The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  Jack Lang reminds them that Jean Cau said Mitterrand was a priest and his socialism was “the flip side of his Christianity.”

  Debray sighs. “What a load of crap.”

  Badinter lights a cigarette.

  Moati eats Chokinis.

  Attali: “He decided to move to the left. He thinks it’s necessary to contain the Communist Party. But it puts off moderate left-wing voters.”

  Debray: “No, what you call a moderate left-wing voter, I would call a centrist. Or a radical Valoisian, at a push. Those people will vote for the Right, no matter what. They’re Giscardians.”

  Fabius: “Including left-wing radicals?”

  Debray: “Naturally.”

  Lang: “All right, and the canines?”

  Moati: “We’ve booked him an appointment with a dentist in the Marais. He’s going to give him a smile like Paul Newman’s.”

  Fabius: “Age?”

  Attali: “Experience.”

  Debray: “Madagascar?”

  Fabius: “Who cares? Everyone’s forgotten it.”

  Attali: “He was minister of the colonies in ’51, and the massacres took place in ’47. Sure, he said some unfortunate things, but he doesn’t have blood on his hands.”

  Badinter says nothing. Neither does Debray. Moati drinks his hot chocolate.

  Lang: “But there’s that film where you see him in a colonial helmet in front of Africans in loincloths…”

  Moati: “The TV stations won’t show those images again.”

  Fabius: “Colonialism is a bad subject for the Right. They won’t want to get into this.”

  Attali: “That’s true for the Algerian War too. First and foremost, Algeria is de Gaulle’s betrayal. It’s sensitive. Giscard won’t take any risks with the pied-noir vote.”

  Debray: “And the Communists?”

  Fabius: “If Marchais plays the Algerian card, we’ll play Messerschmitt. In politics, as in every other aspect of life, it’s not in anyone’s interests to dig up the past.”

  Attali: “And if he insists, we’ll hit him with the Nazi-Soviet Pact!”

  Fabius: “Okay, fine. And the positives?”

  Silence.

  They pour themselves more coffee.

  Fabius lights a cigarette.

  Jack Lang: “Well, his image is of a man of letters.”

  Attali: “Who cares? The French vote for Badinguet, not for Victor Hugo.”

  Lang: “He’s a great orator.”

  Debray: “Yeah.”

  Moati: “No.”

  Fabius: “Robert?”

  Badinter: “Yes and no.”

  Debray: “He’s a crowd-pleaser.”

  Badinter: “He’s good when he has the time to develop his line of thought, and when he’s feeling confident.”

  Moati: “But he’s no good on TV.”

  Lang: “He’s good when he goes head-to-head.”

  Attali: “But not face-to-face.”

  Badinter: “He’s uncomfortable when anyone resists or contradicts him. He knows how to construct an argument, but he doesn’t like being interrupted. As powerful as he can be at a rally, with the crowd behind him, he can be equally abstruse and boring with journalists.”

  Fabius: “That’s because on TV he usually despises whoever’s interviewing him.”

  Lang: “He likes to take his time, to warm up slowly. Onstage, he can do that, feel his way forward, test out his rhetoric, adapt to his audience. On TV, that’s impossible.”

  Moati: “But TV’s not going to change for him.”

  Attali: “Well, not in the next year anyway. Once we’re in power…”

  All: “… we fire Elkabbach!” (laughter)

  Lang: “He has to think about TV like a giant rally. He has to tell himself that the crowd is right behind the camera.”

  Moati: “He needs to watch out for waxing lyrical, though. It’s okay at a rally, but it doesn’t work in a studio.”

  Attali: “He has to learn to be more concise and direct.”

  Moati: “He has to improve. He has to train for it. We’ll make him rehearse.”

  Fabius: “Hmm, he’s going to love that.”

  28

  After four or five days, Hamed finally decides to go home, at least to check whether he might have a clean T-shirt lying around somewhere, so he drags himself up the six or seven flights of stairs that lead to his attic room, where he can’t take a shower because there’s no bathroom but he can at least collapse on his bed for a few hours to purge himself of physical and nervous fatigue and the vanity of the world and existence. But when he turns the key in the lock, he feels something odd and notices that the door has been forced, so he gently pushes it open—it creaks discreetly—and finds his room in a state of chaos: the bed turned over, the drawers pulled out, the baseboard torn off, his clothes spread all over the floor, his fridge open with a bottle of Banga left intact in the door, the mirror over the sink broken into several pieces, his cans of Gini and 7 Up scattered to the far corners of the room, his collection of Yacht Magazine torn out page by page as well as his comic-book history of France (the volume on the French Revolution and the one on Napoleon seem to have disappeared), his dictionary and his books thrown haphazardly around, the tape from his music cassettes unraveled and his stereo partially dismantled.

  Hamed respools a Supertramp tape, puts it in the cassette player, and presses PLAY to see if it still works. Then he collapses onto his upside-down mattress and falls asleep, fully clothed, door wide open, to the opening chords of “The Logical Song,” thinking that when he was young he, too, thought that life was a miracle, beautiful and magical, but that, while things have certainly changed, he doesn’t yet feel very responsible nor very radical.

  29

  A line thirty feet long has formed outside the Gratte-Ciel, which is guarded by a bulky, severe-looking black bouncer. Hamed spots Saïd and Slimane with a tall, wiry lad known as “the Sergeant.” Together, they skip the line, greeting the bouncer by name and telling him that Roland, no, Michel, is waiting for them inside. The doors of the Gratte-Ciel open for them. Inside, they are assailed by a strange smell, like a mix of curry, cinnamon, vanilla, and fishing port. They meet Jean-Paul Goude, who leaves his belt in the cloakroom, and they can tell instantly that he is wasted. Saïd leans toward Hamed to tell him, no, the Giscard years must come to an end, the cost of living is too high, but he has to get some dope. Slimane sees the young Bono Vox at the bar. On the stage, a gothic reggae group is playing a vulgar, ethereal set. The Sergeant is nonchalantly wiggling his hips to the drum machine, behind the beat, watched by the curious, miserable-looking Bono. Yves Mourousi talks to Grace Jones’s stomach. Brazilian dancers slalom between the customers, executing the fluid movements of capoeira. A former minister of some standing under the Fourth Republic tries to touch the breasts of a young, almost famous actress. And there is always that procession of boys and girls wearing live lobsters on their heads or walking them on leashes, the lobster being, for reasons unknown, the fashionable animal in Paris, 1980.

  At the entrance, two badly dressed men with mustaches slip the bouncer a five-franc note and he lets them in. They leave their umbrellas in the cloakroom.

  Saïd asks Hamed about drugs. Hamed gestures to relax and rolls a joint on a coffee table shaped like a naked woman on all fours, like the one in the Moloko Bar in A Clockwork Orange. Next to Hamed, on a corner sofa, Alice Sapritch takes a drag through her cigarette holder, an imperial smile on her lips, a boa around her neck (a real boa, thinks Hamed, but he also thinks it is a stupid affectation). She leans toward them and yells: “So, my darlings, is this a good night?” Hamed smiles as he lights his joint, but Saïd replies: “For what?”

  At the bar, the Sergeant has managed to get Bono to buy him a drink, and Slimane wonders what language the two of them are speaking. In fact, though, they do not appear to be talking to each other. The two mustachioed guys have gone to a corner of the room and ordered a bottle of Polish vodka, the one with bison
grass in it, which has the effect of attracting a group of young people of various sexes to their table, with one or two B-list stars in their wake. Near the bar, Victor Pecci (dark-haired, shirt open, diamond earring) is chatting with Vitas Gerulaitis (blond, shirt open, clip earring). Slimane waves to a young anorexic girl who is talking to the singer of Taxi Girl. Just next to him, leaning against a concrete pillar designed to look like a square Doric column, Téléphone’s bassist doesn’t bat an eyelid as a girl licks his cheek, trying to explain to him how people drink tequilas in Orlando. The Sergeant and Bono have disappeared. Slimane is buttonholed by Yves Mourousi. Foucault emerges from the toilets and begins a heated conversation with one of the singers from ABBA. Saïd shouts at Hamed: “I want some drugs, dope, blow, crack, smack, speed, poppers, whatever, but get me something, for fuck’s sake!” Hamed hands him the joint, which he grabs angrily, as if to say “This is what I think of your joint” and puts it to his mouth, sucking greedily, disgustedly on it. In their corner, the two mustaches are hitting it off with their new friends, clinking glasses and exclaiming “Na zdravie!” Jane Birkin is trying to say something to a young man who looks like he could be her brother, but the man makes her repeat it five times before shrugging helplessly. Saïd yells at Hamed: “What’s left? The PAC? Is that the plan?” Hamed realizes Saïd will be unbearable until he’s had his fix, so he grabs him by the shoulders and says, “Listen,” staring into his eyes as he would with someone in a state of shock or smashed out of their mind, and he takes a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. It’s an invitation for the Adamantium, a club that has just opened opposite the Rex, where a dealer he knows ought to be this evening, supplying the atmosphere for what the flyer calls, above a large drawing of a face that vaguely resembles Lou Reed, a special ’70s night. He asks Alice Sapritch for a pen and carefully writes the name of the dealer on the back of the flyer in block capitals, which he hands solemnly to Saïd, who slides it tenderly into his inside jacket pocket and takes off immediately. In their corner, the two badly dressed men with mustaches look like they’re having a great time; they have invented a new pastis-vodka-Suze cocktail, and Inès de La Fressange has joined them at their table, but when they see Saïd heading toward the exit, they suddenly stop laughing, politely brush aside the attentions of the drummer from Trust, who wants to kiss them while yelling “Brat! Brat!,” and stand up together.

  On the Grands Boulevards, Saïd walks determinedly, blind to the two men who are following him at a distance, armed with their umbrellas. He calculates the number of tricks he’ll have to perform in the Adamantium’s toilets in order to pay for his gram of cocaine. Maybe he’ll have to take amphetamines: they’re not as good, but not as expensive either. Though they last longer. But anyway. Five minutes to pull a client, five minutes to locate an empty cubicle, five minutes for the trick, so a quarter of an hour altogether, three tricks should be enough, maybe two if he finds a couple of really horny rich guys—and surely the Adamantium wants to attract VIPs? It doesn’t look like a cheap lesbian junkie kind of place. All being well, he’ll have the drugs in an hour. But the two men have drawn closer, and just as he is about to cross Boulevard Poissonnière, the first one points his umbrella down and stabs him in the leg through his stonewashed jeans while the second—as Saïd cries out, startled by the sudden pain—reaches inside his jacket and purloins the flyer from the pocket. By the time he has turned around, the two men have already run to the other side of the pedestrian crossing, and Saïd feels his leg throbbing. He also felt the furtive touch of the man’s hand on his chest, so he thinks the two men must have been pickpockets, and he checks that he still has his papers (he has no money), but his head starts to spin when he realizes they’ve stolen his invitation, and he runs after them, shouting, “My invitation! My invitation!” But he grows dizzy, feels weak, his vision blurs, his legs give way beneath him, and he stops in the middle of the road, puts his hand over his eyes, and collapses amid the blare of car horns.

  Tomorrow, in Le Parisien Libéré, there will be stories about the deaths of two people: a twenty-year-old Algerian, victim of an overdose in the middle of the street, and a drug dealer tortured to death in the toilets of the Adamantium, a recently opened nightclub, which has now been closed by the authorities.

  30

  “Those guys are looking for something. The only question, Hamed, is why they didn’t find it.”

  Bayard chews his cigarette. Simon fiddles with paper clips.

  Barthes run over, Saïd poisoned, his dealer murdered, his apartment trashed … Hamed decided it was time to go to the police, because he didn’t tell them everything he knew about Roland Barthes: during their last meeting, Barthes gave him a paper. The clatter of typewriters echoes through the offices. The Quai des Orfèvres hums with police and administrative activity.

  No, the people who searched his apartment didn’t find it. No, it is not in his possession.

  How can he be sure, then, that they haven’t got hold of it? Because it wasn’t hidden in his room. And for a very good reason: he burned it.

  Okay.

  Did he read it first? Yes. Can he tell them what it’s about? Sort of. What’s it about? Silence.

  Barthes asked him to learn the document by heart and destroy it immediately. Apparently, the semiologist believed that the southern accent was a mnemonic technique that facilitated memorization. Hamed did it because even if Roland was old and ugly with his paunch and his double chin, deep down he liked him, this old man who talked about his mother like a heartbroken kid, and anyway he was flattered that this famous professor should entrust him with a mission that didn’t, for a change, involve the insertion of a penis into his mouth, and also because Barthes had promised him three thousand francs.

  Bayard asks: “Could you recite the text to us?” Silence. Simon has stopped his construction of a paper-clip necklace. Beyond the door, the clatter of typewriters continues.

  Bayard offers the gigolo a cigarette, which he accepts with his gigolo’s reflex, even though he doesn’t like dark tobacco.

  Hamed smokes the cigarette and remains silent.

  Bayard repeats that he is clearly in possession of an important piece of information that has caused the deaths of at least three people and that until this information is made public his life is in danger. Hamed objects that, on the contrary, as long as his brain is the sole repository of this information, he cannot be killed. His secret is his life insurance policy. Bayard shows him the photographs of the dealer who was tortured in the toilets of the Adamantium. Hamed stares at them for a long time. Then he tips backwards on his seat and begins to recite: “Happy who like Ulysses has explored / Or he who sought afar the golden fleece…” Bayard shoots a questioning look at Simon, who explains that it is a poem by Du Bellay: “When shall I hail again my village spires / The blue smoke rising from that village see…” Hamed says he learned the poem at school and he still remembers it. He seems quite proud of his memory. Bayard makes it clear to Hamed that he can hold him in custody for twenty-four hours. Hamed tells him to go ahead and do it. Bayard lights another Gitane with the butt of the last one and mentally adjusts his tactics. Hamed cannot go back home. Does he have a safe place to stay? Yes, Hamed can sleep at his friend Slimane’s place, in Barbès. He should go there and lie low for a while, not go out to his usual haunts, not open the door to any strangers, be careful when he does go out, turn around frequently in the street … he should hide, basically. Bayard asks Simon to accompany Hamed in the car. His intuition tells him that the gigolo will confide more easily in a young non-cop than in an old cop, and anyway, unlike all those cops in novels and films, he has other cases on the go; he can’t devote 100 percent of his time to this one, even if Giscard has made it a priority, and even if Bayard voted for him.

  He gives the necessary orders for them to be provided with a vehicle. Before he lets them leave, he asks Hamed if the name Sophia means anything to him, but Hamed says he doesn’t know any Sophias. A uniformed bureaucrat wit
h one finger missing takes them to the garage and issues the keys to an unmarked R16. Simon signs a form, Hamed gets in the passenger seat, and they leave the Quai des Orfèvres in the direction of Châtelet. Behind them, the black DS, which had been waiting patiently, double-parked by the side of the road, without any of the policemen on guard duty taking the slightest notice, sets off. At the crossroads, Hamed says to Simon (in his southern accent): “Oh! A Fuego, con!” It is blue.

  Simon crosses the Île de la Cité, passes the law courts, and reaches Châtelet. He asks Hamed why he came to Paris. Hamed explains that Marseille is a tough place for queers; Paris is better, even if it’s no panacea (Simon notes the gigolo’s use of the word panacea): queers are treated better here, because in the provinces, being queer is worse than being Arab. And besides, in Paris, there are loads of queers with loads of money, and there’s more fun to be had. Simon drives through a yellow light at the Rue de Rivoli crossing and the black DS behind him runs the red to remain in close pursuit. The blue Fuego, though, stops. Simon explains to Hamed that he teaches Barthes at university and says carefully: “What’s it about, that document?” Hamed asks for a cigarette and says: “To be honest, I don’t know.”

  Simon wonders if Hamed is stringing them along, but Hamed tells him that he learned the text by heart without seeking to understand it. His instructions were that if anything ever happened to Barthes, Hamed had to go somewhere to recite the text to one particular person, and no one else. Simon asks him why he hasn’t done this. Hamed asks what makes him think he hasn’t. Simon says he doesn’t believe Hamed would have gone to the police if he had. Hamed admits that he hasn’t done it, because the place is too far away: the person doesn’t live in France, and he didn’t have enough money. He chose to spend the three thousand francs Barthes gave him on other things.

  In his rearview mirror Simon notices that the black DS is still behind them. At Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, he runs a red light and the DS does the same thing. He slows down, it slows down. He double-parks, just to be sure. The DS stops behind him. He feels his heart begin to pound a little. He asks Hamed what he wants to do later, when he has enough money, if that ever happens. Hamed doesn’t understand why Simon has stopped the car, to begin with, but he doesn’t ask questions and tells him that he’d like to buy a boat and organize trips for tourists, because he loves the sea, because he used to go fishing in little coves with his father when he was young (but that was before his father threw him out). Simon starts up suddenly, making his tires screech, and in his rearview mirror he sees the large black Citroën’s hydraulic suspension lifting it up from the tarmac. Hamed turns around and catches sight of the DS and then he remembers the car parked below his apartment, and below the party in Bastille, and he realizes that it has been following him for weeks and that they could have killed him ten times by now, but that that doesn’t mean they won’t kill him the eleventh time, so he grabs hold of the handle above the passenger-side window and says simply: “Take a right.”