The smoke hadn’t yet dispersed. The television cameras were being kept at a distance. The images they were taking on the spot only showed a thick black curtain. From the helicopters, it was different. In some places, the fires had died down. The weirdest thing was not so much what had been destroyed, but what had been displaced by the force of the explosion. What our brains found it hard to process was the stuff they could recognize. Grey tiles splashed with blood, the coloured sign for the metro station, intact but thrown a hundred metres from its original spot. A tree still standing. A bench on its side. A lamp post cut in half, lying flat. Part of some railings, their tips recently repainted gold. A fragment of sculpture from a façade, a chubby cherub with a big sword. One of the black-and-white Buren columns had landed, intact, in the top branches of a tree that had remained upright. The still-recognizable residue bore witness to the fact that the mass of black rubble surrounding them had indeed once been the Palais-Royal. Terror had spared these links with a ravaged normality.
In the room, the first remark was ‘Some high-up in the government must have wanted to move a petrol pump, and oops, the Palais-Royal exploded.’
‘Like Capri juice, but worse.’
They were trying to be clever, but their hearts weren’t in it.
‘But was there anyone inside?’
‘Would there be, this time of day?’
‘Can’t see any bodies.’
‘Wait for the smoke to clear… Then we’ll know.’
‘It doesn’t necessarily have to be Al-Qaida, the Basque separatists said they were going to strike.’
‘In Paris? You must be joking, the Basques aren’t asking for the Ile-de-France to be independent.’
‘Someone said there was an awards ceremony going on inside. Has anyone checked what it was?’
‘What’s the building anyway, a ministry?’
‘No. It’s the Palais-Royal. Keep up at the back.’
‘Oh God, I’ve got a friend who lives opposite there, I must call her.’
‘It’s weird, looks like pictures of Haiti.’
‘Or Chile.’
‘What it makes me think of most, is the Twin Towers.’
It could have been anywhere on the globe, annihilated by a bomb or an earthquake or the attack of a malevolent giant. Life was starting again little by little, people were beginning to pass silly remarks. My legs had turned to jelly, my brain wasn’t working.
On the screen, the area around the explosion was quite recognizable. A bizarrely familiar townscape. I felt like vomiting.
In the streets, we could hear the sirens of ambulances rushing past. We were within walking distance from where it had happened. We had to repeat it to ourselves several times to believe it. Like everyone else, I had often passed in front of the Palais-Royal, in the centre of Paris, opposite the Louvre, the seat of various bodies like the Constitutional Council, and the venue for investiture ceremonies attended by the great and the good. I’d never paid it much attention. I remembered that’s where I had started smoking again, one sunny day, on the terrace of a café that had once existed there, with a boy I liked but whom I would leave for someone else. Right there, on that spot.
Rafik came to join me. He squeezed my shoulder, as if we were brothers and I should know I could count on him, but must also prepare to be strong. At the time, I thought he was simply moved, and I wondered if he’d taken a shine to me, and how to let him know quickly that nothing of the kind was possible between us now. I’ve thought about his gesture since then, many times. Did he know, already? Who was in the know? And about what? Who had been manipulating me? Who had been protecting me? What really happened, and what role exactly did I have in it?
I called Zoska. Everyone in the room was telephoning someone. She’d heard already, people around her were talking of nothing else. I was repeating, ‘It’s just crazy, it’s so incredible, I can’t believe it.’ And then Jean-Marc came to fetch me, and drew me aside. Rafik had a very odd expression on his face.
‘Galtan was inside. He was getting his award as Chevalier of Arts and Letters.’
I didn’t want to understand. I heard what he said all right. But I didn’t want to believe it. I was already having enough trouble digesting the images on the screen, I wasn’t going to be poisoned even further by this grotesque detail: François Galtan, the guy who two days before had been asking me if I took sugar in my coffee, François Galtan was in there under the rubble. A dark girl with long glossy hair, wearing a bright T-shirt and electric-blue trainers, had started to squeal, shaking her hands as if she’d been burnt. ‘Come and see, look! look!’ and we all went towards her screen without a word. Her excitement made you feel afraid. What on earth could be worth getting worked up about, after what we’d just seen?
‘I’m plague, I’m cholera, bird flu, the bomb, I’m the shit in your eyes, I’m a radioactive bitch, I’m a vicious little witch. Aliens, humans all polluters, universal contaminators.’
It began like the kind of poem one reads in school, an insistent rap rhythm. Valentine was dressed all in white. She had heavy black eye makeup on. She was speaking calmly, facing the webcam. Sitting at the little desk in her bedroom. All eyes turned to me. I was drained. All my energy had been absorbed: I didn’t want to believe this. Because of the amateur presentation, the document looked harmless in a way: just a girl doing something at home in front of her computer. So why were we watching this now?
‘I vomit you all. What I’m about to do, I’m doing it on my own. If anyone claims responsibility for my act, they’re pathetic bullshitters. I’m doing it just for fun. I hope you’ll carry on the good work.’
Then Valentine stretched out her right arm to bring the camera down to the level of her navel, and showed a shiny metal cylinder, about fifteen centimetres long and three across – these measurements quickly became known and were compared to those of a mini-vibrator or a large tampon – then she unbuckled her belt with her left hand, pulled down her jeans, and stood up, she wasn’t wearing panties, but nobody found this sexy, she had her pelvis toward the camera, and put one foot up on the desk, classic pornography angle, and inserted the tube right into her vagina, then zipped up her jeans again, gave a little wiggle, put the camera back in position and faced it, concluding in a serious voice, ‘You want it? Come and get it.’
End of video. The film had gone online ten minutes before the explosion, under the pseudonym ‘Little Girl’. From François Galtan’s iPhone, which Valentine had probably borrowed from him just before the ceremony. Some people say the metal detectors on the door picked it up, but the kid had proudly announced that she had had her clit pierced in Spain and nobody had thought fit to insist, she’d been told to go ahead inside and shut up. Or that’s what was said afterwards, but nobody was around any more to confirm if it was true. The bomb wasn’t a home-made production. It blew out buildings over a radius of four hundred metres. People often said later that it was a miniature prototype of an E-bomb that hadn’t worked properly. It was supposed to cut out all electricity and radio and telephone connections for the whole city for several months. All they know, all they are sure of, is that Valentine certainly hadn’t made this on her own with sugar, and that the bomb undoubtedly went off.
She had delivered her text very calmly, lighting a cigarette partway through, she knew it by heart. For someone who was about to do what she was going to do, she looked very relaxed. She kept her eyes fixed on the camera, her expression changed very little.
I turned to Rafik. ‘This must be some ghastly coincidence. It’s a fake, surely?’
Rafik didn’t lift his eyes from the screen. That annoyed me. If I’d been alone, I’d have switched off at once. I’d have pretended I hadn’t seen anything. But the entire world, at this moment, was looking at this video which was to beat all records for hits. And it wouldn’t stay up for long. Less than five hours later, it had been withdrawn from all sites, the first example of censorship on a planetary scale. The Palais-Royal bombing, which woul
d soon be christened ‘Valentine’s massacre’, no doubt to try and eliminate any political connotations from the event, would go down in many ways as the event that propelled us into the politics of the third millennium. People would realize that the internet isn’t as difficult as all that to control, as long as governments have sufficient motivation. And in the Valentine case, they would all be agreed, from Poland to China, by way of Syria, Egypt or Israel: it served no purpose to let this teenage girl spit out her obscenities on the web. Fear of contagion? Perhaps.
Officially, the reason was respect for the victims’ families. For once they didn’t need to plead paedophilia or women’s dignity to justify censorship. All the states in the world had provided themselves with a legislative arsenal that fitted the situation. Even Venezuela fell into line.
On the ground floor of our offices, people started to pick up their stuff, slowly at first, then the group was seized by panic. What if this bomb was radioactive? Rumours started to circulate: it might cause acid rain, a vast electrical blackout, huge-scale flooding. A minor exodus from the city took place – a sort of improvised bank holiday weekend. Cars and trains were full, some people even took to the roads on foot. Others stayed put: those who were convinced that if this really was an H-bomb it was pointless to run away, pessimists, alcoholics, looters taking advantage of the situation, and a few lost souls like me. It turned out to be a false alarm. The bomb in the end had been ‘clean’.
I have only a hazy memory of the exact order of events that day, but soon I found myself alone on the ground floor with Rafik and Jean-Marc. I was drinking whisky. The fact that they stayed with me instead of fleeing inclines me to think they knew better than they said what kind of explosion it was. But perhaps I’m fantasizing here and their pragmatism was the effect of shock, like mine. Jean-Marc was kneeling on the floor in front of me, like when you talk to a child. He was explaining things in a low voice and I wasn’t listening. I interrupted: ‘I’ve got to talk to the Hyena.’
He looked sorry for me when I said that. He’d just realized how totally unprepared I was for what was in store. I don’t know whether they helped me, or whether they took advantage of it. I stood up.
‘I must make a phone call.’
Jean-Marc caught me by the wrist, firmly, shaking his head. The office was empty, I couldn’t think why everyone had left, I didn’t ask myself the question.
The Parisians returned to their city next day. Tourism took off. The entire world came to see the Ground Zero of the City of Light, at the same time as making a trip to the Eiffel Tower.
Many people found this event terrific. Academics notably, people who’d never held a gun in their lives or spent a single night in custody, wrote superb articles on the question. Authors of all ages and every stripe used their ten little fingers to type out passionate declarations to the iconic nihilist. They’d done the thinking, she’d done the acting, a well-tried system. Other people condemned the little fool, with the innocent arrogance conferred by sitting in comfort. Some journalists who had done what they were told all their lives took her side. With enthusiasm. Some artists thought it was a good time to call for the decisive moment, the insurrection. Others on the contrary condemned an action with so little backup. Some people expressed their disgust at seeing this child insert the bomb. Her little declaration had been immediately taken up, turned into a rap chant, sung, changed, copied, recopied, translated. Her brief moment of glory. Morbid. Relatives of the victims were questioned by every kind of media, their distressed statements made the headlines. But they didn’t grab all the public interest. Everyone thought they had been close to the drama. Millions of cybercitizens came online to say their piece about it. They weren’t scared. It would take more than that to impress them. It was all the fault of video games, of divorce, of climate change; it was the fault of the president, of all the sugar in fast food, of the Jewish people, of asylum seekers. There were people who thought it a disgrace that the video could not be viewed any more, and others who thought that that was the least the authorities could do. Some people praised the concept but thought the place ill chosen, they would have done better. There were some who complained that it was always the ‘children of’ who get a lot of attention. Because overnight François Galtan became a world-famous author. Posterity took a broad view, and on all the online bookshops his novels became best-sellers.
The excitement might have been temporary and anecdotal, if it hadn’t been repressed in such an exemplary way. All comments were first blocked then wiped. State security. The first judicial sentences were passed very quickly. A legal framework had long been in place for trials during a state of emergency, as soon as terrorism was involved. For posting a text in support of broadcasting the video online: ten years. One image shown a lot on TV was of this elderly writer entering Fleury prison under top security. Fifteen years he got. He looked more surprised than upset. He could hardly credit what was happening to him. He had simply mentioned the ‘pretty little thing’, and commented that children today have a lot to be angry about. What they wanted was examples, quickly, ones that were easily understood. A boy of sixteen, a cheeky-looking, baby-faced American: thirty years. He had put the video on a file-sharing site. Various laws were amended, initially intended to protect copyright, but beefed up and voted through as a matter of urgency: any agent of the state was empowered at any moment to proceed to the examination of any computer or telephone and to confiscate it if in doubt. The video was not to be circulated under any circumstances, nor was any insidious comment to be passed on what had happened. An appeal was made to the civic spirit of citizens. The desire to talk about it soon faded. Very few articles saw the light of day to complain that, several weeks after the drama, we still knew nothing about the nature of the bomb.
Surveillance cameras were installed in cybercafés. One after another, states adopted the most repressive laws. People whispered that some hackers had persisted, but getting on the discussion forums they organized was way past my competence.
Government-approved articles flooded the web. Any conspiracy theory was simply the fevered imagination of those benighted masses who try to impose a meaning on reality. The official version went out in every language. Valentine Galtan was a disturbed teenager, in a state of advanced mental confusion. She was a victim of drugs, sexual abuse, and under the influence of extreme leftist circles. I saw, to my stupefaction, photos from my file on her put out on the internet. A nymphomaniac, an addict, a mixed-up kid. Parents were warned in the current atmosphere to keep an eye out for any signs of distress shown by their children. To be watchful and firm: a little severity might save hundreds of lives.
Valentine’s grandmother made statements of a stalwartness that impressed me. She refused to cave in, and went on declaring that her granddaughter couldn’t possibly have acted alone.
Jacqueline Galtan died very soon after that, in hospital from the regrettable complications of a severe attack of flu. Valentine’s mother, Vanessa, was questioned by the police, but her statements were not thought convincing. There were too many contradictions and grey areas in what she said. As far as I know, she’s still in prison. They found out incidentally that she had been involved in some dodgy financial dealings, and this information was widely publicized. Yacine and his sister Nadja were suspected of complicity: they never confessed to it, but they too, as far as I know, have not been released from prison. Their mother died shortly afterwards, knocked down by a hit-and-run motorcylist. Several extreme-left activists were sought in vain. Except for a certain Charles Amocrana, aka Carlito, who committed suicide in his cell before the police had finished questioning him. I too am on the list of witnesses who have disappeared. But I don’t have a political label.
In spite of the efficiency of the censorship, rumours have continued to circulate. They didn’t think it worth trying to silence those who simply talked about the event; as long as they didn’t do so in public, our governments remained magnanimous. It was said that the list of those
receiving decorations that day was particularly remarkable. A journalist who had threatened to go public about some scandals relating to the private lives of certain top politicians. A minister about to lose a law case concerning various high-value financial dealings, and of whom it was said that he might reveal his sources. A stupid pop singer, who’d attracted anger on high by claiming that the president was a sex maniac who was spreading VD to all his contacts. (One wondered why he was getting a medal from the republic in that case.) People even mentioned some of the waitresses at the event, who were call girls involved in a high-class prostitution ring and planning to name names.
All these elements lead me to think that Rafik and Jean-Marc gave me the right advice that day: to go into hiding. Not to wait for the police to come and interrogate me. Even before we had understood how big this was getting, they had pointed out to me that the cops would never believe my version of events. If I declared I didn’t know anything about it, I would infuriate them. Same thing, if I said that one fine day, while we were in Barcelona, the Hyena just decided to go into the town centre, and the merest chance had made her pick the very bar where Valentine was hanging out. And that yes, that had surprised me, but at the time I had just fallen in love and hadn’t thought about it very much. Rafik said, ‘That certainly won’t go down well,’ and Jean-Marc agreed, pouring me another whisky. If I said I had no idea how to contact the Hyena, except through this mate of mine who worked in a bar, Rafik said ‘that will get you into deep trouble, believe me’. Rafik asked me to leave my mobile on the desk. I wanted to delete Zoska’s number to protect her, but he pointed out that that was a pathetic precaution. It was about then that I came to my senses and realized that if I went into hiding I’d be putting her in danger, as well as other people I’d been in contact with.
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