The President's Hat Read online

  He closed his eyes, then in a strange ritual gesture presented it for the five men and three women around him to sniff. No one said anything for a long moment. Then they looked at each other and an electric current passed through the room as surely as if a charge of 12,000 volts had been released.

  ‘Call him,’ said the grey-haired man softly. ‘Quickly!’ he added. ‘Before he offers it to Chanel or Saint Laurent.’

  Then he looked at the bottle in the light and smiled the smile of a businessman who has to place himself in the hands of artists and can’t quite believe it when the artists deliver. It was miraculous to him that all the millions of francs that would be invested in this perfume, its manufacture, its bottles, the whole industrial and financial process and even the price of the stock could all be the result of the imaginings of one man. The result of an idea that had occurred to the man one morning.

  That was the great mystery of industry and of finance, that it all came from something intangible, insubstantial, almost mystical …

  The white-aproned waiter had walked ahead of them down the line of tables where couples, families and tourists sat chatting, smiling or nodding their heads, their mouths full. Along the way, Aslan spotted seafood platters, entrecôte steaks with pommes vapeur, faux-filets with Béarnaise sauce.

  A few days after signing the contract for his new fragrance, Pierre had decided to take his wife and son out to dinner. When they came in the head waiter, a man with crew-cut grey hair, had asked them if they’d booked, and then looked for the name Aslan on his list.

  ‘Allow us to show you to your table,’ he said, nodding to a waiter, who immediately hurried over. They opened the red leatherette menu and began to read.

  The plateau royal de fruits de mer (3 people) was framed in the middle of the page, in elegant calligraphy: fines de claire gillardeau, a crab, two types of clam, langoustines, whelks, sea violets, sea urchins, prawns and winkles. Aslan took the wine list and looked for a Chevalier-Montrachet.

  ‘Excellent choice … Monsieur,’ said the wine waiter, abandoning the time-honoured condescension to customers.

  A few minutes later, he returned with the bottle, took hold of the corkscrew and performed the ritual opening, passing the cork under his nose. Aslan tasted the first mouthful and nodded. The wine waiter gave an approving nod in return, filled their glasses and departed. Aslan noticed that a few people were glancing at their table, probably music lovers who had recognised Esther.

  ‘It must be Fremenberg who’s cured you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have stopped his sessions so suddenly.’

  ‘Yes, I should,’ Pierre protested lightly.

  There had been no more sessions since the evening Pierre had opened the study door and sat down in front of his perfume organ. The following Friday, he had told Esther he was too busy to go to see Fremenberg.

  ‘But, Pierre,’ she had replied, horrified, ‘you haven’t missed a session in six years.’

  To avoid any further discussion, which would have interrupted his work, Aslan had gone over to her, looked at her in silence then planted a kiss on her forehead, and, without a word, sat back down in his chair. Esther had left him alone.

  The next week he had missed his appointment because there had been a test distillation at the laboratory at the very time he should have been at his analyst. And on the following Fridays Aslan was not to be found crossing Parc Monceau.

  One morning he received a phone call from an unknown secretary telling him that he hadn’t shown up for his appointments with Fremenberg for four months. If he wished to continue treatment, he would have to pay for all the missed appointments, the woman’s voice informed him.

  Pierre did not particularly like Fremenberg, and he liked even less the attitude that demanded that you pay for a service you hadn’t received. It was highly questionable.

  On the one hand it was fair enough that you should have to make reparation for the inconvenience of a missed appointment, but on the other hand, when you forgot to cancel a dinner reservation, you wouldn’t be expected to pay for two meals when you next went to the restaurant.

  What exactly did he owe Fremenberg? Nothing. The long silent sessions he had attended for six years had not helped him. It was the hat that had pulled him out of his depression. Had he not picked it up, nothing would have changed.

  Pierre had developed a theory about all this, according to which he had a ‘parallel life’ where he had not taken the hat from the bench in Parc Monceau, his wife had not made that comment about his beard, he hadn’t shaved it off, and of course the hat had not been placed on the sitting-room radiator on New Year’s Eve.

  In this ‘parallel life’ he was still wearing his old sheepskin jacket and had his beard, had never opened the door of his study and still went every Friday to his analyst. What Aslan called a ‘parallel life’ was actually a perfect illustration of quantum mechanics and of applied developments in probability theory, starting from the hypothesis that everything we do in our lives creates a new universe which does not in any way wipe out the previous universe.

  Our lives can be thought of as like a tree hiding a forest of parallel lives in which we aren’t exactly the same, nor are we wholly different. In certain of those lives, we wouldn’t have married the same person, or lived in the same place, or had the same profession … To deny that Fremenberg had played any part in his recovery had one flaw: namely that without the weekly appointment with his analyst he would never have sat on the bench beside the hat.

  So Pierre decided to work out the cost of the missed Friday appointments and send off a cheque for what he owed. He did not receive any response, but his cheque number 4567YL was cashed the next day.

  ‘What do you think of the wine?’ he asked his wife and son seriously.

  ‘It’s excellent,’ replied Esther, and Éric voted it ‘cool’.

  A few moments later, a waiter placed a round stand in the middle of the table, a sign that the seafood platter was about to arrive. Next came a basket of pumpernickel bread, a ramekin of shallot vinaigrette, and the butter dish.

  Aslan buttered a piece of bread and dipped it discreetly in the vinaigrette. Éric immediately followed suit and Esther frowned. The platter arrived, the seafood arranged by species on a bed of crushed ice.

  Aslan took an oyster, held a quarter of lemon immediately above it, and squeezed gently. A drop of lemon juice fell onto the delicate membrane, which squirmed immediately.

  The young cloakroom attendant gave him his hat and helped him on with his overcoat, then placed Esther’s silk chiffon scarf over her shoulders, staring at her a little too fixedly.

  ‘I was at Salle Pleyel … at your concert in March,’ she whispered. ‘The Prelude and Fugue in A minor was … unforgettable.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Esther with an embarrassed smile. She was always a little uncomfortable in the face of admiring comments. It was the only time that Aslan saw a trace of shyness pass over his wife’s face.

  ‘I’m touched, really,’ she added, taking the hand of the young girl, who blushed.

  Pierre slipped her a ten-franc piece and she gave him a brief smile, but it was Esther she couldn’t take her eyes off. And no doubt she continued to look at her until the trio disappeared into the night.

  In the taxi, Pierre, Éric and Esther squashed up together in the back because the passenger seat was occupied by a little sheepdog. Women taxi-drivers were quite rare, especially at night, and the dog must have been there for company and possibly for protection. Aslan was smiling as he watched the city pass. His son took the black hat from his knees where it had rested since they set off.

  ‘Who is B.L?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘B.L., the initials in your hat, that’s not you.’

  ‘Your father bought it second hand.’

  Aslan gently took the hat from his son and looked at the band of leather inside. It was the same make of black hat, and the letters were embossed in gold in the same place, but they
weren’t the same letters. Two men with identical hats in the same restaurant. The cloakroom attendant had made a mistake.

  Cher Monsieur,

  Before I go any further and risk raising your hopes, let me make it clear from the outset that I cannot return the item you appeal for in your advert. It’s out of my hands. Nonetheless, I wanted to write to you because the hat you are looking for means something to me too: I wore it for almost twenty-four hours. One evening, one morning and one afternoon, to be exact.

  You mention the Paris–Le Havre 06781 train in your advert, but it had a different number by the time I took it on its return journey (mine was the 67854 service). I got on at Le Havre at 9.25 p.m. on the same day you lost your hat, so it must have been yours I found on the luggage rack opposite seat number 88. I only noticed it as we were pulling in to Paris. Since it was raining, I picked it up and put it on. This one small action was to change my life. The leather band inside your lovely black felt hat happens to be embossed with my very own initials. I took this as a good omen, like a kind of lucky charm to carry with me.

  The story I am about to tell you is of a somewhat personal nature, and I hope you will not be uncomfortable reading it. The night I picked up your hat, I was on my way to meet a man. One of many such meetings, I should point out. Please don’t get the wrong idea: I don’t have legions of admirers, and I certainly don’t trade on my charms! I say many, because this was by no means the first time I had gone to meet this man. That night’s date was set to be just like the one before it, and the ones before that, and so on.

  For more than two years, I had been having an affair with a married man who continually promised he would leave his wife for me but never went through with it … I had suspected for some time that we probably had no future together and that the more dates I filled up my diary with, the closer we were getting to the end. It is in the nature of an affair not to last; its ephemeral quality is what makes it so attractive, and trying to keep it going often leads to nothing but disappointment and disillusion. Forgive me, I’m rambling.

  It was your hat, that night in Batignolles – where we always met, because of its proximity to Gare Saint-Lazare and the abundance of cheap hotels – that sealed the end of my relationship with Édouard and allowed me to see that, when all was said and done, he didn’t really care for me. I won’t go into the details of our break-up here, since you can read them at your leisure (should you wish) in my short story ‘The Hat’, which I’m enclosing, photocopied from the March edition of Ouest-France. Everything in it is true to life, from the events to the places where they happened.

  So Édouard disappeared from my life with the help of your hat. And I really mean disappeared, because I’ve heard nothing at all from him since. In the days following our split, I kept checking my answerphone, hoping he might change his mind or at least come back for a better explanation. Nothing. To this day, I haven’t heard another word from Édouard and I don’t suppose I ever will.

  Thanks to your hat, I also wrote the story that won me the very prestigious Prix Balbec. You may not have heard of it, but it’s awarded every two years on the spring equinox in the Cabourg hotel immortalised by Marcel Proust. The jury was made up of local dignitaries, authors and journalists. Amid the crowd of people gathered round the champagne and trays of canapés, one man instantly stood out.

  He had grey hair, white around the temples, was smartly dressed in a pearl-grey suit and, above all, was holding a felt hat in the same colour. My recent experience of hats immediately drew my attention to the only one present that evening.

  I had been lying when I told Édouard I was seeing an older man who wore a hat and had given me one like it. It may seem strange to you, but this is not the first time one of my stories has come true. Indeed, I wrote ‘Change of Address’ (awarded third place in the ‘Many Words, One Town’ competition, 1984) four months before I actually moved house; and I firmly believe that ‘An Afternoon at the Harbour’ (recited at Le Havre Theatre Festival 1985), about a young woman sitting in a café awaiting the return of her husband, a captain in the merchant navy, prefigured my own brief fling with a fisherman, since six months later I found myself in that woman’s place, sitting in a café waiting for him.

  This time, the character of the older man with the hat had come to me out of nowhere and yet, since the prize ceremony, I must admit he has become an important part of my life, and that my life is changing.

  I’m not sure I will stick around in Le Havre much longer, and I’m not sure I’ll stay in my job either. No, I’m not hoping to become a writer – it’s too hard to make a career out of, and I don’t have the talent or drive to succeed – but I’ve been thinking about setting up a bookshop …

  There’s a lovely shop going on one of the main streets in Cabourg and the more I think about it, the more I can see myself as a bookseller. Michel (that’s what my man in the grey hat is called) has offered to buy it for me.

  He has also offered to start a new life with me and marry me. This time, it’s me who isn’t sure. Everything has happened so quickly.

  If you hadn’t left your hat on the train that day, my life would still be exactly the same and I would no doubt be waiting for my next date in Batignolles.

  Who knows why I’ve written you such a long letter. It must be because I have a man in my life who wears a hat; I feel the need to confide in another man with a hat, who set this all in motion. Sadly, the ending of my story is exactly as it happened. I no longer have your hat. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more.

  I wish you all the very best and sincerely hope you find what you are looking for.

  Fanny Marquant

  Daniel Mercier

  8 Rue Henri Le Secq des Tournelles

  76000 Rouen

  Mademoiselle,

  Your letter took me by surprise. Firstly because I was no longer expecting a reply to my notice in the paper. In fact, I was planning to cancel it when I received your message, forwarded to me by the newspaper’s classified section. I’m absolutely certain it was my hat you picked up on the train.

  I have read your story several times and congratulate you on your writing style, and on winning the Prix Balbec. Your account of the day and a half you spent with my hat has affected me deeply and only confirmed what I already knew from experience: this is no ordinary hat. As you have confided in me in your letter I shall do the same. It will do me good, since work has been very stressful recently.

  Believe me when I tell you, Mademoiselle, that the hat has changed my life, too. I would not be in my present post nor would I be living in the beautiful city of Rouen had it not crossed my path. My name is Daniel Mercier: those are not my initials on the hat, but it is indeed mine, and it remains of great importance to me for reasons I cannot go into here. I was so attached to it that when I lost it, I suffered a recurrence of dyshidrotic eczema for the first time in fifteen years. I consulted my doctor, who asked if I had experienced ‘a major setback or frustration’.

  When I replied that I had lost my hat, he didn’t feel that this was a sufficiently ‘frustrating’ setback to lead to a flare-up of a past skin condition. I stopped seeing him after that, and have since consulted Dr Gonpart, a senior registrar trained at the very best hospitals, who shares my view on the link between stress and dyshidrotic eczema, having observed similar attacks in patients suffering from shock. In particular, he highlighted the case of a man who had come up in blotches minutes after losing his wedding ring in the sea.

  But I digress, Mademoiselle, and will bore you no further with my ailments, which have since been most effectively treated.

  Your very fine story, ‘The Hat’, is, for me, the epilogue to a very personal encounter with our black Homburg. You tell me that the end of your story is true. There is, then, no hope.

  How can I begin to track down the bearded man in the sheepskin jacket, who picked it up off the bench in Parc Monceau?

  I understand your wish to keep your story as true to the facts as possible
, but still I find it hard to believe you really left the hat there. In an ideal world, you would have remained in possession of the hat, read my notice and been able to return it to me.

  Sadly, we do not live in an ideal world, and the irony of it is that the prize money for the Prix Balbec (3,000 francs) is precisely the sum I was planning to offer as a reward to whoever returned my hat.

  I hope you will find happiness with the other ‘man in the hat’ – the grey one – and in your new venture in the charming town of Cabourg, which I have not yet visited. I passed your story on to my wife, who was deeply touched by your writing and asks me to ask you where she might purchase your two other stories – ‘An Afternoon at the Harbour’ and ‘Change of Address’.

  With best regards,

  Daniel Mercier

  Monsieur,

  I was very touched by the letter you sent by return and I completely understand how the loss of something so precious can cause all kinds of distress, as you have suffered with your eczema. I really am sorry for leaving the hat in Parc Monceau. It was a rather irrational thing to do; I was carried away by my writing, and I too came to regret it in the weeks that followed. I was very fond of that hat, and when I looked into buying myself another, I realised I could never afford one.