The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  It’s a beautiful day outside and a black DS is parked by the curb in the empty street. Hamed enjoys the fresh air while listening to Blondie on his Walkman and doesn’t notice as the black DS starts up and slowly follows him. He crosses the Seine, passes the Jardin des Plantes, thinks that with a bit of luck there’ll be someone at the Flore to buy him a real coffee. But at the Flore there are only his gigolo colleagues and two or three old guys who aren’t in the market; Sartre is already there too, coughing and smoking his pipe, surrounded by a little circle of sweater-wearing students, so Hamed asks for a cigarette from a passerby who’s walking a sad-eyed beagle, and smokes outside the Pub Saint-Germain, which is not yet open, with some other young gigolos who, like him, look as if they didn’t get enough sleep, drank too much and smoked too much, and most of whom forgot to eat the night before. There’s Saïd, who asks him if he went to the Baleine Bleue yesterday; Harold, who tells him he almost had it off with Amanda Lear at the Palace; and Slimane, who got beaten up, but can’t remember why. They all agree that they’re bored shitless. Harold would like to see Le Guignolo in Montparnasse or Odéon, but there’s no showing before 2:00 p.m. On the opposite pavement, the two guys with mustaches have parked the DS and are drinking a coffee at the Brasserie Lipp. Their suits are crumpled as if they’d slept in their car and they still have their umbrellas with them. Hamed thinks he’d be better off going home and sleeping, but he can’t be bothered to climb the six flights of stairs, so he bums another cigarette from a black guy coming out of the metro and wonders whether he should go to the hospital or not. Saïd tells him that “Babar” is in a coma, but that he might be happy to hear his voice; apparently people in comas can hear, like plants, when you play classical music to them. Harold shows them his black-and-orange reversible bomber jacket. Slimane says he saw a Russian poet they know yesterday with a scar, and that he was even more handsome like that, and this makes them giggle. Hamed decides to go to La Coupole to see if I’m there, and walks up Rue de Rennes. The two mustaches follow him, leaving their umbrellas behind, but the waiter catches up with them, yelling, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” He brandishes the umbrellas like swords, but no one pays any attention, even though it looks like it’s going to be a sunny day. The two men get their umbrellas back and start tailing their target again. They stop outside the Cosmos, which is showing Tarkovsky’s Stalker and a Soviet war film, and a little gap opens up between them and Hamed, but he keeps pausing to look in the windows of clothing stores, so there’s no danger of them losing him.

  Nevertheless, one of them goes back to fetch the DS.

  18

  At Rue de Bizerte, between La Fourche and Place Clichy, Gilles Deleuze receives the two investigators. Simon Herzog is thrilled to meet the great philosopher, in his own home, among his books, in an apartment that smells of philosophy and stale tobacco. The TV is on, showing tennis, and Simon notices lots of books about Leibniz scattered all over the place. They hear the poc-poc of balls. It’s Connors versus Nastase.

  Officially, the two men are here because Deleuze was implicated by BHL. The interrogation begins, then, with A for Accusation.

  “Monsieur Deleuze, we’ve been informed of a dispute between yourself and Roland Barthes. What was it about?” Poc-poc. Deleuze lifts a half-smoked but extinct cigarette to his mouth. Bayard notices his abnormally long fingernails. “Oh, really? No, no, I didn’t have any quarrel with Roland, beyond the fact that he supported that nonentity, the moron with the white shirt.”

  Simon notices the hat hanging on the hat rack. Added to the one on the coat rack in the entrance hall and the other on the dresser, that’s a lot of hats, in various colors, similar to the one Alain Delon wore in Le Samouraï.

  Poc-poc.

  Deleuze settles himself more comfortably in his chair: “You see that American? He’s the anti-Borg. Well, no, the anti-Borg is McEnroe: Egyptian service, Russian soul, eh? Hmm, hmm. [He coughs.] But Connors, hitting the ball full on, that constant risk-taking, those low, skimming shots … it’s very aristocratic, too. Borg: stays on the baseline, returns the ball, well above the net, thanks to his topspin. Any prole can understand that. Borg is inventing a tennis for the proletariat. McEnroe and Connors, obviously, play like princes.”

  Bayard sits down on the sofa. He has a feeling he’s going to have to listen to a lot of crap.

  Simon objects: “But Connors is the archetype of the people, isn’t he? He’s the bad boy, the brat, the hooligan; he cheats, he argues, he whines; he’s a bad sport, a scrapper, a fighter, he never gives up…”

  Deleuze interrupts impatiently: “Oh yes? Hmm, that’s an interesting point of view.”

  Bayard asks: “It’s possible that someone wanted to steal something from Monsieur Barthes. A document. Would you know anything about that, Monsieur Deleuze?”

  Deleuze turns toward Simon: “It is likely that the question what? isn’t the right kind of question. It’s possible that questions like who? how much? how? where? when? would be better.”

  Bayard lights a cigarette and asks in a patient, almost resigned voice: “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s obvious that if you have come to find me, more than a week after the event, to question me about a moronic philosopher’s half-baked insinuations, it’s because Roland’s accident was probably not an accident at all. So you are searching for a culprit. Or, in other words, a motive. But you are a long way from why, aren’t you? I suppose that the line of inquiry relating to the driver didn’t get you anywhere? I heard that Roland had woken up. And he didn’t want to say anything? So you change the why.”

  They hear Connors grunting each time he hits the ball. Simon glances out of the window. He notices a blue Fuego parked down below.

  Bayard asks why, in Deleuze’s opinion, Barthes does not want to reveal what he knows. Deleuze replies that he has no idea, but he does know one thing: “Whatever happens, whatever the situation, there are always pretenders. In other words, there are people who claim: as far as this goes, I am the best.”

  Bayard grabs the owl-shaped ashtray on the coffee table and drags it toward him. “And what do you claim to be the best at, Monsieur Deleuze?”

  Deleuze emits a small noise somewhere between a snigger and a cough: “One always claims to be what one cannot be or what one was once and will never be again, Superintendent. But I don’t think that is the question, is it?”

  Bayard asks what the question is.

  Deleuze relights his cigarette: “How to choose from among the pretenders.”

  Somewhere in the building, they hear the echo of a woman screaming. They can’t tell if it’s from pleasure or anger. Deleuze points at the door: “It is a common misconception, Superintendent, that women are women by nature. Women have a devenir-femme.” He stands up, panting slightly (yes, him, too), and walks off to pour himself a glass of red wine. “We’re the same.”

  Bayard, suspicious, asks: “You think we’re all the same? You think that you and me, we’re the same?”

  Deleuze smiles: “Yes … well, in a way.”

  Bayard, trying to show willingness but revealing a sort of reticence: “So you’re searching for the truth too?”

  “Oh my! The truth … Where it begins is where it ends … We’re always in the middle of something, you know.”

  Connors wins the first set 6–2.

  “How can we determine which of the pretenders is the right one? If you have the how, you’ll find the why. Take the Sophists, for example: according to Plato, the problem is that they claim something they don’t have the right to claim … Oh yes, they cheat, those little shits!” He rubs his hands together. “The trial is always a trial of pretenders…”

  He downs the contents of his glass in a single gulp and, looking at Simon, adds: “This is as amusing as a novel.”

  Simon meets his gaze.

  19

  “No, it’s absolutely impossible! I categorically refuse! I won’t go! That’s enough now! There’s no way I’m setting foot in that palac
e! You don’t need me to decode that bastard’s words! And I don’t need to hear him; let me summarize for you: I am the groveling servant of capital. I am the enemy of the working classes. I have the media in my pocket. When I’m not hunting elephants in Africa, I hunt down independent radio stations. I muzzle freedom of expression. I build nuclear power stations all over the place. I am a populist pimp who invites himself into poor people’s homes. I receive diamonds from dictators. I like pretending to be a prole by going on the metro. I like blacks, but only when they’re emperors or garbagemen. When I hear the word humanitarian, I send in the paratroopers. I use the back rooms of extreme right-wing organizations for my private purposes. I am … I am … a STUPID FASCIST PIG!”

  Simon lights a cigarette, hands trembling. Bayard waits for his tantrum to end. At this stage of the investigation, given the available evidence, he handed in a preliminary report and had a feeling that this case would turn into something big … but, even so, he didn’t expect that he would be summoned here. With his young assistant in tow.

  “Anyway, I won’t go I won’t go I won’t go,” says his young sidekick.

  20

  “The President will receive you now.”

  Jacques Bayard and Simon Herzog enter a brightly lit corner office with walls covered in green silk. Simon looks like he’s in shock, but he instinctively notes the two chairs facing the desk behind which Giscard stands and, at the other end of the room, more chairs with a sofa beside a coffee table. The student immediately grasps the possibilities: depending on whether the president wishes to maintain some distance between himself and his visitors or, alternatively, give the meeting a more convivial feel, he can welcome them from behind his desk, which acts as a sort of shield, or sit around the coffee table and eat cakes and biscuits with them. Simon Herzog also spots a book on Kennedy, placed ostentatiously on an escritoire to suggest the young, modern head of state that Giscard also aspires to embody; two boxes, one red and one blue, set on a roll-top desk; bronze statues here and there; stacks of files at a carefully calculated height: too low, they would give the impression that the president was lazy, too high, that he couldn’t cope with his workload. Several old master paintings hang on the walls. Standing behind his massive desk, Giscard points to one representing a beautiful, severe-looking woman, arms outspread, dressed in a fine white dress open to the waist that barely covers her heavy, milk-white breasts: “I was lucky enough to obtain one of the most beautiful works in the history of French painting from the Museum of Bordeaux: Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, by Eugène Delacroix. Magnificent, isn’t it? I’m sure you know Missolonghi: it’s the city where Lord Byron died, during the war of independence against the Turks. In 1824, I believe.” (Simon notes the false modesty of that “I believe.”) “A terrible war. The Ottomans were so ferocious.”

  Without leaving his desk, without any attempt to shake their hands, he invites them to sit. No sofa or cakes for them. Still standing, the president goes on: “Did you know what Malraux said about me? That I had no sense of the tragic in history.” From the corner of his eye, Simon observes Bayard in his raincoat, waiting silently.

  Giscard goes back over to the painting, so the two visitors feel obliged to turn around to show they are following what he says: “Perhaps I don’t have any sense of the tragic in history, but at least I feel the emotion of tragic beauty when I see that young woman, wounded in the side, bringing the hope of liberation to her people!” Unsure how to punctuate this presidential speech, the two men say nothing, which does not seem to perturb Giscard, used as he is to silent gestures of polite assent. When the man with the whistling voice turns on his heel to look out the window, Simon realizes that this pause is a form of transition, and that they are about to get to the point.

  Offering his visitors only a view of the back of his bald head, the president continues: “I met Roland Barthes once. I had invited him to the Élysée. Such a charming man. He spent a quarter of an hour analyzing the menu and brilliantly deconstructed the symbolic value of each dish. It was absolutely fascinating. Poor man … I heard he found it hard to get over the death of his mother, isn’t that right?”

  Finally sitting down, Giscard speaks to Bayard: “Superintendent, on the day of his accident, Monsieur Barthes was in possession of a document that was stolen from him. I wish you to recover this document. It concerns a matter of national security.”

  Bayard asks: “What is the exact nature of this document, Monsieur President?”

  Giscard leans forward and, with both fists resting on his desk, announces gravely: “It is a vital document that may pose a threat to national security. Used unwisely, it could cause incalculable damage and endanger the very foundations of our democracy. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to tell you more than that. You must act in complete secrecy. But you will have carte blanche.”

  He looks at Simon at last: “Young man, I’ve heard that you are acting as a … guide to the superintendent? So you are well acquainted with the linguistic milieu in which Monsieur Barthes worked?”

  Simon does not need to be asked twice: “No, not really.”

  Giscard shoots a quizzical look at Bayard, who explains: “Monsieur Herzog has knowledge that could be useful to the inquiry. He understands how these people think and, well, what it’s all about. And he can see things that the police wouldn’t see.”

  Giscard smiles: “So you’re a visionary, like Arthur Rimbaud, young man?”

  Simon mutters shyly: “No. Not at all.”

  Giscard points at the red and blue boxes on the roll-top desk behind them, under the Delacroix. “What do you think is inside them?”

  Simon does not realize he is being tested and, before considering whether it is in his interests to pass the test, answers instinctively: “Your Legion of Honor medals, I assume?”

  Giscard’s smile widens. He stands up and walks over to the boxes, opens one, and takes out a medal: “May I ask how you guessed?”

  “Well, uh … The whole room is saturated with symbols: the paintings, the wall hangings, the moldings on the ceiling … Each object, each detail is intended to express the splendor and majesty of republican power. The choice of Delacroix, the photograph of Kennedy on the cover of the book on the escritoire: everything is heavily symbolic. But a symbol has value only if it’s on display. A symbol hidden inside a box is pointless. In fact, I’d go further: it doesn’t exist.

  “At the same time, I don’t suppose this room is where you keep your screwdrivers and spare bulbs. It seemed unlikely that the two boxes were for holding tools. And if they were for storing paper clips or a stapler, they’d be on your desk, where you could reach them. So the contents are neither symbolic nor functional. And yet they must be one or the other. You could put your keys in there, but I imagine that at the Élysée, the president isn’t responsible for locking up, and you don’t need your car keys either, because you have a chauffeur. So that left only one possibility: a dormant symbol, one that does not signify anything in itself here, but which would be activated outside of this room: the miniature, mobile symbol of what this place symbolizes. Namely, the grandeur of the republic. A medal, in other words. And, given where we are, it has to be the Legion of Honor.”

  Giscard exchanges a knowing look with Bayard. “I think I see what you mean, Superintendent.”

  21

  Hamed sips his Malibu and orange as he talks a little about his life in Marseille, and his companion drinks in his words without really listening. Hamed knows what those spaniel eyes mean: he is this man’s master, because the man is overcome by the desperate desire to possess him. He’ll give himself to him later, or not, and maybe he’ll find some pleasure in it, but that pleasure will undoubtedly be less than the feeling of power he is experiencing now by knowing he is the object of desire—and this is the upside of being young, handsome, and poor: without even thinking about it he can calmly despise all those prepared to pay, in one way or another, to have him.

  The evening is in full fl
ow and, as always, in this large bourgeois apartment, in the heart of the capital, as winter comes to an end, the feeling that he does not belong here intoxicates him with a cruel joy. What we steal is worth twice as much as what we earn through hard work. He returns to the buffet to pick up more slices of bread and tapenade, which reminds him vaguely of the South, fighting his way through the mob wiggling their hips to Bashung’s “Gaby Oh Gaby.” He finds Slimane there, swallowing handfuls of escargots while forcing himself to laugh at the jokes of a paunchy publisher who is discreetly fondling his arse. Next to them, a young woman guffaws, arching her neck exaggeratedly: “So he stops … and walks backwards!” At the window, Saïd is smoking a joint with a black man who looks like a diplomat. The opening words of “One Step Beyond” come through the speakers and a frisson of fake hysteria runs through the room; people cry out as if transported by the music, as if a wave of pleasure were moving through their bodies, as if the madness were a faithful dog, supposed lost but now running toward them wagging its tail, as if they could stop thinking or not thinking for the duration of an instrumental punctuated by blasts of throaty saxophone. After this, there will be a few disco tracks to keep the good mood going. Hamed helps himself to a plate of truffle tabbouleh, seeking out the guests most likely to offer him a line of cocaine or, failing that, a bit of speed. Both make him want to fuck, but the speed softens his hard-on, although that’s not very important, he thinks. Just keep going as long as possible so he doesn’t have to go home. Hamed goes over to the window to join Saïd. A streetlamp illuminates the advertising billboard, on the corner of Boulevard Henri-IV, showing Serge Gainsbourg in a suit and tie, above the words “A Bayard changes a man. Doesn’t it, Monsieur Gainsbourg?” Hamed can’t remember why that name is familiar. And, as he’s a bit of a hypochondriac, he goes to look for a drink, reciting his previous year’s schedule to himself out loud. Slimane contemplates a series of lithographs hanging on the wall representing dogs, in every color of the rainbow, eating from bowls filled with one-dollar bills, while he pretends to ignore the paunchy publisher, who is now rubbing against his backside and breathing into the back of his neck. From the speakers, Chrissie Hynde’s voice orders any guests who may be sobbing to stop. Two long-haired guys discuss the death of Bon Scott and his possible replacement as AC/DC’s singer by a fat truck driver in a flat cap. A young man with a side parting, wearing a suit, his tie untied, repeats excitedly to anyone who will listen that he has it on good authority that you can see Marlène Jobert’s breasts in La Guerre des Polices. He’s also heard that Lennon is making a new single with McCartney. A gigolo whose name Hamed has forgotten asks him if he has any grass, mocks the party briefly as too “designer Left Bank,” and points out the window at the statue of the Spirit of Freedom atop the July Column: “You see the problem, buddy? I want us to be Jacobin as much as the next guy, but, you know, there are limits.” Someone knocks a glass of blue curaçao onto the carpet. Hamed thinks about going back to Saint-Germain, but Saïd gestures toward the bathroom, where two girls and an old man are heading in together. As the girls know they are going in there not to fuck but to sniff (something the old guy pretends not to realize because, if he can’t get what he wants, at least he’ll enjoy the prospect for five minutes), Saïd and Hamed figure that, if they play their cards right, they’ll be able to negotiate a line or maybe two. Someone asks a balding guy with a mustache if he’s Patrick Dewaere. To get rid of the paunchy publisher, Slimane grabs a blonde in stretch jeans and dances with her to “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits. The surprised publisher watches the couple whirling around while trying to look simultaneously ironic and easygoing, an expression that fools nobody. He is alone, like all of us, but he can’t hide it, and no one really notices him except to remark how lonely he looks. Slimane keeps his partner for the next dance, “Upside Down” by Diana Ross. Foucault enters the party with Hervé Guibert, just as the opening riff to the Cure’s “Killing an Arab” comes on. He’s wearing a big black leather jacket with chains and has a razor nick on his shaved head. Guibert is young and handsome, his beauty so exaggerated that only a Parisian could take him seriously as a writer. Saïd and Hamed hammer on the bathroom door and try to coax it open by lying to the people inside, coming up with ridiculous excuses, but the door remains hopelessly locked. All they hear behind it are furtive sounds of metal, enamel, and inhalation … “The sand was starting to stir under my feet…” Now as always, Foucault’s arrival provokes a sort of fearful excitement, except for the few people too out of their heads on speed to notice, who jump around to what they imagine is a song about a beach holiday: “It was the same relentless sun, the same light on the same sand…” The bathroom door finally opens and the two girls emerge, looking scornfully at Saïd and Hamed, sniffing showily, with that pride typical of a high-society cokehead who has yet to feel the loss of the liters of serotonin evaporated from her brain, although, as the months and years pass, it will take longer and longer to replace it. “He was alone…” At the center of the circle that has already formed around them, Foucault is telling young Guibert a story, as if he hadn’t noticed the turmoil his presence has aroused, continuing a conversation they’d begun on the way here: “When I was little I wanted to become a goldfish. My mother told me: ‘But you know that’s not possible, poppet. You hate cold water.’” Robert Smith’s voice yelps: “Nothing mattered!” Foucault: “That plunged me into a quandary. I said to her: ‘Please, just for one second, I’d really like to know what they think about.’” Robert Smith: “The Arab hadn’t moved!” Saïd and Hamed decide to try elsewhere, maybe at La Noche. Slimane goes back to the publisher because, well, a boy has to eat. “I was staring down at the ground…” Foucault: “Someone has to confess. There’s always one who confesses in the end…” Robert Smith: “Whether I stayed or went made no difference…” Guibert: “He was naked on the sofa, and couldn’t find a single phone booth that worked…” “I turned back toward the beach and started walking…” “And when he did finally find one, he realized he didn’t have a token…” Hamed looks outside again, through the curtains, sees a black DS parked below, and says: “I’m going to stay here a bit longer.” Saïd lights a cigarette and in the frame of the window the two figures stand out perfectly, illuminated by the party.