Free Portrait of a Man by Georges Perec, David Bellos Page B

that later. At the moment what matters is finishing your tunnel. But Mr Otto Schnabel must not see it, otherwise he’ll set a trap to catch you. So?
    Your imagination is soaring, is it, dear sir? So let’s have a look. Deeds follow words. Take a sufficiently wide and long plank, easilyfound among the panels used as try-outs for the Condottiere. Scrabble around until you find two large nails. They are found. Drive them into the masonry with the mallet you see before you, set just a little further apart than the width of the plank. Bend aforementioned nails. Slide plank between them. Push. The plank hits the soil, the nails hold it in place like pegs. Dig out the soil that’s just underneath. As you dig, the plank advances. And the tunnel, thanks to man’s genius, is now sheltered by just a thin layer of soil – as long as you’ve reckoned it right – supported by the plank. Otto sees nothing. And when you’ve decided it’s time to emerge, you retract the plank. The soil collapses. An ocean of light floods into the room. A gaping hole appears.
    An hour will go by. And in an hour’s time? Mr Gaspard Winckler, you are free. A feeling he will never have known, something unlike anything else … He’ll be lost in his freedom. He’ll drown in it. He’ll walk the roads. He’ll be a vagrant. He’ll be totally bewildered …
    What do you look like as you do it? You raise your arm, you bring it down, you drag a small amount of soil and a bit of mud towards you, you push the plank forward an inch, you slide along, you wriggle about like an earthworm, like a snake in the grass. What do you look like, half naked, with something like a cake-slicer in your hand, making mud pies like a boy on a beach. An uncomfortable position. It’s hot. You must be very dirty. What a busy day you’ve had! Do you remember Jérôme? Do you remember Rufus? Do you remember Madera? Do you remember Geneviève? Mila? Nicolas? Do you remember Split, Geneva, Paris? Do you remember Giottino,Memling, Cranach, Botticelli, Antonello? Do you remember the Three Magi, the Madonnas and Child, the Christ the Kings, the Resurrections, Donors, Princes, Princesses, Fools and Retinue, the Bremen Burghers, the Knights of the Sepulchre, the
Déjeuners sur L’Herbe
, the Bridges near Blois, the Three Peaches on a Table, the Boats at Saint-Omer? Do you remember the Masonic chests, the totems, the Upper Volta wood carvings, the Jamaican Three Pence Brown, or the sesterces of Diocletian? Do you remember Gstaad and Altenberg? Do you remember your life?
    His hands and his eyes. Anything by anybody from any period. All his own work. All of it, but nothing else. Gaspard the forger. Italian specialities. That dead crowd that had been robbed and betrayed. Cleaned out. Gaspard the forger. Roll up, roll up, the whole world is on show. Admire. The man who knows it all. The only person who managed to copy the Mona Lisa’s smile, to unravel the secrets of the Incas, to learn the forgotten techniques of Aurignacian man. Come and see the history of art in one volume. Gaspard the forger. Gaspard Winckler. Period media and backing. Works on commission …
    The rest would be lost in a guffaw. Forger.
Faussaire. Fausse ère
: wrong period. Bad times. Storm on the way. A forger’s forger. Necrophagist …
    Any answer? Anything certain? Anything obvious? No. Not yet. Not even an acceptable fact. Not quite a done deal. It’s as if having been a prisoner for years in an underground cell far from light and life – in the cellars of Split and Sarajevo, and the studio at Dampierre – he’d been getting ready for his escape for months, years, centuries,ages, by means of a tunnel, a passage through the earth, and that the coming moment would be the drawn-out unfolding of his own body in damp clay, dirt, fatigue, discouragement, obstinacy, and cramp. Then a hoarse breathing sound. Despair. For