“Right. What’s the name of your other colleague, the one who seems to be making fun of everyone?”
“Mickaël?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Now visualize the same scene, but this time between Larcher and Mickaël. It’s Mickaël who’s leaving at five o’clock. What happens?”
“Let’s see. I imagine Larcher makes the same remark to him as he did to me!”
“Yes?”
“He says, ‘So, taking the afternoon off?’ perhaps even more sarcastically than he said it to me. Yes, that’s right! Larcher is really baiting him.”
“And how does Mickaël react?”
“It’s hard to imagine, but I think Mickaël’s got the nerve to rib him back and say, ‘You should know!’ or something like that.”
“Right! And how does Larcher take that?”
“They both laugh as they carry on walking.”
“Interesting,” Dubreuil said, draining his glass. “And what do you think about that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “If it really happened like that, it would indeed be the sign of favoritism.”
“No, Alan. That’s not it.”
He signaled to the waiter, who was beside us in a flash.
“Another bourbon.”
I took a sip of Perrier. Dubreuil leaned toward me, his blue eyes looking into mine. I felt naked.
“That’s not it, Alan,” he went on. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. Thomas is full of himself, and his attitude induces in Larcher a certain respect. Mickaël teases everyone, and Larcher knows he’s a smart aleck who thinks he’s smarter than the rest. So Larcher teases him to let him know that he’s even smarter than Mikaël. You …”
He paused.
“I don’t play games like the others,” I interjected. “I’m natural, and so he takes advantage.”
“No, it’s trickier than that. Alan, what characterizes you is precisely that you’re
not
free. You’re not free, so he locks you up even more in the prison you’re in.”
A thick silence, as I digested the blow. Then I saw red, and I could feel the anger rising in me. What the hell was he going on about?
“No he doesn’t. It’s quite the opposite! Absolutely the opposite! I can’t bear anyone infringing my freedom!”
“Look at what happened with the taxi driver. You said you had to force yourself to express opinions contrary to his. Yet people like him are strangers you will never see again. Your life, your future doesn’t depend on them, agreed? And yet, you feel the need to say what will make them like you. You are afraid of disappointing people and being rejected. That’s why you don’t allow yourself to really express what you feel or behave according to your wishes. You make every effort to adapt yourself to others. And that’s on your own initiative, Alan. Nobody’s asking you to do it.”
“But that seems quite natural to me! Besides, if everyone made efforts for others, everyone’s lives would be improved.”
“Yes, except that in your case, it’s not a choice. You don’t say, in a detached way, ‘Okay, today I’m going to do what people expect of me.’ No. Unconsciously you force yourself to do it. You think that otherwise you won’t be liked, you won’t be wanted. So, without even realizing it, you impose lots of restrictions on yourself. Your life becomes
very
restricted, and as a result, you don’t feel free. And you hold it against other people.”
I was bewildered. A real smack on the head. I was expecting anything but this. Ideas, emotions, everything was rushing around in my head. I felt dizzy. I would have liked to violently reject Dubreuil’s analysis, but part of me felt it contained some truth. A disturbing truth. Having spent my life feeling pain at the slightest attack on my freedom, at being dominated by other people, I was now being told I was the architect of my own suffering.
“And do you see, Alan, that when you force yourself not to disappoint others, in order to fulfill their expectations of you or to respect their way of doing things, then, believe it or not, it encourages certain people to become very demanding of you, as if they feel it is your duty to submit to their desires. It seems quite natural to them. If you feel guilty about leaving the office early, your boss will make you feel even guiltier. And no doubt it’s unconscious. He senses that to you, it’s not acceptable to leave early, so
he
decides it isn’t. You induce his reaction. Do you understand?”
I said nothing. I remained silent, absorbed by the subtle movement of his hand that for some time had been making circles in the air with his glass, the ice cubes swirling in the bourbon, knocking on the walls of their crystal prison.
“Alan,” he went on, “freedom is inside us. It must come from us. Don’t expect it to come from the exterior.”
His words resonated in my mind.
“It’s possible,” I finally admitted.
“You know, there are stacks of studies that have been carried out on survivors of the concentration camps in the Second World War. One of the studies shows that what nearly all of them had in common was the desire to remain free in their heads. For example, if they only had a little piece of bread to eat for the day, they said to themselves, ‘I am free to eat this bread when I want. I am free to choose the moment to swallow it.’ With the help of choices that can seem as pathetic as that, they kept a feeling of freedom inside themselves. And it would appear this feeling of freedom helped them stay alive.”
I listened to him carefully and couldn’t help telling myself that had I been in that situation, I would have so violently resented the domination and the abuse of power by my jailers that I would never have been capable of developing such a frame of mind.
“How can I become … freer in myself?”
“There is no ready-made recipe, no single way of getting there. One good way, however, is to choose to do for a certain time what you would usually carefully avoid.”
“I feel as if everything you’ve advised me to do since the beginning consists of doing what I don’t like doing. Is that how you move on in life?”
He burst out laughing. The old lady with the heady perfume turned around to look.
“It’s more complex than that. But when in life we arrange things in order to keep whatever frightens us at arm’s length, we prevent ourselves from discovering that most of our fears are inventions of our mind. The only way to know whether what we believe is false or not is to go out and verify it in the field! So it’s sometimes useful to take ourselves by the hand, even if it means doing violence to ourselves, in order to experiment with what is worrying us and give ourselves a chance to realize that we’ve perhaps been making a mistake.”
“So, what are you going to ask of me this time to solve my problem?”
“Right. Let’s see,” he said, settling into his armchair, visibly pleased to be in a position to pronounce his sentence. “Since you believe—mistakenly—that people won’t like you if you don’t behave according to their criteria, since you feel the need to correspond to the image they expect of you, you’re going to practice disorienting yourself.”
I swallowed hard.
“Disorienting myself?”
“Yes, you’re going to train yourself to do the opposite of what you feel you absolutely must do. For example, you’re going to start by taking to the office every day that magazine that interests you so much, until we’re sure everyone has seen you with it.”
To my dismay, he grabbed the
Closer
that I had turned facedown when he came in.
“If I do that, I’m done for.”
“Ah! Your image, your image! See how you’re not free?”
“But it would have consequences for my credibility at work. I can’t do that!”
“You forget that you’ve told me over and over that in your company, people don’t matter, all that matters are their results. So they won’t give a damn about what you’re reading.”
“But I can’t. I’d be ashamed!”
“There’s no reason to be ashamed of things that interest you.”
“It doesn’t interest me. I never read this magazine!”
“Yes, I know, nobody reads it. And yet it sells hundreds of thousands of copies every week. But it interests you, since you had it in your hands when I arrived!”
“It was just out of curiosity.”
“Precisely. You’re allowed to be curious. It’s a positive quality, and you don’t have to be ashamed.”
I could already imagine the faces of my colleagues and my managers when they saw me with it.
“Alan, you will be free the day you can’t even be bothered to wonder what the people who see you with a copy of
Closer
under your arm are thinking.”
That day was a long, long way away,
I couldn’t help thinking.
“It won’t be easy,” I protested.
“Each day, you’re to commit, let’s say, three mistakes—mistakes over common things. Specifically, I want you to behave in an inappropriate manner three times a day. It can be about anything, even small things. What I want is for you to become imperfect for a while, until you realize that you’re still alive, that it doesn’t change anything, and that your relationships with others haven’t gotten worse. Finally, you’re going to refuse at least twice a day to do what others ask of you, or else contradict their point of view. It’s up to you.”
I looked at him in silence. My lack of enthusiasm didn’t affect his. He seemed delighted by his ideas.
“When do I start?”
“Right away! You must never put off till later things that can make you grow!”
“Fine. So, in that case, I think I’ll leave without saying good-bye and without even offering to pay my share of the bill.”
“Perfect! That’s a good start!”
He was visibly pleased, but the mischievous look in his eye didn’t bode well.
I got up and left the table.
I had gotten all the way across the bar and was at the door to the gallery when he called out to me. His loud voice broke the muffled silence of the place, and everyone turned around to see what he was waving at arm’s length.
“Alan! Come back! You’ve forgotten your magazine!”
I
HATE
M
ONDAY
mornings. That must be the most trite and widespread feeling in the world. But I had a special reason to feel that way: It was the day of our weekly business meeting. Every Monday, my colleagues and I were told that the targets hadn’t been met and were asked what we were going to do about it. What decisions were we taking? What actions were we going to implement?
My weekend had been rich in emotions, as had the week following my meeting with Dubreuil. The first few days, I had forced myself to come up with the assigned number of inappropriate behaviors and refusals to do what others asked. After that, however, I had bravely grasped all the opportunities that came up.
Thus it was that I had driven two miles an hour down a narrow street with cars behind me, devoured by the desire to pull over and let them pass or speed up in order not to look like an old man. I had made noise in my apartment and been called to task twice by Madame Blanchard. I had hung up on a telemarketer trying to sell me windows. I had gone to the office wearing two different colored socks. I had taken my coffee break each day at the café across the street during the peak period when everyone at the bar is complaining about the country’s economic problems and proffering obvious solutions—why didn’t the government do something about it? And I, of course, had disagreed with everyone about nearly everything. Behaving like this had been very trying, even if a part of me was beginning to feel a certain pleasure at overcoming my fears.
As soon as my first interview with a candidate had finished that Monday, I ran to the accursed staff meeting. It was 11:05
A.M.
, so I was late. I went into the room with a notepad in my hand and
Closer
under my arm. All the consultants were already sitting at the tables, which were arranged in a circle. They were all waiting for me.
Luc Fausteri threw me an icy look. On his left, Grégoire Larcher maintained his unchanging toothpaste smile. I sat down in the empty seat. Faces turned toward me. I placed the magazine on the table, face up with the title showing, and then avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. I was too ashamed.
On my left, Thomas was pretending to read the
Financial Times
. Mickaël was joking with the woman next to him, who was trying to scan
La Tribune
while chuckling from time to time at Mickaël’s idiotic remarks.
“The week’s figures are …” Larcher liked to speak, then leave the end of the sentence suspended in the air, assuring himself of our complete attention. He got up, as if to ensure his domination over those present, and went on, still smiling: “The week’s figures are encouraging. We’re up four percent on the number of recruitment assignments compared to the previous week, and up seven percent over the same week last year. With regard to this indicator, I remind you that our objective is to be up eleven percent. Of course, individual results are uneven, and I must again congratulate Thomas who remains at the top of the group.”
Thomas adopted a relaxed and absentmindedly satisfied look. He loved appearing to be the victor who’s too cool to care. In fact, I knew that compliments had the effect of cocaine on him.
“But I have an excellent piece of news for the others,” Larcher informed us, and then paused. As his seductive gaze swept over the group, he allowed the silence to make what he was about to reveal seem more dramatic.
“First of all, I must say Luc Fausteri has worked hard for you. For nearly a month, he has been analyzing all our data to understand in a rational way why some of you have better results than the others, despite all of us using the same working methods. He has cross-checked in every direction, done the stats, studied the graphs. And the results are pure genius. We’ve got the solution, and each of you will be able to profit from it on a daily basis. However, I’ll leave it to you, Luc, to present your conclusions yourself!”
Our section head, more serious than ever, began speaking in his usual monotone. “Going through all your time sheets, I saw an inverse correlation between the average length of interviews per consultant over the past twelve months and the average monthly sales of that consultant, corrected for any vacation he took.”
The room remained silent for a few moments, everyone looking questioningly at Fausteri.