Portrait of a Man Read Online Free PDF

the past suddenly became present, he was abruptly immersed in all that was most familiar to him, reduced to the dimensions of a lounge: everyone was there in the off-kilter lighting made of jagged leaps of reddish flames in the hearth and the excessively muted, over-intimate and artificial glow from the bar. Jérôme. Rufus and Juliette, Mila. Anna and Nicolas. And Geneviève. And Madera, supremely detestable, with teeth that gleamed when he smiled. Winter suit. A ballroom dancer’s black-and-white shoes. At that point perhaps he should have been wary, should have thought calmly and methodically to try to understand what it all meant, what was henceforth impossible. He could see the full, stark, unaltered story of his last twelve years just by looking in those eight smiling faces. Coincidences or plots? Did he need to go beyond the smiles, further than twelve years back? To find a chink in the wall, a logical connection. An equation: there had been this, then there was that. To make the world coherent once again, or for the first time, a reassuring world, so much more reassuring than all this flux and vagueness. When was that? When was it supposed to be? Was it one evening inthe abominable heat of Sarajevo, in loneliness all the more absurd for being accepted? An afternoon looking at the Condottiere? There would be a sign, and he could already see the complicated workings of a machine set in motion: a switch clicks, a needle points, a filament breaks, and valves open … Would that do the trick? Had it done the trick? The oldest story in the world. His arm raised, the glint of a blade. Was that all it took for Madera to collapse with his throat slit?
    Now I’m lying on this bed, I haven’t shifted for maybe an hour. I’m not expecting anything. But I do want to live. Everybody wants to live. All the same I do maybe have enough time left to get up, get to work, dig a hole, and escape. Couldn’t be easier. Couldn’t be harder. What’s difficult about it … ? Otto is now on the other side of the door and pacing up and down. He might have got through to Rufus, he might have told him …
    Might you be a coward? You are going to die. To die or tomorrow. You’re going to die very slowly. From fear. Thou shalt rot. To be scraped off the floor with a teaspoon, swept up, vacuumed away and disposed of in the waste. You like that. It amuses you.
    You’d like to look in the mirror and make faces. You’d like to wait until it’s all over without lifting a finger, without doing a thing, you’d like it to be just a bad dream so you can rewind and go back a day, a month or a year. You wait. He hangs around outside your door. He’s stupid and obedient, that’s fine. Good dog. Guard dog. You could try to bribe him. You go up to the door and raise your voice. Herr Otto Schnabel, would you like to earn ten thousand dollars fornothing? My dear dear Otto, ten thousand dollars, all yours. Ten thousand dollars and three cents? Ten thousand times ten thousand. A billion dollars? A big pack of chewing gum. An alien outfit with all the accessories. A machine gun with dum-dum bullets. A stuffed elephant. Come on, Otto, show some willing. Make a gesture. You want an ottomobile. An ottomatic. A nelly copter. You want a nellycopter. Without propellors. A nellyjet.
    You. You, the world’s greatest art forger. The grinning joker, inside art. You think that’s funny. You think waiting is a hoot. You’ve had enough, you’re fed up with it. At the end of your tether. What about tomorrow? And the day after? And the day after that? And the day after the day after? You can’t build the world from enlargements. You can’t conquer the world with side-angle lighting. You can’t lay out the world on a restored panel. You took a gamble and you lost. So what?
    Aware of your own misery. And the runner-up is: Winckler, Gaspard, for his remarkable rendition of The Swan.