over the table looks like my own, the cupboards are closed. My hand is still shaking, and a shudder runs down my spine as I step into my studio. I switch on all the lights, open the window and talk out loud. The adrenaline rush has made me a bit light-headed so I sit on the side of the bed. There’s nothing to steal here, apart from a few crumpled pages that prove I’ve got some idea in the back of my mind. I forget one turn of the key, and all my arrogance flies out of the window, I’m back to the cripple I was that first day, minus the anger. And when I lose that I become the most vulnerable man alive. A surge of anxiety now seems to be coming to an end. This longing for revenge is just a cancer, a gangrene contaminating my most intimate thoughts and feeding off my free will. Nothing better than an illness. Some evenings I curse the fact that I am alone more than everything else.

  I slammed the door shut with a good kick but that wasn’t enough, I took a shot at the table and chairs, a few things fell to the ground, and I only stopped when my foot was burning with pain. It calmed me down a little. Soon I would find a way of offloading all my negative energy without suffering for it. This evening, tossed between a young woman’s evaporated perfume and the impoverished state of my own pride, I’m going to have trouble getting to sleep. I smacked my stump into the edge of the table, I did it without meaning to; perhaps I thought the hand would react. And I lay down, fully clothed, with all the lights on.

  At that precise moment I sensed that I was not alone.

  Barely time to sit back up and look round, and the silhouette loomed up beside the bed with one arm raised – I screamed. A ghost. In the blink of an eye I saw his face again just as it appeared when the statue toppled onto me, his hands wound round my neck, his weight crushed me onto the bed, and the shoelace stopped me crying out, I held out my right arm to scratch at his face but nothing came, with a sharp jerk he pulled the lace towards him and it cut into my flesh, my throat emitted a silent belch, my left arm managed to break free but couldn’t reach his eyes, he clamped his hand over my forehead and my eyes hazed over with white, the knot in the shoelace changed angle so that it dug into my windpipe. I felt myself go, suffocated, all at once.

  Passed out, in that vice.

  Eyes bulging open . . .

  And, right next to me, through the fog, I saw the billiard cue within reach.

  I gave a thrust of my hips to heave myself towards it, he saw it and tried to hold my arm down, the shoelace barely slackened, he lost his balance and toppled to the floor with me. I coughed so hard it almost ripped my throat out, he had time to get up and tighten the lace again, almost blind now, I grabbed the cue, and the handle knocked into his forehead, without any power behind it, he hardly even looked up, the lace squeezed me tight again, and I spun the cue in the air to bringing it crashing onto his face with the full force of my anger. I coughed until I nearly spat my guts out, I found the strength to strike again, four, maybe five times, but I soon ran out of breath, my legs couldn’t hold me any longer, and I sat down.

  My breath came back in halting gasps, I held my hand over my burning windpipe and forced myself to breathe through my nose. I had to wait – suffocating, motionless and with my neck twisting in pain – while my lungs filled. I saw him crawling, dazed, towards the door, moving incredibly slowly. I belched out the most impossible sound, I would have liked to tell him, but I could only moan like a mute, so I thought, very hard, in the hope that he would hear me. This has got to stop, you and me. . . What are you doing? Come back. . . We have to finish this this evening. . . Where are you going . . .?

  He only took his hands away from his face so that he could cling to the table legs, they slipped, slick with blood, and there was nothing I could do when he stood up. A neighbour called from outside. With my hoarse cough and my tears, and with the shoelace hanging from my neck, I couldn’t work out how to drag myself away from the bed.

  He lurched into the furniture. I didn’t watch him leave. I just looked at the floor and followed the sinuous progress of his trails of blood.

  And I started to cry, and to suffocate even more, and to cry again.

  I don’t know how long it went on but, centuries later, I saw my neighbour from across the landing peeping, ashen-faced, through the half-open door. He said something about noise, blood and the police. I wanted to reply but the pain in my throat flared again and it reminded me of hospital, of the staples in my mouth and of being deprived of speech. I slowly shook my head, I pointed my finger at the door then leaned my cheek gently against the back of my hand to tell him to
go to bed.

  In the aura of violence that still reverberated around the room, he sensed that he should categorically not disturb my newfound calm. My serene lunacy frightened him. He closed the door without a sound.

  5

  I almost left without cleaning up the blood. On my knees, I ran the floor cloth over the splashes, they were still fresh. I was simply anticipating my homecoming and the dismal surprise of seeing my studio splattered with scabs. I picked up my bag, stuffed a few clothes into it and set off outside in the mild dawn air, without really knowing where my longing for nothingness would take me. A desire for revenge, a desire for peace, should I go up the street or down the street – I’m at a loss.

  He should have stayed. What a prick I’ve been not to have thought of a prosthesis. I have regrets after each of our encounters. A good hook, a really old-fashioned, really pointy one. Because actually, now that I come to think of it, that sort of attachment would be much more use to me now than a hand.

  If I head towards République, I will have a better chance of finding a room. Two or three days, maybe more, definitely not less.

  The gentleman wanted me dead. He’s got it in for my memory, which is full of brand new images, for that last copy of Attempt 30, for my tendency to go round talking about it and for my nose with its powers of resistance. He must think of me, sometimes. I would pay a high price to know how he sees me.

  My throat brings me back down to earth every time I swallow. But my voice is coming back. I let my vocal cords run through from deep notes to high ones.

  I feel had, overcooked all over. Maybe that’s the third-degree-burns feeling Briançon mentioned.

  Hotel du Carreau du Temple. The first one with its sign still lit up. At six o’clock in the morning, I will be waking the night porter. No, not actually, I can see him in the foyer surrounded by baskets of croissants.

  He comes over. A room? There’s only one left, with a double bed; I take it and pay for two days in advance. What time for the wake-up call? No wake-up call, no. We don’t serve breakfast after 10.30. Never mind, thank you.

  Room 62. I had a hot shower in the dark, to avoid seeing myself in the mirror with the red wheals around my neck. The nape of my neck is still hurting. I got lost in that big double bed. It would have been impossible to find me there.

  *

  The white and red come to a gentle kiss in a corner of the baize . . . I’m afraid I will never be able to rest again without being haunted by them. I always have the same dream, play the same point. Nothing symbolic, nothing mysterious, no key to anything. It is all pathetically prosaic, and the moment of waking all the more painful for it.

  Before getting dressed again, I dare to look at myself in the wardrobe mirror. From behind, from the front. It’s the first time I have seen myself completely naked since the amputation. My face is a bit puffy, but I can’t tell now whether that’s from yesterday or the day before. I have put on a bit of weight. I don’t know if it’s an optical illusion, but I think my right arm has shrunk slightly in comparison to my left. Atrophying, probably. It will be a chicken wing soon if I don’t do anything about it. My neck is neither purple nor black, but just red, with flakes of dusty skin that stick to my fingers when I touch it. The pinkish ring left by the shoelace is very clear. There are yellowing bruises on my shoulders and thighs. The whole thing looks like a badly digested Mondrian . . . Briançon wouldn’t be able to do anything to sort it out. Only a restorer could help. Jean-Yves. He would come along with his little case and his gloves and peer at me with his linen tester to isolate the damaged fibre. Then over in a corner, lying on the ground, he would spend hours finding the exact nuance of pigments, and – with the patience of a saint – he would touch up the injured areas with the tip of his paintbrush. I really liked Jean-Yves with his little round glasses and his moustache. However much I talked to him about his work, he always managed to shift the conversation to tennis. In the end he specialized in whites, people would call him from all over Europe to reunify the background of a painting. I would never have guessed that between white and white there was such an incredible variety of whites.

  *

  At about four in the afternoon, when I ran out of patience, I rang Béatrice and suggested we meet at the Palatino, in case she had something for me. She suggested it would be better if I dropped by her apartment, and I eventually accepted. Before hanging up she did ask me why I had hesitated. “No reason,” I replied.

  She lives in another world, on the Rive Gauche, in the Rue de Rennes, somewhere I never venture.

  “What’s happened to you?”

  She brought her hand up to my neck, and I turned up my collar.

  “Probably tell you some time. Did you go?”

  “How about coming in before asking questions . . . ?”

  I was expecting a light, expensive-looking place with wall-to-wall carpeting, Ikea furniture and Venetian blinds. And I find myself between two different computer monitors, piles of daily papers, and walls lined with books and frescoes of press cuttings, collages of photos, magazine covers taped straight onto the wall, the poster for a Cremonini Exhibition with an image of naked, faceless children. A table dotted with ashtrays spewing cigarette ends, a pizza in its cardboard packaging. Not untidiness or slovenliness: no, more an impression of speed, an insatiable, bulimic appetite for information, a need to say that the world is here, everywhere.

  “You don’t miss anything,” I said.

  “Sit down wherever you can, look . . . here . . .”

  The edge of the sofa, near the telephone and the answering machine. She comes back with two cups and a teapot, without asking if I would like it, and sits down at my feet. When she bends over to fill the cups I get a glimpse of her breasts. She hands me a saucer with one eye still on the corner of a newspaper stranded on the floor. When you find a girl as frenetic as this, as avid as this, you have to marry her very, very quickly, I thought.

  “The Beaux-Arts, child’s play! The lowliest freelancer could have done it. I claimed I was doing a paper on the glorious artists they had produced, starting with Linnel, because of the connection with the Pompidou Centre . . . I had a stroke of luck, there was an old secretary who was tickled pink to be interviewed, thirty years’ worth of paperwork, she was like a computer crossed with an old mother hen.”

  “What did she tell you about Linnel?”

  “Aaaaaah Linnel, dear little Alain, such talent! And a practical joker too, if you only knew what he put us through! Every year he developed more and more sophisticated ways of ragging the new intake, and his imagination very nearly got us into trouble with the police! Apparently he made the new students –”

  “Is this really important?” I interrupted.

  “No, but it’s funny. Well, anyway, he did his six years there, the tutors passed everything they knew on to him, despite the mucking about. The absolute prototype of the student who does nothing and knows how to do everything. It’s maddening and it’s seductive, and it demoralizes the other people in the same intake. Except for Morand, his inseparable friend, who was more reticent, harder working. ‘Nice but not very talkative,’ the old woman told me. ‘He was interested in little things, crazes, calligraphy, miniatures, but the academic drawing lessons didn’t really inspire him.’ He was the most discreet of the gang of four.”

  She has left a pause, deliberately, to make me rise to the bait. Four . . . Four . . . The James brothers, the Daltons. It’s the right number for a gang. I’ve got two of them already. I’m afraid of having three. I know one with a talent for appearing just when he’s not expected. Given his age and his obsessions, he could be the third. The gentleman. My appointed duelling partner.

  “Claude Reinhard,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Yes, the auctioneer. He’s very different. He only stayed there three years, the son of Adrien Reinhard, from the renowned Reinhard business, the most –”

  “I know, I know, and so . . .”

  “He tried
himself out at the Beaux-Arts out of defiance, as a way of flouting his father’s authority. Daddy handles paintings that cost thousands, he wants me to carry on with his precious business, well no, I’ll make paintings that cost thousands, and he’ll be forced to give his expert opinion on them one day. So he pitched up at the Quai Malaquais in a convertible, and very soon fell in with the two old hands. They all left at the same time, at the end of ’63. For the final year they were inseparable, the gang of four really gelled that year.”

  I still have a chance, a joker to play for the fourth member.

  “Would you like to have supper here?”

  “And the fourth?”

  “I’ve made courgettes in cheese sauce.”

  She can tell I couldn’t give a stuff. And I’m wondering whether I really don’t give a stuff, I’m wondering whether the fourth man is actually who I think he is, whether she made this courgette dish for me, whether I’m not about to speed up our engagement, whether I’m going back to Biarritz, or whether she chose courgettes because you can eat them with one hand, without a knife.

  “I’m intrigued by this story of yours,” I say, “go on . . . please.”

  “No, from now on it’s your story that intrigues me. It’s going to be my article for September. The fourth member was called Bettrancourt, Julien Bettrancourt. And – in spite of Reinhard and his money, in spite of Linnel and his brilliantly perverse ideas – he was very much the leader of the gang. The old girl tried to evade the question, bad memories for her and for the whole establishment. ‘There’s no need for you to mention him in your newspaper, young lady . . .’ she could have been describing Bluebeard, the way she talked.”

  I’ve moved a little closer to her face to try and catch the smell of her. She’s realized this and hasn’t back away.

  “Fatherless. Obscure. A puny man who instilled terror in the Beaux-Arts and other places too. He never knew when to stop, took things to extremes, and the management always suspected that he had vandalized the premises, some frescoes, with cryptic slogans that completely terrorized everyone. He was apparently a gifted orator and he paralysed the poor pupils with their pitiful folders of watercolours under their arms.”