The Seventh Function of Language

94

“I don’t believe it! That bitch Thatcher let Bobby Sands die!”

Simon hops about angrily as he watches Patrick Poivre d’Arvor announce, on the Channel 2 news, the death of the Irish activist after sixty-six days of hunger strike.

Bayard comes out of his kitchen and glances at the TV. He remarks: “Yeah, but you can’t really stop someone committing suicide, can you?”

Simon yells at him: “Can you hear yourself, you stupid pig? He was twenty-seven!”

Bayard tries to argue his point: “He belonged to a terrorist organization. The IRA kill people, don’t they?”

Simon almost chokes: “That’s exactly what Laval said about the Resistance! I wouldn’t have wanted a cop like you checking my papers in 1940!”

Bayard decides that it is better not to reply to this, so he pours his guest another glass of port, puts a bowl of cocktail sausages on the coffee table, and goes back into the kitchen.

PPDA talks about the assassination of a Spanish general and presents a report on Spaniards nostalgic for the Franco years, barely three months after the attempted coup d’état in the Madrid parliament.

Simon turns back to the magazine that he bought before coming here and which he began to read on the metro. It was the front-page headline that had made him curious: “Referendum: The Top 42 Intellectuals.” The magazine asked five hundred “cultural personalities” (Simon pulls a face) to name the three most important French intellectuals alive today. First comes Lévi-Strauss; second: Sartre; third: Foucault. After that, Lacan, Beauvoir, Yourcenar, Braudel …

Simon looks for Derrida in the rankings, forgetting that he is dead. (He imagines he would have been on the podium, though no one will ever know.)

BHL is tenth.

Michaux, Beckett, Aragon, Cioran, Ionesco, Duras …

Sollers, twenty-fourth. As there is a rundown of the votes and Sollers is also one of the voters, Simon notes that he voted for Kristeva while Kristeva voted for him. (Same reciprocal deal with BHL.)

Simon nabs a cocktail sausage and shouts at Bayard: “So, have you heard any news about Sollers?”

Bayard comes out of the kitchen, holding a dish towel: “He’s out of the hospital. Kristeva stayed at his bedside throughout his convalescence. From what I’ve heard, he’s leading a normal life again. According to my information, he had his balls buried on an island cemetery in Venice. He says he’ll go back twice a year to pay tribute to them—once for each ball.”

Bayard hesitates before adding, gently, without looking at Simon: “He looks like he’s recovering quite well.”

Althusser, twenty-fifth: the murder of his wife hasn’t made much of a dent in his credibility, Simon thinks.

“Hey, that smells good, what is it?”

Bayard goes back into the kitchen: “Eat some olives while you’re waiting.”

PPDA (who voted for Aron, Gracq, and d’Ormesson) says: “In Washington, where they are celebrating the rise in the dollar: five francs forty…”

Bayard pokes his head in: “Were you talking to me?”

Simon grumbles incoherently; Bayard returns to his kitchen.

PPDA’s program ends with the weather forecast, given by Alain Gillot-Pétré, who predicts some sunshine at last to brighten this freezing May (54 degrees in Paris, 48 in Besançon).

After the ads, the screen turns blue, bombastic music featuring brass and cymbals plays, and a message announces the great presidential election debate.

Then the blue screen gives way to the two journalists who will chair the debate. It is May 5, 1981.

Simon shouts: “Jacques, come on! It’s starting.”

Bayard joins Simon in the living room with beers and Apéricubes. He pops open two bottles while the journalist chosen by Giscard, Jean Boissonnat—Europe 1 commentator, gray three-piece suit, stripy tie, face of a man who will flee to Switzerland if the Socialists win—explains how the evening will unfold.

Beside him, Michèle Cotta—RTL journalist, black helmet hair, fluorescent lipstick, fuchsia blouse, and mauve waistcoat—pretends to take notes while smiling nervously.

Simon, who does not listen to RTL, asks who the pink Russian doll is. Bayard sniggers stupidly.

Giscard explains that he would like this debate to be constructive.

Simon tries to unwrap one of the ham-flavored cream-cheese cubes with his teeth, but can’t manage it and becomes annoyed. Bayard takes the Apéricube from Simon’s hand and removes the foil wrapper for him.

Giscard and Mitterrand taunt each other over their embarrassing allies: Chirac, who, at the time, is considered a representative of the hard Right, ultraconservative, borderline fascist (18 percent), and Marchais, the Communist candidate during the Brezhnev era of decomposing Stalinism (15 percent). Both finalists need their respective support in order to be elected to the second round.

Giscard points out that if he was reelected he would not need to dissolve the National Assembly, whereas his opponent would either govern with the Communists or be a president without a majority: “One cannot lead the people blindfolded. This is an important country and its people must know where they are going.” Simon notes that Giscard has problems conjugating the verb dissoudre (dissolve) and says to Bayard that Polytechnique graduates are illiterates. Reflexively, Bayard replies: “Send the Commies to Moscow!” Giscard says to Mitterrand: “You cannot say to the French people: ‘I want to deliver major change, but it could be with anyone … even including the current Assembly.’ In that case, don’t dissolve it.”

As Giscard hammers away at his point about parliamentary instability, because he cannot imagine that the Socialists could possibly win a majority in the Assembly, Mitterrand replies, rather formally: “I wish to win the presidential election, I believe I will win it, and when I have won it, I will do all that must be done within the law to win the legislative elections. And if you imagine that, from next Monday, that will not be France’s state of mind, its formidable desire for change, then it is because you do not understand anything that is happening in this country.” And while Bayard curses the Bolshevik vermin, Simon mechanically notes the coded message: Mitterrand is obviously not speaking to Giscard, but to all those who detest Giscard.

But they have been discussing the parliamentary majority for half an hour now, with Giscard’s game plan being to constantly suggest the bogeyman of Communist ministers, and Simon thinks it is getting rather boring, when suddenly Mitterrand—who’s been on the defensive up to that point—finally decides to launch a counterattack: “As for your anti-Communist outpourings, let me just say that they merit a few corrections. After all, it’s a bit too easy. [Pause.] You realize, there is a large number of Communist workers. [Pause.] Following your line of logic, you have to ask: What purpose do they serve? They serve to produce, to work, to pay taxes, they serve to die in wars, they serve to do everything. But they can never serve to make a majority in France?”

Simon, who was about to stuff another cocktail sausage into his mouth, stops with the sausage in midair. And while the journalists home in on another boring question, he realizes, just like Giscard, that perhaps the debate has shifted. Because Giscard finds himself on the defensive and changes his tone, aware as he is of what’s at stake now, in an era when the equation Worker = Communist is not even questioned: “But … I am not attacking the Communist electorate, not at all. In seven years, Monsieur Mitterrand, I have never said a single disobliging word about the French working class. Never! I respect it in its work, in its activities, even in its political expression.”

Simon laughs mockingly: “Oh yes, of course, every year you wolf down merguez at the Fête de l’Humanité. Between safaris with Bokassa, you like to toast the union metalworkers. Ha ha, yeah, right!”

Bayard glances at his watch and goes back into the kitchen to check the cooking while the journalists question Giscard on his record as president. According to him, it’s very good. Mitterrand puts his large glasses back on to demonstrate that, on the contrary, it is absolutely dreadful. Giscard responds by citing Rivarol: “It is a huge advantage to have done nothing. But one should not abuse it.” And he maintains the pressure where it hurts. “It is true that you have been minister of words since 1965. Since 1974, I have governed France.” Simon gets annoyed: “Yeah, and we’ve all seen how!” But he knows it is a difficult argument to counter. From the kitchen, Bayard replies: “It’s true that compared with ours the Soviet economy is booming!”

Mitterrand decides to twist the knife: “You have a tendency to repeat your old refrain from seven years ago: ‘the man of the past.’ It is rather awkward that, in the meantime, you have become the passive man.”

Bayard laughs: “He still hasn’t got over it, has he, eh? That ‘man of the past’ gibe. Seven years he’s been brooding on that.”

Simon says nothing because he agrees: it’s not a bad comeback, but it does have the feel of something too obviously prepared in advance. At least it has the effect of relaxing Mitterrand, though, like an ice-skater who has just pulled off a triple axel.

There follows a good battle over the French and global economies, and at least the viewers feel that the candidates have earned their keep. Bayard finally serves his main course: a lamb tagine. Simon is wide-eyed: “Whoa, who taught you to cook?” Giscard paints a horrifying picture of a future France under socialism. Bayard says to Simon: “I met my first wife in Algeria. You can play the smart-ass with your semiology, but you don’t know everything about my life.” Mitterrand reminds Giscard that it was de Gaulle who initiated mass nationalizations in 1945. Bayard opens a bottle of red, a 1976 Côte-de-Beaune. Simon tastes the tagine: “But this is really good!” Mitterrand keeps taking off his glasses and putting them back on. Bayard explains: “Seventy-six was a very good year for Burgundies.” Mitterrand declares: “Portugal nationalized its banks, and it is not a socialist country.” Simon and Bayard savor the tagine and the Côte-de-Beaune. Bayard deliberately chose a meal that would not necessitate a knife, the stewed meat being tender enough to be cut with the side of a fork. Simon knows that Bayard knows that he knows this, but the two men ignore it. Neither is keen to mention Murano.

While this is going on, Mitterrand shows his teeth. “The bureaucracy is down to you. You are the one in government. If you make all these speeches complaining now of all the administration’s misdeeds, where do you think the blame lies? You are governing, so you are responsible! You beat your chest three days before an election—of course you do, I understand perfectly why you do it, but why should I believe that in the next seven years you would do anything differently from what you have done during the last seven?”

Simon notes the shrewd use of the conditional but, absorbed by the delicious tagine and by more bitter memories, his concentration wavers.

Surprised by this sudden aggression, Giscard tries to parry it with his customary disdain: “Please, let us maintain an appropriate tone.” But now Mitterrand is ready to let rip: “I intend to express myself exactly as I wish.”

And he hits home: “One and a half million unemployed.”

Giscard tries to correct him: “Job seekers.”

But Mitterrand is no longer in a mood to let anything go: “I am well aware of how you can split hairs.”

He goes on: “You have had both inflation and unemployment, but what’s more—this is the flaw, this is the sickness that risks being fatal for our society: sixty percent of the unemployed are women … most of them are young people … it is a tragic attack on the dignity of man and woman…”

To start with, Simon does not pay attention. Mitterrand speaks faster and faster, he is more and more aggressive, more and more precise, more and more eloquent.

Giscard is on the ropes, but he is not about to give up without a fight. He suppresses his country squire accent and calls out his Socialist opponent: “The rise in the minimum wage—how much?” Small businesses will not survive it. All the more so since the Socialist program is irresponsible enough to plan to lower social thresholds and extend employees’ rights in companies with fewer than ten employees.

The bourgeois from Chamalières has no intention of surrendering.

The two men trade blows.

But Giscard makes a mistake when he asks Mitterrand to tell him the exchange rate of the deutsche mark: “Today’s.”

Mitterrand replies: “Here, I am not your student and you are not president of the Republic.”

Simon drains his glass of wine thoughtfully: there is something self-fulfilling, something of the performative, in that phrase …

Bayard goes off to fetch the cheese.

Giscard says: “I am against the suppression of family tax benefits … I am in favor of a return to a system of flat-rate taxation…” He reels off a whole series of measures with the precision of the good Polytechnique graduate that he is, but it’s too late: he has lost.

The debate goes on though, fierce and technical, over nuclear power, the neutron bomb, the Common Market, East-West relations, the defense budget …

Mitterrand: “Is Monsieur Giscard d’Estaing trying to say that the Socialists would be bad French people, unwilling to defend their country?”

Giscard, off screen: “Not at all.”

Mitterrand, not looking at him: “If he didn’t mean that, then his speech was pointless.”

Simon is troubled. He grabs a beer from the coffee table, wedges it under his armpit, and tries to remove the cap, but the bottle slips out and falls onto the floor. Bayard waits for Simon to explode with rage because he knows how much his friend hates it when daily life reminds him that he is disabled, so he wipes up the beer that has spilled onto the floorboards and is quick to say: “No big deal!”

But Simon looks strangely perplexed. He points to Mitterrand and says: “Look at him. Notice anything?”

“What?”

“Have you listened to him since the beginning? Don’t you think he’s been good?”

“Well, yeah, he’s better than he was seven years ago, that’s for sure.”

“No, it’s more than that. He’s abnormally good.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s subtle, but since the end of the first half hour, he’s been maneuvering Giscard, and I can’t work out how he’s doing it. It’s like an invisible strategy: I can sense it, but I can’t understand it.”

“You’re not saying…”

“Watch.”

Bayard watches as Giscard busts a gut to show that the Socialists are irresponsible fools who must not under any circumstances be trusted with military hardware and the nuclear deterrent: “When it comes to defense, on the contrary … you have never voted with the government on defense, and you have voted against every bill relating to defense. Those bills were presented outside of the budgetary discussion and so it would be perfectly imaginable that either your party or your … or you yourself, aware of the very high stakes of national security, would make a nonpartisan vote on military bills. I note that you did not vote for any of the three military bills … notably that of January 24, 1963…”

Mitterrand doesn’t even bother responding and Michèle Cotta moves on to another subject, so an irritated Giscard insists: “This is very important!” Michèle Cotta protests politely: “Absolutely! Of course, Monsieur President!” And she moves on to African politics. Boissonat is visibly thinking about something else. No one cares. No one is listening to him anymore. It looks as if Mitterrand has completely demolished him.

Bayard begins to understand.

Giscard continues to sink.

Simon spells out his conclusion: “Mitterrand has the seventh function of language.”

Bayard tries to assemble the pieces of the puzzle while Mitterrand and Giscard debate French military intervention in Zaire.

“But, Simon, we saw in Venice that the function didn’t work.”

Mitterrand gives Giscard the coup de grâce on the Kolwezi affair: “So basically, you could have repatriated them earlier … if you’d thought about it.”

Simon points at the TV set:

“That works!”

95

It is raining in Paris, the celebrations have begun at the Bastille, but the Socialist leaders are still at party headquarters, in Rue de Solférino, where an electric joy courses through the ranks of activists. Victory is always an achievement in politics, an end as well as a beginning; that is why the excitement it causes is a mix of euphoria and vertigo. What’s more, the alcohol is flowing freely and, already, the canapés are piling up. “What a night!” says Mitterrand.

Jack Lang shakes hands, kisses cheeks, hugs everyone who crosses his path. He smiles at Fabius, who cried like a baby when the results were announced. In the street, people are singing and shouting in the rain. It is a waking dream and a historic moment. On a personal level, he knows that he will be minister of culture. Moati waves his arms around like a conductor. Badinter and Debray dance a sort of minuet. Jospin and Quilès drink to the memory of Jean Jaurès. Young men and women climb on the railings in Rue de Solférino. Camera flashes crackle like thousands of little lightning streaks in the great storm of history. Lang doesn’t know which way to turn anymore. Someone hails him: “Monsieur Lang!”

He turns around and sees Bayard and Simon.

Lang is surprised. He immediately realizes that these two have not come to join the celebrations.

Bayard speaks first: “Would you mind giving us a few moments of your time?” He presents his card. Lang registers the red, white, and blue stripes.

“What’s this about?”

“It’s about Roland Barthes.”

The sound of the dead critic’s name is like an invisible hand slapping Lang in the face.

“Uh, listen … Not really, I don’t think this is the right time. Later in the week, perhaps? Just see my secretary and she can make an appointment for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

But Bayard holds him back by the arm: “I insist.”

Pierre Joxe, who is passing, asks: “Is there a problem, Jack?”

Lang looks over at the policemen guarding the gates. Until tonight, the police have been in the service of their opponents, but now he is in a position to ask them to escort these two gentlemen outside.

In the street, the crowd is chanting “The Internationale,” punctuated by a chorus of car horns.

Simon rolls up the right sleeve of his jacket and says: “Please. It won’t take long.”

Lang stares at the stump. Joxe says to him: “Jack?”

“Everything’s fine, Pierre. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He finds an unoccupied ground-floor office, just off the entrance hall. The light switch doesn’t work, but the glow of the streetlamps comes through the window, so the three men remain in this gloom. None has any desire to sit down.

Simon takes over: “Monsieur Lang, how did you come into possession of the seventh function?”

Lang sighs. Simon and Bayard wait. Mitterrand is president. Lang can tell them now. And in all probability, Simon thinks, Lang wants to tell them.

He organized a lunch with Barthes because he knew that Barthes was in possession of Jakobson’s manuscript.

“How?” asks Simon.

“How what?” says Lang. “How did Barthes come into possession of the manuscript or how did I know that he had?”

Simon is calm, but he knows that Bayard often has a hard time containing his impatience. As he doesn’t want his policeman friend to threaten to gouge out Jack Lang’s eyeballs with a coffee spoon, he says softly: “Both.”

Jack Lang does not know how Barthes came into possession of the manuscript, but in any case his extraordinary network of contacts in cultural circles enabled Lang to become aware of this fact. It was Debray, after talking about it with Derrida, who convinced him of the document’s importance. So they decided to organize the lunch with Barthes in order to steal it from him. During the meal, Lang discreetly pilfered the sheet of paper that was in Barthes’s jacket pocket and gave it to Debray, who was waiting, hidden, in the entrance hall. Debray ran off to hand the document to Derrida, who fabricated a false function based on the original text, which Debray took back to Lang, who slipped it into Barthes’s pocket before lunch was over. The timing of the operation was extremely precise; Derrida had to write the false function in record time, based on the real one, so that it would be credible but would not actually work.

Simon is amazed: “But what was the point? Barthes knew the text. He would have realized straight away.”

Lang explains: “We banked on the assumption that if we were aware of the existence of this document, we weren’t the only ones, and that it would be bound to arouse keen interest.”

Bayard interrupts him: “You anticipated that Sollers and Kristeva would steal it from him?”

Simon replies on Lang’s behalf: “No, they thought Giscard would try to get hold of it. And they weren’t wrong, were they, as that was precisely the mission he gave you? Except that, contrary to what they had supposed, when Barthes was knocked over by the laundry van, Giscard wasn’t yet aware of the seventh function’s existence.” He turns to Lang: “Seems his network of cultural informers was not as efficient as yours…”

Lang cannot conceal a faint smile of vanity: “In fact, the whole operation was based on what I must say was a fairly audacious gamble: that Barthes would have the false document stolen from him before he noticed the substitution, so that the thieves would believe they had the real seventh function and, additionally, so that we would remain beyond suspicion.”

Bayard: “And that’s exactly what happened. Except that it wasn’t Giscard, but Sollers and Kristeva who were behind the theft.”

Lang: “Ultimately, that didn’t make much difference to us. It would have been nice to play a trick on Giscard, to make him think he had a secret weapon. But the essential thing was that we had the seventh function—the real one.”

Bayard asks: “But why was Barthes killed?”

Lang had never expected things to go that far. They had had no intention whatsoever of killing anyone. It was immaterial to them that others should possess and even use the seventh function, as long as it wasn’t Giscard.

Simon understands. Mitterrand’s objective was purely short-term: to beat Giscard in the debate. But Sollers, in a way, was aiming higher. He wanted to take Eco’s title as the Great Protagoras of the Logos Club, and for that he needed the seventh function, which would have given him a decisive rhetorical advantage. But in order to preserve the position once it was his, he would have to make sure that no one else got to know about it, in case they challenged him. Hence the Bulgarian assassins hired by Kristeva to track down all the copies: it was imperative that the seventh function remain the exclusive property of Sollers, and Sollers alone. So Barthes had to die, as did all those who had been in possession of the document and who might either use it or disseminate it.

Simon asks if Mitterrand had approved Operation Seventh Function.

Lang does not reply in so many words, but the answer is obvious, so he doesn’t attempt to deny it: “Mitterrand was not convinced that it would work until the very last minute. It took him a little while to master the function. But when it came down to it, he crushed Giscard.” The future minister of culture smiles wolfishly.

“And Derrida?”

“Derrida wanted Giscard to lose. Like Jakobson, he would have preferred no one to possess the seventh function, but he was not in any position to prevent Mitterrand from getting it, and he liked the idea of the false function. He asked me to make the president promise to keep the seventh function for his exclusive use and not share it with anyone.” Lang smiles again. “A promise that the president, I feel absolutely certain, will have no trouble keeping.”

“What about you?” Bayard asks. “Did you see it?”

“No. Mitterrand asked us, Debray and me, not to open it. I wouldn’t have had time anyway, because as soon as I took it from Barthes, I gave it to Debray.”

Jack Lang remembers the scene: he had to watch over the cooking of the fish, help keep the conversation ticking over, and steal the function without anyone noticing.

“As for Debray, I don’t know if he obeyed the presidential order, but he didn’t have much time either. Knowing how loyal he is, I would bet that he followed instructions.”

“So, theoretically,” says Bayard, sounding dubious, “Mitterrand is the last person still alive who knows the function?”

“Along with Jakobson himself, obviously.”

Simon says nothing.

Outside, the people chant: “To the Bastille! To the Bastille!”

The door opens and Moati’s head appears. “Are you coming? The concerts have started. Apparently, the Bastille is packed!”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lang would like to rejoin his friends, but Simon still has one more question: “The false document forged by Derrida … was it intended to mess up whoever used it?”

Lang considers this: “I’m not sure … The most important thing was that it seem plausible. It was already quite a feat on Derrida’s part to write a credible imitation in such a short space of time.”

Bayard thinks back to Sollers’s performance in Venice and says to Simon: “Anyway, Sollers was a bit messed up to start with, wasn’t he?”

With all the courtesy he can muster, Lang asks permission to leave, now that he has satisfied their curiosity.

The three men exit the dark office and go back to the celebrations. Outside the former Gare d’Orsay, egged on by passersby, a man staggers around repeatedly yelling: “Giscard the loser! Let’s dance the Carmagnole!” Lang asks Simon and Bayard if they would like to accompany him to the Bastille. On the way, they bump into Gaston Defferre, the future minister of the interior. Lang makes the introductions. Defferre says to Bayard: “I need men like you. Let’s meet this week.”

The rain is bucketing down, but it does not dampen the euphoria of the crowds in the Bastille. Even though it is already night, people shout: “Mitterrand, sunlight! Mitterrand, sunlight!”

Bayard asks Lang if he thinks Kristeva and Sollers will be troubled by the long arm of the law. Lang pulls a face: “Quite frankly, I doubt it. The seventh function is now a state secret. The president has no interest in stirring this up. Anyway, Sollers has already paid a heavy price for his ambitions, don’t you think? I met him several times, you know. A charming man. He had the insolence of a courtier.”

Lang smiles his charming smile. Bayard shakes his hand, and the soon-to-be minister of culture can at last go off to join his comrades in celebrating their victory.

Simon contemplates the human tide that fills the square.

He says: “What a waste.”

Bayard is surprised: “What do you mean, what a waste? You’re going to be able to retire at sixty now—isn’t that what you want? You’ll have your thirty-five-hour workweek, your extra week’s vacation every year, your nationalizations, your abolition of the death penalty … Aren’t you happy?”

“Barthes, Hamed, his friend Saïd, the Bulgarian on the Pont-Neuf, the Bulgarian in the DS, Derrida, Searle … They all died for nothing. They died so Sollers could have his balls chopped off in Venice because he had the wrong document. Right from the beginning, we were chasing a mirage.”

“Well, not entirely. The sheet in Barthes’s apartment, the one inside the Jakobson book, that was a copy of the original. If we hadn’t intercepted the Bulgarian, he’d have given it to Kristeva, who would have realized there’d been a substitution when she compared the two texts. And Slimane’s cassette: that was a recording of the original too. It was important it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.” (Shit, thinks Bayard, stop talking about hands!)

“But Derrida wanted to destroy it.”

“But if Searle had got his hands on it”—seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me?—“who knows what would have happened?”

“They know in Murano.”

An oppressive silence, despite the singing crowd. Bayard doesn’t know what to say. He remembers a film he saw when he was a kid—The Vikings, with Tony Curtis as a one-armed man who kills the two-armed Kirk Douglas—but he is not sure that Simon would appreciate this reference.

There was nothing wrong with their investigation, no matter what anyone thinks. They tracked down Barthes’s murderers. How could they have guessed that they didn’t have the real document? No, Simon is right: they were barking up the wrong tree from the very start.

Bayard says: “Without this investigation, you wouldn’t have become what you are.”

“Disabled?” sneers Simon.

“When I first met you, you were a little library rat, you looked like a hippie virgin, and now look at you! You’re wearing a decent suit, you meet loads of girls, you’re the rising star of the Logos Club…”

“And I lost my right hand.”

A series of performers appears on the huge stage in the Bastille. Among a group of kissing, dancing young people, blond hair blowing in the wind (this is the first time he has seen her with her hair down), Simon recognizes Anastasia.

What were the odds of him bumping into her again, tonight, in this crowd? The thought flashes through Simon’s mind that either he is being manipulated by a really bad novelist or Anastasia is some sort of superspy.

Onstage, the group Téléphone are playing their hit, “Ça (C’est Vraiment Toi).”

Their eyes meet and, as she dances with a long-haired guy, Anastasia gives him a little wave.

Bayard has seen her too; he tells Simon that it’s time for him to go home.

“You’re not staying?”

“It’s not my victory. You know I voted for the other baldy. Anyway, I’m too old for all this.” He gives a vague wave at the groups of people jumping up and down in time with the music, getting drunk, smoking joints, and making out.

“Oh, give me a break, granddad—you weren’t saying that at Cornell when you were high as a kite, screwing God knows who with your friend Judith up your ass!”

Bayard does not take the bait:

“Anyway, I’ve got cabinets full of files that I need to shred before your friends get their … get hold of them.”

“What if Defferre offers you a job?”

“I’m a fonctionnaire. I’m paid to serve the government.”

“I see. Your patriotism does you honor.”

“Shut your mouth, you little twerp.”

The two men laugh. Simon asks Bayard if he isn’t curious to at least hear Anastasia’s side of the story. Bayard puts out his left hand to shake and tells him, watching the young Russian woman dance: “You can tell me later.”

And Bayard vanishes into the crowd.

When Simon turns around, Anastasia is standing in front of him, covered in sweat and rain. There is a brief moment of awkwardness. Simon notices that she is looking at the space where his missing hand should be. To create a diversion, he asks her: “So, what do they think about Mitterrand’s victory in Moscow?” She smiles. “Brezhnev, you know…” She hands him a half-empty can of beer. “Andropov is the coming man.”

“And what does the coming man think of his Bulgarian counterpart?”

“Kristeva’s father? We knew he was working for his daughter. But we couldn’t work out why they wanted the function. It’s thanks to you that I was able to discover the existence of the Logos Club.”

“What will happen to him now, Kristeva Senior?”

“Times have changed. This isn’t ’68 anymore. I have not received any orders. Not for the father or for the daughter. As for the agent who tried to kill you, we last saw him in Istanbul, but after that we lost track of him.”

The rain falls harder. Onstage, Jacques Higelin sings “Champagne.”

In a pained voice, Simon asks her: “Why weren’t you in Venice?”

Anastasia ties up her hair and takes a cigarette from a soft packet, but is unable to light it. Simon leads her to a sheltered place, under a tree, above the Port de l’Arsenal. “I was following another trail.” She had discovered that Sollers had entrusted a copy of the seventh function to Althusser. She didn’t know it was a false document, so she searched everywhere in Althusser’s apartment while he was in an asylum—and that required a great deal of work because there were tons of books and papers, the document could have been hidden anywhere, and she had to be extremely methodical. But she didn’t find it.

Simon says: “That’s a shame.”

Behind them, onstage, they catch a glimpse of Rocard and Juquin, hand in hand, singing “The Internationale,” echoed by the entire crowd. Anastasia mumbles the words in Russian. Simon wonders if the Left can actually be in power, in real life. Or, more precisely, he wonders if, in real life, it is possible to change one’s life. But before he is drawn, once again, down the rabbit hole of his ontological reflections, he hears Anastasia whisper to him: “I’m going back to Moscow tomorrow; tonight, I’m not on duty.” And, as if by magic, she takes a bottle of champagne from her bag. Simon has no idea how or where she got it, but who cares? They take turns drinking from the bottle, and Simon kisses Anastasia, wondering if she is about to slice open his carotid artery with a hairpin or if he will fall to the ground, poisoned by her toxic lipstick. But Anastasia lets him kiss her, and she isn’t wearing lipstick. With the rain and the celebrations in the background, the scene is like something from a Hollywood film, but Simon decides not to dwell on this.

The crowd yells: “Mitterrand! Mitterrand!” (But the new president is not there.)

Simon goes up to a street vendor who has drinks in his cooler, including, for tonight only, champagne. So he buys another bottle and uncorks it with one hand, while Anastasia smiles at him, her eyes shining from the alcohol and her hair, unpinned again, falling over her shoulders.

They clink their bottles together and Anastasia shouts over the clamor of the storm:

“To socialism!”

Everyone around them cheers.

And Simon replies, as a flash of lightning streaks across the Paris sky:

“The real kind!”

96

The French Open men’s final, 1981. Borg is crushing his opponent yet again, this time the Czechoslovakian Ivan Lendl; he takes the first set 6–1. All the heads in the crowd turn to follow the ball, except for Simon’s, because his thoughts are elsewhere.

Maybe Bayard doesn’t care, but he wants to know; he wants proof that he is not a character in a novel, that he lives in the real world. (What is it, the real? “You know it when you bump into it,” Lacan said. And Simon looks at his stump.)

The second set is tougher. The players send clouds of dust into the air when they slide around on the dry court.

Simon is alone in his box until a young North African–looking man joins him. The young man sits on the seat next to his. It’s Slimane.

They greet each other. Lendl snatches the second set.

It is the first set Borg has lost in the entire tournament.

“Nice box.”

“An advertising agency rents it, the one that did Mitterrand’s campaign. They want to recruit me.”

“Are you interested?”

“I think we can call each other tu.”

“I’m sorry about your hand.”

“If Borg wins, it’ll be his sixth Roland-Garros title. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“Looks like he’s got a good chance.”

It’s true: Borg will pull away quite quickly in the third set.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I was passing through Paris anyway. Was it your cop friend who told you?”

“So you live in the U.S. now?”

“Yeah, I got my green card.”

“In six months?”

“There’s always a way.”

“Even with the American government?”

“Yep, even with them.”

“What did you do, after Cornell?”

“I ran off with the money.”

“I know that bit.”

“I went to New York. To start with, I enrolled at Columbia University and took a few courses.”

“In the middle of the academic year? Is that possible?”

“Yeah, sure, you just have to convince a secretary.”

Borg breaks Lendl for the second time in the set.

“I heard about your victories in the Logos Club. Congratulations.”

“Actually, that reminds me: isn’t there an American branch?”

“Yes, but it’s still embryonic. I’m not sure there’s even a single tribune in the whole country. There’s a peripatetician in Philadelphia, I think, one or two in Boston, maybe, and a few dialecticians scattered over the West Coast.”

Simon doesn’t ask him if he’s planning to join.

Borg takes the third set 6–2.

“Got any plans?”

“I’d like to get into politics.”

“In the U.S.? You think you can get American nationality?”

“Why not?”

“But you want to, uh, stand for election?”

“Well, I need to improve my English first, and I need to be naturalized. After that, it’s not just a question of winning debates to become a candidate; you have to—what’s the expression?—do the hard yards. Maybe I’ll be able to aim for the Democratic primaries in 2020, who knows. Not before that, though, ha ha.”

Precisely because Slimane sounds as if he’s joking, Simon wonders if he isn’t serious.

“No, but listen, I met a student at Columbia. I have a feeling he can go far, if I help him.”

“What do you mean by ‘far’?”

“I think I can make him a senator.”

“To what end?”

“Just because. He’s a black guy from Hawaii.”

“Hmm, I see. A suitable test for your new powers.”

“It’s not exactly a power.”

“I know.”

Lendl hits a forehand that speeds ten feet past Borg.

Simon remarks: “That doesn’t happen very often to Borg. He’s good, this Czech guy.”

He is delaying the moment when he will touch upon the real reason he wanted to talk with Slimane, even though the ex-gigolo knows exactly what he has in mind.

“I listened to it over and over on my Walkman, but it’s not enough just to learn it by heart, you know.”

“So it’s a method? A secret weapon?”

“It’s more like a key, or a path, than a method. It’s true that Jakobson called it the ‘performative function,’ but ‘performative’ is just an image.”

Slimane watches Borg play his two-handed backhand.

“It’s a technique, I guess.”

“In the Greek sense?”

Slimane smiles.

“A technè, sure, if you like. Praxis, poiesis … I learned all that stuff, you know.”

“And you feel unbeatable?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I am. I think I could be beaten.”

“Without the function?”

Slimane smiles.

“We’ll see. But I still have plenty to learn. And I have to train. Convincing a customs official or a secretary is one thing, winning elections is something else. I’ve still got a long way to go.”

Simon wonders how great Mitterrand’s mastery of the technique is, and whether the Socialist president could lose an election or if he’s destined to be reelected until his death.

In the meantime, Lendl fights against the Swedish machine and wins the fourth set. The spectators shiver: this is the first time in ages that Borg has been taken to the fifth set at Roland-Garros. In fact, he hadn’t lost a single set here since 1979 and his final against Victor Pecci. As for his last defeat in Paris, that goes all the way back to 1976, against Panatta.

Borg hits a double fault, offering Lendl a break point.

“I don’t know what’s more improbable,” says Simon. “A sixth victory for Borg … or him losing.”

Borg responds with an ace. Lendl shouts something in Czech.

Simon realizes that he wants Borg to win, and that in this desire there is probably a bit of superstition, a bit of conservatism, a fear of change, but it would also be a victory for plausibility: the undisputed world number one ahead of Connors and McEnroe, Borg crushed all his opponents to reach the final, whereas Lendl, fifth in the world, almost lost against José Luis Clerc in the semifinal and even against Andres Gomez in the second round. The order of things …

“Actually, have you heard from Foucault?”

“Yeah, we write to each other regularly. He’s putting me up while I’m in Paris. He’s still working on his history of sexuality.”

“And, uh, the seventh function … he’s not interested in that? At least, as a subject of study?”

“He abandoned linguistics a while ago, you know. Maybe he’ll come back to it one day. But in any case, he’s too tactful to bring it up.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t saying that about you.”

Borg breaks Lendl.

Simon and Slimane stop talking for a while to follow the match.

Slimane thinks about Hamed.

“And that bitch Kristeva?”

“She’s fine. You know what happened to Sollers?”

An evil grin lights up Slimane’s face.

The two men sense vaguely that one day they will go head to head for the position of Great Protagoras, but they are not going to admit that to each other today. Simon has carefully avoided mentioning Umberto Eco.

Lendl breaks back.

The outcome is increasingly uncertain.

“So what about your plans?”

Simon laughs grimly, holding up his stump.

“Well, it’s going to be difficult to win Roland-Garros.”

“I bet you could take the Trans-Siberian, though.”

Simon smiles at the allusion to Cendrars, another one-armed intellectual, and wonders when Slimane acquired this literary knowledge.

Lendl doesn’t want to lose, but Borg is so strong.

And yet.

The unthinkable happens.

Lendl breaks Borg again.

He serves for the match.

The young Czechoslovak trembles under the weight of expectation.

But he wins.

Borg the invincible is beaten. Lendl raises his arms to the sky.

Slimane applauds, along with the rest of the spectators.

When Simon sees Lendl lift the cup, he no longer knows what to think.