Framed

by Tonino Benacquista

  . . . provide information in connection with the murder. The investigators quickly found a link with a case opened by Superintendent Delmas from the crime prevention unit . . .

  I wipe my forehead with my sleeve. My eyes skip through the lines and jump from one word to the next without taking in the meaning.

  A young man was clearly singled out as the perpetrator of the murder. A former technician at the Coste Gallery, he . . .

  I’m hot.

  . . . took revenge for the assault in which he lost his own hand by mutilating the man he held responsible for his amputation.

  The sentences are merging together, the words are empty. I have to latch onto the end of one line to go on to the right one, the one below.

  The young journalist was working on an incriminating article, to be published in May, which would reveal fraud carried out by the dealer. “I just wanted information on the ‘Alfonso affair’, and I knew he wanted revenge on Delarge, but I would never have dreamed that he would go that far,” she told police during questioning. The young man had carried out his own investigation so that he himself could find a culprit. With help from the journalist, with whom he had offered to form a “united front” against Edgar Delarge, he had successfully traced the beginnings of a set-up that dates back more than twenty-five years and in which the dealer was already implicated. In 1964, during an exhibition . . .

  It’s all there. I’ve forced myself to go right to the end. My whole story is laid bare here, in four big columns. She didn’t forget to tell them anything. The only bit that’s missing is the end. Or the very beginning. The three artists with their plot to eliminate Bettrancourt. The only element she didn’t have.

  Edgar Delarge will be buried on Tuesday at the cemetery in Ville-d’Avray . . .

  There are beads of ice-cold sweat down my spine.

  According to Superintendent Delmas, the suspect will be arrested imminently . . .

  I mustn’t stay here, virtually lying on the ground, with my nose in the air. On the Boulevard Beaumarchais.

  They’re looking for a one-armed man.

  Who has killed.

  Who has cut off someone’s hand. It’s impossible for it not to be me. It can only be me. Maybe I did finish him off, after all, back there on the end of his leash. And I so wanted to have a second hand. I must have cut it off, and then, forgotten . . . Béatrice saw him set off, this madman hungry for revenge, heading towards the man who had handicapped him in the first place. And before that, at the private view, everyone saw that same amputee furiously attacking the same man. And he must have left tracks, there, at the gallery. Given that he was there that night. His guilt is even more obvious than Delarge’s death.

  And he will be arrested imminently.

  It’s time to get back on my feet, to walk, to go down to the end of the street and to leave. Not towards the Gare de Lyon, not towards the Rue de Turenne or the maze of streets in the Marais. Nowhere. Arrested imminently. I’m going to escape from the prying eyes of all these people in the street, I’m going to hide my arm, my amputee’s arm, the amputee who only understands the law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand. The papers are saying I have stepped over the boundary . . . I thought I had stopped myself on the very brink, right at the edge of the free territories. Briançon was right all along, with his images and metaphors.

  Don’t leave Paris.

  My parents would have preferred hearing I had lost a hand than committed a murder. It would have been so easy to tell them I was one hand short, compared to this unacceptable truth. The police in Biarritz must have been to see them already. They are my only ties in the world, my only possible shelter. “Someone we can contact,” the doctor kept saying in hospital. “No one? Really?”

  How did I manage to live like a foreigner, with my two half-lives, the daytime one and the night-time one? Even Paris feels like the threat of exile to me.

  Place Saint-Paul, a Métro station, two possible directions, towards Pont de Neuilly, why not, or Château de Vincennes, why not. A newspaper kiosk stuffed full of papers, a phone booth, people out for a Sunday stroll, a police car speeding towards Bastille.

  I won’t last long.

  I go into the booth, thinking the glass box might cut me off from the comings and goings for a moment. I don’t have a diary, just a little square piece of paper with the bare essentials of my few contacts, folded into the sleeve for my travel pass. I have to talk to someone, to plead my innocence. I have to succeed in convincing one person, just one, and I can think of only one.

  He likes me. I’ve never understood why. He’s already taken me in once.

  “Doctor Briançon? It’s Antoine. Antoine Andrieux, I have to see you, I have to talk to you . . .”

  “No . . . it’s impossible . . .”

  “Have you read the papers?”

  “When the police searched your apartment they found some notes I left for you. They’ve asked me about you, my opinion as a therapist, the psychological repercussions of your accident.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “What I’ve always thought. The thing I’ve always warned you against, your repressed violence, your abdication . . . And all that that can entail in terms of behavioural problems. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “But . . .”

  “Go to them, Antoine. It’s the best thing to do.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Listen, they told me to let them know if you contacted me. I’m not going to ask where you are at the moment, I won’t tell them you’ve called, but if you come here I won’t have a minute’s hesitation. It’s the best thing I could do for you. So, go of your own free will. It’s important.”

  His voice has the steady, level-headed ring of someone talking to a psychopath. A precise, rather learned turn of phrase which is enough to turn you into one, if you’re not one already. I mustn’t let myself fall into that trap. I must stay focused on that last image, the marker pen falling to the ground, the cynical way I left and my satisfied smile, having shamed such a masterpiece. That is what happened. I waited a long time before hanging up.

  “You know, Doctor . . . I was right to turn down your sessions. When you’ve slipped right to the bottom of the slope, when you’ve gone from being a master to being a slave, the only way to get out of the desert is with the long, slow, fiddly trials of everyday life. I’ve never felt so left-handed as I do today.”

  I came out of the booth with the square of paper crushed inside my hand.

  There are people waiting for me at the buffet restaurant at the Gare de Lyon. I can picture them. Béatrice, sitting down, frightened to death, a couple of men, not far off, sitting outside a café, pretending to look at the departures board, and Delmas, not far away either, hiding in the customs office, and still more, at each exit . . .

  Finding another booth, near the Sully bridge, I tried again, and I can’t forgive myself for thinking of Véro . . . It only lasted a few seconds, just long enough to hear her stammer in surprise and fear (another one): “you’re . . . you’re . . .” She couldn’t find the word, and I didn’t have time to help her, she hung up. And I started to think what she must be thinking, imagining all the hypotheses available to her, principally: I’m a murderer, I’ve always wanted that painting from the depot, Nico would never have given it to me, I killed Nico. Why not?

  Ile Saint-Louis.

  Open skies.

  I need to find somewhere I can wall myself up alive. Before someone else does it. I think back over the last few years, of all the people I’ve spoken to. Recently there have been Liliane, Jacques and Coste. Those three must already be telling the sorry tale of the secretive, bloodthirsty picture-hanger they came into contact with every day without suspecting a thing. “We never knew what he did after six o’clock.”

  What was it that made him catapult out of the gallery after six o’clock as if he were being released from a dungeon?

  Well, I know.

 
*

  It took me an hour on foot to get to the Place des Ternes. On the way, I went along the banks of the Seine as much as I could and tried to walk like an innocent man. And I panicked myself. All the way to the Alma Bridge I honestly thought that a man on the run had well-honed techniques, and I was just a novice who could only look at his own feet and who paled at every last siren in the area.

  Even so . . . Somewhere in the depths of my conscience weighed down by all the evils of this world, a little blast of hope came and saved me from going under.

  I have them. Three or four of them, no more, but that’s incalculable. I was their junior, their heir, their child prodigy. They believed in me. They couldn’t give a damn about what I did before six o’clock so long as I was there, doing my conjuring tricks with the red and the whites.

  They saw me grow up, a shy boy who listened attentively to advice from old men. They all got together to work through the range of shots, depending on their specialities. Angelo told me everything there was to know about striking the ball to get it to do two things at once, until you sent the thing mad. René, with his expertise of the “screw shot”, taught me how to get the ball to come back as if, in full flow, it suddenly changed its mind and came back to its exact point of departure. Benoît, who was nicknamed the “Marquise of Angles”, told me all the secrets of three-cushion shots. And old Basile showed me everything you shouldn’t do, making the balls leapfrog each other, the multiple collisions, the dead ball shots, all the things that won’t do you any good but will please the crowd.

  Everything that has now been crushed to death under a hundredweight of scrap iron.

  They’re all that’s left to me now. If they shut the door of the academy on me, then the door to prison will be opened wide. And I wouldn’t hold it against them, I stole away like a thief and I’m coming back as an assassin. It’s asking a lot.

  While waiting for the official closing time at eleven o’clock I have forbidden myself any cafés. The Parc Monceau struck me as the only suitable place in the area. I would have liked to lie down on a bench but I forced myself to behave as well as possible, to stroll along in perfect anonymity, just someone getting some fresh air as he eats his sandwich, attentively reading his Sunday paper and trying to work out what sort of shit had managed to shoulder a crime onto him. I didn’t prevaricate for very long on that last point. A name came to me very quickly.

  In the distance I saw a man in a blue uniform asking people to leave the park. I didn’t wait for him to come over before getting up off my bench without making a fuss. From five o’clock till eleven o’clock I walked and walked, all round the Champs-Élysées and the Place de l’Etoile. I can hardly stay awake. René must be picking up his keys now. He has put the balls away in the counter and is calling out to everyone to let them know it’s closing time. Angelo is wondering whether his wife has waited up for him in front of the TV, Benoît is suggesting one last swift one to anyone who is interested. Downstairs the green sign is still lit up. My heart starts pounding, perhaps because I’ve just slipped, perhaps because of them upstairs not expecting me. I’ve been going round in circles, obeying all the green lights and making detours to use all the pedestrian crossings. Before starting up the stairs I take a deep breath. I’ve never climbed them so slowly. Three teenagers are coming down, still pumped up and surprised to find that it’s already dark. Standing on the threshold of the double doors I press my forehead up to the window to see whether they have already started switching off the lights, or whether there are still one or two die-hards who really don’t want to go home.

  The pink lamp over table 2 is still on. Angelo is looking out of the window with a beer in his hand. René is putting the covers over the tables. Benoît is playing alone, putting on a bit of performance but no one is watching him showing off. There’s that clammy Sunday evening atmosphere. I almost want to leave so as not to disturb their peace. Their slow contentment. Maybe they’ve already forgotten me. If I didn’t feel as if a wanted poster was dogging my every move, I’d be far from Paris by now. Sometimes it’s very difficult accepting the decisions we make on principle.

  René has noticed a figure the other side of the door. “Closed!” he shouts. I go in. They all look up at me. With my sleeve behind my back, I stop by the first table.

  I wait.

  Angelo chuckles.

  René is trying to find something to say.

  “Well, what sort of time do you call this to show up . . .?”

  Benoît comes over to me, and Angelo sniggers:

  “Hey . . . it’s you, pretty boy! You bitch! And what about your poor old friends, here all on their own, beezee worrying . . .?”

  He’s just the same, with his Italian face and his exaggerated accent. Some things never change on this lowly earth. And there’s Benoît, standing right in front of me, pinching my shoulder to check I’m not a fake.

  “Is it you, Antoine?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “Well, if it is you, then you’re a bloody jerk.”

  Has he read the papers? No, I’d be surprised if he had, he finds it hard enough reading the sports pages.

  “Yes, a jerk . . . Are you ashamed of us? Have you gone off to play at Clichy? And what about Langloff? He must have rung ten times!”

  The trio slowly gathered round me. If they had wanted to smash my face in, they would have made just the same manoeuvre. I didn’t know what to say to them, there wasn’t a single word that could explain any of it. I just pulled up my sleeve to reveal my stump. I knew that that would do as an explanation.

  “Look quickly because I’m going to put it away.”

  René, trying to sound sure of himself, was still looking for something to say.

  “That’s no excuse.”

  They didn’t dare kiss me. We’d never done that. One by one, they held me to them. Like an idiot, I told them I was going to cry, and they laughed at me.

  What could I tell them? I admitted to my work at the gallery, and they had trouble understanding even that. I felt as if I was speaking another language. The only contact René had had with painting was to tape the lid off a chocolate box to a wall because it had a picture of a clown on it. Benoît asked me whether “contemporary” meant “modern”. As for Angelo, he just made a point of reminding us that the Mona Lisa belonged to Italy and not the Louvre. How could I explain to them that people could kill each other for three red squares on a black background, or three upside-down bowls on three tins of peaches? As I got further into my story and gauged the depth of their scepticism I realized how I should describe it to them: the hand. That was the only thing they had seen. The hand. I had lost it, I wouldn’t ever be able to play again, and I wanted to find the man who had done that to me. Simple. End of story, all the rest was just talk, it all boiled down to money like everything else.

  When they looked through the article about me in the paper, they got the basics: I was seriously in the shit. Against all expectations, they immediately believed my version of the facts in relation to the other hand, Delarge’s hand.

  “The guy who did this . . . He wanted people to think it was you, definitely!” said Benoît.

  “And it’s a bloody good idea!” added René.

  “Eeeeven if I was a poleeeceman, I would never guess.”

  “And where are you going to live now?”

  I was eternally grateful to René for asking that.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been looking all day. I need to find somewhere for four or five days. I know who did this.”

  “And what will you do to him if you collar him?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Mother of God! No messin’ about! If someone do zis to me, I make him eat his hand in ossobuco!”

  Good idea, Angelo. I’ll bear that in mind . . .

  René points his finger at me and speaks firmly and definitively: “You’re going to stop fucking about, you can stay here, full stop. I’ll open up the storeroom for you, and you can sleep o
n the table covers, you’ll manage. During opening hours I’ll lock you in, there aren’t many nosey people here but there could always be some shit-stirrer. In the evenings I’ll close a bit earlier and you can come and get some fresh air on the balcony with us.’

  This back room is my haven of peace, a palace of a dungeon, the Hilton of hideouts. It might even delay that imminence. René, keeper of the golden keys, the one who’s really taking the risk of harbouring a criminal, doesn’t seem to be weighing up the risks. Far be it from me to awaken his suspicions. This is more than a godsend he’s offering me, it’s my last chance. I wouldn’t have lasted two nights outside. I’m not made for this sort of thing, I’m not designed to be a slalom champion and I’ve never had a knack for running between the raindrops in a storm. That takes some dexterity, and I’m just not dextral any more, I’m fresh out of right hands.

  They eventually left in the middle of the night. I didn’t miss the fact that René discreetly left one box of balls open, right where I couldn’t miss them. He didn’t switch the lights off or put the cover on table 2. I don’t know what they’re hoping for. I really don’t. They know as well as I do that there’s not a chance.

  In the still of the night the room takes on all the majesty of the very first time I saw it. Without the dance of the players and the waltz of the balls, the tables look like empty beds, almost inviting. My footsteps make the wooden floorboards creak. I sit at the counter and sip a beer. Not thinking of anything. Loitering. Slightly unwillingly, I take three balls and throw them onto table 2. I rediscover the delicious sound as they smack against each other. With my hand I roll one of them towards the far cushion and watch it come back, then I do it again, and then again, to pass the time, the time I need to remember. I carried on like that a good while, waiting for the pain.

  Which never came, never hacked into my heart.

  That must be good news.

  I’m almost cured of billiards.

  The night was too short, the day too long and the sandwich René gave me even more asphyxiating than the little storeroom. Stuck between my mattress of covers, a forest of chipped cues and a crate of dead light bulbs, I waited for the hubbub of games to die down. The slightest movement created a storm of dust, and I held my nose closed to stop myself sneezing. The papers didn’t say anything more, apart from some vague details about the Objectivists’ abortive history. I wondered where on earth they could have got my picture from. I worried about that, actually. At about ten o’clock in the evening Angelo came in, wearing a smile like a trapper come to set me free from my snare. When I stepped from that washed-out darkness into the blue darkness outside, I rushed over to the balcony as if I had been holding my breath. I don’t know whether it was the confinement, the four floors up, the impression of hunger, the fresh air or the simple fact that Benoît had laid the balls out on table 2, but I suddenly felt dizzy. The balls are waiting for me, the players are watching me, my refusal and their disappointment will undermine the atmosphere.