The Man Who Risked It All

by Laurent Gounelle

  A light came on inside the house. I ran to the little door and pulled. Locked? My piece of metal lay on the ground at my feet. Worried about Stalin, I had let the door shut without paying attention to it. Now I was caught like a rat in a trap. It was only a question of seconds before I was discovered. Anxiety overcame me, violent and oppressive, to which was added the anger of impotence. No other way out! The whole garden was surrounded by impassable railings, ten feet high, with spikes on the top. There was no nearby tree I could make use of, no wall, nothing. I caught sight of Stalin. He was moving his head, his teeth fastened on the bone, which he was shaking every now and then, his fangs shining white in the night. Behind him, the four great kennels were perfectly lined up just under the fence.

  I swallowed hard.

  Dubreuil had said that in the business world, persecutors didn’t choose their victims randomly. And what about dogs? Would Stalin attack me if I weren’t tormented by fear as soon as I saw him? How would he react if I were perfectly calm, relaxed, and even confident?

  It was the only way out.

  A little voice spoke inside me, a tiny whisper telling me I had to face this trial. Doubtless, the piece of metal had fallen by chance, but chance, Einstein said, was God traveling incognito. I had a premonition that life was presenting me with a chance to change and that if I didn’t grasp the proffered opportunity, I would remain forever ensnared in my fears.

  My fears. Stalin terrified me. To what extent was his viciousness induced by the vision I had of him? Was my fear the fruit of his aggressiveness or the spark that set it off? Would I have the courage to confront my fear, master it, and then go up to him? A brave man only dies once, says the proverb, while the coward has already died a thousand times.

  I took a deep breath and then slowly expelled all the air from my lungs. I did it again and again, deep breaths, calming myself down, freeing the slightest contraction of my muscles. Each breath helped me relax more. After a while, I felt my heartbeat slow down more.

  Stalin’s a good boy, a good dog, I told myself. I’m good. I feel good. I feel confident—confident about me, confident about him. I like him, and he likes me, too. Everything’s fine.

  I started walking forward slowly, looking vaguely in the direction of the first kennel and breathing calmly, relaxing more and more. Everything’s fine.

  I continued walking, paying no attention to the dog, directing my thoughts to the color of the kennel, the mildness of the evening, the quiet of the garden.

  I never once looked at Stalin, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he had lifted his head. I continued walking forward, keeping my attention and my thoughts on harmless aspects of my surroundings, maintaining my feeling of confidence and calm. I finally hauled myself up on top of the kennel. The good dog didn’t move. I climbed over the fence, then dropped down on the other side before disappearing into the night.

  25

  FOR MORE THAN a month, I had been letting people I didn’t know govern my life. I had made it a point of honor to respect my promise. What had I been hoping for, exactly? That Dubreuil would keep his promise and make me a free and fulfilled man? But how could I become free by submitting to someone else’s will? I had closed my eyes, refusing to see this obvious paradox, blinded by the egocentric pleasure of having someone take an interest in me. And now I had discovered that our meeting wasn’t chance. These people had hidden motives I knew nothing about.

  I could understand Dubreuil being concerned about my fate after the Eiffel Tower business. Saving someone’s life sets up something irresistible that makes you continue in the direction you have started. But it was impossible to explain him writing reports about me before our meeting. This incomprehension became a source of anxiety that was constantly with me. My sleep became disturbed, agitated. During the day I was tense and worried.

  The wording of the terms of our pact was constantly on my mind: You must respect our contract; otherwise your life will come to an end.

  My life was entirely in this man’s hands.

  Then there was the additional fact that now I knew I was being followed. It’s difficult to live normally under those conditions. Whether you’re in the Métro, at the supermarket, or even sitting quietly in an outdoor café, you’re constantly aware that someone is observing you. Those first days, it made me change my habits: I would leave the Métro at the last moment, just before the doors shut, or duck out of a movie theater by the emergency exit. But far from freeing my mind, these pathetic acts simply reinforced my disquiet, and in the end I decided to give them up.

  I heard nothing from Dubreuil in the following days, which instead of reassuring me, made my imagination run wild and the questions multiply. Did he know about my intrusion? Had I been tailed that night? Had the naked girl revealed my presence? And what effect would it have on the pact that bound us? Would he give me back my freedom or, on the contrary, increase the pressure on me? I didn’t think he was the type to capitulate that easily.

  I spent Saturday wandering around Paris, trying to forget the situation I had gotten myself into. I walked at random through the narrow streets of the Marais, where the medieval buildings sometimes lean so much you wonder by what miracle they’re still standing. I lingered under the arches of the Place des Vosges. I walked along the Rue des Rosiers, where I stumbled onto a Jewish pastry shop that had kept intact the charm and atmosphere of past centuries. The smell of the cakes just out of the oven made me want to buy out the whole shop. I left with an apple strudel that was still warm, which I ate while walking along the old cobblestone streets among the weekend crowds. When evening came, I went back to my own neighborhood, exhausted but satisfied with my day, fully feeling the healthy fatigue of the flâneur, the stroller.

  Reaching the corner of two dark, deserted streets, I jumped as I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around. I was face-to-face with Vladi, who towered over me.

  “Follow me,” he said calmly but without any explanation.

  “Why?” I hurriedly replied, looking around me and seeing, to my annoyance, that we were alone.

  He didn’t reply but merely pointed to the Mercedes parked on the sidewalk. The rest of his body remained as motionless as a rock.

  I didn’t have the strength to break into a sprint. Shouting would have been pointless.

  “Just tell me why,” I pleaded.

  “Monsieur Dubreuil order.”

  He could scarcely have been more laconic. I knew I’d get nothing more out of him.

  He opened the car door. I didn’t budge. He, too, remained motionless, calmly looking at me without any aggressiveness in his eyes. In the end I reluctantly got in. The door closed with a dull click. I was the only passenger. Ten seconds later he set off.

  The soft comfort of the seat transformed my fear into despondency. I felt like a fugitive, caught by the police, who is used to journeys in the police van and almost feels relieved. I found myself yawning.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  No answer.

  “Tell me where we’re going, or else I’m getting out!”

  No reaction. I felt a mixture of anger and apprehension.

  The car finally stopped at a light. My muscles contracted, ready to leap out. I tried the door handle on my side. Locked!

  “Me put child protection so you not fall this night on highway.”

  “What do you mean, highway, this night?”

  “Me advise you sleep. Car all night.”

  I stiffened instinctively, seized by a feeling of panic. What was all this nonsense? I had to get out of here!

  We drove past Ste-Marie Madeleine and turned down the Rue Royale. There were no policemen I could try and signal through the window. The window. Yes, of course, the window! I could get out that way. Vladi’s window was already down; I could feel the air rushing in. He wouldn’t hear me opening my window if I did it while he was accelerating.

  I waited nervously, my finger on the switch. We arrived at the Place de la Concorde. For a sec
ond, Vladi turned his head toward the Fontaine des Fleuves, where some teenagers were shouting and splashing each other. Conscious of playing my final card, I pressed the switch and the window came down. I held my breath. We passed in front of the Obélisque, and then the light turned red at the corner of the Champs-Elysées. The car stopped.

  I dived out.

  I was immediately gripped by the ankle, very hard, and felt myself being pulled back inside. I screamed, grabbing the door to keep my chest outside the car. I waved in the direction of some nearby cars, but the passengers were all turned the other way, admiring the lights of the Champs-Elysées. I struggled, shouted, banged on the body of the car.

  Vladi managed to get me completely back in the car, almost ripping an ear off in the process.

  “Calm down, calm down,” he said. There is nothing more annoying than hearing that. Especially coming from a man whose pulse is 25 while yours is 200.

  I continued to struggle, landing a few blows in vain. Finally, I swallowed my anger, resigned myself, and the car set off again. Then, everything happened very quickly. We sped across the Seine and past the Assemblée Nationale, then along the Boulevard Saint-Germain toward the Luxembourg Gardens. Ten minutes later, the long, black Mercedes was speeding along the highway to the south, a bird of prey cleaving the night.

  26

  THE JOLTS WOKE me up. I opened my eyes and sat up, totally panicked, not knowing where I was. Seeing the back of Vladi’s head brought me back to earth. The Mercedes was climbing a very steep, stony track. Vladi didn’t even bother to avoid the many potholes, and the beams of his headlights bobbed up and down in the night, lighting up stone ruins, then getting lost among the stars.

  I had tried to remain awake, but the long, monotonous hours on the highway had gotten the better of me. My mouth was dry.

  “Where are we?” I said with difficulty.

  “Soon there.”

  The car was climbing a barren hillside. No houses in sight, only the dark silhouettes of scrawny trees with tortured trunks that stood out against the stones and clumps of dried grass. I felt like I was on the way to prison.

  The car stopped on a ledge near the top of the hill. The path was strewn with boulders from a wall that had partially collapsed. Vladi switched off the engine and suddenly everything was totally quiet. He remained motionless for a few moments and then got out. Warm air wafted into the car. My pulse began to race again. What were we doing in such a place?

  Vladi stretched a few times to relax his back. A giant in his black suit, he resembled a huge scarecrow blown by the night wind. He opened my door. I shivered.

  “Get out, please.”

  I got out, pain stabbing me all over my body. The please reassured me a little, but when my eyes got used to the darkness and I could make out more of where we were, my anxiety level shot back up.

  In front of us, tall and imposing, stood the ruins of an abandoned castle. The partially collapsed walls, lit from afar by the Mercedes’ headlights, were silhouetted against the black sky. A medieval tower with battlements was still standing, as if by magic, since its base was missing stones, leaving dark, gaping holes.

  A deathly silence haunted the spot, broken only by the occasional gloomy call of a barn owl.

  “Come,” he said.

  He made a way for us through the scattered stones and weeds. The brambles tugged at our trousers, slowing us down.

  My final hour had come. It was obvious that he would finish me off, in the middle of nowhere, with no one to see or hear us.

  After a few yards, he turned around.

  “Arms up.”

  “What?”

  “You, arms up, please.”

  The bastard was going to shoot me like a dog, and he had the gall to be polite about it. I felt the blood beating in my forehead.

  I raised my arms.

  He came over and frisked me from the shoulders to the knees. Twice he stopped and searched my pockets, emptying out their contents. He took my wallet with my ID, my money, my credit cards, and my Métro tickets, stuffing them in a black bag that he carefully zipped shut. No one would be able to identify my corpse, and as I had no family, no one would claim it. I would end up in a communal grave.

  He glanced around furtively to check that there were no witnesses and then reached in his pocket.

  I looked around us one last time, hoping to take with me some final images of the world, but the place was so dreary I shut my eyes.

  “Take this,” he ordered.

  I half-opened my eyelids. He was holding something out to me. Surely he wasn’t going to ask me to do the job myself?

  “Here!”

  I leaned forward, unable in the darkness to see the small object he was holding out. A coin. A one-euro coin.

  “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  At that moment, a guttural noise made me jump. In a horrible rustling of wings, a flock of bats flew out of a narrow slit in the tower.

  Imperturbable, Vladi went on, “Take, please. You allowed this. It’s all.”

  “But … I … don’t understand.”

  “Monsieur Dubreuil say you learn cope all alone. All alone. One euro, it’s all. Monsieur Dubreuil expect you for dinner tonight seven o’clock. You be on time. Monsieur Dubreuil hate late dinner.”

  His mission accomplished, he turned around.

  An enormous weight lifted from my shoulders, from my whole being. I felt … empty. My legs shook. I couldn’t believe it. I would have hugged him if I had had the strength.

  “Wait!” I called out.

  He didn’t even glance back but got in the car and started the engine. He did a risky U-turn, stirring up a cloud of dust that seemed to catch fire in the headlights, then the Mercedes pulled away, shaken in every direction by the ruts in the track. It disappeared and silence fell again, a heavy, leaden silence. The darkness was almost total. I turned toward the castle and shivered. In the weak light of the waning moon, the ruins were even more frightening. The place gave off a deep malaise, not just the natural fear that you might legitimately feel in this sort of place. I had the inexplicable feeling that these ruins were charged with heavy emotion, past suffering. Horrible things had happened here, and the stones bore their invisible marks. I could have sworn it.

  I ran down the slope, in a hurry to leave this frightening spot as quickly as possible. Several times, I nearly twisted my ankle on the loose stones. Out of breath, I came to some old, gray stone houses with roofs covered in strange round tiles. I slowed down.

  Hunger was beginning to overtake me. I mustn’t think about it. I hadn’t eaten anything earlier that evening, waiting to get home to have dinner. Now I bitterly regretted it.

  Walking on, I came to an old village, clinging to the side of a hill. There was nothing I could do before sunrise. I sat down on a stone bench worn smooth by time and took deep breaths, allowing my hands to run over its coarse surface. I imagined, behind the thick, stone walls of the houses, the slumbering villagers, sleeping peacefully in beds with rough sheets smelling of the sun that had dried them. I was glad to be alive.

  Day finally broke and, along with it came the scents of nature at dawn. Before my eyes, an enchanting view unfolded. The village I was in was perched on the side of a small mountain with steep slopes covered in trees. A few hundred yards away was another small mountain, rising up to more or less the same height as the one I was on. At its summit was another village made up of old gray stone houses. Everywhere, covering the sides of the hills down to the bottom of the valleys, were bushes and trees and scrub, mostly prickly, in varying shades of green tinged with blue. The sun appeared, awakening the perfume of the umbrella pine that was covering me with its protective dome.

  I set about exploring the village. It was immediately apparent that there was only one main street. I walked the length of the village without meeting a soul. But here and there through the open windows, I could hear voices, speaking with a regional accent.

  I had to gather, as
soon as possible, the information I needed to organize my return. Rounding a bend, I saw a café that seemed to be the last house in the village before the road dropped off into the valley. The doors were wide open, so I went in.

  The ten or so people in the room instantly stopped talking. The barman—mustachioed, 50-ish—was wiping glasses behind the bar. As I headed across the room, I said a timid “hello” that got no response. The customers were suddenly absorbed in their thoughts, looking down at their glasses.

  Reaching the bar, I again said hello, this time to the barman, who merely looked up without responding.

  “May I have a glass of water, please?”

  “A what?” he said loudly, looking around the room.

  I turned just in time to see the derisive smiles, before the faces looked down again.

  “A glass of water. I have no money on me, and I’m dying of thirst.”

  The barman didn’t answer but reached for a glass on a shelf, filled it from the tap, then banged it down on the bar.

  I took a few gulps. The silence was heavy. I had to break the ice.

  “It’s going to be a lovely day, isn’t it?”