Escape (8 page)
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.
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
3 February
Filippo is wearing a clean white shirt when he walks into the bar, his breath tight, his mind numb. Yesterday, Cristina slid a note under his door. ‘Meet me tomorrow, 7.30 p.m. at the Café Pouchkine, the Russian bar two streets away. We’ll be able to have a quiet chat about your manuscript.’ He has been in a semi-comatose state of waiting ever since, feeling as though he has stopped breathing. The interior is very dark; he blinks, hesitates, spots a shape waving at him from the back of the room and makes his way over. Cristina is sitting at a table, a glass of lager in front of her.
‘Have a seat. Same?’
‘No, I’ll have a coffee.’
‘Bad idea, the coffee’s dreadful here.’ She signals to the barman, then leans towards him, amused and curious.
‘So tell me, this story, is it your story?’ Filippo feels himself blushing, and hangs his head.
‘It’s a story that I’ve written.’
‘I understand. It’s a novel. But the main character, Filippo, is that you? The same name, is that a coincidence? Filippo, head bowed, avoids her gaze for a while, then takes the plunge.
‘I could change the name.’
‘What about Carlo? I think I’ve identified him, he’s a former Red Brigades leader, isn’t he? Did you know him personally?’
‘Yes, I knew him.’ Filippo smiles. ‘You could put it like that. I knew him well. I was in jail with him – we were cellmates for
six months. He was my friend. We escaped together, and now he’s dead.’
‘Like in the novel?’
‘Like in the novel.’
‘Was he Lisa’s boyfriend?’
‘I don’t know. He never talked to me about her.’
‘Have you told Lisa that?’
‘Yes … I think she was angry with me because of that…’
‘Understandably. When did you write all this?’
Filippo is taken aback by the question. The answer seems obvious.
‘At night. I’m a night watchman, as you know, in a tower, right near here. There’s not much to do – you have to stare at a wall of CCTV monitors and nothing ever happens. In eight months we haven’t had more than a dozen incidents, none of them serious. I’ve been writing every night since I’ve had the job, and I finished a few days ago. I didn’t know what to do with it, that’s why…’
He clears his throat and looks up, meeting her eye at last. This is the decisive moment.
‘I’m no expert, but I can tell you that I read your novel in one go. It’s good, maybe very good.’
Cristina stops, watches him. He gets his breath back, like a deep-sea diver surfacing. He relaxes, glances around the room, takes in the panelling, the banquettes and the heavy wooden armchairs with red leather cushions. He is on the verge of smiling. He really is charming, this young man whom she had taken for an almost completely tongue-tied illiterate. Author of a rather dazzling novel, or a small-time crook trying to pull off a scam? We’ll see. But a good-looking lad in any case, and touching. Cristina takes a sip of beer, finds it has a delicious slight aftertaste of adventure, a feeling that has been cruelly lacking since the departure of Giorgio, her partner, the brilliant journalist.
‘In any case, your story deserves to be published.’
‘I’d love that, but I don’t know how to go about it.’
‘I can help you. I’ve lived here in Paris for a long time, with a well-known Italian journalist. I’m very familiar with the world of the press, and publishing. If you let me have your manuscript, I can have it read and possibly find you a publisher.’
He wavers for a moment, and then: ‘I’m so thrilled that I don’t even know what to say.’
‘Don’t say anything. Drink your vile cup of coffee and leave it to me. I’ll probably be in touch next week.
Summoned by the publisher to whom Cristina had sent his manuscript, Filippo enters the ancient building in the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, fear in his belly and a vague sense of guilt. A warm welcome from the boss’s PA, a beautiful blonde soberly dressed in black.