French Rhapsody Page 14

  ‘Why don’t they revolt against their pseudo-dictators? Why do they come and create disorder here instead of creating order back home? Why is that then? What are they waiting for to overthrow their Negro bosses grown rich on so-called global capitalism?’

  The communications adviser raised an eyebrow. It was ‘black’ that had been in the script, not ‘Negro’.

  ‘Why don’t they seize power, roll up their sleeves and get building, building, goddamn it! Cities, roads, bridges, as all countries have had to do at some point in their history. Here, in our beautiful country, there was a time when there was nothing but little villages with terrible roads that led nowhere and forests full of wolves! Is it still like that today, I ask you? No! Why? Because one day we decided to do something about it and we built cities, roads, bridges and ports; we created craftsmen; we used iron and coal; we put mills in the water to mill wheat. They can’t even be bothered to dig wells, although we tried to teach them sixty years ago!’

  More thunderous applause and catcalls.

  ‘We made things grow and we sold them; we developed our trade. Why are these goddamn countries not capable of doing the same? Why are they lagging behind the rest of humanity? … Because they are like lazy sloths. Sloths asleep in the sun without a care in the world!’

  Another round of rhythmic applause in the arena.

  ‘Shall I tell you the solution? The solution we’ve been looking for now for fifty years? I’ll tell you …’

  Vaugan paused proudly, before bellowing, ‘We’ll re-colonise them! Since you’re no good at anything, we’ll come and show you! Good news, eh? Don’t move, we’re on our way! We have to come back and make an inventory. We left them with flourishing countries, and we’ll be going back to rubble, but never mind, we’ll take it on; France is magnanimous!’

  The arena was in raptures, and laughing. Vaugan mopped his brow, laughing too, before assuming a sober expression.

  ‘And all these immigrants who are landing on us like swarms of locusts, who I hear referred to as poor unfortunates who have paid a lot of money for their journey and have been exploited by smugglers … What do we care?!’ yelled Vaugan. ‘Do you analyse the psychology of the locust who lands on your field to munch up your harvest? Do you consult books of entomology to find out who your locust is: locust, who are you; where do you come from? Of course you don’t! You don’t give a shit what the damned insect is, you just want to protect your field, your labour, your work. And you want to keep the pests out!’

  ‘Out! Out! Out!’ came the chants.

  ‘Have you seen the images coming from Italy? From Lampedusa? From Calais? Because you find these people in Calais – they’re attacking the poor lorry drivers so that they can get to England. Apparently there are Ethiopians and Eritreans – I don’t know where Eritrea is, and I don’t want to know. Do you think they look like poor people? … They look like what they are: thugs! Barbarians!’ shouted Vaugan, over the wild clapping. ‘Barbarians,’ he went on, ‘come to crowbar open the frontiers of Europe. They are thieves! As for the boats in the Mediterranean that people cry over because they’re stuffed with five hundred migrants, when they can only fit ninety … The coastguards shouldn’t go and save them; on the contrary!’ Vaugan was working himself up. ‘They should make waves! Waves and even more waves!’

  Delight in the crowd.

  ‘Let’s go to all the coasts!’ cried Vaugan, walking over to the edge of the stage. ‘Let’s put our hands in the water’ – here he gestured with his hands – ‘and make waves!’ He waved his hands frenetically.

  ‘Waves! Waves! Waves! Waves!’ they chanted like a war cry.

  ‘Illegal immigrants … Oh, the illegal immigrants’ – now he puffed his chest out – ‘beloved by hipsters and champagne socialists, beloved by elites and celebrities! Their pastime, their hobby!’ spluttered Vaugan. ‘“But what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants? What are we going to do with these poor people? What can we do for them?”’ Vaugan mimicked a concerned face that was not unlike Jack Nicholson in The Shining. ‘Since they have no papers, they can bugger off! Simple! Do you think that if I go to the US and disappear into the crowd and start working illegally for ten or fifteen years, I can just show up one morning at a demo in the streets of Washington or New York? Do you think I can do that? That I’d be able to shout slogans in the street with a placard complaining that America hasn’t given me an American passport even though I work illegally on her soil. D’you think that would work?’ yelled Vaugan. ‘Would there be Yanks willing to form humanitarian aid groups for arseholes like me? No! They would boot me out back here!’

  The crowd loved it. From all sides they shouted, ‘Vaugan, Vaugan!’

  Vaugan stood centre stage in the spotlight.

  ‘France République defines the right wing of the right: “To the Right of the Right”, that’s our slogan. Are you frightened of being to the right of the right? Hey, Russian comrade, tovarish! Come and talk to me,’ shouted Vaugan, cupping his hands round his mouth. ‘Hey, Mr American President, get your arse out of the Oval Office and come and talk to me! Chancellor Merkel, put on your little jacket and come and talk to me! Her British Majesty’s Prime Minister, come and talk to me! Leave the riches of the Élysée, President of France, and come and talk to me! Hey! People of France! People of France, come and talk to me!’

  Vaugan threw his arms wide open. The crowd was ecstatic and a good quarter of the Zénith was on its feet.

  ‘Workers, farmers, middle managers and senior executives, middle classes, the unemployed, retirees who have money, graduates with no work, I’m calling on everyone who has been let down …’

  His communications adviser began to scrabble feverishly through the speech – none of that had been anywhere in the text.

  ‘… I’m calling on all the people without qualifications, without hope, without money; I’m calling on all the people all over the country; I’m calling on the men of the past: rise from your tombs, remember your past glories, take up your arms again, your eagles, your crowns; I call on Napoleon, Clovis, Charlemagne, St Louis; I call on the blood of our fallen on the battlefields of honour; I call on France … to rise up!’ He raised his arms and threw his head back.

  Now half of the Zénith crowd was standing, fists raised, chanting Vaugan’s name. Others applauded, their arms above their heads. Some were drumming their feet, and flags waved frenetically. Vaugan could see in the pit some young people who hadn’t really understood the change in the right’s message and were giving fascist salutes. But overall the mood was pleasant, with all those arms outstretched towards him. ‘Down with Europe! Down with Brussels!’ yelled some overexcited men. As the clamour grew, Vaugan prepared to deliver the second part of his speech.

  ‘Now?’ asked the man in grey.

  ‘Just wait one moment,’ replied the voice in his earpiece.

  ‘Now, I’m going to talk to you about people who are suffering and about whom no one ever speaks, far off in our beautiful provinces … and I’m going to talk about the mosques that are sprouting like mushrooms in those same provinces and which are subsidised to the tune of millions of euros of your money, and I’m going to talk about the last remaining parish priests who live off one boiled egg a day and who perform mass in front of church pews that are three-quarters empty. I’m going to talk to you about the collapse of our country!’ bellowed Vaugan.

  ‘Now!’ said the voice.

  The man in grey, who had been holding a digital device the size of a mobile phone in his pocket since the beginning of the meeting, pressed the button and closed his eyes. There was a blinding light with Vaugan’s platform at the epicentre. The three Semtex charges, each twenty kilos, exploded exactly as planned and the platform tipped backwards, dragging Vaugan down with it. The noise was brief but deafening, then smoke began to rise. The platform had gone, the front rows were no longer cheering, but for the most part, the blood on their faces and hands was due to their eardrums bursting.

/>   ‘All done,’ declared the man in grey, soberly, before moving away through the crowd to the exit.

  A Three-legged Dog

  The next morning, Aurore had opened the shutters to discover the vines were shrouded in dense fog. She found her mother watching the news of the bombing of the Zénith. Vaugan was reported to be in a coma and eleven others were seriously wounded, including, most severely, his publicist. The investigation was under way and the journalists were already deep in speculation: a split between factions of the far right? Islamic extremists? The explosives used in the attack suggested ‘well-trained, if not professional elements’.

  ‘He’s already had his breakfast,’ said Bérengère, ‘and gone out with a bag, heading towards Romanée-Conti. I shouldn’t have let him go on his own, he’ll get lost.’ She frowned at the fog outside the windows.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Aurore.

  She picked out a parka and walked to the door.

  The night before, JBM had put his arms around Bérengère, hugged her and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’ Bérengère asked quietly but, rather than answer her, JBM continued, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything …’

  Then he felt very weary.

  ‘Do you have to go back to Paris?’ Bérengère asked. ‘Why don’t you stay, if you like? There are rooms free.’

  JBM glanced at Aurore. They were both thinking of the same person: Blanche. The Paris–New York flight took seven hours, so she would not yet have landed and probably wouldn’t try to contact him until tomorrow. She would therefore be none the wiser about JBM’s trip to Burgundy.

  ‘We’ll stay,’ JBM decided.

  The fog now covered all the vines. What he was looking for – the stone cross marking the entrance to the Romanée-Conti estate – was, according to Bérengère, ‘at the end of Rue du Temps Perdu, but you don’t have to take that road; you can cut across the vineyards.’

  ‘I don’t need to go in search of lost time?’ JBM had asked with a smile. ‘Sure about that?’

  He stopped and looked around. He couldn’t see five metres ahead of him.

  ‘Everything is an amalgam of elements,’ whispered JBM, remembering the phrase Pierre used to like to quote. ‘I’m in the eye of the storm; there is no sky; everything is an amalgam of elements; there’s nothing but mountains of water around me’ – the last radio message sent from the Manureva by Alain Colas at four in the morning on 16 November 1978 off the coast of the Azores. That winter, both brothers had been glued to the incredible Route du Rhum transatlantic solo race and the news of the sailor’s tragic disappearance; the search for the boat and its skipper went on for several weeks, but no trace of either was ever found. At the time, Pierre became fixated on one particular detail, which, to his mind, was what the whole story turned on: Alain Colas didn’t have his distress beacon with him. The signals the device emitted on an international frequency might have been picked up by aircraft or shipping vessels up to seventy-two hours after the distress call. He had simply forgotten to take it with him when he set off – it had been found in a bag on Quai Vauban in Saint-Malo.

  JBM was working out which way to go – carry straight on or veer right through the vines? – when a little shadow emerged from the fog, a small dog running towards him whose front right leg was missing. JBM put down his bag, crouched down and held out his hand, which the little dog licked frantically while managing to balance very well on its three spindly legs. JBM stroked it between the ears.

  ‘What happened to you, then, you poor old thing?’

  The dog barked excitedly several times, as happy little dogs do.

  ‘I’m lost,’ JBM told him. ‘I was trying to get to Romanée-Conti … Do you want to take me back home?’

  The creature barked again and began to head into the fog, following the path that ran alongside the vines. JBM went after him as he bounded down the track. They walked together for a good minute and then the dog stopped, sat himself down and, tongue lolling, looked up at JBM. There was a shift in the air and a few metres ahead of them, JBM made out the mighty Christian cross, built of stone six centuries earlier, which marked the entrance to the legendary Romanée-Conti estate.

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ whispered JBM, patting the dog’s back.

  A stone cross, a wine estate and the valley it sat in – nothing about this mist-covered landscape had changed since the time of Charles VII.

  ‘You found Jimmy then …’

  JBM turned round to see Aurore coming through the fog.

  ‘He belongs to the estate, so he’s just the guy to show you the way here.’

  She bent down towards Jimmy, who began wagging his tail.

  ‘With you to meet me here,’ added JBM.

  ‘Yes.’ Aurore smiled. ‘I’m your three-legged dog.’

  ‘No, you’re my beloved daughter.’

  They looked at one another without speaking, and then Aurore’s gaze settled on the bag.

  ‘He said he wanted “a place of beauty and history”. This is it, isn’t it?’

  ‘This is it.’

  JBM reached down, unzipped the bag, carefully took out the urn and removed the lid. Aurore took a step backwards and stood very straight. The dog sat and watched intently.

  ‘Let’s go further into the vines,’ suggested JBM. ‘Pierre will be more in his element.’

  They took three steps; the dog followed them and settled back down at their feet. The wind changed, blowing towards the vines, and beginning to break up the fog. Aurore crossed herself. JBM tipped the urn forward and, caught in a ray of sunlight, the ashes began to pour out, rising up around the cross before being carried off on the wind above the vines. When the urn was almost empty, JBM tapped the bottom to release the last few particles of the antiquarian. He placed it at the foot of the cross and stepped back again. The fog had almost blown away. JBM, Aurore and the dog remained silent for a long while, their gazes and thoughts lost in their surroundings. The dog barked once.

  ‘Ceremony over,’ remarked JBM.

  Rats

  Karim the Tuileries’ park-keeper was deep in his reading of L’Équipe but glanced up at Bubble. Several women had just screamed and he had immediately thought it might be a flasher. They had already had one individual in a raincoat showing off his bits to passers-by. Karim had chased him down a path and wrestled the terrified man to the ground. The bloke had begged him not to call the police and even offered him money if he would let him go.

  But this time Karim hadn’t seen anyone acting suspiciously. The problem seemed to be on the ground, in the dust. Karim got up from his chair, dropping his paper.

  ‘Stay back,’ he called in French and then in English. He blew his whistle.

  But the walkers, whether they were French or foreign, needed no second bidding and had already fled. Karim spoke into his walkie-talkie. ‘Karim, at the entrance. I’ve got a problem, a huge problem.’

  ‘What’s going on, Karim?’ came the crackly response.

  ‘Rats! I don’t know where they’ve appeared from but there are dozens of them. They’re all making for the structure.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous – come and see for yourself! They’re coming from every direction.’

  Now there had to be hundreds of the rodents, ranged in what looked like battle formation round the pond. A brave tourist walked towards them to take a picture on his phone. The rats froze at his approach.

  ‘Be careful! Stay away from them!’

  It was the first time that Karim had seen the rats behaving in an obviously aggressive manner. One of them jumped on the tourist’s ankle and climbed in a scrabbling of legs up to the man’s face. The man’s wife screamed as the man waved his arms frantically until the rat fell to the ground and went to join the others.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Karim asked the man who had gone over to his wife and children and was touching his face with his hands.

  ‘Sì! Sto bene,
ma cos’è successo qui?’ cried the tourist, looking furious.

  Karim didn’t know how to reply and looked over at the horde of rats. It really was like a commando operation. Arranged in a circle around the pond, some rats were standing guard, while others in groups of two or three were frantically nibbling the cables that secured Bubble. Each cable had a group of rats, and as soon as Karim tried to approach, the guard rats immediately adopted an attack pose.

  ‘Karim!’ shouted a voice.

  Five park-keepers, one of whom was his boss carrying a loudhailer, were jogging towards him. They all stopped to catch their breath and look at the spectacle.

  ‘What the hell?’ said the head park-keeper in alarm.

  ‘They’re eating the cables,’ Karim told him tonelessly. ‘All the cables,’ he added.

  Just then one of the cables broke free with a loud snap, immediately followed by a second one. One of the rats was catapulted into the air.

  ‘But … but …’ stammered the boss, ‘they’re going to release that monstrosity – and have you seen the size of it? And the wind’s getting up …Franck,’ he said, turning towards one of the park-keepers, ‘call the fire brigade immediately!’

  In twenty-five years of guarding the park, the head park-keeper had never had to think as fast on his feet. ‘We’ll evacuate the gardens to the east, as quickly as possible,’ he announced just as a third cable popped into the air with a sound like the crack of a whip. He took his loudhailer and spoke into the microphone. ‘Evacuation of the Tuileries Gardens. Everyone is to leave the gardens.

  ‘Please leave the gardens by the east exit, the exit by the Louvre!’

  Then he activated the siren on the loudhailer. Three cables snapped almost simultaneously and Bubble began to rock. The tourists assembled at the east end of the pond but, fascinated by what was happening, did not seem in a hurry to leave the park.