French Rhapsody Read online

  ‘I saw his brother twice,’ went on the neighbour. ‘He came, opened the grille, then closed it again, stayed for an hour and left again. He still pays the rent and the telephone bill; I sometimes hear the phone ringing through the wall. Along with some of the other shops, I’ve sent him an email asking if he plans to sell up, but he hasn’t replied. It’s not that we want to buy it given current conditions, it’s because a phone shop was interested and that would attract customers.’ The neighbour sighed before flicking his cigarette butt neatly into the gutter and going back indoors.

  Alain heard his door close and made for the nearest café where he immediately ordered a rum.

  So, Pierre the antique dealer, the man who had been passionate about the past and whom Alain had admired for his cultural knowledge and anecdotes about France, had put an end to it all. No doubt an accumulation of problems both private and professional had led him to do it, yet Alain felt that Pierre’s death represented more than just a personal tragedy. The way he had deliberately stepped out of his own era by staging his death in that ostentatious way was a mark of something more profound. ‘An artistic accident,’ the shopkeeper next door had said. Pierre’s trade was too slow – a trade where you spent entire afternoons daydreaming, or buried deep in art books whilst waiting for an erudite customer or the phone to ring, was out of step with modern life. The rhythm of the world had accelerated; everything had to happen quickly. The past and the aspect of culture Pierre had chosen to make a career out of, had less and less relevance to how people lived now. Frankly, thought Alain, sipping his rum, who now knew anything about Louis XIII and what he had done? Everybody knew Louis XIV because of the chateau and gardens of Versailles, Louis XVI because he’d ended up on the scaffold and Napoleon because of his hat, his wars and his exile on St Helena. All the rest of history, whether political or artistic, was just a shapeless mass which had over the course of time created the France of today and of which its citizens had only a hazy knowledge … Alain paid for the rum then checked his emails on his phone.

  Quite unexpectedly, Frédéric Lejeune had already replied. Even though Thailand was on the other side of the world, there was only a five-hour time difference with France. Never having got on particularly well with Frédéric – they hadn’t had a lot in common back in the days of the band – Alain had decided to come straight to the point about the cassette and had not mentioned the letter from Polydor. In response to his email, Frédéric did not say anything about the cassette but announced that he would soon be in France.

  Hi Alain,

  Great to hear from you. Good timing as well because I’m coming to Paris in a few days for a week so that I can finalise the sale of my parents’ apartment in La Garenne-Colombes. I see from the internet that you’re still a doctor and wondered if I could show you a boil on my left buttock? I’ve had it for two weeks and it’s still very inflamed. I can’t find a cream here that’s any use and after a fourteen-hour flight, it’s bound to be worse. Thank you in advance for your help with this. I have attached a photo of the boil – it’s about as big as a ten-baht piece, so I suppose the size of a euro or maybe a two-euro piece.

  See you soon, Fred.

  Alain clicked on the photo of the boil, which filled his iPhone screen in all its glory, making him quickly close it. Digital technology had really transformed modes of communication. You asked someone a question and in reply received a huge photo of their buttocks. The fleeting dermatological image that had appeared on his screen confirmed what he had been thinking – Pierre Mazart, even though he had chosen a rather radical way of showing it, really did have no connection at all with the present day.

  Bubble

  At eleven o’clock in the evening, powered by the generator, the enormous tubes were filling with helium to the sound of the purring blower. Standing in his trademark overalls, Stan Lepelle surveyed the installation of his work. Situated at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens on the octagonal basin sixty metres across, Bubble was taking shape before the very eyes of its creator.

  ‘Everything going well?’ the attaché from the Ministry of Culture asked obsequiously.

  ‘Yes, very well,’ replied Lepelle. ‘Be careful fixing the base!’ he called to the workmen who were putting steel protectors round thick ropes. These were attached to stakes that had been driven into the ground by an astonishingly noisy machine once the gardens had closed for the evening.

  Lepelle walked round the structure. The pink, semitransparent skin was very slowly inflating. It was made from the very latest synthetic rubber, BN657, which had been chosen because it was very thin but very strong. It would take a good hour to fill the thousand cubic metres. He went back to sit on the little folding chair that someone had set up for him under a light with its own projector linked to the generator.

  ‘Would you like coffee?’ he was asked by a young intern from the Ministry of Culture.

  ‘I would, yes,’ replied Lepelle.

  He unfolded a copy of the article from his press office that was to appear in Le Monde the next day, and prepared to read the interview he had given recently. It filled a whole page. A 3D image of Bubble in the Tuileries as it would look by day and by night appeared next to his photo, in which he wore the frowning preoccupied expression of the intellectual engaged with the big questions of the day. The young girl brought his coffee. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No sugar, ever,’ he replied.

  He grabbed the cup and continued reading.

  The headline across the top of the page read ‘The consecration of Stan Lepelle’. ‘The work is intended to pose questions’ was one of the quotes in bold in the body of the article. Lepelle stated crisply that ‘the role of art is to question behaviour and the moral and ideological foundations of society’. The 25-metre-high, 60-metre-wide inflatable structure, a reproduction of his brain from a model generated by a 3D printer based on a medical scan, was not merely an artefact. It was a ‘semantic question mark’. Further on in the article, he had managed to get in the fact that Bubble must provide a ‘dialogue’ with the Obelisk. That was important; you always had to have the word ‘dialogue’ in an interview about a contemporary art installation. It made the work seem appealing. Who would want to attack someone who just wanted to start a dialogue? No one.

  The interview with Le Monde was the only one he would give and tomorrow all the press would be talking about it. By his silence he would communicate his scorn for future detractors, whilst also building his reputation as inaccessible. ‘You have to make yourself appear unobtainable,’ his dealer was always telling him. Not that Lepelle needed that cretin to point it out. Love it or hate it, no one would be indifferent to Bubble. There would be a hue and cry from some right-wing extremists – the ones who had unhooked McCarthy’s butt plug from its air source or vandalised Anish Kapoor’s Dirty Corner at Château de Versailles. But Bubble had no sexual connotation and that would make it harder for them. The extremists would make just enough fuss to publicise Bubble, his dealer said, but would stop short of vandalising it. In any case, the mairie had allocated two security guards who would do the rounds of the park at night so that during the month the installation was there, no joker could come and damage it.

  Lepelle looked up from the newspaper at the work which was taking shape: a giant brain, his own brain, 60 metres across and 25 metres high, installed over the pond, filled with helium but solidly anchored to the ground. The gas was part of the symbolism of Bubble: ‘the possibility of flight countered by support cables, or, if you prefer, desire and reason in apposition’ had been his explanation to the journalist. When the brain was fully inflated, the din of the blower would cease and all that would remain to be done was the testing of the final phase of the installation. On the dot of midnight, the machinery designed by Matra Horlogerie and LED lighting would make the brain glow pink and blue. Lepelle got up from the chair and took a few steps back to savour this night alone with his statement piece.

  A little shadow moved in the distance, then
another. The two shadows froze, without taking flight. Cats would already have scarpered into the bushes. But these two silhouettes, nose to nose, seemed almost to be plotting in the glare of the spotlights. One of them was picked out by the light, revealing its red eyes. Lepelle recoiled in shock – rats. ‘Shit,’ he murmured. The rats hadn’t moved a centimetre, and he could make out a third one coming from further away to join them. For more than a year, the gardens had been infested by rodents around the Place du Carrousel. They could quite often be seen amongst the walkers, pouncing on a bit of sandwich dropped by tourists before scurrying off, or busily crossing a lawn oblivious to the passers-by who stopped, horrified, in their path. The park authorities had tried to get rid of them, without success. Now the rats had come to reconnoitre what was happening so noisily in the middle of the night on their patch. Lepelle picked up a stone and threw it at them. One of the rats fled, whilst the albino with red eyes emitted a sort of sharp squeak, wrinkling its nose, and calmly set off towards a dark corner. Lepelle had the disagreeable impression that the rodent had given him a sardonic smile intended to convey, ‘We’ll be seeing each other again.’

  Lepelle turned back to the pond. The first arabesques characteristic of brain matter were beginning to appear one after the other on the immense rubberised brain.

  Agitprop

  Domitile Kavanski’s questionnaire had arrived by email. A list of seventeen questions going from the personal to the general that Aurore had downloaded to her tablet. JBM had initially refused to take part, stating plainly, ‘That crazy woman’s a pain in the arse.’ Aurore managed to persuade him to spend a quarter of an hour answering it with her, like a child being forced to do his holiday homework on an August afternoon before he’s allowed to go to the beach. Except that there would be no beach.

  Things had not got off to a particularly good start with the high priestess of comms. On Blanche’s orders, JBM had reluctantly attended his first ‘informal chat’, at which he had been shown a short film. A series of vox pops had been carefully put together before being presented to their subject. In the first clip, a man of North African origin selling fruit and veg on a market stall claimed that what the country was crying out for was JBM. ‘We’re counting on you, JBM!’ he concluded, pumping his fists and smiling into the camera as if addressing a football player before the match. An old man leaning on the counter of a bistro with a small white wine in front of him also said JBM might be just what the country needed, because everyone was tired of the usual politicians, who never got anything done, and if we carried on with the same old same old, the elections would be ‘a walk in the park for the far right’. He seemed quite proud of his little summary, and two other men at the bar nodded approvingly. Then they all held their glasses – two small white wines and a half of beer – and raised them to the camera: ‘To JBM!’ A woman in her forties fumed in front of the lens. ‘We’re always paying all these taxes and then they tell us there’s no money. Where’s it all going then? There’s never been so many homeless. There, look at him.’ The camera spun round to focus on a haggard-looking man sitting cross-legged on the pavement in front of a tent. ‘For over a year, when I look out of my windows, I’ve seen him there. Can’t they find him a job? They could give him a rake and a shovel and some work in a park. Don’t tell me you need forty different degrees to look after a lawn and plant a few things! So, yes, yes, if he’s going to get a grip on it all, I’ll vote for him.’ Finally, a girl with several piercings and a mouthful of chewing gum said she was yet to vote in an election, but if she did, it would definitely be for him because he seemed ‘cool’ and ‘not like the others’.

  The picture gently faded to black and, as if by magic, the giant screen rolled back up to the ceiling in the publicist’s spacious office. JBM and Aurore turned to look at Domitile, who was sitting at the enormous oval table surrounded by her troops, silently congratulating herself.

  ‘Who’s been telling them I’m planning to stand for anything?’ JBM asked coolly.

  ‘Their hearts are telling them!’ Domitile replied with such pizzazz it made you want to slap her. ‘Their hearts, JBM,’ she went on. ‘You’re the one they want. They’re crying out for you.’

  ‘Well, you can tell them I’m not a cardiologist. I’m not about to launch a political career just because a couple of housewives, three old sots and a Moroccan greengrocer have got it into their heads that they could see me in the Élysée.’

  Domitile smiled and walked over to him, her stilettos clacking on the floor.

  ‘I love it when you get angry, JBM,’ she said, placing her hand on his shoulder before simpering, ‘You must have been impossible as a child.’

  She slowly moved away before suddenly swivelling back to face him.

  ‘France is at your feet – don’t you want it? Don’t you want it, JBM?’ she pressed him, raising her voice.

  JBM left the screening, waving goodbye to everyone round the table. He shook hands with Domitile, who gazed seductively up at him, whispering mischievously, ‘Au revoir, Président.’ He had barely left the building when she turned back to face her team and slammed her hand down on the table, making all eighteen people gathered around it jump out of their seats.

  ‘Agitprop!’ she shrieked. ‘I want stories planted everywhere in the press. Get me all the actresses; ask them to tell us about whatever crappy film they’ve been in lately, their beauty tips, holiday plans, the kids, and throw in a political question to which the answer can only be ‘JBM’. In return we’ll get them ads, clothes, perfume, holidays, flat-screen TVs, partnership deals. We have to be everywhere, except the political arena – we’ll attack from the inside. They’re waiting for us on the beaches; we’ll surprise them on the battlefields! I want to make people think. I want this to get inside their heads. He’s the next occupant of the Élysée palace, him and him alone. Everybody got that?’

  She raised to her lips an e-cigarette covered in a silver sheath which had been specially made for her by Cartier and engraved with her motto: ‘Where next?’ She strolled over to the window and gazed out at the city, which looked like a toy town from up here on the eighteenth floor.

  ‘He doesn’t seem too sure about it,’ ventured one of the young men in the room.

  ‘Let me worry about him,’ Domitile said nonchalantly, as swirls of electronic smoke curled out from her crimson lips.

  The questionnaire covered all kinds of subjects, from JBM’s favourite writers and animals to his position on big questions such as the right to die or gay adoptions. Having already answered nine questions, JBM began dictating his response to the tenth.

  ‘Pepe Mujica and his three-legged dog.’

  ‘Hang on, JBM. You can’t say Pepe Mujica. She’ll have a fit.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just say Mitterrand or de Gaulle.’

  ‘No, Aurore, no way. I’m going to give an honest answer to her question: which politician has made the biggest impression on you?’

  Aurore put down her tablet with a sigh and went towards the window.

  ‘Do you want me to put Mitterrand?’ asked JBM conciliatorily.

  ‘No, put Mujica and his dog. You’re right; it’s more original.’

  It was true that the former Uruguayan president would be a more unexpected response than the names of either of the two great presidents of the French Fifth Republic. Jailed for thirteen years by the military dictatorship, during which time he had been tortured and thrown down a well, the former leader of the Tupamoros guerrilla group had gone on to rebuild his life, culminating in his election as his country’s president at the age of seventy-four. Describing himself as ‘a humble peasant’, the little round man with the moustache, defined by the press – who can never resist a good catchphrase – as ‘the poorest president on the planet’, stood out among world statesmen for his refusal to embrace the high life. Rather than move into the presidential palace, he had carried on living on his little farm on the outskirts of Montevideo and donated most of hi
s salary to charitable organisations or small businesses, keeping for himself a salary equivalent to the Uruguayan national average. Upon leaving office in 2015, he set up a small business selling home-grown flowers. During Mujica’s five-year term, JBM had closely followed the speeches the president made at the UN and the interviews he had given from his modest home. Mujica called for people to open their eyes to the spread of consumerism, the rising tide of globalisation and the market economy that curtailed freedoms, making people slaves to their credit cards, working only to pay off the debts they had racked up buying things they didn’t need. As he saw it, a poor man was not someone with few possessions, but someone who needed endless quantities of stuff and was never satisfied. Sitting at his farmhouse table, surrounded by books, he quoted philosophers like Epicurus and Seneca. He was also seen walking along mud paths with his little limping dog, who was missing a leg.

  ‘You don’t know what these people are like, Aurore. Domitile Kavanski is like a tick on a dog’s back. If you want to get rid of it, you have to cut it out.’

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  JBM looked up.

  ‘What if she’s right? What if Blanche is right? And Bourdin? What if it’s you, JBM, and we’ve come full circle. What if politicians as we know them are no longer equipped to face the world we live in, they’re outdated, over, and it’s people like you who need to take control? I mean it,’ she said, moving towards the desk. ‘The candidates going for the presidency in six months’ time don’t have a quarter of your experience, or a diary or contacts book a tenth as full as yours. You, Bernard Arnault, François Pinault and Xavier Niel have more power and expertise between you than the whole political class of this country.’