“Don’t lie.”
“I swear! You can check for yourself. You must know, but you won’t admit it. You were in the papers every day until the public’s morbid interest in your crimes began to wane, and that’s all the documentation I used; I didn’t put in anything that wasn’t already in the public domain. I didn’t have special sources or prior personal knowledge. I don’t have any underworld contacts; I spend all my time bent over the drawing board, in a world of fantasy. .”
“Don’t lie. It’s no fantasy. Everything you put in this comic happened exactly like you show it.”
The cartoonist’s voice was more natural now, not so shaky; he was taking heart from his irrefutable reasoning.
“But that’s because I got it from the newspapers! It’s all there, you can ask anyone. You weren’t reading the papers in prison, so you don’t know how much space they devoted to your story, how much information they gathered, how many photos of you they found, how meticulously they reconstructed each one of your exploits. . The material was all there, ready and waiting, all I had to do was write the script. . Well, I don’t want to get too technical, but—”
“Don’t lie.”
The same hoarse refrain: the record was stuck. What more could the cartoonist say? His arguments having failed to persuade, the panic was returning and with it the pallor and the urgent desire not to die. He had placed too much faith in language and reason. He’d forgotten that he was at the mercy of a terrible criminal, who could not have become what he was had he not already been an insane monster, impermeable to humanity. Already, and still.
And yet, when the criminal spoke, which he promptly did (all this took place in a few fleeting instants of horror), he too resorted to the irrefutable.
“Look at the date.”
These words introduced a new element, which, on the face of it, undermined the argument based on the newspapers, because if anything is dated, it’s the daily press. A complex rearrangement took place in the cartoonist’s mind, with the instantaneity that characterizes moments of high tension. He felt that he had settled the matter once and for all by appealing to the evidence of the newspapers; now the question of dates would oblige him to enter into the specific details of the proof. On the other hand, it was encouraging; by raising the question, his interlocutor was showing his willingness to rise to the level of a linguistic (and numerical) conversation, and that was a domain in which the cartoonist felt much more at home than in the world of action.
This relief, however, lasted only the few seconds it took him to focus (anxious sweat was running into his eyes, blurring his vision) and read the date in question, written by hand at the top of the cover. Those cheap comic books were almost never dated, and collectors like him had to determine the year of publication indirectly, by means of stubborn, laborious research. They calculated and triangulated, comparing the styles of the cartoonists and the themes of the scriptwriters, using providential references to current affairs that had found their way into the timeless extravagance of the adventures. A wealth of idle, playful erudition was mobilized, with no prestige or award to be won, but that only made it more enjoyable.
The date showed that the comic was forty years old, published when both of them had been children (the criminal and the cartoonist were roughly the same age). That explained the yellowish color of the paper, the neat grid of panels, the old-fashioned layout, and the dog-eared pages. It also explained, compellingly, why the cartoonist’s syllogism had made no impression on the criminal. How could you argue that a comic published forty years ago was based on events reported by the press in the last few months?
Because of its age, this element was, paradoxically, too new for the cartoonist to absorb straightaway. He tried to step back and consider it from a distance, not only to see it in perspective, but also to put the exchange, if he could, on a more civilized footing, and above all to buy time, which, in the circumstances, was the only thing that really mattered:
“I’m a comic book collector. .”
The criminal interrupted him:
“Don’t lie.”
His leitmotif again! But this time the cartoonist had visible proof to back his claim.
“I’ve got lots of comic books, from the forties on, I’ve been collecting since I was a kid. . You can’t say I’m lying, because you saw them and you took this one. . I don’t know how you found it so easily, just like that, among the thousands of comics in my collection. . though they are well organized, it’s true, by year, by publisher, by title. .”
“Shut up and explain—”
This time it was the cartoonist who interrupted:
“Creating and collecting are parallel activities for me. They’re separate, but they nourish each other, inevitably. Most of my colleagues are collectors too.”
“What do I care? Why are you lying? This”—the criminal shook the comic book violently, scrunching it up with no regard for its value as a collector’s item—“didn’t come out of the newspapers, son of a. .!”
“That comic, I swear. . I’d forgotten all about it. You saw yourself how many I’ve collected: thousands and thousands. . That’s how it is with collectors, we can never have enough. . There must be lots I haven’t even read. . All I take from the masters is the form, insofar as I can. For the plots, I use the newspapers, the crime reports. .”
The criminal exploded in fury (miraculously, his shouts were not accompanied by a jerking of the wrist: the slightest movement could have been fatal).
“What the fuck do you mean? The police didn’t know who I was, and the journalists had no idea! Now they know, thanks to you!”
“But I followed the cases in the newspapers!”
“Well, the papers are going to follow you now, smart-ass, bullshit artist! And they won’t have any work to do, because you showed it all just like it happened, and it’s obviously me in the drawings.”
“No. . I don’t know. . you’re confusing me. Now you mention it, maybe I used the Identi-Kit pictures. .”
“Ha!”
The criminal laughed sardonically, full of contempt for those crude sketches patched together by the police. Although the cartoonist shared his opinion, he attempted a lukewarm defense:
“I don’t know. Sometimes they get it right.”
“Come on! Don’t make me angrier than I already am. . No, do! Go on lying, so I lose control and get it over with, since I’m going to do it anyway.”
“No.”
It was a cry from the soul, and the vibration of the cartoonist’s vocal cords perilously tensed the part of his neck on which the blade was pressing. The men were in an uncomfortable, strained position, both standing in the middle of the semidark studio, the criminal’s massive body pressing against the cartoonist’s back, his right arm bent, elbow out, so as to place the knife in exactly the right position for throat-slitting, the left arm around the other side, extended, holding up the comic book. It was almost like a sculptural group, except for the trembling of one figure, the other’s expressive little jolts, and of course the moving lips of both. It was hard to see how the composition could remain stable, given the turbulent passions to which it was subject (revenge, terror). But it wasn’t all that strange: statues hold still too, although they often represent, in a direct or allegorical way, volcanic passions, including, precisely, vindictiveness and fear.
“No,” the cartoonist repeated. “Are you accusing me of plagiarism? No way. . Not because I care about bourgeois morality or property rights. . I’m not like that. .” He was trying, crazily, to win over his attacker by taking the outlaw’s side. “What I care about is innovation, invention, creation. . Anyway, the world of comics is a kind of fan club; like I said, we’re all collectors, we know our stuff, and we can tell a copy at a glance. . You even have to watch out for unconscious memories!”