Portrait of a Man (5 page)

But what had come of his own effort, of his slow and blinkered striving, his indefatigable energy, the four months he had spent in a cellar working twelve to fifteen hours a day? What reassurance? What certainty? He had worked in torrid heat, almost naked but for his apron, surrounded by a never-ending swarm of flies, leaving his workbench only when darkness fell, not seeing a soul apart from a vague acquaintance of Nicolas who brought him his food twice a day. Why and for whom had he slaved away? Geneviève had asked him not to leave, he had refused; later, she asked him to come back, and he had refused again. Was his love no stronger than that? He had obstinately tried to convince her, claiming in complete bad faith that it was just a question of a week or two, seeing all the work he'd put in, the paperwork that had been assembled, the money that had been put up, the negotiations that Nicolas and Rufus were conducting …

And now you're digging crumb by crumb. Unpredictable geometry of the rock being tackled. No order, no logic: just the continuity of the hammering you're giving it. Your arm hurts. Your head is buzzing. Do you want to go on? Why do you ask? You mustn't stop. You'll collapse from fatigue, your chisel will slip from your hand, you won't hit hard enough. You have to exhaust yourself. Like an animal. You must not pause to recover. Don't ask any more questions. Or else
don't answer them. Why is that suddenly reassuring? The width of the chisel, the accuracy of your hammering, those shards cluttering up the plank and the trestle, those stones which are coming apart, millimetre by millimetre. In a few hours you'll be sliding through the wet grass like a worm. Shirtless, shoeless, kneeling at the top of the scaffolding with your head almost touching the ceiling, bathed in sweat, you hammer away like a deaf man on the rough, off-white surface of the mortar and each blow echoes inside you with a longdrawn-out, strident intensity, with an obsessive rhythm …

Months and months, all that pointless effort? As if he had such powerfully rooted habits, or rather, a stubborn wish to go on; whatever the cost, to go to the very limits of his own misery, his own weakness. A decision taken once and for all to be entirely and only that absence, that hollow, that mould, the duplicator, false creator and mechanical agent of works of the past. Those clever hands, that precise knowledge of what erosion means to paint, his skill and craft. What did he want? Guilty or not guilty …

Sometimes, in spite of himself, his hands, his neck, shoulders and ankles shook, seized up, got cramp. He pressed on with clenched teeth, sometimes making a rough whistling sound, absorbed in his struggle, as if he were no longer capable of stopping, as if all his life had migrated to the flat, shiny blade of the chisel with which he was pummelling the mortar like a machine, had migrated into his painful, overdone, ever more tense movements and which with every second, with every minute, were loosening, unfixing the stone that would become a new door open onto the night.

The bedazzlement of life. From deep down in his consciousness rise the snows of Altenberg, the banners floating over the Olympic piste, the huzzahs of the crowd. And then the same fatigue and that feeling of peace. How beautiful he found those first steps towards conquest, the horizon suddenly coming into view after a long night's march. A small party of four or five men, barely a rope. Sunrise near the top of the Jungfrau. The suddenly revealed view of the Alps, on the other side of the mountain. The watershed. As if it had all hung on the suddenly friendly and familiar presence of the sun. Near. Because it was cold or because they'd had to walk a long way to see it? Because his climb had been nothing more than the desperate call of that radiance …

Why not understand? And why should he have forgotten? Then one by one the masks had come: meeting Jérôme, getting settled in Geneva. An absurd memory. Altenberg and its too fresh snow, a thousand slivers of light, the proud accumulation of layers beneath the apparent protection of the iced-over surface that glinted in the sunlight. Altenberg, whose traces lay in him like ski-tracks: parallel headlong lines accompanied by a quincunx pattern of roundels, slightly inclined towards the direction of travel, made by ski-sticks scraping their steel tips visibly if minutely, and more or less deeply, on the snow.

Those vanishing, intertwining tracks, still sharp or else half rubbed out, each of which compacted the snow, solidified the ground, made it less and less fragile, less and less deceptive, just as – in the present – memories rose up in him, intertwined and vanished,
strengthening his approach, and, like those pistes that were too hard for him to tackle, leaving immaculate, hostile landscapes of virgin snow on the north slope, offering wide open spaces that were waiting for him. Every instant, now, beyond the snow, beyond his memories, the paltry image of his own death rose up, the image of his fate, of his ridiculous saga, and the sickening grimaces of the masks. Twenty years had gone by. A hundred forged paintings, or more …

And here you are, at the present time, with your life in your hands, wallowing neck-high in your own story, and more lost in your memories than you ever were before. A tear wells up, you're so touched by your own weakness. But you know very well that things did not happen like that. What's the use of complaining? You wanted to be what you were. You were what you wanted to be. You accepted your fate, whole and entire, not because you were obliged to accept something, not as a victim, but definitely because the way you structured your life, your work, your entertainment, remained the most likely way to provide you with satisfaction. It was you who followed Jérôme, it wasn't Jérôme who led you astray …

But what difference did that make today? Yes, it had all been messed up. Yes, he had messed it all up. He had accepted the world in its easiest manifestation. He had intended to lie. He had lied. He had made lying his business. And then? He had wanted to run away and it was too late …

At an altitude of three thousand metres between Belgrade and Paris, maybe over Basel or Zurich, perhaps above Altenberg, the salutary decision he had mulled over for too long had at last been made
to have done with forgeries and go away with Geneviève. They would have gone to the Balearics first, then to the United States. He would have earned a living as a restorer. But he had not alerted Geneviève … He had not answered her last letter, which he had had for ten days. When the plane made a stop at Geneva, he had sent a telegram. But when he reached Orly, only Rufus and Juliette were waiting for him, and they took him back to their place where there was a cocktail party going on, where he had hooked up with Jérôme. Then with Anna, Mila and Nicolas. Then Madera. Then Geneviève …

She had left straight away. He hadn't spoken to her. Had Gaspard been nailed or screwed to the floor? He had not seen her since. Sixteen or eighteen months later, that telephone call, in the middle of the night …

She had not answered. She must have woken up with a start. Then understood. Who could be calling her at that hour? Then waited. Then decided quite quickly that she would not get up, that she would not pick up, and then she must have listened, maybe counting the rings, and got up all the same, then hesitated, switched the lights on, edged closer to the telephone, hesitated again, mesmerised by the ringing, hesitated yet again, then put out her arm, brought her hand towards the receiver, unable to decide whether to pick up or cut the caller off … Perhaps he had not waited long enough, perhaps he'd let himself get swallowed up by the regular sequence of rings, as if each of them merely emphasised the futility of this final attempt. Ring. Silence. Those tinny crackles on the line, over there, on the other side of Paris, here, right in his ear. How his
patience and pointless obstinacy must have reassured her … Sometimes I feel I understand you, completely, inside out … What would have happened if she had picked up, if she had answered, if she had agreed to see him again? How long would it have been until he went back to Dampierre? Was he free? Was he a prisoner?

Sixteen or eighteen months later, at night, that telephone call. That crazy call. That automatic, almost automatic gesture, like so many others after all, following on from those dozens and dozens of numbers, dozens and dozens of letters on the dial. Counted out one by one. Always with that same anxiety. And the same impatient desire for a dialogue wrested from space, recreating, in a bizarre coherence, that universe of wires and networked lines, those thousands of faithful and impassive operators in headsets, those kilometres of cable weaving all round the globe, not so much in his mind the eternal muttering of time and history as the soothing web of a potential release, simply connected to the refusal or the acceptance of one's self, of one's fate, of one's destiny, the last bastion of one's freedom, those simple movements taken on board one by one, corresponding, beyond the electronic precision of the combined circuitry, to what could have been his definitive, immediate, indisputable victory over the world … B–A–B–1–5–6–3 – Everything became possible again, for the second time, one more time, beyond the clumsiness of the action, simply because at Rue d'Assas Geneviève had woken up, Geneviève had heard. But she was not the person he should have called.

He had driven from Gstaad to Lausanne then flew in a taxi-plane
from Lausanne to Paris, and another taxi from Orly to Avenue de Lamballe. He had arrived at three in the morning. He had put his case in the hall. He had taken off his coat. He had gone up to the telephone. He had wanted to call Rufus first to explain why he'd left. Then Madera, to say that he was not going to go on, that he didn't want to be a forger anymore. But the number he had dialled – why? – was Geneviève's …

Was it really for her sake that you left Gstaad? Answer, no lying now: what were you after? You waited a long time. At each unanswered ring the world collapsed anew. Whole continents smashed to smithereens. Torrents of lava. Tidal waves. What was left? She had not answered. You hung up. You took off your jacket. You loosened your necktie. You looked at the time. You went to the kitchen. You drank a glass of water … You lay down, you woke up, you called Rufus in Gstaad. You got dressed …

He had taken a taxi to Gare Montparnasse. Another taxi from Dreux to Dampierre. Otto had opened the door, and he had not looked surprised. Madera had seen him in his study. He had told the older man that he'd had enough rest and had come back to finish the
Portrait of a Man
, and that he would have it completed in a week. He had gone down to the laboratory. He had taken off the piece of canvas that protected the panel. He had looked at the Condottiere …

You did all of those things, you lived all of those moments. Do you remember? That was three days ago. Everything was possible, you remember, you wanted it. You were waiting and at each ring
you swore you would hang up after the next one, and still you waited, and you promised yourself that she only had to pick up, even if she cut you off straight away without saying anything to you, for you to call Madera. But she kept you hanging on to the end. She didn't lift a finger. Nor did you. It was so simple. A mere telephone call …

Hello, I want Dampierre 15, in the Eure-et-Loire. Hello. You can talk now. This is Winckler. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Otto, can I speak to Madera, please. Certainly, sir, one moment, sir. Those kilometres of wires weaving all around the globe their soothing web of a potential release. Madera I'm not coming back I'll never come back. You can all get stuffed, you and your clique. Click. Clunk.

Was there nothing? Nothing but his admitted weakness. The counter-truth of a dead end. What to do? Where to go? Carry on. Why carry on? Carry on for whom? Why accept? What difference could it possibly make whether she picked up the phone or not? What difference could it possibly make that he had decided to complete the Condottiere? What difference could it possibly make if the Dampierre studio, after the studio at Place du Cirque, after the one in Gstaad and the one in Split and the one before that in Paris, had become a prison, the vicious circle of his contradictions, the eloquent symbol of his pointless life?

Pointless. Now he had said it. In Geneva, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Paris, London, Tangier, Belgrade, Lucerne, Split, Dampierre, Trieste, Berlin, Rio, The Hague, Athens, Algiers, Naples, Cremona, Zurich, Brussels – what had he done? What image would he leave in the whole wide world?

Which framework would he walk out on? None. The void. And yet at all times a way out had been available. And yet at all times he had thought he could say no …

That was wrong, wasn't it? You could not say no. You never did say no. All you could say was yes. They had you on a leash and you were free to follow them. You couldn't make any demands. You couldn't do anything except what you were doing – making coins, faking reliquaries and statuettes, turning urns and pastiches of shams …

Twelve years. Twelve times three hundred and sixty-five days. Twelve years in the course of which he had been shut in basements, attics, strongrooms, empty workshops, abandoned houses, barns, caves, disused mineshafts and set up, thought up, worked out and carried off alone and on his own one hundred and twenty or thirty fake paintings, A whole gallery. From Giotto to Modigliani. From Fra Angelico to Braque. A gallery without any soul or guts …

Gaspard the forger. Gaspard Theotokópoulos alias El Greco. Gaspard da Messina. Gaspard Solario, Gaspard Bellini, Gaspard Ghirlandaio. Gaspard de Goya y Lucientes. Gaspard Botticelli. Gaspard Chardin, Gaspard Cranach the Elder. Gaspard Holbein, Gaspard Memling, Gaspard Metsys, Gaspard Master of Flemalle. Gaspard Vivarini, Gaspard Anonymous French School, Gaspard Corot, Gaspard Van Gogh, Gaspard Raphael Sanzio, Gaspard de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaspard de Puccio alias Pisanello …

Gaspard the forger. The smith-slave. Gaspard the forger. Why a
forger? How a forger? Since when a forger? He hadn't always been a forger …

Becalmed. Day in day out. Then the hours that started ticking away, putting their full weight on him. And then those deeds, those events, that adventure, story, fate – a caricature of a fate. A useless gesture, or a step in the right direction? In its unspeakable spontaneity, Madera's death was perhaps the first action of the demiurge emerging from chaos.