Escape

CHAPTER THREE

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.

Night after night, between the evening round after the departure of the last employees and the morning round before the arrival of the ‘office cleaning operatives’, Filippo finds himself shut up with his colleague in the security guards’ office. They sit back-to-back in comfortable swivel armchairs, and they each keep an eye on thirty or so monitors on the opposite wall that relay footage from the CCTV cameras in the offices, the control panels of the alarm systems of the high-security offices, while still others ensure that all the utilities and technical systems are functioning correctly — heating, water pressure, power circuits, along with a dozen telephones. Each guard has a logbook on his desk to report any incidents. Which never occur. Stuck in front of the still, flat, ugly images of the screens blinking and flickering in the emptiness, Filippo feels giddy. Like many night watchmen probably, he fantasises about a disaster that would blur all the screens, set off all the alarms and create a reassuring chaos justifying, for a few minutes, the existence of his job. The temptation to provoke such an incident preys on him briefly before evaporating. His colleague Antoine, on the other hand, keeps himself busy. Unable to converse with Filippo, he flicks through old magazines, does crosswords, eats cake and snoozes.

Filippo soon realises that he needs to find a way of filling his time, otherwise he’ll get depressed. Learn French? He tries for a while with an old Assimil method. And discovers that he has no incentive. Who does he want to speak French with? And what for? Because my future is in France? What future? Before thinking about my future, I’d do better to try and get a grip on my present. The burning question: what am I doing here, far away from everything I know? I’m here because I jumped into that skip. I escaped, without planning to. Why did I jump? What made me do such a senseless thing?

While his thoughts wander, he has got into the habit of doodling the leaves and scrolls of the acanthus fern — in black pencil, on white sheets of paper. In the near-contemplative silence, his hand is as free as his mind, and his doodles mingle with the rhythm of words. He’d jumped because he’d followed Carlo, like iron filings to a magnet. His thoughts always returned to Carlo. His form, so clear, so close, within reach, a warm glow — Filippo closes his eyes and holds out his hand, as he used to do in their cell, but only encounters emptiness. He hunches over his sheet of paper; his drawings overlap. Above all, Carlo is a voice, a language, and stories. The memories of never-ending nights spent listening to him flood back powerfully, overwhelming him, those memories that he’d tried to bury, to destroy because he felt abandoned, betrayed. Carlo had the words to talk about the struggle of those heady years, the passion, the battle against slave labour, the thrill of the fight, the euphoria of victory, the agony of defeat and the joy of freedom, jubilant violence. Being prepared to put your life at risk, every day. For a while I wanted to forget everything about him. Betrayal. Impossible. Filippo is suffocating. The sheet of paper is now covered in black. He screws it into a ball, throws it into the waste-paper bin and picks up another.

Gradually, the words in his head become sentences that fit together. On the page, a series of almost perfect circles overlap, intersect and reinforce one another. I was blown away by everything Carlo told me; his passion, his hunger for freedom and his violence were the very stuff of my life in Rome, before jail. My horror of my mother’s exhausting, humdrum existence, my hatred of my father’s submissive, mediocre life, which he blotted out with alcohol to the point where he despised himself, my rebellion against the cops and my teachers, the crushing boredom of village life, and the feeling of not having a grip on anything, not counting for anything or for anyone, drove me to look for adventure among Rome’s squats. I wanted to live, but I didn’t know it, I’d never had the words to express all that. Never even the desire to express it. Carlo taught me that if I couldn’t find the right words to say who I am, I wouldn’t exist, not even in my own eyes. With his words, he justified my rebellion and salvaged my Rome years from being no more than a defeat. So naturally I followed him, I jumped into the skip. It was a free and necessary act.

Filippo stops scribbling, sits up, relaxes, breathes and drinks a glass of water. He has just struck a blow against despair. The overlapping circles covering the entire surface of the page in front of him take on the shape of a crowd of faceless heads. A crowd with no voice. He doesn’t throw this sheet away, but puts it carefully to one side for the time being.

After his leap into the skip came separation. At this point, his voice becomes husky, the words stop flowing. A complex tangle of confused feelings. No desire to try and unravel them. Filippo puts it all to the back of his mind. I’ll think about it later. Then Carlo’s death, his own escape, Paris. He recalls his meeting with Lisa, then Cristina. Looking for a shoulder to cry on. A little love. Didn’t find it. Lisa’s fury. Hatred, the word forms, imposes itself. She hates me. Why? She told me. Because I’m to blame for Carlo’s death, I put the idea into his head and gave him the means to escape. Harsh words. But now, I understand them, I accept them. To blame for his death, OK. What about Cristina? She doesn’t hate me, she doesn’t even know I exist. For those two women, Carlo’s a prince and I’m a piece of shit. They helped me because Carlo asked them to. Fair enough. But Carlo doesn’t belong to them. They don’t know him. The closeness of being in jail, the breakout, the dangers, the ordeal we went through together, that’s our story, Carlo’s and mine, not theirs.

He picks up the sheet of paper with the anonymous crowd on it. With a few pencil strokes he adds Lisa’s dark hair, Cristina’s chignon, here a look, there a mouth, and their faces emerge and replicate. Before Carlo died, as he set off for his final battle, he said to me, ‘Tell Lisa.’ I’ve got to tell it. How? Put my trust in Carlo, listen to my memories, let his words come out. And when I have my whole story nice and tight … he hunches over the sheet of paper and contemplates the faces. Those two will come to understand that Carlo is mine, not theirs, and that he never did belong to them. A story of men.

The time for tears is over. He dreams of conquering the two women, the way you conquer a land, for the pleasure of conquering, and then leaving for pastures new.

That day, I went into the bin room to clean it, as I did every day. And I knew that today was the day. The screw who opened the door for me didn’t notice that the skip was full, whereas usually it was empty, and he locked the door behind me, as he did every day. I was breathing fast and my hands were clammy. I waited, straining my ears, counting the seconds by my heartbeat. According to our calculations, we had thirty minutes before the alarm would be raised.

After one minute, or a bit more — the minute went on so long — I heard the sound of an engine in the yard. It was the truck come to pick up the skip and take it to the dump. I gave five sharp knocks on the rubbish chute. Carlo was on dishwashing detail in the canteen, on the floor above. He heard the signal that we’d rehearsed over the last few days. He sneaked over to the mouth of the rubbish chute and jumped in. He shot out into the skip like a cannon ball and plunged down, swimming his way to the bottom. Then I jumped too. I grabbed the top of the skip wall, steadied myself and dived in after him. As I jumped, the metal shutter that closed off the bin room from the yard began to open. The guards checked that the room was empty, the truck was about to load the skip. I slid down among the plastic bags, the pressure was crushing, I couldn’t tell which way was up or down, and some of the bags had split. I felt something slimy and rough against my face, I wanted to throw up, I could hardly breathe, and I began to panic and choke. Drowning in a sea of rubbish. Carlo’s hand grabbed my arm, he brought his face very close to mine, pushed a bag out of the way to give me some air, and whispered, ‘Protect your face with your T-shirt, everything’s fine.’ Then a crash to make us shudder: the skip had been loaded on to the truck. ‘Good news,’ murmured Carlo, ‘we’re going to make it.’ I got my breath back. We began to manoeuvre ourselves very slowly into an upright position, trying to clear an air pocket around our heads. Carlo guided me.

We had to control our breathing, we knew it was vital otherwise we’d suffocate to death amid the rubbish. The truck started up. Our hands fumbled and found each other, locked. A stop: exit checks, signature of the paperwork, and inspection of the skip by the screws. We knew that it would be cursory, but what if, that day… Hearts thumping. The truck was on its way, we squeezed hands. We waited a few minutes, counting slowly, then bit by bit we fought our way to the surface. When we were able to come up for air, I took a deep breath, despite the smell, then threw up. Carlo was kneeling, he held on to the wall of the skip with one hand, very much in control. I thought how he’d saved my life, in those first few minutes after I’d jumped in. I didn’t say anything because Carlo didn’t like shows of emotion. But he knew.

The truck slowed down. The driver was Marco, the leader of my gang when I was a thief in Rome, before my arrest. Using a false name, he’d got himself a job as a driver for the subcontractor who handled the prison’s rubbish, and the whole operation had been coordinated by his sister Luciana, who often used to come and visit me in jail. We’d been in love, before I got banged up. Or rather, we thought we were. But we were very young. In other words, we used to fuck each other. And she was a great help in planning our escape. It was agreed that we’d jump out when Marco braked three times in quick succession. He couldn’t stop because he wasn’t alone in the cab. We felt him brake three times, we shot up together, grabbed the side of the skip, heaved ourselves over the edge, hung there for a second, then we let go, throwing ourselves out as far as possible, clear of the truck. We hit the ground hard, but we were ready for it. We both tucked ourselves up into a ball and rolled on to the asphalt. We watched the truck drive off, then we stood up. The place was empty. Good choice. About five hundred metres away were some apartment blocks, one of those suburban housing estates plonked down in the middle of the countryside. We had to hope that no one had seen us jump off the truck, and we still needed a bit of luck. Carlo said to me, ‘By my reckoning, we’ve got ten minutes left before the alarm’s raised in the prison.’ We had to get away from the route taken by the refuse truck as fast as possible. Ten minutes just might be enough. We crossed the fields very quickly, heading for the apartment block. We kept calm, didn’t run, brushing ourselves down to get rid of the rubbish clinging to our hair and our clothes as we went. We walked round the first building and found ourselves in a huge car park between two apartment blocks. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, there weren’t many people about. A few days earlier I’d hidden a piece of wire in my pocket, which I unrolled. I chose a Fiat model that I knew well. Within twenty seconds, I’d opened the door, and thirty seconds later I had the steering lock deactivated and the engine running, and we drove out of the car park. Carlo looked at his watch. ‘The alarm’s been raised,’ he said. We drove away from Rome. We left the stolen car in a supermarket car park around twenty kilometres away, where we waited for Luciana, Marco’s sister. She was standing next to her car, against the sunlight, her mass of copper-blond hair glinting in the sun. I found her stunning, but she had eyes only for Carlo. I’d already lost that game.

The three of us embraced and thumped the roof of her car — we’d pulled off our escape. Then we got into the car, I took the wheel, she sat next to me, half-turned towards Carlo sitting like a king on the back seat, and we headed off in the direction of the mountains.

Filippo is absorbed in his work. He is laboriously copying out on to a pad of lined paper, in a careful, legible hand, a text extracted from twenty or so sheets of rough paper covered in crossings-out and corrections, without stopping to glance at the bank of CCTV monitors in front of him. His old colleague is so intrigued that he forgets to watch his television, craning his neck to try and see what Filippo is up to that is so engrossing. When Filippo finally sits up and carefully slips the sheets of paper inside an orange binder, he can no longer contain himself and asks, jerking his thumb in the direction of the binder:

‘What are you doing? What’s that thing?’

The very question that Filippo has been asking himself since he starting copying out his notes. ‘I’m writing.’

‘So I can see, but what are you writing?’

Filippo pauses, searches for the words in French, and blurts out an answer that he has clearly been rehearsing: ‘I’m writing my story.’

‘So you’re a writer?’

The bank raid was planned for 3 p.m. on the 3rd of March. On the first of March, Carlo, Pepe and I held a vigil back at camp. Luciana had departed early in the morning, leaving us her car. She had to walk alone for a good three hours over the mountains before finding a car to take her back to Rome, but we men wanted to be on our own. I caressed her mass of copper hair one last time, feeling very emotional, then I went into the barn with Pepe, to allow Carlo to say goodbye to her in private, surrounded by nature.

When he came back, we got out the guns, three Walther P38 pistols. Our final shooting practice, four cartridges each, we didn’t have enough ammunition for more. I’d never used firearms in my Rome days, I was wary of them, I didn’t like the alternately icy or burning feel of them, they scared me. They were like wild animals that I couldn’t tame, but I kept quiet and joined in the shooting, same as the other two. I was no worse, either, once I was over the initial shock. Then we cleaned and greased our weapons, lying disassembled on a table in front of us. Carlo lingered, with a faraway look in his eyes. It was plain that he derived a physical thrill from touching the metal, greasing it, breathing in the special smell of mingled grease and powder. We put the guns away. Then, on the same table we spread out a map of Milan and the surrounding area, a map of the neighbourhood and a sketch showing the bank entrance and the interior.

We didn’t plan to go further inside the building. The three of us stood poring over the maps, our shoulders and heads brushing, and sometimes our hands touched. Pepe and I listened while Carlo explained to us in detail, a pencil in his hand, who would do what, and the precise timing of the operation. ‘Precision is crucial,’ Carlo said. ‘Our organisation must be flawless.’ We were attentive, very solemn. We exchanged a word, a look, our movements were coordinated, we were experiencing an intense moment of comradeship. Then, when the maps were put away, we decided that the fine-tuning was done, and we broke bread. ‘Last meal before the battle,’ Carlo said, and we shivered with anticipation, fear and pleasure. Afterwards, we found it difficult to chat idly so we sat in silence, and the time dragged. We went to bed early, and took sleeping pills.

Next day, on the second of March, the three of us drove up to Milan in the car that Luciana had left us, the guns hidden under the seats. When we got there, we staked out the area around the bank, to get a clear picture in our minds, then Carlo took the bag with the guns. We dumped the car in a car park, as planned, so that Luciana could pick it up that evening, and we hid in an empty apartment that belonged to friends of Carlo’s. For the sake of having something to do, something to say, we went over the next day’s schedule twice. Carlo emphasised that as long as we followed the plan to the letter, as long as there were no cock-ups, everything would be fine, they’d be waiting for us — those were his words. And he didn’t elaborate any further. The day dragged by very slowly.

The third of March. At last. The day that was to decide our fates. Things started speeding up. We split up. Pepe went to hire two vans and parked them near the bank. My job was to check the condition of the two motorbikes in the garage. I lavished attention on them and drove them to the two positions identified the previous day, so that we could make our getaway in two different directions after the robbery. And then there was more hanging around. I wasn’t able to eat the sandwich I’d bought.

We met up in a café a few hundred metres from the bank. Carlo had brought the guns in a sports holdall, we took one each. At 14.30, we got into our vans, Carlo alone in one, Pepe and me in the other. At 14.50, Pepe started up the van and parked it over a driveway to the left of the bank, obstructing the entire pavement. The bike was there, shielded by the van, and I was relieved to see it. At 14.57, the security van drew up in front of the bank and two guards got out, one of them was carrying two bags, the other kept his hand on his hip, on his open holster, and they went into the bank. Just then, Carlo’s van pulled up on the driveway to the right of the bank, facing ours. I was very focused, but not frantic, not even anxious; we simply needed to stick to the plan. Carlo opened his door, I opened mine. I didn’t take my eyes off him, he was our chief, we took our cue from him. He had his gun in his hand, I picked up mine, but then everything went wrong, and I don’t understand how or why. I saw Carlo collapse in slow motion, like in a film. It was impossible, unthinkable, and I lost all sense of reality. I was in another dimension. I’d gone deaf, I couldn’t hear a sound, I didn’t hear the shots. I turned towards the entrance to the bank, still in slow motion, and I saw a carabiniere aiming his gun at me, and one of the security guards taking his gun out extremely slowly. I didn’t have the sense that I was in danger, I shot without making the decision to do so, without grasping what was happening. I saw two cops stagger and fall in a muffled silence. I existed only through the gun I was holding with both hands, through my fingers squeezing the trigger. Pepe grabbed me by the arm, brutally, and dragged me from the scene. He shoved me behind the van and started up the bike. I clambered on behind him, clung on to his shoulders, and within a few seconds we were out of sight. I could feel the bike throbbing, I could hear the sound of the engine, I put my gun in my pocket and I could feel the barrel burning my thigh. Gradually I came back down to earth. I replayed the whole scene in my mind, much more clearly than I had experienced it. Three things were certain: Carlo was dead. Dead. I would never hear him talking about his former battles again, inventing his future and mine. Dead without a goodbye, a last outburst, a last caress. Another certainty: I had killed, I’d become a killer, without yet comprehending the full import of those words, the consequences of those actions. And finally: yes, Carlo was right, they’d been waiting for us.

Filippo adds these sheets to those in the orange binder sitting on the desk in front of him. He is concentrating, his elbows on the desk, his face cupped in his hands. The two key sections of his story, the opening and the closing scenes, are written, they exist. His task now is to fill in the bits in between, bring alive the entire story by fleshing it out. How to go about it?

He draws a box in the top left-hand corner of a blank sheet of paper, and writes ‘Escape’ in it. In the bottom right-hand corner, a box with ‘Bank raid’. Three weeks to get from one to the other. Three characters, Carlo, Marco, Luciana, and a fourth, Filippo, the chronicler, slightly in the background, an observer until the final shootout. He scribbles and he thinks. When he feels that he has a scene where something is really happening between the four of them, he gives it a name, a number, and hangs it on the line between the breakout and the bank robbery. Sometimes, he moves a box up or down the line, inserts another. At first, the game amuses him, but soon he is hooked. It is not long before he has the bare bones of his entire story:

After the breakout, the two fugitives and Luciana made it to a ruined farmhouse in the mountains. Marco, the small-time boss from Rome, was waiting for them there. He’d thought of everything, organised everything to enable them to hide out and survive — clothes, food and a few books for Carlo, who appreciated his thoughtfulness. But Marco never did anything for free. He immediately informed them that he had big plans. He wanted to expand his gang and consolidate his territory in Rome. To do that, he’d already done a deal with the local mafia bosses. He needed competent, reliable men, men he could count on, like Carlo and Filippo. Carlo was hesitant and asked for some time to think about it before making a decision. Marco reluctantly agreed, gave Carlo a week and went back to Rome. Luciana stayed at the barn and became Carlo’s mistress. Filippo accepted this situation, which he’d known was inevitable ever since they’d first met in the car park. If he was annoyed with Luciana, it was for depriving him of precious moments of intimacy with Carlo rather than for being unfaithful to him. Carlo got back in contact with his Milan friends, those who weren’t dead or in jail. To survive, they formed a little band of thieves and lived off run-of-the-mill burglaries, while cultivating the memory of ‘the years of fire’.

Carlo trusted former comrades rather than anyone else. He was keen to hold on to his independence, and was instinctively wary of Marco. He suggested that the Milanese should build a solid team, that they should stop being amateurs and move up a gear — first of all, do a bank robbery, in the style of the best of them in the old days. Then, they’d see, they’d have money, the means to plan for the future. The idea soon took shape. The bank was selected, the plans for the raid drawn up. All the logistics were entrusted to the Milan crew. Carlo would head the action group. He came back to the farmhouse with Pepe, one of the Milanese. Filippo, who’d been a pickpocket and bag-snatcher, let himself be sucked in, fascinated by Carlo’s eloquent tales of past exploits and his future plans. He would be the third man. Preparations for the robbery were steaming ahead. Marco felt he was losing control of the group and his grand plans were compromised. However, he did seem willing to make a deal: in exchange for his past help, he insisted that the first bank raid take place in Rome, on his turf, so that he could control the share-out. Carlo refused; he insisted on Milan, his home town, on his turf. Neither trusted the other. Besides, claimed Carlo, plans were too far advanced in the north now to change targets. Conflict.

Filippo delights in imagining the clash between the two men, he knows he’ll enjoy writing it even more. Carlo, tall, slim, elegant, classy, icily polite, with perfect self-control. Then Marco, squat, burly, a square mug, deep-set eyes and very black, bushy eyebrows in a slash across his forehead, a scar down his left cheek that disfigures his face slightly — a souvenir of knife fights in the turf wars around Termini station — his thuggish manner and brutal gestures. A persistent memory — the mug of the getaway car driver. Filippo counts on writing to help him purge the fear he felt on meeting his gaze, back in the mountains.

Class won out over violence. At least for the time being. Marco seemed to give in. Bank robbery, fiasco. Certainty: Marco grassed on Carlo. Who informed him, day by day, of Carlo’s plans, who gave him the means to betray him? Luciana, of course.

The friend more faithful than the woman. Posthumous revenge. Can’t let that betrayal go unpunished. Filippo adds another box after the bank robbery, by way of an epilogue.

Filippo, aided by Pepe, kills Marco. The end.

It feels as if his story will hold up and, as to the question ‘why has he ended up as night watchman in a tower at La Défense?’ he also has an answer that will hold water. Assuming he manages to unravel the yarn right to the end, that is. All he has to do is to write.

As of now, Filippo’s days, asleep and awake, are peopled with intrusive characters and snatches of dialogue, all of which never leave him alone for a moment. And his nights, between security rounds, are entirely devoted to writing. He works relentlessly, revises, edits and deletes until he is satisfied he has found the right word, the one that pins down a fleeting thought. Right now, he feels something akin to happiness.

January

Marco has just died, during a fairly confusing turf war between Milanese and Romans, shot perhaps by Pepe. Or Filippo. The story ends there. For the author, it is a visceral certainty — it’s over. Full stop, no prisoners. He doesn’t want to know why, and he puts down his pen. So, he has come to the end of his endeavour. It isn’t going to be easy. He thought he would jump for joy, or do a dance — it’s done, it’s finished, I’ve got to the end, success. But not at all. After ten months of a lone undertaking verging on madness, ten months of it consuming all of his energy and of living intensely day and night through Carlo and Filippo, who are him and not him, the last line written, his characters abandon him, disintegrate, and he crumbles, the lifeblood sucked out of him. His brain is exhausted and empty, his body gives way like elastic slackening. For a few days he relishes this state of emptiness, and replenishes his energy.

And then, inevitably, the machine for churning out ideas and emotions starts up again, softly at first. The satisfaction of having managed to explain why and how he’s ended up in this windowless room in the Tour Albassur. Nothing either mediocre or risky, but a path of flesh and blood, of violence and freedom which fulfils him. But very soon, the sense of frustration inevitably returns with a vengeance.

I know very well why I’m here. But if I stay stuck in this windowless office in the bowels of a tower in La Défense as a night watchman, I’ll be giving Filippo a pathetic end. Who’s going to read my amazing tale? No one, not even Antoine, who doesn’t understand Italian. So what’s the point of all this effort? I didn’t just write it for myself, did I? I wrote it so that Lisa could read it, and be hurt by it. To make her understand that I exist, as much as Carlo, and alongside him. Will I have the guts to take my pile of paper to her and put the pages in her hands? I haven’t seen that woman in the ten months I’ve been living in France, but I’ve felt her burning hatred, like an animal lurking between the two of us. Of course not. And if I did, since she’s clever enough to realise that I’m stealing Carlo from her, she’s strong and determined enough to burn the manuscript. If I want her to read it, to be forced to read it, there’s only one way, and that is to publish it as a book. An object, that will live through its readers and so become indestructible. Like those piles of books at Lisa’s place, at Cristina’s, in the studio apartment that’s my home, all around me. A book, written by me, who’s hardly ever read anything. One hell of a revenge. Becoming a writer. ‘You are a writer,’ Antoine said, seeing me scribbling. Since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. A way of giving my Filippo a life worthy of him, in the world of cultured people, not hoodlums? And in the world of women like Lisa and Cristina, beautiful, desirable, unattainable. It was seeing their faces emerge from my doodling that made me decide to write, wasn’t it? See it through to the end. Now that the story is written, I’ve got to publish it. But how the hell do I go about that?

The question goes round and round in his head for a few days, a few nights. One thing is clear — he won’t be able to manage it on his own. He needs a friend in the book world, the world of other people, to act as go-between and introduce him. Who could do that? In Paris, the choice is limited, and it doesn’t take long to run through the list of people he knows who may be able to help. Go through Lisa? Don’t even think about it. The Italian refugees’ lawyers? Only met them once. The memory still smarts — they were so stuck-up and condescending. ‘Let us know if you have any problems. We act on behalf of political refugees, not criminals like you, but since Lisa sent you, we’ll see what we can do.’ No point. Cristina? He recalls how she’d dazzled him on their first meeting, her beauty, her elegance, her smile. And then his hopes shattered. The impersonal handshake, ‘I arranged everything with Lisa,’ and Filippo, anonymous, no surname, just a first name, who had no say in the matter, the rent in cash in an envelope left on a shelf in the hall wardrobe, a few rare, fleeting encounters on the landing. ‘Hello’, ‘Good evening’, and then nothing. He had always put her in the same camp as Lisa. But he recalls her mass of copper hair and her smile, the same as the girl on the mountain. A sign? Filippo wonders whether he’s missed something. Cristina had said, ‘I’ve lived alone in this huge apartment … since Giorgio, my partner left … my phone number’s on the kitchen table…’ Was that a come-on? Not sure. Did he have any other options? No. Besides, to exist in Cristina’s eyes, revenge … So, he’ll have to try his luck. Tomorrow, he’ll buy a nice cardboard cover, write on it ‘ESCAPE, a story by Filippo Zuliani’, slip the pages inside and put the whole thing in Cristina Pirozzi’s letter-box, without a word of explanation. He wouldn’t know what to say.