He pauses for a moment.
“And anyway, you’ve got a bloody cheek, you could have burned the Braque instead of my painting!”
“What blackmail are you talking about?”
“Oh that, I imagine he didn’t give you much on that . . . After Bettrancourt died he made it very clear: I would work for him, for life. I was offered a fortune a thousand times by some of the biggest galleries in France.”
“What about your two accomplices?”
“Etienne reacted the best way possible, he flew off as fast as he could to the Babylon of the art world that New York had turned into. Contemporary art had switched continents. But I had no intention of leaving Paris. I wanted to paint here at home, in spite of everything, and Delarge gave me the opportunity. Claude, on the other hand, he was in the same boat as me. Delarge congratulated himself when he saw him following in his father’s footsteps. Sooner or later that would be useful to him too. The proof in the pudding: Claude couldn’t turn down the Alfonso con trick. Tough luck on him, he never dreamed that it would come back to haunt him. Twenty-five years later.”
He seems satisfied to have said that.
“Of the two of us, you’re the one who’s lost it, Linnel. Why were you so friendly with me at that private view?”
“When we saw this one-armed man pitching up at the Pompidou Centre we worked it out straightaway. The man who did that to you was a hired . . .”
“A hired hand, go on, say it. There are plenty more like it. I can handle it.”
“Let’s say he was one of Delarge’s henchmen. He told us about his little performance at the Coste Gallery. I wanted to know what sort of person you were, what you had in you. When you punched Edgar’s lights out it gave me confidence. I was completely on your side. And then I waited quietly for you to go and see him, one to one.”
I moved closer to his painting, still keeping a reasonable distance from his head. The smell of paint prickled my nose.
“And what about Morand’s painting, Attempt 30? Was it really all that dangerous?”
“Delarge, Claude and myself all agreed that it had to be withdrawn from circulation as quickly as possible. Do you want to see it again?”
“Hasn’t it been destroyed?”
“Edgar wanted to, but I couldn’t. You know . . . I understood why Etienne painted it. To remember us, mainly, what we were. And as atonement. Look, it’s almost at your feet, in a cloth.”
It is lying on the floor, wrapped in a white towel. I unroll it with two fingers, not letting go of the cleaver. I recognize it.
“Even at the Beaux-Arts, Etienne was already fascinated by anamorphic work and miniatures. He could spend weeks on end studying Chinese calligraphy. He even had a thesis project on the missing spots in Dutch naïve painting. I’ve even kept some little masterpieces here, like a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper on a postage stamp. It’s a real gem. Once, going back to an ancient Chinese tradition, he proved he could write a whole poem on a grain of rice. He even wanted to make that his speciality – the invisible, hidden details. He loves that old master painting showing a goblet full of wine, with one drop slipping over the edge.”
“Don’t know it.”
“It was a long time, a very long time, before anyone found out that in that droplet – which is no bigger than a pinhead – the painter had done a self-portrait.”
“What?”
“That’s the absolute truth. One woman just looked at it in more detail that anyone else. Now, if you come in really close to the very tip of the church spire, you’ll see . . . But I don’t have a magnifying glass, I’m sorry . . .”
“What would I see?”
“The face of our shame. The features of our own remorse.”
“A portrait of Bettrancourt?”
“Yes. Incredibly faithful. And that’s not all. If you look closely at the colour you can see that it’s covering a text. I’m amazed Coste didn’t see that.”
“A statement?”
“A confession. Detailed, but still a confession. Obviously sooner or later all this would have come out. Beneath the flaking paint you’d have been able to read it like an open book. He’d anticipated everything, right down to using different types of paint. He was an alchemist, our Etienne. A magician. You do understand that it was better not to leave the thing lying around where everyone could . . . could get their hands on it.”
I don’t pick up on that. He didn’t say it on purpose. As for the mystery surrounding the painting and the urgent need to get it away from close scrutiny, I now understand Jean-Yves’s intrigued expression just thirty seconds after it was hung.
“Bettrancourt had the idea for the first Attempt, didn’t he?”
He smiles.
“Julien always used to say: ‘there are only three major art forms: painting, sculpture and the crowbar.’ He was already telling us about Rothko and Pollock and about Abstract Expressionism while we were still swooning over the delicate mysteries of Monet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe. He had plenty to say about studious little people like us, you see really . . . the Objectivists was him, and no one else. It didn’t take him long to recruit us.”
“And Delarge came and fucked things up.”
“Oh, that was just the real world which brought us straight back to something more concrete and palpable. Julien saw him coming right away. But it was easy to reel us in, he came and visited our gallery, Etienne’s and mine. He did everything he could to get us to drop Julien. And after a while we ended up wondering whether he was right, especially when we saw what he had to offer us. He portrayed Julien as a sort of fascist who would never let us express ourselves. He was the one who suggested the accident to us.”
“What you euphemistically call an accident was a murder good and proper. Don’t play with words. Afterwards Morand was filled with remorse and Reinhard was terrified.”
“The weirdest thing was the effect that death had on our painting, Etienne’s and mine. With him it was all black and with me it was everything else.”
“The green of hope.”
“No, of decomposition.”
“In other words, a hand can do any number of different things, paint, tinker with a car, kill a friend . . .”
He dips his finger in a cup and carries on toying with the damp canvas. There are more and more drips on it.
“You know, it’s not new. If you look hard enough you can confuse the history of criminality with the history of art. In the beginning people painted the same way they killed – with their bare hands. Crude art you could call it. Instinct before technique. Then the tool intervened, brushes, sticks . . . people realized how incredibly efficient it could be to have something in their hands. Then the materials became more sophisticated and people started painting with knives. Look at the work of Jack the Ripper. Next, with the advent of technology, the gun was invented. Painting with a gun brought something new and terribly dangerous to it all. Hardly surprising the Americans liked it so much. And now, in the age of terrorism, people paint with bombs, in cities, in Métro stations. It’s another concept of the profession. Anonymous graffiti going off at the end of the street.”
He wipes his fingers and darts a quick look at the cleaver.
“That’s why with that thing of yours there, you’re a bit . . . a bit stuck in the past. A weekends-only amateur.”
I smiled.
“Look, you’re . . . you’re not going to use it . . .”
I asked myself the same question two seconds ago.
“I don’t think you’ll use it, because you know what a hand can mean. You had a golden hand too.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“It’s blindingly obvious, you said so yourself.”
No one knows, no one ever knew.
“It’s billiards. The gentleman, as you call him, told me how he nearly came to grief when you smacked him across the face with your pole.”
“It’s called a cue.”
“I understoo
d why you were so obsessive then. But you wouldn’t do that to me.”
With one sharp blow I split open a brand new pot of paint. A thick blue swell spreads over to his knees.
“If I’d become a deaf-mute or even if I’d lost a leg, I would never have tried to get involved in something which had nothing to do with me. It was bad luck for all of us that it was my hand that got it. Put yours on that shelf.”
“If you want, then I won’t hesitate.”
And he proves it. He makes some space around him, brings the palette within his reach and puts his wrist down on it. Quite calm.
“Go on . . .”
Well played.
Let’s say it did me good lugging that cleaver along with me. That’s all.
Mind you, there is one thing I’d rather not lug around with me any more: a squad of policemen and my “imminent” conviction for murder.
“Take it away, it’ll keep you busy where you’re going. Call Delmas now. I know it’s late but he wants to finish with this as much as I do.”
“But who’s going to look after Hélène?”
He said it with no edge of spite or calculation. No malice. Yes, he’s right, who’s going to look after Hélène . . . ?
For the first time this evening I can feel the fear rising in him.
“Delmas will go and ask her questions,” he says, “they’ll try and explain that the young Alain, the one who comes and comforts her every Friday evening, that he killed her son in a car crash. She won’t survive long with that image in her mind. She’ll go off and join Julien in the grave within ten minutes.”
“It looks like a foregone conclusion,” I say. “Then you will have killed her twice, twenty years apart.”
I say that on purpose. It’s more violent than slicing with the cleaver. Let him suffer a bit now.
“You don’t have to spare me, but can’t you spare her?”
“What do you mean? I don’t really understand.”
“I need time. For years now I’ve been wanting to get her out of that hole. I’m worried something will happen to her. And I know where to set her up, a little place in the sun for her and her museum. No one will know where she is. I just have to persuade her. To achieve that, including the house move, I’ll need a week.”
“What? Are you crazy or something? I’ve got a mother too, and she thinks I’m a murderer too.”
“Give me time to go and see her. I want her to have a chance to see me. I don’t want to run away from something like this. Just a week . . .”
He gets up, changes his T-shirt and rubs his jeans down with a cloth.
“You are joking, aren’t you? Did you really think I would let you find yourself a hideaway in the Seychelles? I must be dreaming . . .”
“Who said anything about that? I just want a week to take care of her. I can’t leave her behind. One week.”
“Not so much as two minutes.”
“I thought so. Is it really too much to ask?”
*
I’ve waited for him to clean himself with white spirit. Still with the cleaver firmly in my hand, I watched for the slightest false move. He didn’t say a word.
His mind is whirring like a madman. The madman he is.
“What if we played for it, for this week?”
“What . . .? What do you mean by ‘played’?”
“Played billiards.”
“You’re in no position to take the piss with me.”
“I’ve never been anywhere near a billiards table in my life, I don’t know anything about it, not even the rules. My only asset is my hand. You, though, have the knowledge but not the tool. I would say that evens it out well. I’m sure it would be the ugliest game in the world. But why not?”
I’ve never heard anything so absurd.
Obscene.
And yet I can see how an idea like that managed to germinate in that half-demented mind. He likes playing with fire, he must have sensed that I’ve got some settling of scores to do with billiards. And on top of that it appeals to the quirky, detached side of him. To his cynicism. He’s got nothing to lose. Seen like that, his suggestion seems almost logical. With a madman’s logic. And I’ve always said that fools should be left their share of mystery.
“If we had a quick test of strength, which of us would have a chance?” he asks.
I honestly can’t answer.
“You’re crazy . . . it would be like me painting with my feet.”
“Well, you’d be surprised actually, there are those who have. There are even blind people who paint, I’m not joking.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure.”
My mind is reeling.
“Just ten points and a straight game. No cushions. It’ll be the ugliest game in the world, you’re right. But I don’t know if it’ll sort our problems out.”
“Of course it will. You’ll see. I bet you my own hand . . .”
*
He drove, without asking me where we were going. When we reached the Rue de l’Etoile I glanced up towards the balcony. I warned them we were coming without giving any explanations. Angelo was looking out for us. He gave me a little wave as I got out of the car. René didn’t try to fathom it when I told him I was coming to play. Linnel isn’t faltering: he doesn’t give a damn about anything so long as he can paint. So long as Hélène can spend her last days in peace, without tarnishing the memory of him, without being confronted with horror a second time. And why have I accepted his duel? He just managed to awaken something in me. That’s all. Yes, it will be the ugliest game in the world, a useless player against a damaged one, to each his own handicap. A nasty compromise. A pathetic equity. I like the ugliness of it – my lack of respect for the green baize might prove that it’s lost all its appeal for me now, that I can tear it without any scruples. If I no longer have perfection at my fingertips, I might as well shatter the aura surrounding my remaining regrets. So that I can live without any ghosts, once and for all.
And I want to win, that’s the worst of it. Apart from that, it’s just a bit of a laugh.
“Nice place,” he says, walking into the room. “There’s a sort of back-street solemnity about it. Good use of space. Pink light on a green background.”
René has closed the shutters on all the doors, even the ones on the ground floor. He’s not trying to get to the bottom of this. He just wants to see me pick up the wooden cue again, like Benoît and Angelo. The balls have already been set out on table 2, Linnel is given a cue. I choose one from the rack, any of them will do.
“The idea is to strike one of the white balls so that it hits the other two. That’s all there is to it.”
“Argh . . . games that can be explained in one sentence are always tough. How many years does it take before you score your first point? Without snagging the baize, I mean.”
“That depends on the shots, some take ten minutes, others five years. Watch.”
I turn towards Angelo.
“Show us the trick with the bottle.”
“Wha’? . . . Oh no . . . issa long time since I did it . . .”
“Don’t act the prima donna. Show him. Show us.”
I know it doesn’t take much to persuade him. He loves doing it, especially when he’s asked to. Linnel watches him put his bottle of beer down on the baize, right in the middle, and the red ball on the mouth of the bottle. Then he puts one white ball up against the bottle and the other one in a corner of the table. He positions the tip of his cue downwards, perfectly perpendicular to the baize. A moment’s concentration and he gives the white ball a brisk smack. A dead ball shot, to be precise. The sidespin on the ball is so powerful that it spins on its own axis and climbs up the bottle in a fraction of a second, dislodges the red, goes back down and rolls over to touch the third ball in the corner.
That Italian’s the only person within these walls who can do it.
Linnel, speechless, looks at Angelo as if he were possessed by the devil.
“You’re ta
king the piss . . . There’s some trick . . . Have you had physicists here yet? You’ve got to do that under scientifically controlled conditions.”
“Hey, come on! I’m not a laboratory gueeneepeeg!”
“You, the artist, you wanted to play billiards, didn’t you? Don’t worry, I can’t do shots like that any more. We’re bound to be equals then. René, teach him how to hold the cue . . .”
While the boss teaches him the basics, I pick up my cue. The problem is keeping the thing in a more or less straight line. I sprinkle a little talc over the inside of my right elbow and clamp the cue in it, not too tightly so that it can slide backwards and forwards. For every shot I have to lie myself down across the table from my hips up. Not a very graceful position, oppressed: the absolute opposite of billiards. The shots are inevitably shorter, I have to strike harder to adjust the aim. I’m squashed down on the baize, all at an angle, but it works. Just enough to actually play. Benoît, who is standing right next to me, looks away. It’s not very beautiful, I know . . . Now he sees why I was reluctant to play again.
Linnel saunters back over, holding his cue like a sword.
“Before playing I’d quite like to take some precautions for the next few days,” I tell him. “Let’s be clear about this, you’re going to sign something for me in front of witnesses, and my friends will keep it safe and warm for exactly a week. If I win the match, you give yourself up within quarter of an hour. And you can be sure my mates will help me accompany you, to avoid any dirty tricks. If I lose it, I go to Delmas and keep my mouth shut for a week to give you time to set the old girl up. I don’t recommend running late.”
“Either way, I won’t stay in prison long.”
“Really? Everyone who says that seems to pick up an extra five years.”
“It’s not the same for me. Look at what happened to the Douanier Rousseau. A true naïf. It was in 1900 or 1907, sometime around then, he trusted a crook, which cost him a prison sentence straightaway. He was very proud of his talent and his paintings and very keen to show his paintings to the warders and the prison director. And he was immediately acquitted on the grounds of diminished responsibility.”