The President's Hat

by Antoine Laurain

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Bernard, ‘it hasn’t changed anything.’

  ‘What about the communist government ministers!’ cried Pierre Chastagnier.

  ‘Indeed, what about them? The Communist Party is dissolving like sugar in water. Mitterrand has achieved in the space of six years what the Right failed to do in thirty.’

  ‘You’re just playing devil’s advocate!’

  ‘Mitterrand is not the devil … but he is an advocate,’ Bernard said with a smile.

  The heel of a Céline stiletto is a weapon too often overlooked by the male of the species, and a violent kick in the shin made him look up to meet Charlotte’s livid gaze.

  ‘He represents France to the rest of the world,’ muttered Jean-Patrick Teraille, ‘and I can’t abide it!’

  ‘What kind of image are we projecting with a socialist president?’ threw in Hubert de la Tour.

  ‘What kind of image?’ repeated Bernard in surprise. ‘Why, the very best,’ he said, discreetly nursing his leg. ‘Mitterrand is well liked wherever he goes. And as a result he has forged stronger relationships with his counterparts, whether it’s Helmut Kohl, President Reagan, Gorbachev or Margaret Thatcher. He’s popular in France too, people love him.’

  ‘People? What people?!’ fumed Hubert de la Tour.

  ‘The people …’ replied Bernard, smiling.

  ‘He’s Machiavellian,’ complained Pierre de Vaunoy.

  ‘So he is,’ said Bernard, grinning. ‘You should re-read The Prince.’

  ‘The Prince?’

  ‘Machiavelli’s The Prince. It’s all in there.’

  ‘As if you’ve ever read it,’ Charlotte shot back coldly.

  Bernard blinked imperceptibly. ‘“I will only conclude that a prince must have the people on his side, otherwise he will not have support in adverse times.”’

  ‘How enlightening …’

  Everyone turned to face Colonel Larnier, who had not slackened his jaw. He had just discovered in Bernard an object even more worthy of his wrath than the artist responsible for the reggae version of the ‘Marseillaise’.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he went on, breathless with rage, ‘I refuse to sit here listening to you eulogising François Mitterrand. The manner in which you cut Monsieur Teraille off was unspeakable. Once upon a time such quarrels were fought to the death!’

  The lady of the house tried to calm the colonel down as he carried on mumbling about the voice of France, General de Gaulle and damned usurpers. Then silence descended, and, after a brief lull, the good manners common to the very best households were restored.

  When the time came to take their leave, Bernard thanked his hosts and went to say goodbye to the other guests, while unbeknownst to him his wife was apologising profusely to the hostess.

  In the hallway he put on his Burberry coat, helped Charlotte with her shawl and placed his black felt hat on his head, without noticing that the initials embossed inside had skipped a few places up the alphabet.

  At half past midnight, as his wife was falling into a fitful sleep – in spite of taking a sleeping tablet – Bernard, alone in the living room, poured himself a cognac. No one had backed him up, even half-heartedly, when he had dared to ask for the President’s name to be pronounced properly. And Charlotte had gone as far as to lay into his calf in the most underhand manner.

  The initial mockery he met with had quickly given way to undisguised loathing. When they got up to leave, the colonel had looked Bernard up and down as he shook his hand with a contempt no one had shown him since he was in short trousers. Once upon a time such quarrels were fought to the death. A duel? Whatever next?

  Bernard kicked himself for failing to think in time of a suitably cutting put-down. It had come to him in the lift: No need for that, my dear colonel, you’re already brain-dead. Wonderful, it would have pierced the colonel’s heart more effectively than the fastest bullet.

  On the way home, his wife had thrown what could easily be described as a fit of hysteria: ‘We’re going to fall out with all our friends, thanks to you!’ she had shrieked.

  ‘Our friends?’

  Bernard finished his cognac in one gulp and poured another. What the hell? he thought to himself. Everyone’s asleep, I can do what I like.

  In what way did these people really count as friends? It was far too strong a word for what they meant to him; just because you had had the same sort of education, had gone to the same parties and the same universities, that didn’t make you friends. It was ridiculous to think that it did. They moved in the same circles – that was all. Friendship was something else entirely; it was the stuff of great poets and writers.

  The names Montaigne and La Boétie sprang to mind, but he swiftly brushed them aside; they were perhaps not the best example, since the close friendship between the two authors was rumoured to have gone as far as sodomy.

  Saint-Exupéry, on the other hand, had written very eloquently on the subject, with his tale of the little tamed fox you were forever responsible for. The dinner party guests had been nothing like vulnerable little foxes; rather they resembled hyenas that had smelt blood the moment he had spoken.

  That evening, in a matter of seconds, the well-respected man with the important job at AXA had become ‘suspect’.

  They eyed me as if I were their prey, Bernard reflected. They’re all big hunters, after all, and I’ve always turned down their invitations to country meets. So what exactly do I have in common with these people? With this question, which he had never asked himself before, a chasm opened before him.

  His stomach gurgled and an image of the chicken with apricots came back to him. He banished it, replacing it with the memory of Henriette at the stove.

  Henriette lived in the little house at the entrance to the family estate, between Le Clos-des-Deux-Pies and the Rivaille property. The extended Lavallière family – parents, cousins, uncles and grandparents – came together in the big house several times a year during the school holidays.

  Henriette, whose husband Bernard had never known because he had died twenty years earlier, shared the gatekeeper’s cottage with her brother, Marcel. He made his living as an odd-job man, doing everything from gardening to masonry.

  He had never been known to have a woman in his life and, many years later, it was rumoured that Marcel liked men, but that was never confirmed.

  Being allowed inside Henriette’s house was a privilege which was not afforded to all the Lavallière children. Some of them were judged to be too grown-up, others too little; the optimum age range was between seven and twelve.

  The lunch to which the ten or so children were invited always began in the same way, with a walk around Henriette’s vegetable patch. It was there that they learnt to recognise aromatic herbs and vegetables; sometimes they were even allowed to try them.

  Marcel would take an Opinel knife out of his trouser pocket and, in front of the fascinated children, would cut a carrot or tomato into little pieces and hand them round.

  Afterwards, everyone sat down around the big table, always covered in the same red and white oilcloth. Henriette would stand at the coal-fired stove and the bowls would be filled with a pot-au-feu that would put most restaurants to shame. Sometimes they got a melt-in-the-mouth blanquette, ossobucco or cabbage with bacon instead – local dishes cooked from secret recipes that had been passed down through the generations, which none of these children’s mothers could hope to recreate in their Paris kitchens. They had their cooks for that, of course, but none of them were a patch on Henriette.

  Time had passed and after the death of Bernard’s grandparents, the estate had been sold, savagely carved up among the inheritors. The warmth of that kitchen and the sweet aromas of his childhood had gone for good.

  The guests at the dinner demonstrated perfectly why there had been latent hostility towards the middle and upper classes for centuries.

  Giscard d’Estaing, that grand bourgeois made aristocratic by the title hi
s forebears bought in 1922, but taken fully into the fold through marriage, was another fine example. What was it Mitterrand had said to him at the debate between the two rounds of the presidential elections? ‘First of all, I don’t appreciate your tone. I am not your pupil and you are not the President of the Republic here, you are merely my opponent.’ His words struck a chord.

  To think I voted for Giscard, mused Bernard, when the word ‘fossil’ came to mind – the word that meant ancient sediments. ‘That’s exactly what they are, fossils,’ he whispered to himself, slamming his glass down on the coffee table. Fossils, some of whom don’t own a TV and are proud of the fact. Fossils, who wish nothing would ever change, living in their old apartments with the same old decor.

  Bernard looked up and caught sight of the portrait of his ancestor Charles-Édouard Lavallière which had been hanging over the mantelpiece for two generations. It was to this man with grey sideburns and an imperial profile that his family still owed a large part of its fortune, held in apartments and office space in the capital – originally plots of land which his forebear had built on during the Haussmann-era redevelopment of Paris.

  His gaze fell on the Louis XVI dresser and the two Ming vases sitting on top of it. He turned to the white marble mantelpiece and the Louis XVI gilt bronze carriage clock depicting Diana the huntress and a fawn. Then he looked round at the Louis XIII cabinet beside the window, the Laura Ashley drapes, the lace curtains, the six matching Louis XVI armchairs, the Persian rug, the Louis-Philippe stool and the desk of the same era.

  On the walls there were landscape paintings from about 1800 depicting imaginary ruins peopled with unconvincing shepherdesses, and a rather kitsch pastel drawing of unclear provenance, showing a woman looking up at the sky as though faced with an apparition of the Virgin Mary. There was also an Aubusson tapestry on the opposite wall and a Charles X crystal chandelier.

  Bernard realised with dismay that his apartment was decorated no differently from the homes of his fellow dinner party guests. Take the painting hanging above the sofa. It depicted a bucolic scene beside a babbling brook, with a church in the background.

  A circular hole had been cut in the canvas where the bell tower was and a real enamel clock mechanism inserted. Its hands had fallen off at some point over the years; Bernard had never known it any other way. In theory, the picture was supposed to chime and give the time. It did nothing of the sort; it had not worked for decades. Bernard had inherited it from his father, who had inherited it from his father, and no one knew which Lavallière it had originally come from – it was just there, a permanent, useless object, and by the very presence of its handless clock face, it symbolised time standing still.

  The disfigured canvas seemed to tell him: You’re a conventional bourgeois and you always will be. You’re exactly the same as everyone else at that dinner. Just like them, you live surrounded by things you did not choose and to which you have contributed almost nothing new. Your children will do the same and their children after them, and so it will go on.

  You’re nothing but a conservative, in every sense of the word. A product of your milieu, with nothing to distinguish you – just like your father, your grandfather and all the generations to come. You are not a man of your time; just look at that clock face – you don’t even know what hour or year you’re living in.

  Bernard felt a sudden desire to read Machiavelli’s The Prince. ‘As if you’ve ever read it,’ Charlotte had had the audacity to snipe. Of course he had read it while studying law, but he had never so much as opened it since. The mere fact of being able to recite from it so accurately that evening should have earned him universal admiration.

  He went into his study and scanned the shelves for a good fifteen minutes before laying his hands on the cheap paperback edition, whose pages were already yellowed. He opened it and read:

  ‘A wise ruler cannot and should not keep his word when it would be to his disadvantage to do so, and when the reasons that made him give his word have disappeared. If all men were good, this rule would not stand. But as men are wicked and not prepared to keep their word to you, you have no need to keep your word to them.

  ‘It is vital to understand that a prince, especially a new prince, cannot afford to cultivate attributes for which men are considered good. In order to maintain the State, a prince will often be compelled to work against what is merciful, loyal, humane, upright and scrupulous. He must have a spirit that can change depending on the winds and variations of Fortune, and, as I have said above, he must not, if he is able, distance himself from what is good, but must also, when necessary, know how to prefer what is bad.’

  As he read these words, he felt a splitting headache come on and went to bed.

  ‘… Are you sure?’ the newsagent with the moustache asked doubtfully.

  Every morning, Bernard was up with the lark and went out early to buy Le Figaro. He could have taken out a subscription, of course, but the outing had become part of his daily routine. Once he had bought the paper, he would head home to have breakfast with his family before setting off for the office. He had got to know three different newsagents over time and had a very good relationship with all of them. He was their quarter-to-seven customer, the one who always bought Le Figaro, plus the Madame and Magazine supplements at the weekend.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ replied Bernard evenly.

  For the first time in the thirteen years he had been running the kiosk at Passy, Marcel Chevasson had just sold a copy of ‘Libé’ to his morning customer. This sort of thing never happened.

  Customers fell strictly into one of two categories: the fickle ones, who picked up a newspaper and cleared off never to be seen again, and the unswervingly loyal. This kind of customer shared an understanding with his newsagent, the soul of discretion, who never dreamt of commenting or passing judgement on his purchases.

  Thus every Thursday Chevasson served his two regular buyers of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s rag, National Hebdo: a thirty-something skinhead and an elderly gentleman with a walking stick, Loden coat and gloves in winter.

  The same went for the porn mags. Union and Lui readers purchased their magazines discreetly but without shame, and Marcel Chevasson handed them over as disinterestedly as if they were copies of Le Point or Valeurs Actuelles.

  What would happen if the old man with the stick started buying Le Figaro? What if the skinhead asked for L’Équipe, or the smutty-picture lovers switched to France-Dimanche or Point de Vue? The Figaro man had just upset a delicate balance and Marcel Chevasson was thrown off kilter for the rest of the morning.

  Peering over the stack of gossip magazines, he realised the changes did not stop there. His customer had not walked back towards his street as he usually did but, still wearing his hat, had sat down at a pavement café to read ‘Libé’ while sipping a café crème.

  More precisely – though Marcel Chevasson could not see this – he was savouring a scathing piece on Jacques Chirac. Terribly well written and vicious as you like, the article pulled apart every one of the Prime Minister’s mistakes since coming to office.

  A quarter of an hour later, Bernard passed through the entrance hall of his apartment building. The concierge did a double take; no, she had not imagined it, it really was Monsieur Lavallière who had just walked past her with his nose buried in the daily with the red diamond logo.

  Only one person in this building read ‘Libé’ and that was the ‘newcomer’, Monsieur Djian, who subscribed. Monsieur Djian had moved into the second-floor flat ten months earlier. The brass plates beside the intercom had witnessed the arrival of a surname which stuck out among those of the families who had inhabited the building sometimes for several generations, most of which had an aristocratic ring to them. Monsieur Djian was in the import-export trade.

  What did he import? What did he export? No one knew, but whatever it was it meant he could afford a Rolls-Royce, which – according to the concierge, who got it from Monsieur Djian himself – he had bought off ‘his friend J
acques Séguéla’, publicist to the stars.

  His neighbours took this crowning glory of British automotive technology to be the height of vulgarity and openly referred to the Barritiers – the old Action Française family who had sold him their apartment in order to emigrate to the seventh arrondissement – as ‘traitors’. They said hello to Monsieur Djian in passing, but it would never have occurred to them to ask him in.

  When he first moved in, he had warmly invited them all to a drinks party at his new apartment, but each of his neighbours had managed to conjure up a prior arrangement they could not possibly get out of. Monsieur Djian did not hold it against them.

  Though they saw him as an outsider, the occupants of the building had to admit Djian had one notable strong point: when it came to getting service charges knocked down, he was peerless. The management committee, who had until then never had any trouble getting their prim and proper residents to cough up, had had to get used to the idea of a city slicker calling the shots.

  Undaunted, waving the estimates in front of them with his gold-Rolex-ringed wrist, Monsieur Djian would utter words like ‘scandalous’, ‘crooks’ and ‘money-grabbers’ to denote the various trades only too happy to ply their services around ageing Parisian apartment blocks: lift engineers, painters, plumbers and roofers.

  He asked them to go back for revised quotes, threatened to sever long-standing business arrangements and demanded a reduction of at least twenty-five per cent. Monsieur Djian was physically rather imposing, and Madame Prusin of the Foncia property company was terrified into passing on all his requests.

  The tradesmen, keen to avoid losing lucrative business, always replied favourably and in the most fawning terms. Monsieur Djian had thus saved the residents more than 38,000 francs so far this financial year. Not that they would have thanked him out loud; at meetings, they kept their mouths shut, sometimes gathering in small groups beforehand and agreeing in hushed tones: ‘We’ll let Djian take care of that …’