The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  The crowd yells: “Mitterrand! Mitterrand!” (But the new president is not there.)

  Simon goes up to a street vendor who has drinks in his cooler, including, for tonight only, champagne. So he buys another bottle and uncorks it with one hand, while Anastasia smiles at him, her eyes shining from the alcohol and her hair, unpinned again, falling over her shoulders.

  They clink their bottles together and Anastasia shouts over the clamor of the storm:

  “To socialism!”

  Everyone around them cheers.

  And Simon replies, as a flash of lightning streaks across the Paris sky:

  “The real kind!”

  96

  The French Open men’s final, 1981. Borg is crushing his opponent yet again, this time the Czechoslovakian Ivan Lendl; he takes the first set 6–1. All the heads in the crowd turn to follow the ball, except for Simon’s, because his thoughts are elsewhere.

  Maybe Bayard doesn’t care, but he wants to know; he wants proof that he is not a character in a novel, that he lives in the real world. (What is it, the real? “You know it when you bump into it,” Lacan said. And Simon looks at his stump.)

  The second set is tougher. The players send clouds of dust into the air when they slide around on the dry court.

  Simon is alone in his box until a young North African–looking man joins him. The young man sits on the seat next to his. It’s Slimane.

  They greet each other. Lendl snatches the second set.

  It is the first set Borg has lost in the entire tournament.

  “Nice box.”

  “An advertising agency rents it, the one that did Mitterrand’s campaign. They want to recruit me.”

  “Are you interested?”

  “I think we can call each other tu.”

  “I’m sorry about your hand.”

  “If Borg wins, it’ll be his sixth Roland-Garros title. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like he’s got a good chance.”

  It’s true: Borg will pull away quite quickly in the third set.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “I was passing through Paris anyway. Was it your cop friend who told you?”

  “So you live in the U.S. now?”

  “Yeah, I got my green card.”

  “In six months?”

  “There’s always a way.”

  “Even with the American government?”

  “Yep, even with them.”

  “What did you do, after Cornell?”

  “I ran off with the money.”

  “I know that bit.”

  “I went to New York. To start with, I enrolled at Columbia University and took a few courses.”

  “In the middle of the academic year? Is that possible?”

  “Yeah, sure, you just have to convince a secretary.”

  Borg breaks Lendl for the second time in the set.

  “I heard about your victories in the Logos Club. Congratulations.”

  “Actually, that reminds me: isn’t there an American branch?”

  “Yes, but it’s still embryonic. I’m not sure there’s even a single tribune in the whole country. There’s a peripatetician in Philadelphia, I think, one or two in Boston, maybe, and a few dialecticians scattered over the West Coast.”

  Simon doesn’t ask him if he’s planning to join.

  Borg takes the third set 6–2.

  “Got any plans?”

  “I’d like to get into politics.”

  “In the U.S.? You think you can get American nationality?”

  “Why not?”

  “But you want to, uh, stand for election?”

  “Well, I need to improve my English first, and I need to be naturalized. After that, it’s not just a question of winning debates to become a candidate; you have to—what’s the expression?—do the hard yards. Maybe I’ll be able to aim for the Democratic primaries in 2020, who knows. Not before that, though, ha ha.”

  Precisely because Slimane sounds as if he’s joking, Simon wonders if he isn’t serious.

  “No, but listen, I met a student at Columbia. I have a feeling he can go far, if I help him.”

  “What do you mean by ‘far’?”

  “I think I can make him a senator.”

  “To what end?”

  “Just because. He’s a black guy from Hawaii.”

  “Hmm, I see. A suitable test for your new powers.”

  “It’s not exactly a power.”

  “I know.”

  Lendl hits a forehand that speeds ten feet past Borg.

  Simon remarks: “That doesn’t happen very often to Borg. He’s good, this Czech guy.”

  He is delaying the moment when he will touch upon the real reason he wanted to talk with Slimane, even though the ex-gigolo knows exactly what he has in mind.

  “I listened to it over and over on my Walkman, but it’s not enough just to learn it by heart, you know.”

  “So it’s a method? A secret weapon?”

  “It’s more like a key, or a path, than a method. It’s true that Jakobson called it the ‘performative function,’ but ‘performative’ is just an image.”

  Slimane watches Borg play his two-handed backhand.

  “It’s a technique, I guess.”

  “In the Greek sense?”

  Slimane smiles.

  “A technè, sure, if you like. Praxis, poiesis … I learned all that stuff, you know.”

  “And you feel unbeatable?”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I am. I think I could be beaten.”

  “Without the function?”

  Slimane smiles.

  “We’ll see. But I still have plenty to learn. And I have to train. Convincing a customs official or a secretary is one thing, winning elections is something else. I’ve still got a long way to go.”

  Simon wonders how great Mitterrand’s mastery of the technique is, and whether the Socialist president could lose an election or if he’s destined to be reelected until his death.

  In the meantime, Lendl fights against the Swedish machine and wins the fourth set. The spectators shiver: this is the first time in ages that Borg has been taken to the fifth set at Roland-Garros. In fact, he hadn’t lost a single set here since 1979 and his final against Victor Pecci. As for his last defeat in Paris, that goes all the way back to 1976, against Panatta.

  Borg hits a double fault, offering Lendl a break point.

  “I don’t know what’s more improbable,” says Simon. “A sixth victory for Borg … or him losing.”

  Borg responds with an ace. Lendl shouts something in Czech.

  Simon realizes that he wants Borg to win, and that in this desire there is probably a bit of superstition, a bit of conservatism, a fear of change, but it would also be a victory for plausibility: the undisputed world number one ahead of Connors and McEnroe, Borg crushed all his opponents to reach the final, whereas Lendl, fifth in the world, almost lost against José Luis Clerc in the semifinal and even against Andres Gomez in the second round. The order of things …

  “Actually, have you heard from Foucault?”

  “Yeah, we write to each other regularly. He’s putting me up while I’m in Paris. He’s still working on his history of sexuality.”

  “And, uh, the seventh function … he’s not interested in that? At least, as a subject of study?”

  “He abandoned linguistics a while ago, you know. Maybe he’ll come back to it one day. But in any case, he’s too tactful to bring it up.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “Oh, no, I wasn’t saying that about you.”

  Borg breaks Lendl.

  Simon and Slimane stop talking for a while to follow the match.

  Slimane thinks about Hamed.

  “And that bitch Kristeva?”

  “She’s fine. You know what happened to Sollers?”

  An evil grin lights up Slimane’s face.

  The two men sense vaguely that one day they will go head to head for the position of Great Protagoras
, but they are not going to admit that to each other today. Simon has carefully avoided mentioning Umberto Eco.

  Lendl breaks back.

  The outcome is increasingly uncertain.

  “So what about your plans?”

  Simon laughs grimly, holding up his stump.

  “Well, it’s going to be difficult to win Roland-Garros.”

  “I bet you could take the Trans-Siberian, though.”

  Simon smiles at the allusion to Cendrars, another one-armed intellectual, and wonders when Slimane acquired this literary knowledge.

  Lendl doesn’t want to lose, but Borg is so strong.

  And yet.

  The unthinkable happens.

  Lendl breaks Borg again.

  He serves for the match.

  The young Czechoslovak trembles under the weight of expectation.

  But he wins.

  Borg the invincible is beaten. Lendl raises his arms to the sky.

  Slimane applauds, along with the rest of the spectators.

  When Simon sees Lendl lift the cup, he no longer knows what to think.

  EPILOGUE

  NAPLES

  97

  Simon stands outside the entrance of Galleria Umberto I, and from this position he can perceive its proud and happy union of glass and marble, but he remains on the threshold. The gallery is a landmark, not a destination. He stares at the map he has unfolded, puzzling over why Via Roma cannot be found. He has the feeling that his map is wrong.

  He should be standing on Via Roma. Instead of which, he is on Via Toleda.

  Behind him, on the opposite pavement, an old shoeshine guy watches him curiously.

  Simon knows the shoeshine guy is waiting to see how he will manage to fold his map back up with only one hand.

  The old man has a wooden crate, on which he has created a sort of makeshift rack on which customers can wedge their shoes. Simon notes the slope for the heel.

  The two men look at each other.

  Perplexity reigns on both sides of this Neapolitan street.

  Simon does not know exactly where he is. He begins folding the map, slowly but dexterously, never taking his eyes off the old shoeshine guy.

  But suddenly the old man points at a spot directly above Simon, who senses that something abnormal is happening because the man’s glum expression changes to one of stupefaction.

  Simon looks up just in time to see the pediment above the gallery entrance, a bas-relief representing two cherubs flanking a coat of arms, or something like that, come loose from the façade.

  The shoeshine guy tries to yell something, a warning (“Statte accuorto!”) to prevent the tragedy, or at least to participate in it in some way, but no sound emerges from his toothless mouth.

  But Simon has changed a lot. He is no longer a library rat about to be crushed by half a ton of white stone, but a one-handed man ranked quite high in the hierarchy of the Logos Club who has cheated death at least three times. Instead of stepping back, as our instinct would prompt us, he has the counterintuitive reflex of pressing his body against the building’s wall, so that the huge block of stone smashes the pavement next to his feet without injuring him.

  The shoeshine guy cannot believe it. Simon looks down at the rubble, he looks over at the old man, he looks around him at the petrified pedestrians.

  He points at the poor shoeshine guy, but it is not him, of course, he addresses when he declares, aggressively: “If you want to kill me, you’re going to have to try a bit harder than that!” Or maybe the novelist wanted to send him a message? In that case, he’ll have to express himself a bit more clearly, thinks Simon angrily.

  98

  “It’s last year’s earthquake; it made all the buildings fragile. They could collapse at any moment.”

  Simon listens to Bianca explaining why he almost got his skull caved in by a huge chunk of marble.

  “San Gennaro—Saint January—stopped the lava during an eruption of Vesuvius and he has been Naples’s protector ever since. Every year, the bishop takes a bit of his dried blood in a glass vial and he keeps turning it upside down until the blood becomes liquid. If the blood dissolves, Naples will be spared misfortune. And what happened last year, do you think?”

  “The blood didn’t dissolve.”

  “And then the Camorra embezzled millions that the European Commission gave the city because they’re in control of the reconstruction contracts. So of course, they didn’t do anything, or they did such shoddy work that it’s just as dangerous as before. There are accidents all the time. Neapolitans are used to them.”

  Simon and Bianca are sipping coffee on the terrace of the Gambrinus, a very touristy literary café and pastry shop that Simon chose for this meeting. He nibbles a rum baba.

  Bianca explains that the expression “See Naples and die” (vedi Napoli e poi muori; in Latin, videre Neapolim et Mori) is in fact a play on words: Mori is a small town near Naples.

  She also tells him the history of the pizza: one day, Queen Margherita, married to the king of Italy, Umberto I, discovered this popular meal and made it famous throughout Italy. In tribute, a pizza was named after her, the one containing the colors of the national flag: green (basil), white (mozzarella), and red (tomato).

  Up to now, she has not asked a single question about his hand.

  A white Fiat double-parks near them.

  Bianca becomes more and more animated. She starts talking politics. She tells Simon again about the hatred she feels for bourgeois people who hoard all the wealth and starve the people. “Can you believe it, Simon? Some of those bourgeois bastards spend hundreds of thousands of lire just to buy a handbag. A handbag, Simon!”

  Two young men get out of the white Fiat and sit on the terrace. They are joined by a third, a biker who parks his Triumph on the pavement. Bianca can’t see them because they are behind her back. It is the scarf gang from Bologna.

  If Simon is surprised to see them here, he doesn’t show it.

  Bianca sobs with rage, thinking about the excesses of the Italian middle classes. She heaps insults on Reagan. She is suspicious of Mitterrand because, on that side of the Alps as on this one, the socialists are always traitors. Bettino Craxi is a piece of shit. They all deserve to die, and she would happily execute them herself given the chance. The world seems infinitely dark to her, thinks Simon, who cannot really claim she is wrong.

  The three young men have ordered beers and lit cigarettes when another character arrives, already known to Simon: his Venice opponent, the man who mutilated him, flanked by two bodyguards.

  Simon leans over his rum baba, hiding his face. The man shakes hands like a VIP, a local elected official or a high-ranking Camorra member (the distinction is often not very clear, here). He disappears inside the café.

  Bianca spits on Forlani and his Pentapartito government. Simon worries that she is having a nervous breakdown. Attempting to calm her, he utters some soothing words—“come on, not everything’s that bad, think about Nicaragua…”—and moves his hand under the table to rest on her knee, but through the fabric of Bianca’s trouser leg he touches something hard that is not flesh.

  Bianca, startled, abruptly pulls her leg beneath her chair. She immediately stops sobbing. She stares at Simon, defiant and imploring at the same time. There is rage, anger, and love in her tears.

  Simon says nothing. So, that’s how it is: a happy ending. The one-handed man and the one-legged girl. And, as in all good stories, some guilt to drag around with him: if Bianca lost her leg at Bologna Central, it was his fault. If she had never met him, she would have two legs and would still be able to wear skirts.

  But then again, they would also not form this touching handicapped couple. Will they marry and make lots of little Leftists?

  Except that this is not the final scene that he had in mind.

  Yes, while visiting Naples, he wanted to see Bianca, the young woman he fucked on a dissecting table in Bologna, but right now he has other plans.

  Simon makes an im
perceptible nod to one of the young men in scarves.

  The three of them stand up, put their scarves over their mouths, and enter the café.

  Simon and Bianca exchange a long look, communicating an infinity of messages, stories, and emotions, of the past, the present, and, already, the conditional past (the worst of all, the tense of regrets).

  The sound of two gunshots. Screams and confusion.

  The gang emerge, pushing Simon’s opponent forward. One of the three has his P38 wedged in the lower back of the important Camorra member. Another sweeps the terrace with his, threatening the shocked clientele.

  As he passes Simon, the third gang member puts something on the table, which Simon covers with his napkin.

  They shove the Camorra guy in the back of the Fiat and speed off.

  There is panic in the café. Simon listens to the screams from inside and understands that the two bodyguards are injured. Each one has a bullet in his leg, as planned.

  Simon says to the frightened-looking Bianca: “Come with me.”

  He leads her over to the third man’s motorbike and hands her the napkin, inside which is a key. He says to Bianca: “Drive.”

  Bianca protests: she’s ridden a scooter before, but never a bike as powerful as this one.

  Lifting his right arm, Simon says, scowling: “Well, I can’t either.”

  So Bianca straddles the Triumph, Simon kickstarts it and sits behind her, arms around her waist, and she twists the handle to accelerate, sending the bike flying forward. Bianca asks which direction she should take and Simon replies: “Pozzuoli.”

  99

  It is like a lunar landscape, somewhere between a spaghetti western and a science fiction film.

  At the center of an immense crater coated with whitish clay, the three gang members surround the paunchy VIP, who is kneeling next to a boiling mud pit.

  Around them, geysers of sulfur burst from the bowels of the earth. The air is thick with the stench of rotten eggs.

  Simon’s first thought was to go to the Sibyl’s cave in Cumae, where no one would have come to find them, but he decided against that because it was too kitsch, too obviously symbolic, and he’s getting tired of symbols. Except it is not that easy to get away from them: as they tread the cracked earth, Bianca tells him that the Romans believed the Solfatara, this dormant volcano, to be the gates of Hell. Okay …