I reread it twice and couldn’t suppress a grimace at the thought of what awaited me. Everything would depend on what the taxi driver said. It could quickly become very unpleasant.
A glance at my watch: 5:40
P.M.
I had no more interviews, but I never left the office before 7:00 at the best of times.
I looked at my e-mails. A dozen or so, but nothing urgent.
I grabbed my raincoat and looked into the corridor. Nobody in sight. I headed for the emergency stairs. No point in standing around waiting for the elevator. I reached the end of the corridor just as Grégoire Larcher charged out of his office. He must have seen my embarrassment instantly.
“Taking the afternoon off?” he asked with a mocking smile.
“I’ve got to go. An emergency.”
He walked off without answering, no doubt pleased to have caught me red-handed. I rushed down the stairs, slightly disgusted at the way things were turning out. Dammit, I worked incredibly long hours every day, and the one day I left early, I got caught.
Irritated, I charged into the Avenue de l’Opéra. The fresh air helped me refocus—unless it was the prospect of the task I had to accomplish, which was even more worrying than running into Larcher. I walked to the taxi stand. Nobody. I had a little time to spare and felt almost relieved. I lit a cigarette and puffed on it nervously. As soon as I was stressed, I had to smoke. What a filthy habit! I’d never get rid of it.
As I walked, I had a strange feeling. The impression of being … followed. I turned around but just saw lots of people. Difficult to be sure. I walked on, feeling uneasy.
I thought back to the last few times I had taken a cab. The drivers were for the most part out-and-out chatterboxes, openly expressing their opinions on all the topics in the news, and I had been careful not to give a different opinion. Okay, Dubreuil was right. But perhaps it was just a form of laziness. After all, there’s no point to trying to put people right. In any case, you won’t convince them.
I looked in the distance. A fair amount of traffic. It was rush hour. I might have to wait a long time for a taxi.
Suppose it was cowardice, more than laziness? Besides, not saying anything was not that restful either. I was often raging inside. So what was I afraid of then? Of not being liked? Of setting off a bad reaction in the other person? I didn’t know.
“Where you goin’?”
The cabby’s thick Parisian accent brought me out of my torpor. Caught up in my daydreams, I hadn’t seen him drive up. The driver was leaning out the window, staring at me impatiently. Fiftyish, thickset, bald, with a black moustache and a nasty look—why did I have to get a live one today of all days?
“Hey! You goin’ to make up your mind? I haven’t got all day!”
“The George the Fifth, please,” I stammered as I opened the rear door.
Bad start. I had to get the upper hand.
Come on, chin up—the opposite of everything he says. Everything.
I leaned back in the seat and immediately the smell in the cab made me want to vomit: stale tobacco mixed with a supermarket car deodorant. Awful.
“I’ll give it to you straight,” the driver was saying. “The hotel might be close, but we’re not there yet! I tell you, I don’t know what people are up to today, but traffic’s at a stand-still.”
Hmm … Difficult to say the opposite. How should I reply?
“With a bit of luck, it’ll free up, and we’ll be there quicker than you think.”
“Ha, that’s right, still believe in Santa Claus, too?” he said. “I’ve been doing this job twenty-eight years. I know what I’m talking about. Goddammit, I’m sure half these people don’t even need their cars.”
He was talking loudly, as though I was in the back of a bus.
“Perhaps the cars really are useful. We don’t know,” I ventured.
“Yeah, that’s right! Most of them don’t go more than a few hundred yards in their cars! They’re too lazy to walk and too cheap to take a taxi! There’s no one tighter than a Parisian!”
I had the feeling he wasn’t even noticing that I was disagreeing with him. It just fed the conversation. Perhaps, in the end, my task wouldn’t be as hard as I thought.
“I think Parisians are rather nice.”
“No joke? Well, you can’t know them very well. I’ve been studying them for twenty-eight years. And I can tell you, they’re getting worse each year. I can’t stand them anymore. I’ve had it up to here!”
His big, hairy hands tightened on the wheel, which was covered in artificial fur, and I could see the tension spreading to the muscles of his equally hairy forearms. Under the black hair was a huge tattoo that made me think of a giant frozen French fry. When I was little, American television used to show a cartoon ad with dancing French fries. In my whole life, I’d never seen such a ridiculous tattoo.
“I think you’re mistaken. People just send back a mirror of the way we talk to them.”
He slammed on the brakes and turned around to face me, his eyes wild with rage.
“What the hell do you think you’re saying?”
I wasn’t expecting such an intense reaction. I recoiled, which didn’t stop me from smelling his disgusting breath. Was that the smell of alcohol? I had to defuse the bomb, play at being the bomb squad a bit.
“I was just saying that perhaps people are uncommunicative, but if you take the time, accept the idea that they may have reasons for being stressed, talk to them gently”—I underlined this point—“they may open up and become more pleasant when they feel you’re interested in them.”
He stared at me wordlessly, his eyes narrowing like a bad-tempered boar’s. Then he turned around and set off again. All of a sudden, dead silence in the cab. I took a few deep breaths, trying to release the tension in my body. As we inched forward in the traffic, the silence became oppressive. I had to break it.
“What’s your tattoo?” I said, with the vague hope of applying the idea I had just put forward.
“Oh, that,” he said, in an almost tender tone of voice that told me I had hit the mark. “That’s a childhood souvenir. It’s vengeance.”
I suppressed a smile. I was dying to ask him how a frozen French fry could symbolize vengeance, but I wasn’t that suicidal.
We were arriving at the Place de la Concorde.
“I’m not going down the Champs-Élysées. Too much traffic. I’m going along the river to the Pont de l’Alma, and then we can come back up Avenue George the Fifth from the bottom.”
“Hmm … I’d prefer it if we went down the Champs Élysées, if you don’t mind.”
He didn’t say anything, sighed, and carried on with the conversation.
“I love tattoos. There aren’t two the same. And it takes guts to have a tattoo done. ’Cos it doesn’t come off. It’s for life. So it takes guts, it sure does. I love them on women, as well. There ain’t nothing sexier than a tattoo where you’re not expecting it—in hidden places, if you see what I mean.”
Suddenly, in the rearview mirror, I could see his eyes, full of lust.
Calm down, Granddad,
I thought.
Calm down.
I mustered all my courage and said, “I don’t like tattoos very much.”
“Yeah, nowadays youngsters don’t like them because they all want to be the same.”
“Perhaps they don’t need a tattoo to be different.”
“Different? Pfft! We didn’t give a damn. We just wanted to have some laughs. We got bikes or cars and took off. No traffic jams then!”
The man didn’t know how to talk at anything less than a bellow. And the smell …
Okay, one more try. “Yes, but today, young people know you can’t carry on polluting the planet just to have fun.”
“Ha! That’s right! More of that ecology bullshit! Global warming, load of bull. It comes from people who want to sell you intelligence, when they ain’t got any to sell.”
“What would you know?”
I said it without thinking. He braked violently, bringing the car to a standstill. I was thrown against the front seat and then bounced back. The driver exploded. “Fuck off, you hear? Fuck off! I’ve had enough of little jerks like you preaching at me! Get out!”
I opened the door and threw myself out, then ran off like a shot, before he thought of catching up with me.
I dodged between the cars until I reached the Champs-Élysées, running through a fine drizzle, which cooled my face. The fright passed, but I kept on running. I was running because nothing was holding me back. I had loosened my shackles, unlaced a few knots. For the first time, I had dared to say all I was thinking to a stranger, and I was beginning to feel lighter and, above all, free. The fine mist lashed my face as if to awaken me to life.
T
HE UNIFORMED DOORMAN
pushed the revolving door, I slipped in, and there I was, in the majestic entrance hall of the George V, one of the most beautiful luxury hotels in Paris. Pale marble covered the floor and columns. The reception desk was faced in darker marble, and behind it hung a large tapestry. The atmosphere was a mixture of great distinction and silent efficiency. Valets were busy moving gilt trolleys piled with trunks and suitcases, most of them covered in leather and bearing the stamp of a prestigious brand. Smiling receptionists handed over keys or street maps or information to guests who were probably used to a high level of service. A customer in shorts and Nike sneakers, a vision as unexpected as a rapper crossing the platform of a symphony orchestra, walked across the hall with the casualness of someone used to this sort of place—or a lot more chutzpah than I possessed, at any rate. Probably an American.
I went up to the concierge.
“Good evening, I’m looking for the bar, please.”
I was afraid he’d ask if I had a room there. I must have cut a sorry figure with my wet hair, damp suit, and water trickling down my face. Fortunately, the vision of the tourist in shorts had made me feel a little more at ease.
“Yes, Monsieur. Turn right after the three steps, and you’ll see the bar a little farther on,” he replied, his tone pleasant but rather grand.
I climbed the three steps and found myself in a vast, glass-enclosed gallery running along one side of an interior courtyard filled with orange trees in magnificent carved pots. I walked through the gallery into the bar, an elegant wood-paneled room with red brocade chairs that invited intimate conversation. The George V bar is one of the most famous meeting places in Paris. Not many people were there when I arrived. A man and a woman of a certain age sat opposite each other at one of the marble-topped tables, and a little farther on, two men were involved in a quiet but obviously heated discussion. No trace of Dubreuil. I headed for a table at the back and sat facing the door, so I could see him arrive. Passing by the couple, I smelled the woman’s heady perfume. Shalimar, a classic.
Some newspapers had been left on my table—
The International Herald Tribune
,
The
New York Times,
Le Monde
—and some decidedly less serious magazines, including a well-thumbed copy of the gossip rag
Closer.
I was checking out the lives of the stars when I spotted Dubreuil coming toward me. I quickly got rid of the incriminating magazine. As he crossed the room, everyone turned to look at him. He was one of those charismatic men who can’t help but attract attention.
“So, tell me about your exploits!” he said, as he sat down in the chair across from me.
I noticed that he never said hello. Every time I saw him, it was as if he was resuming a conversation interrupted a few minutes earlier.
He ordered bourbon, and I settled for Perrier water.
I described the scene in the taxi in detail, and he was greatly amused by the driver’s behavior.
“You got a ripe one there! If I’d wanted to set up a meeting like that myself, I’d never have found one like him!”
I told him of the difficulty I had had expressing opinions that were in opposition to the driver’s, and the feeling of freedom in the end after I had succeeded.
“I’m really pleased you went through that. You know, you talked to me a lot about your life at work, about your feeling of being trapped at the office, of being under surveillance and constantly judged.”
“Yes. In that company, I’m prevented from being myself. I’m given very little freedom. I feel like a prisoner. I feel as if everything I say and do will be commented on. Even this evening, when I left a little early, I was on the receiving end of an unpleasant remark from my section head. It’s true it was earlier than usual, but I leave work very late
every
evening. It was especially unfair to criticize me on the only day I’ve left early! I’m suffocating in that place.”
He looked at me with a piercing eye, while savoring a mouthful of bourbon. I could smell its bouquet.
“Look, when I hear you say ‘They prevent me from being myself,’ I want to say that, on the contrary, they’re
allowing
you to be yourself. They’re even
pushing
you to be more and more yourself. That’s what’s suffocating you.”
I was perplexed.
“I don’t follow at all.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“You talked to me about some of your colleagues. I remember one of them, in particular, who’s rather arrogant.”
“Thomas.”
“Yes, that’s it. A bit of a show-off, from what you said.”
“That’s a euphemism.”
“Imagine that Thomas had been in your place tonight, that he had left his office at four or five o’clock and had met his boss in the corridor.”
“It wasn’t our immediate boss. It was Larcher, the section head.”
“Fine. Imagine the scene: Thomas leaves exceptionally early and meets his section head in the corridor.”
“Okay.”
“You’re a little mouse, and you watch them as they meet.”
“Right.”
“What do they say to each other?”
“Hmm … I don’t know. Well, that’s funny, I imagine Larcher smiling at Thomas, a friendly smile, almost an indulgent smile.”
“Interesting. You think that’s how your section head would have reacted if he had met Thomas tonight instead of you?”
“Well … yes, it’s likely. I imagine him like that, at any rate. It would be very unfair, I think, but there’s a certain favoritism around there. The rules are not the same for everyone.”