REMEMBERING THAT CESARE owned a small apartment in St James’s, I asked him if Rossa and I could stay there. He gave us the keys gladly, unaware of my plans.
The apartment could easily have been Ted’s. Wallpaper with stripes in a shade of burgundy, antique furniture, pictures by minor artists of the Italian seicento, Afghan carpets. There was a small, dark ante-room, a living room with two leather armchairs, a desk, two bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen. It was the perfect place for Ted, who had to have the same tastes and manias as Cesare. There, he would prepare to murder Sax.
I took Rossa to lunch at Tony’s and we saw Sax. He was alone, relaxed, leafing through a newspaper. He didn’t notice our presence, and I tried to memorise every detail of the place and to capture every expression on his face. I thought that the man sitting in front of me, who with a simple and natural gesture was dunking a biscuit in his tea, was a great painter, old by now, whose paintings are recognised everywhere. People would say:
“That’s a Warhol, a Van Gogh, a Goya, a Caravaggio, an Antonello da Messina, a Sax”.
There he was, fragile, defenceless, and observing him aroused a different emotion in me compared to the other times. Who was I to decide to kill him, even through a novel and a fictional character like Ted? I began to realise that Ted would not do it because, as he was preparing to commit the crime, to eliminate his rival for ever and avenge Lisa’s offended love, something would make him see that he couldn’t do it. Killing Sax would not be right, it wouldn’t bring him luck. Besides, wasn’t it absurd to think of winning a woman by killing the man she was in love with? Death would make him a hero, an irreplaceable memory, while all he would be for Lisa was a friend unable to console her.
No, Ted would understand that Sax ought to be challenged. He would have to let him know, through mutual acquaintances, that a young man, very rich and seductive, was winning Lisa, who had got over things, was blooming again and having the time of her life. This would certainly upset Sax. A slap in the face to his vanity. But was Sax a jealous man? And was Ted capable of falling in love with someone? Was it possible for him to imagine living with a woman? Would he be able to give up being a criminal, working only as an art dealer and living a normal life? Was he sure he could control the urge to kill? Ted would understand that in reality Julian had loved Lisa and his pictures bore witness to that love. But, at a certain point, he could no longer live with her, he needed new emotions, and his attention had shifted to a fat black woman who aroused an incontrollable sexual desire in him and this too was borne out by the portrait he had made of her.
Lisa should not be consoled, but seduced. In his way, Ted too was an artist. He had to tell her that he was a killer wanted all over the world. This might terrify her, but perhaps her curiosity would be aroused and she would fall in love with him. But he wouldn’t trust Lisa completely, just as he didn’t trust anyone. He had gone unpunished because he had chosen a solitary life and he would never let his secret out. He couldn’t do that, he could not fall in love, nor could he kill an artist. A great criminal must know his own limitations. But if Ted didn’t kill Sax and if he gave up the idea of winning Lisa’s love, how would the book end? With no crime and no coup de théatre would the novel still hang together? On the contrary, the strength of the story would be that of setting itself up as the great novel of seduction, envy and passion that I had in mind. The storyline would be charged with tensions right to the finish. Only when the perfect crime was ready to be committed would Ted change his mind. Lisa would never be his.
It was certainly a very particular situation. We were at Tony’s, Rossa was eating a salad while I bit into a hamburger. In front of us was Julian Sax, taking the last sips of his tea and leafing through the newspaper. He could never have imagined what had been going through my mind over all those months. He didn’t know that I envied him, that he had become my obsession, that he had inspired me to write a book and that only a moment before I had decided that Ted would not kill him. He didn’t know that Lisa would always love him. Luckily, Rossa too was unaware of all this. She would have to wait until she read the novel.