The Man Who Risked It All Read Free Page B

I’m doing what I want. Go away.”
    He watched me in silence, and right away I had the feeling that something wasn’t right. He looked relaxed. Yes, that’s it, relaxed!
    He raised his cigar to his mouth, calmly.
    “Go on. Jump!”
    I was stunned by his words. I was expecting anything but that. Who was this guy? A weirdo? He wanted to see me fall and get off on it? Shit! It had to happen to me! But this can’t be! What had I done to God, for crying out loud? I was incensed. It was not possible, not possible, not …
    “What are you waiting for?” he asked in a terribly tranquil tone. “Jump!”
    The situation left me completely at a loss. My thoughts were knocking into each other without managing to come together. Struggling, I managed to say few words.
    “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
    He drew on his cigar and held the smoke in his mouth for a while, before exhaling it in thin coils that vanished before they reached me. His eyes riveted on mine paralyzed me. This guy had enough charisma to bend the Eiffel Tower.
    “You’re angry. But you are suffering a lot deep inside yourself,” he said in a very calm voice, with a light accent that I didn’t recognize.
    “That’s not hard to guess.”
    “You’re atrociously unhappy and can’t bear to go on living.”
    His words troubled me and made me feel my pain. I nodded. The silence weighed on me.
    “Let’s say I’ve had big problems all my life.”
    A slow, very slow puff on the cigar.
    “There are no big problems. There are only little people.”
    A wave of anger rose up in me. I could feel my blood beating in my temples, which were burning hot. I swallowed hard.
    “It’s easy to take advantage of my situation to humiliate me. Who do you think you are? Of course, I suppose you know how to solve all your problems?”
    With incredible self-assurance, he replied: “Yes, I do. And other people’s problems as well.”
    I was beginning to feel ill. Now I was fully conscious of being surrounded by the void. I was beginning to be afraid. Fear had finally found me and was worming its way inside. My hands were moist. I absolutely mustn’t look down.
    He went on: “It’s true that by jumping your problems will disappear with you. But the situation isn’t as fair as that… .”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Once again, you’re the one who’s going to suffer. Your problems won’t feel anything. As a solution, this is not very balanced.”
    “You don’t suffer jumping from a tower. The collision is so violent that you simply stop living without having time to feel anything. No pain. I’ve informed myself.”
    He quietly laughed.
    “What’s making you laugh?”
    “That’s true—if you start from the hypothesis that you are still alive at the moment you hit the ground. That’s where you’re wrong. Nobody arrives down there alive.”
    A long draw on the cigar. I felt more and more ill. Dizzy. I needed to sit down.
    “The truth is,” he went on, taking his time, “they all die during the fall from a heart attack provoked by horror, the abominable horror of the fall and the unbearable vision of the ground coming nearer at one hundred and fifty miles an hour. They are struck down by an atrocious fright that makes them spew out their innards before their heart explodes. Their eyes are bulging out of their sockets at the moment of death.”
    My legs were shaking. I nearly fainted. My head was spinning. I felt extremely sick. Don’t look down, I told myself. Definitely not. Stay standing straight up. Concentrate on him. Don’t take your eyes off him.
    “Perhaps,” he said after a silence, speaking slowly, “perhaps I have something to propose to you.”
    I stayed silent, hanging on his words.
    “A sort of deal between us,” he continued, leaving his words floating in the air.
    “A deal?” I stuttered.
    “Here’s how it is: You remain alive, and I’ll look after you. I’ll set you back on the right road, make you a man capable of