At the same time, Big Brother was pacing up and down the huge room with the knife in his hand, examining the paintings on the walls, the little Native American figurines, and even a Berber vase he picked up from its stand.
“That comes from Algeria,” said the quavering voice. “You can take it if you like. I’ll give it to you. It’s my father … You know, he loved that country. We had property over there.”
Big Brother put the vase down and walked up to the paintings.
“Jean Dubuffet,” he said, pointing to a portrait; it was highly simplified, almost mad—broken lines traced by a child of genius.
“You can take that too, you can take everything.”
Madame Hauvet was getting more and more restless on her couch. She was coming back to life. She thought she had identified a ransom. Everything would be all right again soon. He would take the painting and go away with his horrible sidekick. Perhaps she would offer him a few trinkets and it would all be over with.
“It’s fine right where it is,” Big Brother answered. “I won’t touch it. These works have a soul, madame. They belong to no one. They should be in a museum. And museums should be free.”
She didn’t understand: These drawings belonged to her and she could wipe herself with them if she wanted to. Her ransom had been devalued by those stupid words. These guys were total morons!
“You see, madame, I was sent to Yugoslavia during the war.”
“Oh! It must have been frightful,” she said, feigning great compassion. “You must have suffered a great deal.”
“Me? Oh no, don’t worry. But the Bosnian farmers, yes. They suffered a great deal, as you say.”
He stopped talking for a moment.
“Have you read Dante, madame?”
“When I was young. How boring!”
“Too bad,” he said, very curtly.
She was sorry she’d given her opinion about Dante. She had almost forgotten she was at their mercy. At
his
mercy. He terrified her. He was not like the others. Not like the ones you see on TV. The ones who had burned cars for two months. Those people were far from her world, far from her. This one was getting too close to be harmless, like the sun to the earth. He was in her home! In her home, my God! She’d been so dumb she felt like crying.
He interrupted her thoughts and began speaking again.
“Yes, madame, hell exists. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it in those devastated farms where everything had been looted, destroyed, trampled on. I’m not talking about human beings, I’m talking about objects, madame, just objects. Believe me, they have a soul. Like you and me.”
He was preventing her from thinking. He was trying to distract her—worse, he was lecturing her. He horrified her now.
“So leave the paintings and take my jewels, take all of them. They’re in the safe, behind the Dubuffet you like so much. The key is stuck to the bottom of the frame.”
She was on the verge of hysteria.
“That is not very prudent, madame. Anybody could find it there.”
Rachid came back into the living room. He wasn’t alone anymore. When she saw him, Madame Hauvet began blubbering softly.
“Silence!”
He was accompanied by a pale girl. For Big Brother, she seemed to have come out of a Modigliani. For Rachid, she was just kind of skinny and tall. Above all, she was scared to death.
Her whole body was trembling, her eyes still foggy with sleep. She couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“That’s my darling granddaughter!”
The old woman was sobbing now.
“Shut the fuck up!”
She stopped sobbing and Big Brother turned the portrait over, removed the key, and opened the safe. Inside, an ebony box: He lifted the cover. Necklaces, bracelets, several pairs of earrings. He examined the contents under the light of a lamp and closed the little box of black wood again.
“I thought I could trust you,” he said. “You’re really disappointing me.”
“I don’t understand … no, I don’t understand.”
But she did understand. The jewelry was fake. That’s why she wasn’t protecting it. The Dubuffet was a copy as well. Big Brother knew that too. But he liked to give any human being a second chance, even a third one. In Bosnia he had learned that men and women in some places never even got the slightest chance.
He walked up to the old lady, turned her over on her belly, grabbed her hand, and cut off her little finger with the large knife. He threw it onto the white carpet. A spot of blood began flowering like a rose. He had stuck her head into the couch cushion to stifle her screams.
Rachid hardly had a chance to hold her up in his arms— the girl who looked like a Modigliani model fainted. He laid her gently out on the carpet.
When the old woman stopped moving, Big Brother turned her over so she wouldn’t get smothered to death. When she came to, he said, “Now let’s stop playing games. Where are the jewels?”
The old woman was trying to speak through bloody lips. She had bitten them out of pain. Pink bubbles welled up in her mouth and exploded on her chin. Big Brother had to put his face up close to hear her tell him where the jewels were.
He got up and this time walked over to a little writing desk. He ignored the only visible drawer, kneeled down, and stuck his head under the desk. He groped around and found it. He slid a little wooden panel and the precious objects tumbled onto the carpet. He picked them up and shoved them into the pocket of his Hugo Boss jacket. What cop would search a man dressed like him? Especially if he was coming back home in a taxi.
“I have some bad news,” he said to the old lady. “My friend and I cannot allow ourselves to be recognized. By anybody.”
“Oh my God! Oh, my God! I beg you. Please, I’m begging you. Let me live, please! I won’t say a word. I swear to you. I’m imploring you. I don’t deserve to die.”
“No one deserves to die, madame. And yet, one day or another … And just think: You have lived well up to now. You have never wanted for anything.”
“I implore you, for the love of God, take
her!
Take her. Take my granddaughter. Isn’t she beautiful? You’ll like her a lot, I’m sure of it. Please, please don’t kill me. I don’t deserve it. I’m giving her to you, take her!”
This kind of reaction no longer surprised him. It was, after all, a very human reaction. An old she-bear would have reacted differently, but not a grandmother.
“She deserves to live too,” he said very gently. “She’s so young. Consider what a long way she has to go in life. All the good things she can do for humanity. And believe me, I know something about humanity.”
The old woman began to spit blood.
“She’ll be of no use to anybody. She’s a slut. A lousy bitch.
She’s, she’s … she’s a whore, that’s what she is.”
Big Brother had heard enough and took care of the old woman.
The girl was still lying on the carpet, languid as an odalisque. She was beautiful. And she was sleeping like a princess in a fairy tale. Big Brother was happy she hadn’t seen all that. He was happy for her. Perhaps she would even sleep through her own night, a night without end, a night without glory.
Translated by Carol Cosman
1.
B
erthet and Counselor Morland are having lunch at Chez Michel on rue de Belzunce. Berthet and Counselor Morland have ordered fricassée of langoustines with cèpes as their first course, and grouse with foie gras as follow-up operations.
It’s autumn.
Berthet and Counselor Morland are men of the world
before
. Berthet and Morland favor only restaurants with seasonal products, and Berthet and Morland still believe in History, loyalty, and things of that nature.
Berthet and Counselor Morland know that they are out of step, but that’s just how it is. Berthet and Morland were born before the first oil crisis, and Morland way way before. Berthet and Morland are among those Europeans over forty who’ve been spared the microchip submission implant.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland to find a temperature of twenty-seven degrees Celsius normal on the third of November.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland that the market economy and its related carnage are not one big lie.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland to eat sandwiches standing up or to listen to MP3 players plugged directly into their brains.
Berthet and Morland are informed of the coming end of the world.
Sometimes Counselor Morland jokes. This is rare for this high-ranking operative; also Protestant. Very rare. But it happens.
“Berthet,” Morland says, “I have a mistress who’s not even thirty, and you know, sometimes I feel like I’m gonna find myself in a USB port instead of her pussy.”
Berthet says nothing. Berthet is nervous. Berthet does not know Morland’s mistress and Berthet is not even sure Mor-land has a mistress.
What Berthet knows about Morland:
he has a cover as a European bureaucrat;
he has a tall, fuckable wife who teaches philosophy at
the French high school in Brussels;
he has no children;
he has twenty-five years’ service in The Unit, at a very high level;
he has a predilection that does him credit for the literature of the unlucky, forgotten ’50s writers Henri Calet and Raymond Guérin;
he has a slightly less honorable predilection for the complete repertoire of the singer Sacha Distel;
he’s Berthet’s boss;
he’s a good guy, almost a friend.
“What’s wrong?” Berthet finally says. “It’s not like you to talk pussy.”
“The Unit’s ditching you,” says Morland. “They’re after your hide. And fast.”
Before the fricassée of langoustines with cèpes, Berthet and Morland had ordered a bottle of champagne as an aperitif. Drappier brut, zero dosage.
Berthet and Morland are eating some excellent charcuterie and drinking the champagne, which actually tastes like wine—something always surprising in a totally ersatz era.
“When?” asks Berthet.
“Say what you will,” says Morland. “When they start making pinot noir with this kind of expertise, there’s almost hope for the survival of the human race.”
“When?” repeats Berthet, who agrees on the zero dosage and the pinot noir as a sublimation of the vinous quality of the champagne and who even enjoys it, but who’s nevertheless somewhat upset by Morland’s information.
“When what?” says Morland, who pours them each another glass of champagne. “When are they going to kill you or when was the decision made?”
“Both,” says Berthet.
Berthet might say,
Both, mon général,
as the joke goes in the French army. Except that it wouldn’t be a joke. Morland is a one-star general, though not many people know it, and he probably hasn’t worn a uniform in thirty years. Morland’s cover is counselor to a European Commission member in Brussels.
Berthet and Morland look at each other.
At Chez Michel, you always feel you could be in the provinces. Rue de Belzunce is calm—a small, clean, narrow tear in the continuum formed by the Gare du Nord, boulevard Magenta, and rue Lafayette. The setting is pure Simenon. Berthet has never liked Simenon. Morland always has.
“I’m going back to Brussels on the Thalys train—come with me. We’ll plead your case …”
“That way, you’ll just have an easier time bumping me off.”
“You’re making me sad. I’m risking my life to warn you.”
They finish the champagne, the charcuterie. The fat of a Guéméné sausage relaxes Berthet, reassures him for a moment about the possibility of his body’s enduring power, almost as much as his 9mm Glock in the shoulder holster and his Tanfoglio .22 in its ankle case.
Berthet doesn’t answer. Berthet asks for the wine list. A blond waitress comes over. Berthet gets a hard-on. This is a sure sign. Death is on the prowl. Berthet concentrates on the choice of a white to go with the fricassée of langoustines with cèpes. Berthet decides on a Vouvray. Dry. La Dilettante, from Cathy and Pierre Breton.
The blonde says it’s a good choice, and Berthet wants to tell her that he’d be glad to eat her pussy.
“You’d be glad to eat her pussy, right?” says Counselor Morland.
Strange and specific kinds of telepathy exist between men who have been together a long time in close contact with state secrets and violent death.
Berthet thinks he’s going to die. Berthet knows he’s going to die, or is about to. The sudden hardness of his dick is a somatic sign that never fails to warn him. An even surer sign than Morland’s announcement.
Berthet gets hard for anyone, for anything, when death is near.
This began when Berthet was twelve years old, well before Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan military school, well before The Unit. His grandfather was being buried in a village in Picardy.
They’d had to take a train, from Gare du Nord to be precise. Berthet was as sad as if he were the one who had died.
Getting out of the taxi with his parents, Berthet had looked up through the rain at the statues with big boobs on top of the building. The statues represented international destinations. The ones lower down, in front of the vast windows, represented more local destinations. Their boobs were not so big, of course. Berthet had preferred the international ones. The big-boobs cities.
Cities where Berthet would go later on behalf of The Unit—London, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam—cities where he would manipulate, destabilize, lie, torture, assassinate, and cities where after all this, he would fuck desperately, seeking out women who resembled those statues, women huge, massive, firm.
To get to his grandfather’s funeral, they’d taken an old mainline train with sleeping compartments. Berthet, distraught by the first death in his life, had spent his time walking annoyingly back and forth past his sobbing mother to go jerk off in the train car’s toilet, mentally replaying to the rhythm of the tracks the images of the railway caryatids, their hard breasts, their arms against the gray sky.
When they buried his grandfather in the rain, which played its role perfectly in that cemetery on the outskirts of Abbeville, Berthet wept hot tears because he liked his grandfather, but also because his martyred prick was bleeding a little and he was afraid it would show on his black corduroys.
At the time, the Gare du Nord didn’t look like an airport you’d take to fly to the fourth dimension, a platform for freaks bound to the parallel worlds of dope, an accelerated state of homelessness, and social death. Their medieval-looking faces, their ulcers, their missing teeth, their foul smell of mass graves, their barely articulated speech, all of this was like living blame for thirty years of failure on the part of the welfare state.
At the time, the trains at the Gare du Nord were not designed for high speed, for the exclusive use of global elites.
Blue, gray, Bordeaux trains, phallic enough to make a Laca-nian laugh out loud. And from these trains, men and women pour every hour now, looking busy with their laptops, their cell phones, their bodies full of benzodiazepines, antidepressants, alcohol, come, shit, and the latest figures marking the return on their investments in start-ups in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Their bodies full of all these things, but not nicotine. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere: Cigarettes stink and smoking can kill you.
At the time, to intervene between those two mutant species, the Gare du Nord did not have mixed patrols of soldiers and uniformed cops, which always makes you think a coup is not far off. Besides, at The Unit, they know that a coup is never far off, that perhaps one is happening at this very moment, though no one knows it. A postmodern coup.
At the time, there were no battalions of special riot police either, transformed into ninja warriors meant to make the new market gap materialize once and for all—a digital divide to the end of time, unbridgeable, an end of the war of all against all. Neck-protecting helmets, opaque visors, Kevlar vests, padding at the joints, walkie-talkies constantly crackling.
And Berthet thinks that he has never liked the 10th ar-rondissement, and the Gare du Nord even less, the Gare du Nord as:
antechamber of the coup
prelude to civil war
back room of electronic fascism
warehouse of the death trade
laboratory of the apocalypse
Once again, Morland is telepathic: “When I arrived from Brussels a little while ago, I said to myself, walking along the platform, that everyone is now living in a permanent state of emergency and everyone thinks this is normal. No one can even remember what this place was like only twenty years ago. Better they don’t, or they would seriously start to panic.”
Morland interrupts himself. Morland burps from the charcuterie, but discreetly because Morland is a high-level intelligence bureaucrat, a classy one, not a bum.
“Fucking hell, Berthet, they’re really after your hide at The Unit …”
The blond waitress brings the bottle of Dilettante.
Berthet is still hard, Berthet tastes. The Vouvray is perfect, heartbreakingly perfect, even when you know that The Unit is ditching you and drinking wines like this one cannot go on much longer.
“You know why?” Berthet asks.
“Hélène. Hélène Bastogne,” says Counselor Morland.
They bring the fricassées of langoustines with cèpes. Berthet and Counselor Morland sniff.
It’s like a forest in autumn by the sea.
And then the windows of Chez Michel explode.
2.
Berthet is lying on the ground. The fricassée is all over his suit. Berthet sees:
Morland, his skull topped off like a soft-boiled egg, holding his glass of Dilettante halfway to his mouth;
the well-endowed blond waitress, who has no more face but is still standing with a bottle of Châtel-don mineral water in her hand;
the other couple who were having lunch at Chez Michel, quite dead, their shredded heads on their plates of grouse with foie gras, still tempting despite two manicured feminine fingers, cleanly cut off, lying on the meat; a cat right next to his face,
a cat meowing as if to express its displeasure, but a cat that Berthet can’t hear.
Berthet is thinking two things:
first, cats are not democrats, which must be a vague, Baudelairean reminiscence;
second, I’m deaf because of the explosion. Probably a defensive grenade. They’re going to come back to finish the job. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Berthet gets up. Berthet stinks of langoustines and cèpes.
Berthet is annoyed. Berthet has a romantic notion of the last-ditch stand. And it does not fit the image of a man in a ripped Armani suit that smells of langoustine.
Hélène Bastogne, what do you know?
A car somewhere blares its antitheft alarm.
Counselor Morland’s topped-off head is dripping into the Dilettante from Cathy and Pierre Breton.
Barbarians. Bunch of barbarians. To do that to a practically unadulterated wine.
A motorbike makes a half-turn at the end of rue de Bel-zunce. Two guys in helmets. Petty subcontractors. The Unit subcontracts now, like any other big firm in the private sector. It’s pitiful. The driver of the bike leans against the buttress of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul church before skidding to a halt.
The passenger pulls the pin out of a second grenade.
Fucking subcontractors, I’m telling you.
Professionals would have stepped right into Chez Michel, come up to Berthet and Counselor Morland’s table, shot them simultaneously through the back of the head with low-caliber weapons, like the Tanfoglio .22 against Berthet’s ankle.
Farting noises. By the time everybody has reacted and understood that the strike wasn’t really a stroke, they’re far away.
Come on! Stupid temps. Even The Unit has accountants now. Even The Unit is into budget cuts. Part-time work in the intelligence services. Assholes. Berthet knows that he’s living in a system in which, even on the day the world ends, there will be guys complaining about deficits.