Free Escape by Dominique Manotti Page B

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 eithermediocre 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