Open Door Read Online Free Page A

can be discerned an old woman, a not-so-old woman, a mature man, another younger man, and two children rather than one. They don’t, however, have our secondary group of curious onlookers, who don’t dare approach the railings, preferring to remain protected by the darkness, but who comment, murmur and speculate all the same. Like the cars and buses, which, before turning into the avenue some fifty metres ahead, slow down without actually stopping, resembling a funeral cortège. Some drivers are in too much of a hurry and don’t have time to pay attention to the patrol cars, or the bridge, or the police cordon, far less to what is going on up above, and give three sharp blasts on their horns, as they would in celebration, to hurry on those ahead.
    For a while nothing changes on the bridge. Some people get impatient, the girl wants to go, she’s hungry. And the father tries to lighten the mood with a joke at which no one laughs: Come on, mate, make your mind up, my pizza’s getting cold, he says to the person up there, who, of course, doesn’t hear him. Or maybe he does, because not a minute later we begin to notice movement once again on the cross-beam of the bridge. Two of the firemen stay at the highest point, illuminating the scene: what can they see, what are they planning, I wonder. The third is just a few metres away from the person threatening to jump, and he begins a game of push and pull, coming and going, in which one advances and the other retreats. They know, like two fencers contemplating one last, fatal lunge, that to touch the other would be to finish everything. The first must be saying something like: Stay there, I’m not going to do anything, I just want to talk to you. And the other: Come any closer and I’ll jump. Each wants the other to stay where he is. But until when? It’s a blind impasse, with no solution. One knows what he wants, the other, seemingly, does not.
    It’s half nine and once more the action builds to a viscous nothing. I don’t want to think any more. I don’t want to and yet I wonder whether I should do something, try something, approach the fireman speaking into his walkie-talkie and ask him something. But what?
    The lad with the pizza announces: He’s not going to jump at all, you’ll see. And he takes the girl’s hand again, turns around and departs, not without glancing back once or twice as he walks away; surely it can’t happen right now, not after waiting so long. But no, he’s right, it doesn’t look like anyone’s jumping after all.
    In a while, the man leading the operation on the bridge takes the initiative again. The suicide case isn’t putting up as much resistance as before. He’s getting tired. The fireman advances a few steps and must be speaking to him. I wonder if he has something prepared or whether he’s improvising a few words on the spot to say that everything can be worked out, nothing’s final, except for death. No, not that, the word death can’t be prudent in such circumstances, better to avoid it. And the jumper will say to him: No, nothing has any meaning. A difficult argument to refute.
    Now a small spark appears between the two. Look, explains the old woman, he’s lighting a cigarette and passing it to him. See? Yes, a tiny ember that weakens and revives as the smoke is drawn in or exhaled illuminates the black point that is not quite yet a head but which shows up against the black of the bridge and the blue-black of the sky. The shape smokes and breathes. Anyone would smoke at a time like this.
    I put my hands in my trouser pockets to fish for my cigarettes, and with one in my mouth, we’re equal, from a distance. Two pairs of lungs filling with smoke. I feel calmer, he’s not going to jump, it’s for the best. The threat of a storm also seems to have passed right by.
    I count: one, two, three long drags. Some, like the woman with the fake pearl necklace, have resigned themselves to not seeing anything and move away slowly, along