The Man Who Risked It All

by Laurent Gounelle

  Her room was indeed charming—minute, with a sloping ceiling made of old beams and a skylight that looked out on a succession of gray roofs angled in every direction. All it needed was a crescent moon to be something straight out Henry James’s novel, The Aristocrats. She undressed with a natural grace, and I immediately loved her body, which had a delicacy I was not used to. Her shoulders and arms were exquisitely slender, nothing like those of American girls brought up on cornflakes and intensive sports. Her white, white skin contrasted with her dark hair, and her breasts—my God, her breasts were sublime, simply sublime. Fifty times during the night I thanked her for not wearing perfume, as I delighted in the voluptuous scent of her skin at every point of her body, intoxicating like a drug. That night will remain engraved in my memory beyond my death.

  We woke up the next morning entwined. I ran to fetch croissants and breathlessly climbed back up the six stories to her room. I threw myself into her arms, and we made love again. For the first time in my life I was experiencing happiness. It was a new, strange sensation. I was far from suspecting that this happiness foreshadowed the fall from which I would not get up.

  For four months my life was centered on Audrey. She occupied my thoughts during the day and my dreams at night. Her schedule at art school was full of openings that left her available. During the week, we would often meet during the day. I would use a client meeting as an excuse and spend an hour or two with her in a hotel room that we rented nearby. I felt a bit guilty. Just a bit. Happiness makes you selfish.

  One day, I was in my office when Vanessa, the departmental secretary, called to say that my candidate had arrived. I was expecting no one but as my organizational skills left room for improvement, just to be safe I asked her to send the candidate up. I would rather see someone for nothing than give Vanessa proof of my lack of organization; my boss would have known in less than half an hour. I waited at the door to my office and nearly fainted when, at the end of the corridor, I saw Vanessa escorting Audrey, who was dressed as a caricature of an accountant, in a skimpy suit and metal-rimmed glasses that I’d never seen on her before, with her hair in a ponytail. A real cliché, borderline grotesque. As I thanked Vanessa, my voice stuck in my throat. I closed my door behind Audrey. She took her glasses off with a suggestive look, her lips in a slight pout. I immediately knew what she intended. I swallowed hard and felt a wave of fright pass through my body. I knew her enough to know that nothing would stop her.

  That day the conference table became a piece of furniture that I would never see in the same way again. I was scared stiff that someone would find us. She was crazy, but I loved it.

  When Audrey left me four months later, my life stopped at once. Without the slightest suspicion beforehand, one evening I took a little envelope out of the mailbox. Inside was one word, just one, in her very recognizable handwriting: Good-bye. I stood rooted to the spot in the hall of my apartment building, in front of the mailbox. My blood froze in my veins. My head was throbbing. I was nearly sick. I collapsed into the old wooden elevator, which discharged me at my floor, where I entered my apartment in a state of shock. Everything was swaying around me. I fell onto the sofa and sobbed. After a long while, I sat up and told myself it was impossible, quite simply impossible. It must be a practical joke or something. I grabbed my phone and tried to call her. I listened to her voice mail a hundred times and, each time, her voice seemed a little more neutral, more distant, colder. I gave up when her machine reached saturation point and stopped taking messages.

  Slowly, a distant but familiar feeling emerged from deep inside me, gradually rising to the surface. It was natural, the feeling said, quite natural that I should be left. That was the way it was. You don’t fight your destiny, Alan.

  It was at that moment that I realized my death was self-evident. It wasn’t an impulse. I wouldn’t have jumped under a train. No, it was just something obvious that imposed itself on me. I was going to pass to the other side, and everything would be fine. It was up to me to choose the place, the time; there was no hurry. It wasn’t a morbid, masochistic desire. Not at all. And it wasn’t just a desire to put an end to my suffering, however great that was. No, the beyond was drawing me, gently, irresistibly, and I had the strange feeling that my place was there, that my soul would flower there. My life on earth had no reason to be. I had had the conceit to cling to it, to pretend that all was well, and life had sent me Audrey to make me experience an unbearable pain and in this way to face my destiny at last.

  The place was suggested to me by my memory, and it’s no doubt not pure chance that it had been kept there, in one of my memory’s mysterious compartments. Some time before I had read, in a magazine left behind by Audrey, a controversial article by someone named Dubrovski. In it, the author laid out his theory on the right to suicide, and his idea that, if you were going to commit suicide, you might as well do it properly. He described a suitable place for what he poetically called “the flight of one’s life”—the Eiffel Tower. It is totally secure, he explained, except at one point that it’s useful to know. You have to go up to the Jules Verne, the luxury restaurant on the second floor, go into the ladies’ room, then open the little door marked Private to the left of the washbasin. It leads to a tiny room that serves as a broom cupboard. The window in there is not barred and opens directly onto the girders. I remembered these details as though I had read them that very morning. Dying at the Eiffel Tower had something grand about it. Revenge for a mediocre life.

  One more step …

  I had to walk far enough along the beam to reach a suitable point where there was no metal structure below me to impede my fall.

  I was leaving nothing behind me, not a friend, not a relative, not a pleasure, nothing that could make me regret my action. I was ready, in my head and in my body.

  One last step …

  That’s it. The right place. I stood still. Consciousness was already beginning to leave me. I took a deep breath and slowly pivoted on my heels to the right, toward the abyss that I didn’t look into but whose presence, whose beauty, I could feel.

  I was on a level with the flywheel of the Jules Verne’s private elevator. Three yards of nothingness separated us. From where I was, I could see only the grooved edge holding the cable, as it circled the wheel, then plunged into the void. The void. The windows of the restaurant were on the other side of the tower. Nobody could see me. No noise from the restaurant reached me. I heard nothing but a gentle humming, the sound of the night. Those shimmering lights in the distance were drawing me, hypnotizing me. The warm, intoxicating air was flooding me with supernatural well-being. Most of my thoughts had left me. I no longer inhabited my body. I was no longer me. I was merging with space, life, death. I no longer existed as a separate being. I was life. I …

  A cough …

  In a flash, it brought me out of the state I was in, just as the snapping of a hypnotist’s fingers breaks his patient’s trance.

  To my right, at the end of the girder, stood a man looking me straight in the eyes. About 60, with silver-gray hair, wearing a dark suit. His eyes, lit by the reflection from one of the tower’s lights, seemed to emerge from a void. All my life I’ll remember those eyes, a steely blue to freeze your blood.

  A feeling of anger mixed with my surprise. I had taken every precaution not to be seen. I was certain I had not been followed. I felt as if I were in a bad film, in which a rescuer miraculously arrives at just the right moment to prevent a suicide.

  I had made a mess of my life. Others had taken control of it, but my death belonged to me. To me alone. There was no question of me allowing someone to hold me back, to convince me with soothing words that life was beautiful all the same, or that others were unhappier than me, or I don’t know what. In any case, no one could understand, and what’s more, I wasn’t asking for anything. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be alone. Alone.

  “Leave me alone. I’m a free man. I’m doing what I want. Go away.”

  He watched m
e in silence, and right away I had the feeling that something wasn’t right. He looked relaxed. Yes, that’s it, relaxed!

  He raised his cigar to his mouth, calmly.

  “Go on. Jump!”

  I was stunned by his words. I was expecting anything but that. Who was this guy? A weirdo? He wanted to see me fall and get off on it? Shit! It had to happen to me! But this can’t be! What had I done to God, for crying out loud? I was incensed. It was not possible, not possible, not …

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked in a terribly tranquil tone. “Jump!”

  The situation left me completely at a loss. My thoughts were knocking into each other without managing to come together. Struggling, I managed to say few words.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

  He drew on his cigar and held the smoke in his mouth for a while, before exhaling it in thin coils that vanished before they reached me. His eyes riveted on mine paralyzed me. This guy had enough charisma to bend the Eiffel Tower.

  “You’re angry. But you are suffering a lot deep inside yourself,” he said in a very calm voice, with a light accent that I didn’t recognize.

  “That’s not hard to guess.”

  “You’re atrociously unhappy and can’t bear to go on living.”

  His words troubled me and made me feel my pain. I nodded. The silence weighed on me.

  “Let’s say I’ve had big problems all my life.”

  A slow, very slow puff on the cigar.

  “There are no big problems. There are only little people.”

  A wave of anger rose up in me. I could feel my blood beating in my temples, which were burning hot. I swallowed hard.

  “It’s easy to take advantage of my situation to humiliate me. Who do you think you are? Of course, I suppose you know how to solve all your problems?”

  With incredible self-assurance, he replied: “Yes, I do. And other people’s problems as well.”

  I was beginning to feel ill. Now I was fully conscious of being surrounded by the void. I was beginning to be afraid. Fear had finally found me and was worming its way inside. My hands were moist. I absolutely mustn’t look down.

  He went on: “It’s true that by jumping your problems will disappear with you. But the situation isn’t as fair as that… .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Once again, you’re the one who’s going to suffer. Your problems won’t feel anything. As a solution, this is not very balanced.”

  “You don’t suffer jumping from a tower. The collision is so violent that you simply stop living without having time to feel anything. No pain. I’ve informed myself.”

  He quietly laughed.

  “What’s making you laugh?”

  “That’s true—if you start from the hypothesis that you are still alive at the moment you hit the ground. That’s where you’re wrong. Nobody arrives down there alive.”

  A long draw on the cigar. I felt more and more ill. Dizzy. I needed to sit down.

  “The truth is,” he went on, taking his time, “they all die during the fall from a heart attack provoked by horror, the abominable horror of the fall and the unbearable vision of the ground coming nearer at one hundred and fifty miles an hour. They are struck down by an atrocious fright that makes them spew out their innards before their heart explodes. Their eyes are bulging out of their sockets at the moment of death.”

  My legs were shaking. I nearly fainted. My head was spinning. I felt extremely sick. Don’t look down, I told myself. Definitely not. Stay standing straight up. Concentrate on him. Don’t take your eyes off him.

  “Perhaps,” he said after a silence, speaking slowly, “perhaps I have something to propose to you.”

  I stayed silent, hanging on his words.

  “A sort of deal between us,” he continued, leaving his words floating in the air.

  “A deal?” I stuttered.

  “Here’s how it is: You remain alive, and I’ll look after you. I’ll set you back on the right road, make you a man capable of leading his life, of solving his problems, and even being happy. In exchange …”

  He drew another puff on his cigar.

  “In exchange, you’ll do everything I tell you to. You promise on your life.”

  His words were highly disturbing and added to my unease. I had to make a considerable effort to concentrate, collect my wits, and think.

  “What do you mean by ‘promise on my life’?”

  Silence.

  “You must respect the contract.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Otherwise you will not remain alive.”

  “I’d have to be mad to accept a deal like that!”

  “What have you got to lose?”

  “Why would I place my life in the hands of a stranger in exchange for a hypothetical happiness?”

  His face showed the confidence of a chess player who knows that his opponent is in check.

  “And down there, what will you obtain in exchange for your certain death?” he said, pointing to the void with the tip of his cigar.

  I made the mistake of looking in that direction and was gripped by violent vertigo. The vision terrified me, yet at the same time, the void was calling to me, as if to free me from the awful anguish that was overcoming me. I wanted to lie down along the girder and stay there without moving, waiting for him to help me. Uncontrollable nervous shivers went up and down my limbs. It was awful, unbearable.

  Rain …

  Rain was starting to fall. Rain. My God, the metal girder was going to be like a skating rink. There were five yards between me and the man, the window, safety. Five yards of narrow and slippery girder. I had to concentrate. Yes, that’s it, concentrate. Above all, stay upright. Breathe in. I had to turn gently to the right, but my legs wouldn’t move. It was as if my feet were stuck to the metal. Staying too long in that position had frozen my muscles, and now they weren’t responding. Vertigo was an evil sorcerer that had bewitched its victim. My legs started trembling, at first imperceptibly, then more and more violently. My strength was abandoning me.

  The wheel …

  The wheel was turning. The noise of the elevator beginning to move. The wheel began to throw off water. The rotation accelerated, and I could hear the elevator going down, faster and faster. The water hit me, cold and blinding. Deafening. I lost my balance and found myself crouched down, clinging to the girder, still attacked by the cascading water. Through the din I heard the man shouting in a commanding tone:

  “Come over here! Keep your eyes open! Put one foot in front of the other!”

  I obeyed, submitting to his authority, forcing myself to only listen to his orders and forget my thoughts and my emotions, even though they were overwhelming. I took a step, then a second, like a robot, mechanically executing each of his commands. I managed to extricate myself from the waterfall, then to walk, in a trance, until I was level with him. I lifted a foot to climb over the horizontal beam that separated me from him, but he gripped the trembling, dripping hand I was holding out and stopped me in my tracks, pushing me back. I nearly staggered into the void, unbalanced by his force. But his iron grip held me immobile.

  “Right. Is it a deal?”

  The water was streaming down his face, guided by his wrinkles. His blue eyes were fascinating.

  “Yes.”

  2

  THE NEXT DAY I woke up in my bed, nice and warm in my dry sheets. A ray of sunlight was coming through the blinds. I rolled over to reach the bedside table without leaving the welcoming cocoon of the bedclothes. I stretched out my arm and took the calling card I had left there as I went to bed. The man had given it to me before leaving me. “Come tomorrow at eleven o’clock,” were his final words.

  Yves Dubreuil

  23, Avenue Henri Martin

  75116 Paris

  Telephone: 01 47 55 10 30

  I really didn’t know what to expect and was rather worried.

  I grabbed my phone and called Vanessa to ask her to cancel al
l my appointments for the day. I told her I was unwell and didn’t know when I would be back. That chore done, I dashed into the shower and stayed there until the hot water tank was empty.

  I lived in a one-bedroom apartment I rented in Montmartre. The rent was high and the space limited, but I had an unobstructed view over the city. When I was feeling down, I could sit for hours on the windowsill, allowing my eyes to wander to the horizon over the multitude of buildings and monuments spread out below me. I imagined the millions of people who lived in all those buildings: their stories, their occupations. There were so many of them that at any hour of the day or night there was bound to be some working, some sleeping, some making love, some dying, some arguing, some waking up. I would say “beep” and wonder how many people, at that precise moment, had burst out laughing, had said good-bye to their partner, had burst into tears, had breathed their last, had given birth, had been struck by lightning. I tried to imagine the very different emotions that each one could be feeling at the same moment, at the same time.

  I rented my apartment from an elderly woman, Madame Blanchard, who, unfortunately for me, lived in the apartment just below mine. She had been a widow for the last 20 years but gave the impression she was still in mourning. A fervent Catholic, she went to mass several times a week. I sometimes imagined her kneeling down in the old wooden confessional at Saint-Pierre de Montmartre church, confessing through the grill in a low voice the malicious gossip she had proffered the day before. Perhaps she confessed the harassment she subjected me to as well. As soon as I made the slightest noise above the accepted norm—that is to say, complete silence—she would come up and knock vigorously on my door. I would open the door partway and see her infuriated face formulating exaggerated criticisms and inviting me to show more respect for my neighbors. Unfortunately, age had not made her lose her hearing, and I wondered how she could hear such insignificant noises as a ball rolling or a glass set down a little clumsily on the coffee table. I imagined her perched on an old stepladder, with a doctor’s stethoscope held against her ceiling, frowning as she listened for the slightest trace of noise.