The Man Who Risked It All (3 page)

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 me 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

T
HE 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 all 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.

She had agreed to rent me the apartment reluctantly and not without alerting me to the favor she was granting me. Normally, she didn’t rent to foreigners, but as her husband had been freed by the Americans during World War II, she had made an exception for me that I had to show myself worthy of.

It goes without saying that Audrey had never stayed over. I would have been afraid to see the agents of the Inquisition burst in, in their dark robes, faces hidden by the shadow of their hoods, and put us to the question, then hanging Audrey naked and chained hand and foot, from the hook in the ceiling for a chandelier, as the flames of a crackling fire began to lick at her body.

That morning, I went out—without banging the door—and ran down the five stories of my apartment building. I hadn’t felt so light since my separation from Audrey. And yet I had no objective reason for feeling better. Nothing had changed in my life. Wait, yes, it had: Someone was interested in me, and whatever his intentions, that was perhaps enough to soothe my suffering. Admittedly, I did have a little knot in my stomach, like the stage fright I experienced before going to the office on those rare occasions when I would have to speak in public.

As I went out, I came across Étienne, the neighborhood vagrant. From the entrance hall, a small flight of stone steps went down to the street. Étienne was in the habit of hiding underneath it. He must be a real matter for Madame Blanchard’s conscience, no doubt divided between her Christian charity and her passion for order. That morning, Étienne, his hair unkempt, had come out of his hole and was leaning against the wall of the building, sunning himself.

“Lovely day,” I threw out as I went past.

“If ye says so, sonny,” he replied in his rasping voice.

I ran down into the Métro, and the sight of all those depressed faces going to work as though they were going to the abattoir almost brought back my melancholy from the day before.

I got out at the Rue de la Pompe station and came up into the smart part of Paris. I was immediately struck by the contrast between the fetid smell of the dark underground corridors of the Métro and the fresh air, the green scent of this luminous district. The few cars on the street and the proximity of the Bois de Boulogne were no doubt the reason for the clean air. The Avenue Henri Martin is a wide avenue, with four rows of trees down the center and on either side, and sumptuous mid-19th-century houses in carved stone, set back behind high, ornate railings of black and gold.

I was very early for my appointment, so I went into a café to have breakfast. It smelled of hot croissants and coffee. I sat down near the window and waited. The waiter didn’t seem particularly busy, but when I gestured to him I had the impression he was pretending not to see me. Finally, I called and he came over, grumbling. I ordered a hot chocolate and bread and butter, and while I waited, leafed through a copy of
Le
Figaro
that was lying on the table. When the steaming chocolate came, I threw myself on the deliciously buttered slices of fresh baguette, overhearing bits of local gossip being passed around at the bar. Parisian cafés have an ambiance and smells that you don’t get in the States.