Portrait of a Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rufus. ThenMadera? Meanwhile? The evening of the reception, or the day before, or the day after. At first, nothing. Nothing to report. Days dragged on. Then came facts, a story, a fate, a caricature of fate. To end with this obviousness, this bloody heap, Madera’s corpse, and blood trickling between the feet of the chair …
    Escape, of course, but why? What’s in the way? Some plaster, some bricks, not much stone, and then some packed earth. How many feet? A man-sized hole, just beneath the level of the basement window. How many hours? The same image crosses your mind like a sudden and brutal slap: Rufus bursting into the studio to find you right here, slumped on your bed surrounded by cigarette butts, half hidden in a cloud of smoke … Otto had made a call. Was Rufus out? What would he be doing in his hotel room at four in the afternoon? Otto will call again this evening … You’ve still got a chance. A few hours … Enough time to get the right tools …
    Wherever it may be, one day a telephone will crackle and a far distant voice will come through, there’ll be the sound of footsteps, the knock on your door, three soft taps, there’ll be a hand on your shoulder, somewhere, sometime, in the metro, on a beach, in the street, at a station. A day, a month, a year will have gone by, hundreds or thousands of miles will have been travelled, and someone will suddenly hail you, come up to you, will meet your gaze for an instant and then vanish. Night train. Empty compartment. Fuzzy images. You’ll be lying on your bunk, no way out. Who will get you first – Rufus, or the police? One and then the other? A fine piece of melodrama, anavenging finger pointed at you – that’s him we’ve got him keep it up lads go to it – then banner headlines in huge type. In court today. Read all about it. Eight columns wide. Headless corpse found in alley. You shall show my head to the people. Second by second. The carriage shudders over the fish-plates. Every sixty feet? Every thirty feet? You’re fleeing. Fleeing at 120 kilometres an hour. You’re in an empty train rushing along at 120 kilometres an hour. You’re sitting in a facing seat by the window. Wan lights flicker now and then on the other side of the cold pane. Where are you going? Genoa, Rome, Munich. Anywhere. What are you running away from? The whole world knows you are on the run, you’re standing still, the moon on the horizon is keeping up with you. Anywhere as long as it’s out of this world. You won’t make it.
    He was cold. The cigarette he’d tossed on the floor was burning itself out. A wisp of smoke rose vertically almost to meet his eye, then broke into irregular whorls that wobbled for a few seconds and then dispersed as if blown by an invisible puff from nowhere, maybe a draught from the window.
    Truth. Nothing but the. I killed Madera. I killed Anatole. I killed Anatole Madera. The killer of Anatole Madera was me. I did murder. Murdered Anatole Madera. Everyone murdered Madera. Madera is a man. Man is mortal. Madera is mortal. Madera is dead. Madera had to die. Madera was going to die. All I did was speed things up a bit. He was under sentence. He was ill. His doctor reckoned he had only a few years of life left. If you can call that a life. My word, did he live in pain. He wasn’t feeling very well that afternoon. He had a lot on hismind. If I hadn’t done anything maybe he would have died in any case. He would have gone out like a candle just by blowing himself out. He would have committed suicide …
    â€œI don’t think that’ll be a problem.” What did he know about it, in the first place, and why had he said it? The surroundings in that lounge, the potential effect of the lighting, the bar, the fire in the hearth. They both had a glass in their hands. And at a stroke the whole world, his whole world, materialised around him. After a long period of solitude