The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  The previous year I’d gone to see the colonial exhibition. I was one of the nine million people who queued to see an interpretation of life in the French controlled territories. Grinning Africans in ostrich feathers danced comically. The scent of homemade coconut sweets wafted through the crowds. On the Lao stage a handful of bored non-Lao actors were threshing rice and pounding in an endless loop. A black-and-white film showed scenes of jolly villagers welcoming men in uniform, working beside them in the fields, drinking together. Of native girls learning from a white woman in crinoline how to use a steam iron. Every country had its film and none of them made mention of the schools poor local children weren’t allowed to attend or the slave porters carrying a new officer’s household goods, or natives being whipped for insulting an administrator. In fact, the actors at the colonial exhibition were all having such fun you’d want to hop on a steamer and join them. The French Communist Party ran an alternative exhibition showing the depressing truth of colonial occupation, but, naturally, very few people attended. Reality was such poor entertainment.

  Getting from Café de la Paix to l’Hotel de Rothschild would have only taken me ten minutes on the Metro. It was cheap and reliable, but I always felt the tentacles of claustrophobia squeezing my chest when I was under the ground. Whenever possible, I would walk. Paris was a beautiful, vibrant city, and it felt disrespectful to be slinking around beneath her. The cool wind was at my back as I started off along rue Auber past the Grand Hotel. The edifices always felt like the faces of ornamental canyons around me. Ladies wrestled with their parasols. A man chased his boater. Remembering the horse at La Paix, I kept one eye to the ground when I crossed to Boulevard Haussmann. The trees there had been trained to lean away from the buildings, which made it appear that the apartments were lounging back against the grey sky. I passed the depressing, windowless Chapelle Expiatoire and—cognac and wind assisted—I reached rue Berryer in twenty-five minutes.

  Any hopes I may have had of strolling up to the president as we perused the book display, looking into his soul and inviting him for a chat and an absinthe were thwarted when I turned the final corner to see that a large crowd had gathered opposite the hotel. Two gendarmes stood in the road in front of the onlookers motionless but for their black capes flapping like bat wings. There was no rope barrier, but the crowd comprised mainly elderly ladies and families with children holding small tricolors. An enterprising shoe-shine boy was taking advantage of the boots on display. The policemen had apparently assessed the danger level and decided there was no threat, so they had their backs to the crowd.

  It was very orderly and I could have probably slotted in amongst the old ladies, but I actually wanted to look at the exhibition and pick up a few bargains before they let in the public. Fortunately, we “Chinese” were at our most popular, so I ignored the police, who ignored me in turn, and entered an alleyway beside the hotel. I emerged at a rear door whose sign read tradesmen and hotel employees only. This was no fluke. Three months earlier, Boua and I had entered the hotel through this door whilst gate crashing a wine-tasting event. We had become quite competent at enjoying free French hospitality. On occasions, we’d even been able to convince people that we were the Japanese ambassador and his wife. Why not?

  For a presidential visit I’d expected security to be tighter on this occasion, but the commissionaire’s table inside the door was unattended. I was able to walk through the busy kitchen and the chambermaid’s quarters unchallenged. Nobody knew what to say to me. And suddenly, there I was in the grand ballroom, which that day looked more like a book emporium. Men in monocles and tailcoat suites fussed over last-minute preparations, and hotel staff stood at attention in a line receiving their final in-house briefing. I was able to browse at leisure and even paid for and put aside my book selection at one of the secondhand booths.

  A bell chimed from the direction of the reception area, and the staff hurried to the front of the hotel. I followed them because I admit I had become infected by the atmosphere. I wasn’t even an employee, but I’d been there long enough to want the hotel to do its very best—even for a bastard like Doumer. I needn’t have worried. The welcome committee was regimental. Everyone knew of his or her function and where they should stand. Except me. I retreated behind one of the stone pillars and from there I could see through the two enormous glass doors and beyond them I witnessed the arrival of two motorized police vans. The rear doors were thrown open and a dozen gendarmes stumbled out of each. Some took up positions on the hotel steps. The others wrestled open the doors, secured them in the open position, and spread themselves around the foyer. If they were armed, their weapons were well concealed. But I suspected there were more qualified plain-clothed officers strategically dotted around. One, quite obviously a military man with a crew cut and the nervous twitch of a security guard on alert, was in place behind the next pillar. I smiled at him and he ignored me. I’d expect nothing less from my bodyguard.

  It was a very long, tense ten minutes before the President’s Citroën arrived. An aide hurried to open the rear door but the president was already halfway out before he got there. I’d seen Doumer on newsreels at my cinema. He was a portly man with a fancy white beard, and I had a theory that this was what Father Christmas did for the other eleven months of the year. I couldn’t help smiling at that thought as he stopped on the top step, turned and waved at the grannies and the bemused children. He entered the hotel and the male staff members leaned forward into a respectful bow. The women curtsied. There was silence apart from the manager welcoming the President on behalf of the hotel and the Fund for Wounded Soldiers.

  A table had been set up in the foyer with the types of political books a president would have been expected to read. But I saw him as more of a detective fiction type. I was already an aficionado of Simenon and I decided that would be my opening gambit:

  “I’m sure you’d prefer the exploits of Inspector Maigret,” I would say.

  I was practicing my pronunciation of that line and Doumer was alone at the table waiting for the photographer to adjust his lens. Doumer would laugh at my impudence and confess that he was indeed a crime novel fan. Leap forward five months and we’d be at his gentleman’s club sorting out troubles in the Far East fairly and sensibly with not a shot fired.

  I took a step forward but it seemed that by doing so, I broke some invisible thread and threw the ordered world into chaos. A shout came from the kitchen. It was a foreign language, but I wasn’t alert enough to say which. A plate smashed. The kitchen doors flew open and a ruddy-faced man ran into the reception area. He had the build of a pasta chef and wore a suit so tight that it could only have been a relic from his slimmer past. A large serviette covered his right hand and forearm. It made him look like a waiter and perhaps it was that image: the head waiter emerging angrily from the kitchen after some unforgivable culinary incident that prevented the security detail from moving. We were a still photograph with only the man in the tight suit animated. He looked around the room, caught sight of Doumer, and staggered toward him.

  He shouted again. This time I recognized his language as Russian. Then in French he said, “I do this in the name of the miserable ones who wait in Russia.”

  Then, like a birthday party magician, he pulled back the serviette to reveal an FN1910 pistol. I recall that he fired five shots, but I still don’t know how many hit Doumer. Enough to make him dead, I could see that. He fell backward onto the book display and his blood ruined a number of first editions. By the time everyone realized what had happened, it was too late. I looked back at the security man behind the pillar. He had his gun drawn and aimed at the assassin, but he hadn’t fired. In fact, I saw him look left and right, then return his pistol to his inside pocket. He watched the gendarmes tackle the gunman to the ground. He observed as the President’s waistcoat changed from grey to crimson. And I couldn’t be sure amid the chaos, but I fancied I saw the young man smile. I remember he had almost perfect tee
th, which was quite unusual in those days.

  He walked calmly to the hotel entrance and into the street. It was odd. Perhaps I was one of the few people there who didn’t really care that the President had been shot. That’s why I noticed him. Why had he not intervened? If he was a bodyguard, why was he leaving?

  I wasn’t yet doctor enough to offer to tend Doumer’s wounds. He had a team of surgeons to care for him but none of them would make him any more alive. So, in pursuit of my own curiosity, I followed the short-haired man. He casually crossed the street and melted into the crowd even though the road had been cleared of traffic, and it would have been easier to walk there. I stayed with him. When he got to the first corner he turned, knelt, and pretended to be tying a shoelace. Even if he’d seen me I doubted he would have considered that I might be following him. You tend to notice only what you expect to be there.

  He cut into a narrow lane with art and craft stalls on either side and picked up his speed. He stopped briefly at a stand with a display of ornamental mirrors, and there he made his second check for prospective followers. I’d put on a woolen hat I kept in my pocket and was almost beside him as he scanned the crowd through the mirror. If he’d looked to his right we would have met eye-to-eye. But he did not. Once he was through the maze of vendors he turned on to the boulevard at Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and I could see his shoulders relax. Now that we had distance between us I felt more comfortable. He sauntered along the northern pavement and I kept to the south side. We passed the saddlers and trunk stores, and he paused calmly to admire the fashions displayed in the windows of the high-class stores. Everything was going fine until he passed the foolish stone balloon monument and descended into the Metro at Ternes.

  This was a problem, not just because of my claustrophobia, but because I had paid my last franc for the books at the hotel. I had nothing left for the Metro. But I was determined to stay with my man until I could work out what the hell had happened at the hotel.

  The underground walkway to the station was long and tiled. Every sound echoed. My man wore shoes with metal tips. A blind person could have followed him. But the workday was not yet finished, and there were few people traveling. He was heading for a labyrinth of tunnels on the way to the platforms, and I had to stay close to see which he took. At each level and with each turn he could be there waiting for me. I was close enough to see him hand his 70 centimes to the kiosk cashier and receive his ticket. He showed it to the guard when he passed the gate.

  I had neither ticket nor coins, but I had an ethnic brotherhood. The cashier was dark as cocoa, possibly Moroccan. I hoped he might have attended the colonial exhibition. I stood in front of him with the hangdog expression I used to get extensions on my essays.

  “I have no money, brother,” I said.

  He could have told me to go jump in the Seine, but he cocked his head to one side, smiled a splendid set of teeth minus one at the front, and tore me off a ticket from the roll.

  “Your lucky day,” he said, “but don’t try this shit again when I’m on duty. I got to cover shortcomings.”

  I could hear the metallic rattle of an East-West line train in the distance, but I couldn’t tell in which direction it was headed. I ran past the guard and stood considering the options. There were two staircases. I chose west because my own instinct would have been to double back across the city. The stairwell seemed to go all the way down to Hades. I hit the empty platform after the passengers had boarded. The station assistant normally closed the metal gate when a train arrived, but it was open. Someone had failed to shut a door correctly, and the assistant was running along the platform blowing his whistle. It gave me time to look at the faces through the smoky glass of the windows. I reached the third carriage, and there I saw my man. He looked at me directly but with no sign of recognition or interest.

  I walked to the fourth carriage, where the assistant was having trouble with the door. One of the hinges had dropped, and it took two people to lift it back onto its frame: the man outside, the train guard inside. We left the station seven minutes late.

  At Courcelles I stepped off the train but my man did not. I climbed back on. The same happened at Monceau, and, by then, I had a sort of working hypothesis of what I’d witnessed at the Rothschild. My man was clearly not a part of Doumer’s security detail, but he was armed and in a position to see all that happened. Even after the assassin had removed the serviette from his forearm, a good five seconds passed before he pumped his bullets into the president. My man’s weapon was unholstered and aimed at the shooter, so why had he not fired? And why did he smile?

  I was left with only one conclusion. The slurring Russian had been recruited by someone to shoot Doumer. Perhaps he had some grievance against the president about his treatment of Russians. He was clearly unstable but passionate. Someone had brought him into the hotel, perhaps as a guest. They’d provided him with a weapon and plied him with booze for Dutch courage. Only one thing was missing. The plan had to have a contingency. There had to be a second shooter in case the Russian folded or missed. Once the assassin had discharged his weapon, my man behind the pillar, a marksman, sober, would ensure that at least one bullet hit the target.

  But the Russian did not fail. The president was dead, and the second shooter could return to his cabal and make his report.

  At Villiers, my man stepped off the train and I was behind him. He was so confident that he no longer checked his back. I still had no idea what purpose my following him would serve. I wasn’t yet clear-headed enough to assess what the benefits for France or Europe or the world would be with Doumer dead. I didn’t really care. It just annoyed me that any idiot could undemocratically solve his problems with a gun or a sword or a stick of dynamite. Surely we’d progressed far enough from the ape to settle our differences without violence.

  By the time I reached street level, I’d lost him. There were no large buildings nearby for him to have disappeared into so fast. It was as if the station had been built in the center of a large field in anticipation of development closing in on it. I could see all around but there was no sign of my man. I was embarrassed. Maigret would have been ashamed of me. I sat on a bench that had the view of just one tree, and I considered my next step. Who should I tell? What exactly would I say? Would anyone believe me? And, at that moment, my man walked out of the Metro exit. Somehow I’d passed him without noticing. The telephone. That was it. He’d stopped in the telephone booth. They were a new item in Paris, so it hadn’t occurred to me. I imagined he’d reported that everything had gone according to plan.

  He walked past my bench. I squeezed the cap in my hand and concentrated on the tree. I’d been a boxer and wrestler at university. Good in my weight class. But my man had a gun in his inside pocket. A lot of use the old one-two would have been against that. But, as before, he looked straight through me and crossed the park heading east. Perhaps it was there that I learned how to be invisible. I let him get fifty meters ahead then climbed back on his tail. He didn’t go far. On Constantinople, he joined the queue at a tram stop. I didn’t want to pass him, so I studied the headlines at the news kiosk. The newsagent eyed me with suspicion. The longer I stood there the deeper into me she glared. I had to make a decision. The tram was on its way. If I left it to the last moment and ran for it, I’d draw attention to myself. Then there’d be another scene when the conductor asked me for money and found out I had none. But, if I didn’t catch the tram I’d lose the second shooter.

  The tram passed the kiosk. The driver clanged the bell and applied the brake. What if this was my man’s final check? What if he left it to the last second before boarding the tram? That way he’d be certain he wasn’t being followed. And then again, what if he had no intention of getting on board? And that, as Civilai would say, was the filly I put my savings on. I stood at the kiosk and waited for the passengers to board the tram. My man looked around, put his foot on the running board, then took it off and stepped b
ackward. The conductor asked if he intended to get on, and my man waved him away.

  “Hey, China,” said the newsagent. “This what you’re looking for?”

  She reached inside a leather pouch and produced a very racy magazine. Some might have called it downright filthy. But I was a trainee surgeon and I’d seen all those parts before. The tram had pulled away, leaving my man alone on the sidewalk. He crossed the boulevard and walked directly to an expensive-looking apartment building opposite. He opened the main door and before it shut behind him, I noticed the uniformed concierge at the reception desk salute him. He lived there. Damn. I had to admire his audacity. Who would oversee an assassination three Metro stops from his home?

  “Bravo,” I said, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. Neither was I likely to walk into a gendarmerie and file a report. And I wasn’t about to seek help from my new comrades at the PCF. They’d have hoisted the assassin on their shoulders and treated him to a slap-up meal.

  There was only one person I thought I could talk to. The following morning, I was due to attend the second lecture of three from an army general called Richard from the French medical corps. It was he who had described the rapidly approaching blight of heroin that morning. I’d been impressed by his distress and concerns about the drug business and his preparedness to accept the blame on behalf of the French government for its involvement in the opium trade.

  After his lecture the following morning, I invited him for coffee in the university refectory. I told him what had happened after the assassination of Doumer. He asked why I hadn’t filed a report immediately, but I could see he understood. He asked for my address but made no comment as to my actions or suspicions. I thought he might have considered me to be some sort of crackpot. I heard nothing for the rest of the day. I met Boua for lunch and told her I’d been at the book exhibition and witnessed the killing of Doumer. I’m not sure why, but I decided against telling her my theory of the second shooter and about my pursuit of him. It was the first time I’d withheld information from her but would not be the last, and we weren’t even married yet. Perhaps I felt she’d consider it her duty to tell her Communist friends and things would have become . . . messy. I wanted to marry her without issues pulling us apart. Even then I was cautious of Boua’s hypersensitive buttons and which ones launched missiles.