The Man Who Risked It All Read Online Free PDF

silence he had observed during our meeting. The meal was served by a different servant from the one who had buzzed me in. Dubreuil’s natural, if refined exuberance contrasted with the reserved and mannered style of his staff. His outspokenness tended to reassure me, unlike the absorbed, unsettling expressions I occasionally saw on his face as he listened to me.
    “Would you mind if Catherine stayed with us this afternoon? She is my eyes and ears, and sometimes my brains as well,” he added with a laugh. “I have no secrets from her.”
    A clever way of informing me that, in any case, everything would be repeated to her.
    “I have no objections,” I lied.
    He suggested I go for a stroll in the park to stretch my legs before we started again. I think he took advantage of this to summarize what I had said during the morning.
    All three of us went back to his office. I felt less at ease for the first few minutes, but Catherine was one of those people whose extreme neutrality means that you quickly forget them.
    It was nearly 7:00 P.M. when we had exhausted the subject of my tormented life. Catherine discreetly withdrew.
    “I’m going to think about all this,” said Dubreuil in a pensive voice. “And I’ll get back to you to tell you your first task. Leave me all your contact details.”
    “My first task?”
    “Yes, your first mission, if you prefer. What you’re to do while you wait for further instructions.”
    “I’m not sure I understand.”
    “You have experienced things that, in a certain way, have engraved themselves upon you, conditioning the way you see the world, the way you behave, your relations with others, your emotions. The result of all that is that things aren’t working, to be quite frank. It’s causing you problems and making you unhappy. Your life will be mediocre as long as you live it this way. So we need to bring about certain changes.”
    I had the impression he was going to brandish a scalpel to operate on my brain straightaway.
    He went on: “We could talk about it for hours but it would do no good, apart from informing you of the reasons for your unhappiness. But you’d stay unhappy. Look, when a computer malfunctions, you have to install new programs that work better.”
    “The problem is, I’m not a computer.”
    “You grasp the philosophy, at any rate: You must live a certain number of experiences that will make your point of view change and lead you to go beyond your fears, your doubts, your anxieties.”
    “And how do I know you know how to program properly?”
    “You’ve given your word. So, no point asking the question. It would only feed your fears, which are already numerous, if I’ve understood properly.”
    Silently, I looked at him for a while. He met my gaze without saying anything. Seconds that seemed like hours went by. I finally broke the silence.
    “Who are you, Monsieur Dubreuil?”
    “Now that’s a question I ask myself every now and then!” he said, getting up and walking before me to the corridor. “Come on, I’ll show you out. Who am I? Who am I?” he declaimed as he walked, and his powerful voice resounded in the vast staircase.

3
    T HE FOLLOWING NIGHT I had a nightmare such as I hadn’t had since childhood.
    I was in the mansion. It was dark. Dubreuil was there. We were in an immense, dark drawing room. The very high walls were as black as those of a dungeon. The room was lit only by the flickering flames of chandeliers that gave off a smell of old wax burning. Dubreuil was staring at me intensely, holding a sheet of paper in his hand. Catherine, a little farther on, was wearing only a black leotard and high-heel shoes, her hair in a ponytail. She was holding a big whip that she regularly cracked on the floor with unsuspected violence, grunting like a tennis player who has just served. Stalin was opposite her, furiously barking after each crack of the whip. Dubreuil didn’t take his eyes off me, displaying the calm air of someone who knows he