Alice Asks the Big Questions

by Laurent Gounelle

  “Your job is rather thankless,” she’d said, to justify her question.

  “Not at all!” he’d protested. “Thanks to me, people can see the world better.”

  Thanks to him, people can see the world better…Alice had walked away, pensive. And what about her? What exactly did she bring to the world?

  That morning, standing right in between the garbage cans, the window washer was clearly in high spirits, in the middle of a discussion with an elderly man. Alice walked over to them, breathing through her thin cotton scarf.

  “All this chaos seems to make you happy.”

  “Ha, ha, ha! This gentleman just told me that with all this garbage, the neighborhood is going back to its origins. What a laugh! A chic neighborhood that owes its name to a garbage dump. That’s really a good one!”

  “But no,” said Alice. “Its name is a reference to Mount Parnassus, a sacred mountain in ancient Greece.”

  “Exactly,” said the elderly man, his eyes lighting up. “In the seventeenth century, the students used to come here and recite poems on a mound built of rubble and waste. There was so much that it formed a little mountain, and one sarcastic student mockingly baptized it ‘Mount Parnassus.’ The term stuck, and the name was given first to the neighborhood, then to the tower.”

  Alice’s cell phone rang.

  “Yes, Rachid.”

  “Hi, where are you?”

  “Standing next to a pile of garbage. Where are you?”

  “Upstairs, as usual.”

  “Okay.”

  “So are you sitting down?”

  “Better not to here.”

  “I’ve got some unbelievable news.”

  “Go for it. I’m holding on to the garbage cans.”

  “We won the Qatar International contract.”

  The Qatar International contract.

  Alice stood there, speechless. She let go of her scarf. Beside her, the Senegalese man had continued his joyful discussion with the retired man. The employees were rushing to get inside the building, holding their noses. She suddenly felt affection for this little group of people.

  The Qatar International contract.

  They had won it.

  Her raise was a certainty, the family trip to Australia, maybe even the promotion…

  “They put in a clause with an early deadline,” said Rachid. “Can you make an initial brainstorming meeting at ten?”

  “Of course. Get the team together. I’m coming up.”

  An hour later, everyone was gathered around the director of the department, who was the acting head of the project until a permanent one was appointed.

  “Let me remind you of the goal,” he said. “To restore Qatar’s image among the general public in the principal European cities. Let’s start with France. Any ideas?”

  Alice launched in. If she was hoping for a promotion, she had to be in the spotlight.

  “Let’s get them to buy a company that’s in trouble, a company with some emotional connection, like a traditional business that makes toys in the Jura region that’s on the verge of bankruptcy. Then we launch an all-out publicity campaign in the media, like an interview on TV with a worker who thanks them for saving her job. Put yourself in the place of Mr. Average: if the Qataris save the manufacturer of their childhood toys, it’s difficult to then imagine them financing ISIS and their executioners, right?”

  The director showed no reaction, but she sensed she had hit home. Other people also had ideas, and she did her best to rephrase them in a better way, pacing how often she spoke, positioning herself, apparently ingenuously, as a leader, without overdoing it. After half an hour, the Qataris had a good chance of becoming saints. Suddenly, through the window, Alice saw the cable of the window washer’s platform moving, and she thought back to the introspection he had caused in her and the question that had remained unanswered: what exactly did she bring to the world?

  She remembered the words Jeremy had recently spoken to her. There are three dimensions to a person, he’d said: the internal, the horizontal, and the vertical. One’s inner life, introspection, self-knowledge, were all understandable. The horizontal dimension as well, having to do with one’s relationships in life, a sense of brotherhood. But what exactly did he mean by the vertical? That seemed a little vague, not very rational.

  She stopped herself from laughing when she saw the Senegalese man’s hand emerge from below, then wave about as if he were desperately looking for something to hold on to as he climbed the tower. Finally, all of him appeared. He recognized her in the middle of the group and winked. He was beaming, as usual, despite a salary that was probably minimum wage.

  She too was happy when she helped Jeremy, even though she wasn’t being paid for it. And was without a title or any official responsibilities.

  Very strange.

  * * *

  “How dare you do such a thing!”

  Alice started and looked up from the novel she’d been absorbed in. She was sitting comfortably in the old green velvet armchair in the living room, near the window. When she was at her father’s house in Cluny, she was used to getting surprise visits. Much less formal than in Paris, relationships here were more natural, and friends often dropped by without being asked.

  Jeremy’s blue eyes, whose softness normally contrasted with the stiffness of his black cassock and white collar, were now burning with anger.

  He was waving the little poster in the air, holding it out in her direction.

  Alice gave him her sweetest smile. “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s completely ridiculous!”

  “If it were ridiculous, it wouldn’t have been so successful.”

  “You cannot do something like this without speaking to me about it first!”

  “But you never would have agreed.”

  “And I would have been right to refuse!”

  Alice looked at the poster. “Admit that the drawing is good.”

  “That is not the problem.”

  Jeremy sighed.

  “I’m being blamed for this,” he added. “Even the bishop was alarmed and summoned me to see him.”

  Shit, the bishop. The leadership was getting involved. She hadn’t anticipated that.

  She looked away, her eyes focusing on the window. The ivory paint was flaking off, dried out by the sun, the same sun that made the grapes of Burgundy produce the best wines in the world.

  “I’m really sorry,” she finally conceded, staring at the window.

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  “I realize now that I shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Forgive me.”

  He didn’t reply.

  She turned to him. “Please.”

  She looked at him for a long time in silence, then gave him a charming smile. “Am I really going to have to get inside your shack to get you to forgive me?”

  Jeremy’s severe expression remained for a few moments, then his armor cracked. He suppressed a smile and sadly shook his head.

  Part II

  Jesus says: “Let him who seeks cease

  not to seek until he finds:

  when he finds he will be astonished;

  and when he is astonished he will wonder,

  and will reign over the universe.”

  —Gospel of Thomas, saying 2

  11

  The annual general meeting was going to be rough.

  When Alice went into the large conference hall with its tiered seating, she could immediately feel the tense atmosphere. The five hundred employees of the firm sat in near total silence. The convivial mood of former meetings seemed far away.

  Alice herself had not been able to calm down for two weeks. The announcement of a general increase in salaries of 0.1 percent, and excluding any individual increases, stuck in her throat.

  One-tenth of 1 percent. Worse than nothing: a sarcastic consolation prize that was more humiliating than the outright refusal of any increase. The same egotism,
but with less courage.

  Adieu, Australia. Goodbye to the family trip she wanted so much.

  But what she felt went far beyond dissatisfaction. The worst part was the ingratitude, a kind of scorn, a refusal to take into account the enormous amount of work she had done to win the Qatar International contract, the biggest the company had signed in nearly ten years. Her considerable personal investment had been met with silence, as if it didn’t count. She felt unacknowledged, her efforts disregarded, her results ignored. In short, she felt demoralized. Given the general atmosphere, she wasn’t alone.

  One-tenth of 1 percent.

  Obviously, given the circumstances, the revelations by the press were bad—very bad—for the CEO. Served him damned right. How stupid do you have to be, how incredibly stupid, to award yourself a bonus of two million euros two weeks after announcing the annual general meeting and think that people wouldn’t know? Obviously that kind of thing would get out! There’s always someone, in the Payroll department or elsewhere, who’ll leak the information.

  Or if it wasn’t plain stupidity, it must’ve been such a sense of superiority that the CEO thought he was untouchable. Maybe the media getting hold of it knocked him down a little? Questioned by a journalist, the board of directors thought it appropriate to respond, in a brief statement, that he deserved the bonus.

  Alice noticed the company’s union rep a few rows in front of her to the right. He looked in a better mood than the other employees. This situation was a godsend to him. You could tell he felt he was in a position of strength.

  The curtain opened and a man came onto the stage, all smiles, whom she recognized at once. It was Sam Boyer, a popular comedian who hosted a weekly TV show. The company had, as every year, engaged the services of a celebrity to be master of ceremonies.

  Sam immediately began by telling a funny story…that had no effect whatsoever. The audience remained silent. Nevertheless, he didn’t get discouraged and continued with a little speech that included references to the everyday life of the company. He had obviously been prepped and had worked on his performance like a pro. But his little witticisms made no one laugh. Their hearts weren’t in it, clearly. Sam continued, unshakable, and Alice felt a certain respect for him. Not easy to do a comic routine in front of five hundred people who want to do anything but laugh.

  Sam then introduced the finance director, who came onstage looking like a depressive who’d run out of antianxiety medicine one rainy Sunday night in November.

  With half a dozen bar charts, three pie charts, four flow charts, and a bunch of scattered figures, he laboriously tried to show that the results were both very good and very precarious. But the flagrant imperfections of the formatting of the slides fooled no one: everything had been reworked in haste at the last minute.

  Next came the marketing director, much more at ease, smiling, as if to show that he had nothing to feel guilty about. He was happy to reply with humor to the jibes Sam Boyer made at him. Alice felt the atmosphere relax a little.

  Then it was the CEO’s turn.

  He crossed the stage in a dead silence. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t look uncomfortable, as his finance director had. He’d clearly worked on his attitude: confident without being arrogant.

  Sam Boyer left the stage. Personal choice? Request by the staff?

  The boss began his speech, leaving out the few emotional effusions he’d pretended to feel in previous years toward “the best team in the world.” He stuck to the facts, rapidly sweeping aside the past year to talk about the future, the only possible area where he could hope to reinvigorate his troops by making them dream of the promising prospects before them.

  He was met with icy silence, but since he had been expecting it, he continued to run through ideas without seeming to be concerned in the least. In previous years, at the end of his speech, he had allowed time for a Q&A with the employees. Would he risk doing that this year?

  The audience seemed to be paying close attention to his words, much more than usual, as if everyone were lying in wait for the moment when he would tackle the thorny question of the cap on salaries.

  But he was coming to the end of his speech without having raised the matter, and suddenly Sam Boyer leaped onto the stage like a devil jumping out of a box.

  “Is this going to last much longer?” he said in a tone of voice that was meant to sound insolent.

  The CEO pretended to be surprised.

  “We’ve had enough!” said Sam. “We want to get to the buffet! All these speeches are well and good, but we came to eat! Come on, everyone! Let’s go! And may the fastest among you stuff your faces!”

  The CEO pretended to laugh heartily while folding his papers to follow Sam in the direction of the buffet.

  “Not so fast!” a voice trumpeted.

  Everyone turned to look at a man who had stood up in the middle of the audience. The union rep.

  Beneath the lights, the CEO hesitated for a moment, then stopped at the edge of the stage.

  “A question,” said the rep.

  The CEO, stoic, decided to listen to him.

  “With inflation at 0.3 percent and the increase in salaries announced as 0.1 percent, that means a decrease of 0.2 percent in salary. How can you justify the drop in purchasing power given the current positive position of our company?”

  The tension in the silent room was palpable. Electric.

  “I understand your frustrations,” said the CEO, looking empathetic, the way his advisors had obviously coached him to do. “But it is my duty to ensure continued good results to prepare for the future and thus guarantee that you can all keep your jobs.”

  The following question, which everyone expected, sounded like the cracking of a whip.

  “In that case, doesn’t your bonus of two million euros put that goal at risk?”

  The eyes of the five hundred employees were riveted on their boss. Alice watched the scene, detached.

  Her lack of motivation made her indifferent. She didn’t feel it had anything to do with her anymore.

  “It was a decision by the board of directors, and they have the final word.”

  Alice sighed. The reply had been just as boring as the question. The situation was sufficiently eloquent in itself. There was no need for a debate, or even comments.

  Alice started thinking of Jeremy, the advice she’d given him, the changes he’d made, the success he’d had. Of course, she hadn’t won her bet—they were far from having one hundred people come to Mass on Sundays. But a lot of people went to confession. Most important, she felt that Jeremy was much happier at his job, which had been her main goal. She had loved using her energy and creativity to serve a cause that was so strange to her. She was an atheist, practically drenched in antireligious culture since childhood. She thought of Jesus again, thought of his disarming words, which had succeeded in having an impact on his followers during his lifetime.

  “And what if he was an imposter?” she had asked Jeremy. “It seems that many people at the time tried to claim they were the Messiah the Jews were waiting for.”

  Rather than being offended, Jeremy had laughed. “The Messiah they expected was supposed to be a warrior. It was a harsh time, when strength was valued. And then along comes Jesus, who tells people, ‘Love each other.’ Those words may seem banal to you today, but when you put yourself back in the context of those times, it was totally absurd. Revolutionary. That wasn’t at all what they wanted to hear. By speaking that way, he was much more likely to be rejected than to please people.”

  If he wasn’t an imposter, Alice thought, then he was probably a kind of sage, a charismatic great thinker. But could you be a sage and still formulate precepts as astonishing as “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also”?

  In the auditorium, tension was rising all around Alice. The union rep was getting annoyed, and the voices were getting louder. She could sense a wave of resentment aimed at the stage.

  Turn the other cheek�
�How was Jesus able to attract scores of followers by saying such things?

  A few insults were hurled at the CEO. The employees’ contained anger was beginning to be awakened. It was going to spin out of control.

  Suddenly, Alice felt something strange within her. Like an idea that came not from her mind but from her gut, from deep inside her. Something within her pushed her to act according to this absurd Christian precept. And the more she saw everything getting out of control, saw the clash of so much negative energy, the more she felt she simply had to act.

  So despite the stage fright she felt every time she tried to speak in public, she stood up and waved her arms in the air to get people’s attention.

  “Excuse me!”

  They finally noticed her, and strangely, when she began speaking to the CEO, everyone fell silent.

  “We read in the press that you stated you deserved your bonus. Since you said it, it must be true.”

  Alice saw hundreds of people turn toward her in disapproval.

  “Since your bonus was deserved, it’s fair that we lower our income so you can have it.”

  A hum of disgusted protests rushed through the room. Alice felt the weight of reproach, incomprehension, and betrayal fall on her. She glanced over at the union rep, who was giving her a hateful look.

  On the stage, the CEO stood dead still, not understanding what was happening.

  She continued amid the harrowing silence. “I therefore officially request that you lower my salary so you can increase yours.”

  General astonishment.

  Alice walked down the center aisle toward the stage. Everyone looked at her with hostility and repugnance. A wave of whispers accompanied her as she walked.

  “You deserve it!” she shouted at her boss, finding it within herself to sound sincere.

  He took a step as if to leave.

  “Wait!”

  He seemed to hesitate for a moment. She took advantage of it.

  “Don’t run away!”

  Now he couldn’t leave without looking like a coward.