He did not understand, the judge, when he sentenced me. He took me for one of those crazy people who claim to be … Who claim to be … But how can we lack humility so much to claim to be by God, whatever the name we give him? And it does not give all rights at all!
I explained it to my lawyer, but he told me it was not a defense who would work. Because hers worked, maybe? I took it for ten years anyway. And the humiliation of psychiatric exams! Not really talented psychiatrists, to looking in early childhood, to ask questions more stupid than each other. All this to declare that I am healthy in body and spirit. Vegetarian diet and two footings a week so healthy body, it’s obvious, as for the spirit, I do not feel to be crazier than anyone around me. That’s what they said in court, a tendency to neurasthenia, but no depression. Normal, at the time in which one lives, There’s nothing to jump in the air every day!
So he struggled to find a line of defense, my lawyer. A childhood without history and loving parents. Studies without problems. No particular defaults, no enemies, no devastating addiction. A life stuck between my jogging, the concern for a balanced diet and my job in a pension fund. I am a “retirement silencer”, that does not mean that I kill pensioners to balance the pension plan, no, I calculate and verify their rights according to years of contribution. Nicknamed “the world of silence” by my colleagues, because their stories do not interest me, they could not say much when they were called to the bar. “A guy without story”, “He is very discreet, we could not suspect”.
He would have done better to listen to this lawyer who has become confused in a defense made of cheap psychoanalysis. “I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, Judge, why did my client take this knife off and how did he manage to pass the checks? to enter to the Orsay Museum, among the Matisse, Renoir, Gauguin, Staël, Courbet and other masterpieces known by all humanity. And it is among these illustrious painters and their works that he decided to commit his odious and barbarous act …” I listened, curious to know where he was going. it’s my skin that was played there…
My parents did not come to my trial, they were too ashamed. They had to remain locked in their suburban pavilion with millstones, shutters closed to escape the journalists and the eyes of the neighbors. The newspapers had made the front page of my actions. My lawyer told me that I had also made headlines and even twenty hours. Goal achieved…
Juliet had come. Juliet? She works in the service of the contributions two floors down, we saw at the canteen at noon. We were walking in the park next door when it was sunny days. I invited her to dinner at the restaurant one night. We spent the night together, then others. It was good. But I did not have much to say to her, so, as she explained when the lawyer called her at the bar, we took some distance …
Journalists took notes: heartache or heartbreak? It was a twisted explanation, but she would sell papers so why not use it? Juliet gave me a small wave of her hand, all intimidated in the courtroom. Maybe to tell me that she did not mind me too much. She said that I am someone who is gentle and calm, without which, someone who lives very quietly. She had not noticed anything in my behavior that could explain my gesture. Juliette blushed when the lawyer asked her questions about … Finally, about our privacy. In a small voice barely audible, she said, it was good … The lawyer of the civil party seemed disappointed that our relationship did not reveal any perversion that could have explained my gesture and pass it for the act of a delusional so skillful that he had deceived the psychiatric experts. It would have helped, but it was clear from the unpacking of my life that it was desperate … Normal.
Before the deliberation of the jury, the judge asked me if I wanted to say something in my defense. On a gesture from him, I jumped up. I cleared my voice, glanced at my lawyer who told me not to reveal anything about my intentions.
I looked at the audience for a moment that seemed like an eternity, especially the bench of journalists. I did not have any paper to know what I had to say, all that was ready in my head for so long … I took advantage of all these looks focused on me before starting.
-If you do not know Erostrate you can not understand my gesture. This man lived a long time ago in Greece. On July 21, 356 BC, he set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Temple of Artemis was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. So why will this gesture ask me?
I was interrupted by the judge who did not seem to taste my words about such an old event and which seemed to him unrelated to the present case.
- To the facts, come to the facts …
I took advantage of his interruption to take a few sips of water and contemplate the assembly again.
-Well, it’s under torture that Erostrate confessed his real motives. He sought celebrity at all costs and had found no other way to achieve it! To death, he was condemned and the Ephesians forbade his name to be pronounced … But Erostratus went through the ages and almost two thousand years later after his gesture, Jean-Paul Sartre devoted a short story to him where he says more or less this: we still remember Erostrate while the name of the architect of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the world has fallen into oblivion …
I paused again, the judge said nothing, I think he was beginning to understand.
-So ladies and gentlemen, Judge, more than two thousand years after Jesus Christ, torture no longer exists in this beautiful country and so much the better, so I will tell you everything of my own free will. It is with a little emphasis that I express myself, because for me the moment is solemn. I will join Erostrate.
-If I attacked the famous painting of Courbet, it is not to fight against an ill-asserted Oedipus, if I lacerated it, cut it and started to burn it before the guards could stop me, it is simply to destroy … The origin of the World, that we remember for a long time my gesture as that of Erostrate, for, just, simply, in History with a great H … EXIST.
