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But mankind’s fascination with the infinite variations in the art of fire remains immense, perhaps precisely because of the air of secrecy surrounding it. On the playful, popular level alone, no festival or fair, no mountain village or international metropolis, is complete without glittering luminous pyrotechnics, marvelled at by children, admired by adults.

Paris couldn’t get out of it. Certainly not with a festival like the 14th of July on the horizon, even though French pride had been dealt a severe knock by events in Indochina, and the festivities were going to be in a minor key.

Fireworks are obtained by mixing metals with explosive powders. As they burn, carbonates and oxides of different metals produce the different tones and colours of each firework. There are rockets called ‘chokes’ or ‘vortices’ that rotate on their own axes and soar into the air leaving a luminous trail. The ‘bombs’ or ‘aerial shells’, on the other hand, need iron mortars fixed to the ground with wooden battens. Each one is a cartridge full of smaller fireworks which, once a certain altitude has been reached, explode in all directions. By modifying the arrangement of the charges within the main firework, different shapes and intensities may be achieved.

Toni knew these things because he had always admired fireworks displays. He had researched the subject, he knew a few things about it. He had often said it was how he would like to go. A nice multicoloured bang lighting up the sky. Now they had ‘Stars of the East’, his favourites. Golden tears filling the sky. Toni watched the spectacle from inside his car, through the windscreen.

A rotten year for France, 1954. Who gives a toss? thought Toni.

He thought he’d fucked them good and proper. He’d fucked them twice over. The Marseillais. The bastards.

But he had been waiting for them. Dead-eye from Naples always settled his scores.

He had sent three of them to their creator. Toni thought of the other, less choreographic use of the black powder.

The blaze of the Stars of the East was at its peak, Toni could see it everywhere, increasingly blurred. The taste of blood filled his mouth.

Toni couldn’t help noticing that it was not as he had imagined it would be. A nice polychrome explosion colouring the sky. It was different from the colourful geometric figures, the intestine bursting from his torn belly. And the gilded tears of the Stars of the East inundating the sky were different from the blood now flooding into the back space of the car and pouring copiously out of it, on to the pavement, tinting it a dark red. Fuck tuberculosis, he thought.

Toni thought about all these things. As he died.

II Eastern suburbs of Bologna, 2 September

McGuffin had shown cartoons of cats chasing mice.

The mouse called ‘Jerry’ lived behind the wainscoting of a spacious and well-furnished living room. Inside, a bed made from a matchbox, and various bits of furniture recycled from the rubbish. There was a housekeeper, but all you ever saw of her was her feet, and her fat calves.

She was trying to hit the cat with a broom. The cat had turned the living room into a complete mess. The cat’s name was ‘Tom’. He spent his days chasing ‘Jerry’.

Mice and cats scampered around McGuffin, at the top of a mound of rubbish. Often a cat would doze off inside McGuffin. She didn’t look like ‘Tom’.

The mice had long fur and long tails, and they didn’t look much like ‘Jerry’.

At dawn, McGuffin’s broken screen reflected the rising sun.

At sunset, the broken mirror in front of it reflected the red of the sinking sun.

At night, squeaking crickets, distant barking, insistent miaowing, the noise of shoes or bottles thrown at cats to shut them up.

A smashed chair. Radio dials. Irreparable gadgets.

McGuffin couldn’t have known, but the smell was terrible.

McGuffin imagined it.

Never again would he capture electromagnetic waves to turn them into dreams or nightmares.

Never again would anyone stare at him with eyes as dead as the cigarette stubs that surrounded him now.

At least McGuffin had a purpose. The cat was pregnant. She would give birth before Christmas.

He had passed from home to home. Now he was a home. Someone really needed him, at last.

If he had had a mouth, a face, McGuffin would have smiled.

III Montreal, Quebec, 11 September

The moment of glory. The whole of Montreal seeing him evening after evening. Friends and relations, even the ones in the Ville de Québec.

Arsenic et vieilles dentelles. A rustproof pochade, the story of two adorable old ladies, a crazy nephew who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, a criminal on the run and a secret that must not be confessed. He played the role of Mortimer, the sane nephew, a newly-wed husband preparing to set off on his honeymoon.

Laughter, smiles, even requests for autographs. Jean-Jacques Bondurant ran, rolled his eyes, raised his eyebrow. Exaggeratedly, like Cary in the film version. He was perfect, the monozygotic twin of the most elegant man in the world. Apart from the fact that he delivered his lines in québecois French.

The audience adored him. Twenty performances at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert, and the bookings were still coming in.

Not bad for a benefit show, with most of the parts taken by amateurs.

He remembered the opening night. Charlotte in the front row, happy, proud of him.

In the photographs published in magazines, Charlotte and Jean-Jacques had eyes full of sapphires and emeralds. Cary Grant’s double and his wife. They smiled towards the future. Alive. Strong.

The curtain was about to rise. The noise quickened his blood. His Quintino suit was a second skin.

He guarded a secret in his heart. Wherever he went, he took a note with him. The note consisted of a few lines and a two-word farewell. They bounced around his cranium, from one side to the other.

Au revoir.

The smile spread across Jean-Jacques’ face until it filled his cheeks.

Merci beaucoup, monsieur Grant.

IV Los Angeles, 11 September

Betsy had advised Cary to go and see Dr Clapas. All her friends had good things to say about him. The events of the past few months had banished depression, returning Cary Grant to the world that was clamouring for his return. Now they had to try to understand the reasons for his depression, to make sure that it didn’t come back. Never again was the sun to darken, nor the hand that moved the razor to tremble.

Clapas was French. A pointed white beard, silver-rimmed glasses. He had moved to California with his wife in 1949, at the age of fifty.

If the truth be told, it appeared that he had fled, after a rather unpleasant experience culminating in a nervous collapse. A dangerous criminal had taken him hostage in his own home. The man was a patient and had turned up for his session, but the police, who had been on his trail for some time, had surrounded the building. Holding him at gunpoint, the criminal (a multiple robber and murderer with anarchist and subversive tendencies) had told Clapas of all the atrocities he had committed. Clapas’s anamnesis had been so mercilessly accurate that the criminal had gone mad and, having managed to free himself, committed suicide in the most grotesque fashion: bursting into a police station, guns in hand, and opening fire on the officers. The press had reported his last words: ‘Shoot at my genitals!’ adding that some policemen had followed his advice. Dr Clapas had become frightened and, fearing an underworld vendetta, had fled the country.