Framed

by Tonino Benacquista

  “What do you want?”

  “An interview.”

  He opens his eyes wide, he looks like a madman . . . or like someone looking at a madman.

  “The man who cut off my hand and who came to my studio to finish the job, he’s one of yours, isn’t he? Answer me, quickly.”

  He screamed out a sound that could have meant either yes or no.

  “That’s not clear enough.”

  He swallows several times and tries to get to his knees, but the shoelace won’t allow him to.

  “I won’t say anything.”

  He tucks his head between his shoulders and closes his eyes tight. Like a temperamental child. A foulmouthed brat. Stubborn.

  “I . . . I won’t tell you anything . . .”

  I registered a hint of surprise. I didn’t know what to do. He repeats his words slowly, he won’t tell me, he won’t tell me.

  That’s just my luck. Everything was going so well, and I’ve ended up with this ball of fear under the table. He is even more afraid of letting slip some sort of admission than of violence. And I am perfectly incapable of committing that violence. I have absolutely no faith in myself in that department. With the gentleman there’s no problem, in fact – quite the opposite – I would have liked to do a lot more. But with a man thirty years older than me, on his knees, I’m lost. Actually, at that private view, it was Linnel I should have punched. I was drunk.

  Time and hesitation are playing against me, I’m beginning to feel I’m losing him, that he isn’t afraid of me.

  I mustn’t get this wrong.

  In a couple of seconds he will almost be smiling.

  I have sat down on the floor next to him. I have forced myself to think that this man has ruined the rest of my life, and that only yesterday he wanted to see me dead.

  I notice the paintings on the wall and go over so that I can see them better.

  “Is art really a passion?” I ask out loud.

  No reply.

  “This is your private collection, isn’t it?”

  Not a word.

  “A real passion or a good investment?”

  Silence.

  I take out a lighter, bought for the occasion. An idea I nabbed from the gentleman, like the rest of my arsenal.

  I’m not going to draw blood from this piece of shit. It’s a question of mental health. But I know as well as the next man that there’s an almost infinite range of tortures. He knows it too, and there’s a new gleam of anxiety in his eye. I grasp the lighter and bring the flame up to the Linnel.

  “It won’t . . . it won’t do you any good!” he says in his cracked voice.

  “A passion? Or just a source of money?”

  “Stop . . . I won’t say anything!”

  The flame eats into the middle of the canvas, a round circle forms and a tongue of flame starts to appear.

  “Stop! You’re . . . you’re mad! Don’t do that! We didn’t . . . have anything against you . . . particularly . . . We just wanted Attempt 30.”

  The canvas is burning up, nice and slowly.

  “You got in the way, he . . . he reacted . . . No one knew that you . . . that you would try to find out more . . . your questions . . . You knew the Objectivists existed . . . And we’re all trying to forget them . . .”

  He begs me, once again, to take the flame away. What was the point? The shrivelled thing was unsaleable now. Or was it just the sentimental value. He had chosen a painting he liked from the studio of his friend and protégé.

  “Go on . . . tell me what happened after the exhibition in ’64.”

  “I wanted to look after them . . . to get them to work . . . oh and . . . Do what you like, I won’t say any more.”

  The Linnel has been reduced to a black cavity. I mustn’t give up now, Delarge is about to crack, he is under my power again. Who should it be next? I have quite a choice.

  “Which should I burn first? The Kandinsky or the Braque?”

  Delarge puts his head in his hands, he begs me, and heaves like a donkey leaning against its halter, dragging the table.

  “Don’t move, Delarge,” I say, waving the lighter.

  He freezes, horror in his eyes.

  “They had a ringleader . . . a failure who needed the group to hide his own mediocrity. I wasn’t interested in him but the creep had the others under his thumb. I wanted Linnel and Morand, they were the ones I was really interested in. I’d been to their studios, Linnel had everything it takes to be a great artist, and Morand had a dexterity and a precision which could have been useful to me some day. No connection with what their ringleader was doing! Pathetic art! But, there you are, they didn’t do anything without him, without his blessing, like the word of God! They were young, stupid and easily influenced. Don’t do that, please, keep that flame away! I’ll give you everything you want . . .”

  With all his whinging he has just answered my question. Passion or money, the two are perfectly compatible. I have flicked the lighter off.

  “What did you do with Bettrancourt?”

  The way he looks me up and down says it all. With a question like that I was confident he would get an idea of the ground I had already covered in the utterly forgettable History of Contemporary Art.

  “He was the one who founded the group, he was always the one who refused my offers . . . but I got them in the end. It didn’t take the other three long to understand, groups never last very long, I told them they wouldn’t get far by refusing to sell, that their little adolescent rebellion would peter out, and then, money . . . Linnel was the first to bite, Reinhard didn’t need it but he followed suit, and Morand held out a bit longer.”

  He tries to loosen the shoelace before going on.

  “Bettrancourt would never have given in, he was becoming a hindrance. He would have preferred to die, for ethical reasons, yes, ethical . . . Mad. I convinced each of the others to put a painting before the acquisitions board without his knowing, to prove to them that their paintings were worth a lot. And that was just a beginning. When the state paid out, they finally understood. The word of God started to lose its edge, Bettrancourt was losing his grip, and their individual ambitions gradually emerged. And do you really want to know? I’m proud I did that. Thanks to me, they painted instead of sinking into oblivion.”

  This whirl of information from him makes me giddy. I feel as if the fog has finally cleared above the gorge and I can look down into it at last. There are so many things I would like to ask him that not one of them comes to me spontaneously, and we sit there in silence for a moment.

  “Now I’m going to tell you what happened next. Whatever you may say, you know exactly what happened to Bettrancourt. You urged the other three to break away from him, one way or another. The group was destined to a great career and, I mean, why not work as a threesome instead of a foursome, given that they’d already found an idea and a system? You made them shine far brighter than young students could dream of. And all so quickly. And if people are so keen to forget the Objectivists now it’s because the way they ended was radical. Bettrancourt frightened you, he could have done anything. They eliminated the leader, a car crash, so simple. October ’64. Am I right?”

  He looks up and smirks in amazement.

  “You knew . . . Did you force me to tell you what you already knew?”

  “I’d sort of guessed. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t carry on with the group.”

  “Oh well, neither do I. After the accident they didn’t even know themselves whether or not they were guilty. Morand really coped badly afterwards, the guilt, something stupid like that . . . One morning he announced to the other two that he was leaving for the States, that the Objectivists could carry on without him. Reinhard was frightened, he abandoned his paintbrushes to go back to his father’s business.”

  “And Linnel carried on on his own, under your protection. That explains your difficult relationship. A collaboration built on a dead body, what a great foundation . . . But twenty years later
Morand comes back – dead but very much there. An exhibition is devoted to him and, unintentionally, one Objectivist painting is included, a reminder. It brings back all sorts of forgotten stuff, and it’s terrible timing, just as Linnel is about to be exhibited at the Pompidou Centre, with a public commission into the bargain.”

  “No one knew what had happened to him, and then Coste brought him back to life. That painting shouldn’t have been exhibited, it harboured various kinds of proof, we panicked. After that we had to carry on with the job, the painting that had been sold to the nation. And it was all over, not a trace left of that wretched group. And then . . .”

  “And then there was me.”

  I give a weary sigh. I’m exhausted. And I’ve had enough. I feel like leaving and abandoning him there, hanging on the end of his leash. I can’t see what else to do. I just want to be left alone.

  Alone.

  My desire for revenge amounts to that.

  “What are you going to do with me . . .?”

  “Me? Nothing.”

  As I say that, I think of the journalist again, and her written proof. By threatening to reduce the Braque to shreds I got the forger’s name. I’m sorry that it wasn’t Linnel. A name that didn’t mean anything to me. But, mind you, if he’d had another name . . .

  I smirked.

  “Tell me, Monsieur Delarge, your forger, he has other talents, doesn’t he?”

  “What . . . what do you mean by that?”

  “He does quite a lot of favours for you. And he wears a tweed suit and a Burberry, doesn’t he?”

  “It’s true . . . but you could burn my whole collection and I couldn’t tell you more than that. He’s got nothing to do with the Beaux-Arts. I hardly know anything about his past. I think he used to paint. He’s already had problems with the police, but that’s none of my business. He won’t be exhibited anywhere any more. I find ways to get work for him.”

  An artist in his own way, I thought. I rifled through the next office, and all I found was a letter from Reinhard referring to an order for a hundred and fifty pieces. I think that will do. Béatrice will have to manage. It’s nothing to do with me any more.

  “I’m going to make you an offer: it all stops here. I know too much about you, Reinhard and Linnel, I’m a living danger, I know that . . . I don’t want to go on waiting for another visit from the gentleman – who won’t miss me next time. You should know that if anything happens to me, the journalist from Artefact will publish a complete article on what’s happened to me. She’s got it in her power, hasn’t she?”

  “That . . . that bitch . . .”

  I didn’t like that. Really not. One word too many, again.

  In a flash I take the Kandinsky watercolour down and lie it on the floor. Delarge is gasping, watching in fascination, more childlike than ever. I light up the lighter again, he howls for mercy and I like it.

  “You can’t do that! You don’t know, you couldn’t!”

  And I suddenly realize that he’s right. That there is no point stupidly burning a work of art of that calibre. I’m not really sure what a Kandinsky represents. I don’t know anything about it. I’m a crass philistine. I just know it’s a name that can silence a room when it is mentioned, that he was there at the very beginnings of abstract art and that he discovered it when he was transfixed in admiration of one of his own paintings that had been hung upside down. So for me to burn something like that, well, it seemed a bit mean. A gesture like that would have been fundamentally lacking in any feeling of pleasure.

  So I change my mind, or rather, my form of torture. Next to the visitors’ book there are some pens, felt tips and a thick marker. And I thought to myself: Go on, Antoine, this will only happen once in your life.

  I took the lid off the marker with my teeth and brandished it in the air, in the top left-hand corner of the canvas. Behind me I heard a heartrending cry, which only served to encourage me.

  “Be quiet! I’m not going to deface your painting, I’m just going to add a few bits and bobs.”

  Blue background, green circles with lines through them, overlapping geometric figures, triangles in lozenges and crosses in ovals in every possible colour.

  I’ve put three black daisies bobbing out of a trapezium. Next to a crescent-moon shape I’ve populated a whole area with five-pointed stars. My left hand is wonderful. It’s touching up a Kandinsky. I just had to have faith in it. With one of the circles I couldn’t help regressing to childhood, and I’ve drawn a mouth and two eyes, with irises and pupils.

  I drop the marker on the floor and turn round.

  “There we are, isn’t it better like that?”

  7

  Leave Paris.

  Sooner or later I’m going to have to go to Biarritz. My parents deserve better than a letter. Anyway, they would have come. A whole century of painting wasn’t any help sketching out the note to them. Nothing but rather arcane drafts. But now that I can distinguish between being one-armed and being left-handed, I will be able to explain to them and perhaps even play the whole thing down.

  Another couple of things to sort out, ring Béatrice, finalize a cast-iron account of the last few days I’ve spent in Paris, with the Polaroid of Attempt 8 as a bonus. It can act as an illustration. Should I really bother going back to my studio? Or even letting Delmas know? No. He would know how to find me if I became indispensable. All I want is for him to go on marking time for a while, for him to leave everyone in peace, I don’t feel like talking, testifying and justifying my every action. It would be bound to cause me a fair amount of grief, what with hiding evidence and physical assaults, not to mention my obstinate attempts to dispense justice myself.

  Justice . . . I will never get back what I’ve lost, and the worst of it is I will end up getting used to it. And forgetting billiards. All too soon. This great surge of furious activity has worn me out.

  I slept for more than twenty-four hours. On my body’s orders. A physiological need to be alone. The man on night duty made me a sandwich, I had a beer with him and I came back up to my room in the early hours. I waited one more night, trying to think back through the whole of this saga, and I sorted everything out. Peace. I have restored myself all on my own, I’m gradually going back to my original colours. For the first time in a long while I’ve succeeded in making the time I wake up coincide with morning. My biological clock has righted itself all on its own, and it’s telling me that it’s high time I got out of here.

  Béatrice must be getting impatient, I should have rung her as I left Delarge but I so badly wanted to be on my own, waiting for the fever to drop.

  It’s only ten o’clock in the morning. There’s someone different on duty today, I don’t know him. Four hundred francs for three nights; as he gives me my change he doesn’t take his eyes off my right sleeve and doesn’t deign to look me in the eye, not even once.

  “Can I make a phone call within Paris?”

  He puts the telephone down in front of me and comes out from behind his desk. And, just when I was beginning to lose my aggressive tendencies, I wonder whether I will ever fit in with other people again.

  First I rang the paper, but when I got the answering machine I realized it was Sunday. And when you’re not expecting it, it comes as a shock. Sunday . . .

  I try her at home.

  “Béatrice? It’s Antoine.”

  “. . . Yes, just a second . . .”

  It takes much longer than that. I was expecting a gasp of surprise or irritation, even a bollocking because it had taken me so long.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I’m going away, to the country . . . and I wanted to tell you . . .”

  “Where are you?”

  “Um . . . at the hotel, but I won’t be here long . . .”

  “Shall we meet?”

  Strange. I’m no longer sure exactly who I’ve got on the other end of the line. I would have thought she would make me spill a good part of the beans over the phone.
/>   “What’s going on? Am I disturbing something?”

  “No, no. Come over to my apartment.”

  “Haven’t got time, I want to get out of here. Let’s meet at the Gare de Lyon in half an hour. At the buffet restaurant.”

  She waits a moment before agreeing. And before hanging up, just like that . . .

  I have a horrible feeling she wasn’t alone. The fever soars again in a flash. I must have missed something while I was asleep. Some detail which has reawakened my paranoia just when I was coming back up to the surface.

  I leave, quickly, and head towards the Boulevard Beaumarchais. She was scared stiff, that was obvious. Has Delarge frightened her? He would definitely not want to go complaining to Delmas, there’s much more to incriminate him than there is me. Or he’s played some trick, he’s made up some story which puts me in the shit.

  What’s happened to my newfound feeling of peace?

  When I pass a news kiosk I ask for a copy of Artefact but they have run out of this month’s issue. I take three daily papers, two from yesterday and a Sunday paper. A little insert on the front page sends me to the third page. The pages slip from my fingers.

  Murder of great art lover.

  My head is spinning, I have to put the paper down on the pavement to turn the pages.

  A feeling of nausea has swept over me.

  The famous art dealer Edgar Delarge, a well-known figure in the contemporary art world, was found strangled to death on Saturday night in his gallery on the Rue Barbette in the fourth Arrondissement. His attacker had cut off Delarge’s right hand, which was found several feet from his body by the police. Investigators have not been able to identify any thefts amongst the few valuable pieces he keeps exhibited in his gallery. Two pieces had, however, been damaged: a painting by Linnel – a close friend of the dealer – had been burned, and a Kandinsky had been defaced. When his death was announced and, following a brief enquiry, a journalist from the review Artefact, came forward to the police to . . .

  Passers-by are turning to look at me, finding it funny seeing someone on the ground trying to pin down the pages of his paper in the wind.