The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  Bayard begins to understand.

  Giscard continues to sink.

  Simon spells out his conclusion: “Mitterrand has the seventh function of language.”

  Bayard tries to assemble the pieces of the puzzle while Mitterrand and Giscard debate French military intervention in Zaire.

  “But, Simon, we saw in Venice that the function didn’t work.”

  Mitterrand gives Giscard the coup de grâce on the Kolwezi affair: “So basically, you could have repatriated them earlier … if you’d thought about it.”

  Simon points at the TV set:

  “That works!”

  95

  It is raining in Paris, the celebrations have begun at the Bastille, but the Socialist leaders are still at party headquarters, in Rue de Solférino, where an electric joy courses through the ranks of activists. Victory is always an achievement in politics, an end as well as a beginning; that is why the excitement it causes is a mix of euphoria and vertigo. What’s more, the alcohol is flowing freely and, already, the canapés are piling up. “What a night!” says Mitterrand.

  Jack Lang shakes hands, kisses cheeks, hugs everyone who crosses his path. He smiles at Fabius, who cried like a baby when the results were announced. In the street, people are singing and shouting in the rain. It is a waking dream and a historic moment. On a personal level, he knows that he will be minister of culture. Moati waves his arms around like a conductor. Badinter and Debray dance a sort of minuet. Jospin and Quilès drink to the memory of Jean Jaurès. Young men and women climb on the railings in Rue de Solférino. Camera flashes crackle like thousands of little lightning streaks in the great storm of history. Lang doesn’t know which way to turn anymore. Someone hails him: “Monsieur Lang!”

  He turns around and sees Bayard and Simon.

  Lang is surprised. He immediately realizes that these two have not come to join the celebrations.

  Bayard speaks first: “Would you mind giving us a few moments of your time?” He presents his card. Lang registers the red, white, and blue stripes.

  “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about Roland Barthes.”

  The sound of the dead critic’s name is like an invisible hand slapping Lang in the face.

  “Uh, listen … Not really, I don’t think this is the right time. Later in the week, perhaps? Just see my secretary and she can make an appointment for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  But Bayard holds him back by the arm: “I insist.”

  Pierre Joxe, who is passing, asks: “Is there a problem, Jack?”

  Lang looks over at the policemen guarding the gates. Until tonight, the police have been in the service of their opponents, but now he is in a position to ask them to escort these two gentlemen outside.

  In the street, the crowd is chanting “The Internationale,” punctuated by a chorus of car horns.

  Simon rolls up the right sleeve of his jacket and says: “Please. It won’t take long.”

  Lang stares at the stump. Joxe says to him: “Jack?”

  “Everything’s fine, Pierre. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He finds an unoccupied ground-floor office, just off the entrance hall. The light switch doesn’t work, but the glow of the streetlamps comes through the window, so the three men remain in this gloom. None has any desire to sit down.

  Simon takes over: “Monsieur Lang, how did you come into possession of the seventh function?”

  Lang sighs. Simon and Bayard wait. Mitterrand is president. Lang can tell them now. And in all probability, Simon thinks, Lang wants to tell them.

  He organized a lunch with Barthes because he knew that Barthes was in possession of Jakobson’s manuscript.

  “How?” asks Simon.

  “How what?” says Lang. “How did Barthes come into possession of the manuscript or how did I know that he had?”

  Simon is calm, but he knows that Bayard often has a hard time containing his impatience. As he doesn’t want his policeman friend to threaten to gouge out Jack Lang’s eyeballs with a coffee spoon, he says softly: “Both.”

  Jack Lang does not know how Barthes came into possession of the manuscript, but in any case his extraordinary network of contacts in cultural circles enabled Lang to become aware of this fact. It was Debray, after talking about it with Derrida, who convinced him of the document’s importance. So they decided to organize the lunch with Barthes in order to steal it from him. During the meal, Lang discreetly pilfered the sheet of paper that was in Barthes’s jacket pocket and gave it to Debray, who was waiting, hidden, in the entrance hall. Debray ran off to hand the document to Derrida, who fabricated a false function based on the original text, which Debray took back to Lang, who slipped it into Barthes’s pocket before lunch was over. The timing of the operation was extremely precise; Derrida had to write the false function in record time, based on the real one, so that it would be credible but would not actually work.

  Simon is amazed: “But what was the point? Barthes knew the text. He would have realized straight away.”

  Lang explains: “We banked on the assumption that if we were aware of the existence of this document, we weren’t the only ones, and that it would be bound to arouse keen interest.”

  Bayard interrupts him: “You anticipated that Sollers and Kristeva would steal it from him?”

  Simon replies on Lang’s behalf: “No, they thought Giscard would try to get hold of it. And they weren’t wrong, were they, as that was precisely the mission he gave you? Except that, contrary to what they had supposed, when Barthes was knocked over by the laundry van, Giscard wasn’t yet aware of the seventh function’s existence.” He turns to Lang: “Seems his network of cultural informers was not as efficient as yours…”

  Lang cannot conceal a faint smile of vanity: “In fact, the whole operation was based on what I must say was a fairly audacious gamble: that Barthes would have the false document stolen from him before he noticed the substitution, so that the thieves would believe they had the real seventh function and, additionally, so that we would remain beyond suspicion.”

  Bayard: “And that’s exactly what happened. Except that it wasn’t Giscard, but Sollers and Kristeva who were behind the theft.”

  Lang: “Ultimately, that didn’t make much difference to us. It would have been nice to play a trick on Giscard, to make him think he had a secret weapon. But the essential thing was that we had the seventh function—the real one.”

  Bayard asks: “But why was Barthes killed?”

  Lang had never expected things to go that far. They had had no intention whatsoever of killing anyone. It was immaterial to them that others should possess and even use the seventh function, as long as it wasn’t Giscard.

  Simon understands. Mitterrand’s objective was purely short-term: to beat Giscard in the debate. But Sollers, in a way, was aiming higher. He wanted to take Eco’s title as the Great Protagoras of the Logos Club, and for that he needed the seventh function, which would have given him a decisive rhetorical advantage. But in order to preserve the position once it was his, he would have to make sure that no one else got to know about it, in case they challenged him. Hence the Bulgarian assassins hired by Kristeva to track down all the copies: it was imperative that the seventh function remain the exclusive property of Sollers, and Sollers alone. So Barthes had to die, as did all those who had been in possession of the document and who might either use it or disseminate it.

  Simon asks if Mitterrand had approved Operation Seventh Function.

  Lang does not reply in so many words, but the answer is obvious, so he doesn’t attempt to deny it: “Mitterrand was not convinced that it would work until the very last minute. It took him a little while to master the function. But when it came down to it, he crushed Giscard.” The future minister of culture smiles wolfishly.

  “And Derrida?”

  “Derrida wanted Giscard to lose. Like Jakobson, he would have preferred no one to possess the seventh function, but he was not in any position to prevent
Mitterrand from getting it, and he liked the idea of the false function. He asked me to make the president promise to keep the seventh function for his exclusive use and not share it with anyone.” Lang smiles again. “A promise that the president, I feel absolutely certain, will have no trouble keeping.”

  “What about you?” Bayard asks. “Did you see it?”

  “No. Mitterrand asked us, Debray and me, not to open it. I wouldn’t have had time anyway, because as soon as I took it from Barthes, I gave it to Debray.”

  Jack Lang remembers the scene: he had to watch over the cooking of the fish, help keep the conversation ticking over, and steal the function without anyone noticing.

  “As for Debray, I don’t know if he obeyed the presidential order, but he didn’t have much time either. Knowing how loyal he is, I would bet that he followed instructions.”

  “So, theoretically,” says Bayard, sounding dubious, “Mitterrand is the last person still alive who knows the function?”

  “Along with Jakobson himself, obviously.”

  Simon says nothing.

  Outside, the people chant: “To the Bastille! To the Bastille!”

  The door opens and Moati’s head appears. “Are you coming? The concerts have started. Apparently, the Bastille is packed!”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Lang would like to rejoin his friends, but Simon still has one more question: “The false document forged by Derrida … was it intended to mess up whoever used it?”

  Lang considers this: “I’m not sure … The most important thing was that it seem plausible. It was already quite a feat on Derrida’s part to write a credible imitation in such a short space of time.”

  Bayard thinks back to Sollers’s performance in Venice and says to Simon: “Anyway, Sollers was a bit messed up to start with, wasn’t he?”

  With all the courtesy he can muster, Lang asks permission to leave, now that he has satisfied their curiosity.

  The three men exit the dark office and go back to the celebrations. Outside the former Gare d’Orsay, egged on by passersby, a man staggers around repeatedly yelling: “Giscard the loser! Let’s dance the Carmagnole!” Lang asks Simon and Bayard if they would like to accompany him to the Bastille. On the way, they bump into Gaston Defferre, the future minister of the interior. Lang makes the introductions. Defferre says to Bayard: “I need men like you. Let’s meet this week.”

  The rain is bucketing down, but it does not dampen the euphoria of the crowds in the Bastille. Even though it is already night, people shout: “Mitterrand, sunlight! Mitterrand, sunlight!”

  Bayard asks Lang if he thinks Kristeva and Sollers will be troubled by the long arm of the law. Lang pulls a face: “Quite frankly, I doubt it. The seventh function is now a state secret. The president has no interest in stirring this up. Anyway, Sollers has already paid a heavy price for his ambitions, don’t you think? I met him several times, you know. A charming man. He had the insolence of a courtier.”

  Lang smiles his charming smile. Bayard shakes his hand, and the soon-to-be minister of culture can at last go off to join his comrades in celebrating their victory.

  Simon contemplates the human tide that fills the square.

  He says: “What a waste.”

  Bayard is surprised: “What do you mean, what a waste? You’re going to be able to retire at sixty now—isn’t that what you want? You’ll have your thirty-five-hour workweek, your extra week’s vacation every year, your nationalizations, your abolition of the death penalty … Aren’t you happy?”

  “Barthes, Hamed, his friend Saïd, the Bulgarian on the Pont-Neuf, the Bulgarian in the DS, Derrida, Searle … They all died for nothing. They died so Sollers could have his balls chopped off in Venice because he had the wrong document. Right from the beginning, we were chasing a mirage.”

  “Well, not entirely. The sheet in Barthes’s apartment, the one inside the Jakobson book, that was a copy of the original. If we hadn’t intercepted the Bulgarian, he’d have given it to Kristeva, who would have realized there’d been a substitution when she compared the two texts. And Slimane’s cassette: that was a recording of the original too. It was important it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.” (Shit, thinks Bayard, stop talking about hands!)

  “But Derrida wanted to destroy it.”

  “But if Searle had got his hands on it”—seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me?—“who knows what would have happened?”

  “They know in Murano.”

  An oppressive silence, despite the singing crowd. Bayard doesn’t know what to say. He remembers a film he saw when he was a kid—The Vikings, with Tony Curtis as a one-armed man who kills the two-armed Kirk Douglas—but he is not sure that Simon would appreciate this reference.

  There was nothing wrong with their investigation, no matter what anyone thinks. They tracked down Barthes’s murderers. How could they have guessed that they didn’t have the real document? No, Simon is right: they were barking up the wrong tree from the very start.

  Bayard says: “Without this investigation, you wouldn’t have become what you are.”

  “Disabled?” sneers Simon.

  “When I first met you, you were a little library rat, you looked like a hippie virgin, and now look at you! You’re wearing a decent suit, you meet loads of girls, you’re the rising star of the Logos Club…”

  “And I lost my right hand.”

  A series of performers appears on the huge stage in the Bastille. Among a group of kissing, dancing young people, blond hair blowing in the wind (this is the first time he has seen her with her hair down), Simon recognizes Anastasia.

  What were the odds of him bumping into her again, tonight, in this crowd? The thought flashes through Simon’s mind that either he is being manipulated by a really bad novelist or Anastasia is some sort of superspy.

  Onstage, the group Téléphone are playing their hit, “Ça (C’est Vraiment Toi).”

  Their eyes meet and, as she dances with a long-haired guy, Anastasia gives him a little wave.

  Bayard has seen her too; he tells Simon that it’s time for him to go home.

  “You’re not staying?”

  “It’s not my victory. You know I voted for the other baldy. Anyway, I’m too old for all this.” He gives a vague wave at the groups of people jumping up and down in time with the music, getting drunk, smoking joints, and making out.

  “Oh, give me a break, granddad—you weren’t saying that at Cornell when you were high as a kite, screwing God knows who with your friend Judith up your ass!”

  Bayard does not take the bait:

  “Anyway, I’ve got cabinets full of files that I need to shred before your friends get their … get hold of them.”

  “What if Defferre offers you a job?”

  “I’m a fonctionnaire. I’m paid to serve the government.”

  “I see. Your patriotism does you honor.”

  “Shut your mouth, you little twerp.”

  The two men laugh. Simon asks Bayard if he isn’t curious to at least hear Anastasia’s side of the story. Bayard puts out his left hand to shake and tells him, watching the young Russian woman dance: “You can tell me later.”

  And Bayard vanishes into the crowd.

  When Simon turns around, Anastasia is standing in front of him, covered in sweat and rain. There is a brief moment of awkwardness. Simon notices that she is looking at the space where his missing hand should be. To create a diversion, he asks her: “So, what do they think about Mitterrand’s victory in Moscow?” She smiles. “Brezhnev, you know…” She hands him a half-empty can of beer. “Andropov is the coming man.”

  “And what does the coming man think of his Bulgarian counterpart?”

  “Kristeva’s father? We knew he was working for his daughter. But we couldn’t work out why they wanted the function. It’s thanks to you that I was able to discover the existence of the Logos Club.”

  “What will happen to him now, Kristeva Senior?”

  “Times h
ave changed. This isn’t ’68 anymore. I have not received any orders. Not for the father or for the daughter. As for the agent who tried to kill you, we last saw him in Istanbul, but after that we lost track of him.”

  The rain falls harder. Onstage, Jacques Higelin sings “Champagne.”

  In a pained voice, Simon asks her: “Why weren’t you in Venice?”

  Anastasia ties up her hair and takes a cigarette from a soft packet, but is unable to light it. Simon leads her to a sheltered place, under a tree, above the Port de l’Arsenal. “I was following another trail.” She had discovered that Sollers had entrusted a copy of the seventh function to Althusser. She didn’t know it was a false document, so she searched everywhere in Althusser’s apartment while he was in an asylum—and that required a great deal of work because there were tons of books and papers, the document could have been hidden anywhere, and she had to be extremely methodical. But she didn’t find it.

  Simon says: “That’s a shame.”

  Behind them, onstage, they catch a glimpse of Rocard and Juquin, hand in hand, singing “The Internationale,” echoed by the entire crowd. Anastasia mumbles the words in Russian. Simon wonders if the Left can actually be in power, in real life. Or, more precisely, he wonders if, in real life, it is possible to change one’s life. But before he is drawn, once again, down the rabbit hole of his ontological reflections, he hears Anastasia whisper to him: “I’m going back to Moscow tomorrow; tonight, I’m not on duty.” And, as if by magic, she takes a bottle of champagne from her bag. Simon has no idea how or where she got it, but who cares? They take turns drinking from the bottle, and Simon kisses Anastasia, wondering if she is about to slice open his carotid artery with a hairpin or if he will fall to the ground, poisoned by her toxic lipstick. But Anastasia lets him kiss her, and she isn’t wearing lipstick. With the rain and the celebrations in the background, the scene is like something from a Hollywood film, but Simon decides not to dwell on this.