The Man Who Risked It All Read Free Page A

beyond was drawing me, gently, irresistibly, and I had the strange feeling that my place was there, that my soul would flower there. My life on earth had no reason to be. I had had the conceit to cling to it, to pretend that all was well, and life had sent me Audrey to make me experience an unbearable pain and in this way to face my destiny at last.
    The place was suggested to me by my memory, and it’s no doubt not pure chance that it had been kept there, in one of my memory’s mysterious compartments. Some time before I had read, in a magazine left behind by Audrey, a controversial article by someone named Dubrovski. In it, the author laid out his theory on the right to suicide, and his idea that, if you were going to commit suicide, you might as well do it properly. He described a suitable place for what he poetically called “the flight of one’s life”—the Eiffel Tower. It is totally secure, he explained, except at one point that it’s useful to know. You have to go up to the Jules Verne, the luxury restaurant on the second floor, go into the ladies’ room, then open the little door marked Private to the left of the washbasin. It leads to a tiny room that serves as a broom cupboard. The window in there is not barred and opens directly onto the girders. I remembered these details as though I had read them that very morning. Dying at the Eiffel Tower had something grand about it. Revenge for a mediocre life.
    One more step …
    I had to walk far enough along the beam to reach a suitable point where there was no metal structure below me to impede my fall.
    I was leaving nothing behind me, not a friend, not a relative, not a pleasure, nothing that could make me regret my action. I was ready, in my head and in my body.
    One last step …
    That’s it. The right place . I stood still. Consciousness was already beginning to leave me. I took a deep breath and slowly pivoted on my heels to the right, toward the abyss that I didn’t look into but whose presence, whose beauty, I could feel.
    I was on a level with the flywheel of the Jules Verne’s private elevator. Three yards of nothingness separated us. From where I was, I could see only the grooved edge holding the cable, as it circled the wheel, then plunged into the void. The void. The windows of the restaurant were on the other side of the tower. Nobody could see me. No noise from the restaurant reached me. I heard nothing but a gentle humming, the sound of the night. Those shimmering lights in the distance were drawing me, hypnotizing me. The warm, intoxicating air was flooding me with supernatural well-being. Most of my thoughts had left me. I no longer inhabited my body. I was no longer me. I was merging with space, life, death. I no longer existed as a separate being. I was life . I …
    A cough …
    In a flash, it brought me out of the state I was in, just as the snapping of a hypnotist’s fingers breaks his patient’s trance.
    To my right, at the end of the girder, stood a man looking me straight in the eyes. About 60, with silver-gray hair, wearing a dark suit. His eyes, lit by the reflection from one of the tower’s lights, seemed to emerge from a void. All my life I’ll remember those eyes, a steely blue to freeze your blood.
    A feeling of anger mixed with my surprise. I had taken every precaution not to be seen. I was certain I had not been followed. I felt as if I were in a bad film, in which a rescuer miraculously arrives at just the right moment to prevent a suicide.
    I had made a mess of my life. Others had taken control of it, but my death belonged to me. To me alone. There was no question of me allowing someone to hold me back, to convince me with soothing words that life was beautiful all the same, or that others were unhappier than me, or I don’t know what. In any case, no one could understand, and what’s more, I wasn’t asking for anything. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be alone. Alone.
    “Leave me alone. I’m a free man.