Dominique Manotti: Escape

A murmur ripples through the gathering. Clearly opinion is extremely divided. Lisa continues in the same vein: ‘I’m looking for all the information we can find on this Lucio Renzi, Carlo’s killer. Ask around, ask any journalists you know, any contacts you still have in Italy. Who is he, where does he come from? I’m sure we’ll find something. Thank you, all of you, for your help.’

Lisa pauses for a moment, people are growing restless, some go over and pour themselves a drink or start chatting to their neighbours. When the hubbub dies down, Lisa takes the floor again: ‘There’s something I must tell you. A week after Carlo was killed, his cellmate, the criminal who escaped with him, turned up at my place.’ She has the audience’s attention again. ‘Apparently Carlo gave him my address. I say “apparently”, because, instinctively, I distrust him, but I have no concrete reason to. Everything he’s told me so far fits with what I know from other sources. I’ve put his case in the hands of our lawyers.’ The audience turns to the lawyer, who nods. ‘I’ve found him a job as a night watchman and a studio flat that he’s subletting from a work colleague of mine. I owe it to Carlo’s memory to help him, and I feel I’ve done all I can. I’m quits. Let me know if you’d like him to come to our Sunday meetings, and I’ll give you his contact details. I repeat, I’m not keen, I don’t trust this guy, but it’s up to you. That’s all from me, thank you for being here, and for your support and help.’

Lisa sits down, suddenly exhausted, her gaze vacant. People avoid her, forming little knots again by the buffet. There are heated arguments in hushed voices. The lawyer pours himself a glass of fruit juice and leans over to Roberto: ‘Do you believe this business about Carlo being set up?’

‘No, but I believe that Lisa needs to believe in it to cope with Carlo’s death. She’s never stopped waiting for him.’

A woman called Chiara sidles up to Roberto, leans close to him and murmurs with pinched lips: ‘Lisa’s the only person here who believes her story. That arsehole was capable of wrecking our lives singlehandedly. He didn’t need anyone’s help. And you know it as well as I do.’

Roberto turns his back on her, without replying.

Further away Giovanni, a stocky man in his fifties, is holding forth, surrounded by three women who are lapping up his words, spoken in a half-tone: ‘I’ve had enough of her noble widow act, her scout-leader airs, the way she flaunts her generosity, her posturing, as if she were the custodian of the memory of all the radical struggles in Italy. We know as much as she does about all that, if not more. And her ridiculous stories. She’s been in France for too long. Exile creates fantasists and paranoia.’

LA DÉFENSE, PARIS

Night watchman at the Tour Albassur, at La Défense. The walk from the Métro exit to the staff entrance is an ordeal repeated nightly. Filippo strides across the deserted concourse, his head down. Aim: to avoid being crushed by the office blocks lined up like soldiers, dizzyingly high, threatening, blocking out the sky. Blasts of freezing or scorching-hot air. The few grey shapes scuttling soundlessly in various directions no longer seem human.

Ten p.m. Filippo begins his shift. He checks in at the security guards’ office, a long, narrow, windowless room on the ground floor, crammed with machines and CCTV screens, just behind the magnificent reception desks in the foyer. He picks up his badge and greets his colleague, his sole companion for the entire night, an elderly man who’s been given this job by Albassur so they won’t have to fire him three years before he is due to retire. He’s a sociable type and seems genuinely sorry not to be able to communicate with Filippo, who doesn’t yet speak a word of French.

Then Filippo sets off on his evening tour to inspect all the floors. The same ritual every night. Lift. Stop at the first floor. The light timer switches on, Filippo exits the lift and scans his fob into a little device on the wall. Three sets of double doors, one to his left, one to his right and one straight ahead of him. Start with the doors on the right, according to his instructions. He pushes them open. A long corridor, wanly lit by the glow from the luminous emergency exit signs. He advances slowly along the corridor, on thick carpet, not a sound, not a living soul, the sensation of walking on cotton wool. Office doors to his left, office doors to his right, all identical. He opens them, closes them, repetitive actions. A lounge area with vending machines, a coffee machine, and two imitation-leather armchairs. Deserted, sinister. At the far end of the corridor, a large boardroom, and the scanner. He swipes his fob. Return to the lifts. Swing doors, left-hand corridor, scanner, return, central corridor, scanner, back again. Lift, second floor. Each floor, one after another. There are thirty-two floors in this block. Sometimes a floor of offices with a view, less claustrophobic perhaps than the long corridors, but the loneliness there is overwhelming, chilling.

Thirty-second floor, the last. The space is designed in a much less regular fashion, the offices are much bigger, but there is still a scanner, and the loneliness. Filippo goes into the boardroom. A dim light, like everywhere else. He skirts the oval table in the centre of the room, hemmed with wood-and-leather chairs, and stops in front of the vast bay window that runs the entire length of the room. He stands stock still, digesting the shock he feels every night. He is mesmerised, overcome by the view, as he had been by the white rocky ridge, the blue lake and the immense sky in the mountains when he was on the run. On either side, within touching distance, at the same height as him, loom the dark shapes of the neighbouring towers, punctuated by a few lines and pinpoints of light, and just opposite him, a large gap affording a view of Paris. The lines and shapes are clear and sharp — the deep, dark course of the Seine, the lighter black mass of the Bois de Boulogne, the Eiffel Tower with its coppery outline, the epitome of elegance, standing out against the sovereign midnight-blue sky, and the light at the top, its powerful revolving beam mechanically sweeping space. Seen from here, the hasty, oppressive walk across the concourse each night feels like an initiation test before entering dreamland. And each night, confronted with this magnificent landscape built by men but devoid of any trace of life, in solitude and silence, he listens to the words going round and round in his head, the sentences that form all by themselves. He waits patiently for the memory of Guidoriccio to return and haunt him, and each night the warlord turns up. This landscape suits him. He would gladly make it his. Who is Guidoriccio? wonders Filippo. The triumphant warrior in flesh and blood, astride his horse, challenging stone-built cities and deserted fortifications in glorious defiance of all the gods and all men, of whom he dreamed in his childhood. Or the lone horseman, playing at war, without enemies, and therefore without pleasure and without any possibility of victory, whom he had met during his long trek over the Italian mountains? Or is he a lifeless equestrian statue on a stage set? What is this knight’s message? Is it that the tempting but fatal combination of solitude and dreams are both his destiny and mine? The presence of this enigmatic character at his side stops Filippo from becoming lost.

The walkie-talkie on his belt crackles. ‘Everything OK?’ asks a tinny voice. His round is finished, the moment of reverie too; it’s time to go back down to the ground floor, to the duty office of the Tour Albassur security team, where the longest part of the night is about to commence.