The President's Hat Read online

  By way of apology, and for the benefit of your wife, I am enclosing the manuscripts of all three of my short stories. None of them have been published, so you won’t find them in any bookshop. I hope you both enjoy reading them, and wish you every happiness.

  Fanny Marquant

  Mademoiselle,

  I thoroughly enjoyed reading more of your work. Your style and characters are so engaging. My favourite has to be ‘An Afternoon at the Harbour’ – I really identified with the woman waiting for her husband at the Café des Deux Mouettes, thinking about her life now, in the past and in the years to come. I think a lot of women would see themselves in the character of Murielle. Well done and thank you for moving me with your writing.

  Véronique Mercier

  PS What a shame you couldn’t get my husband’s hat back. He talks of nothing else!

  Librairie de la Mouette

  Fanny Marquant – Bookseller

  17 Rue Marcel-Proust

  14390 Cabourg

  Monsieur,

  We were briefly in touch a few months ago on the subject of the hat you lost on the Paris–Le Havre train.

  I wanted to get this article to you as quickly as possible. I ripped it out of a magazine at the hairdresser’s just this morning.

  It’s an interview which appeared in Paris Match a fortnight ago. At first glance, the man in the picture wasn’t familiar, but when I saw that he had created Solstice, the perfume I wear myself, I read on and was amazed.

  You’ll see what I mean when you read his answer to the question at the bottom left of page 46. I turned back to look at the photo again and asked the hairdresser to lend me a biro so I could draw a beard on his clean-shaven face. I had seen those round glasses before.

  Then I remembered something else I didn’t put in my story: he smelt the hat before taking it with him. Monsieur Mercier, the man who picked up the hat and the man you see on the two pages I enclose are one and the same person.

  Kindest regards,

  Fanny Marquant

  PS The hairdresser’s biro was blue, which has made him look strangely like Bluebeard …

  THE SIXTH SENSE

  Exclusive interview with ‘nose’ Pierre Aslan.

  Words: Mélaine Gaultier

  Pictures: Marianne Rosenstiehl

  Described as the Stanley Kubrick of the perfume world, French ‘nose’ Pierre Aslan is back with a new fragrance which already promises to be one of the defining scents of the decade. We meet the legendary creator of Solstice and Sheraz.

  We left you on the woody notes of Alba, back in the late 1970s. How would you sum up this decade’s fragrance?

  Like the women of today, of whom you are a great example: beguiling, free, independent, with just a suggestion of animal passion, totally modern, captivating … perhaps even captivated?

  By you? No doubt about it, Monsieur Aslan.

  Oh but I do doubt it! [Laughs.] Men are always full of doubt, which is why they make perfumes: so they can give them to you and win you over.

  How has your style developed over the years?

  It’s difficult to say … A perfume should be representative of its era, and yet able to transcend it. It’s the women who wear it that bring it to life and develop it. Take Habanita, for example. It was created in 1921, and today in 1987, many women still wear it. They approach it differently, and wear it differently too.

  How do you mean?

  Women have changed, so perfume has changed too …

  In what way have they changed?

  Their skin is different. The species has evolved: the skin of a girl of the eighties is nothing like the skin of a girl in the 1920s. She doesn’t use the same soap, or the same face powder; the washing powder she uses to clean her bed linen is completely different. The smell of the city itself has changed beyond all recognition. The humidity of the atmosphere too. A woman in the court of Louis XV would smell nothing like a woman today, and it’s not about what perfume she’s wearing. It’s to do with her skin.

  So skin changes with the times?

  Absolutely. Think of the eighteenth century. What does that era smell like? Stone, sunshine, wood, manure, leaves, wrought iron. Nowadays it’s petrol, tarmac, metallic paint, plastic … electricity.

  Electricity has a smell?

  Of course. So do TV screens.

  What made you go back to perfume-making after an eight-year gap?

  It was finding a hat … on a bench in Parc Monceau.

  I don’t understand …

  It doesn’t matter. It’s too complicated to explain. Let’s move on.

  Monsieur,

  Your letter concerning my interview with Pierre Aslan was forwarded to me by the Paris Match editorial office. I must say I found it very intriguing. I’m just starting out as a journalist and yours is the first item of correspondence I have received – and it’s not one I’m likely to forget in a hurry.

  To tell the truth, the only reason I got the exclusive with Pierre Aslan was that my little sister is in the same class as Monsieur Aslan’s son. Éric fancies my sister and I think the interview served as a way of getting closer to her … Pierre Aslan hadn’t given a single interview in thirteen years, so I was a quivering wreck when I went to meet him.

  Coming back to your letter, are you quite sure that the hat you left on the bench in Parc Monceau is the same one Monsieur Aslan describes? Personally, I was baffled by his answer – I still am, in fact. I actually thought that section might be cut, but the editor wanted to keep it in because it shows what a complex and disconcerting character Pierre Aslan is.

  As for your request, I’m sorry but I can’t give you Monsieur Aslan’s home address. I didn’t meet him at his house but in the bar at the Ritz with his publicist, and, in any case, even if I had his address I wouldn’t be allowed to give it to you. However, I am enclosing the contact details for his publicist; if you wish to write to Monsieur Aslan, I think you could go via him.

  Wishing you every success with your search and all best wishes,

  Mélaine Gaultier

  ASLAN

  Monsieur,

  Your letter is one of the strangest I have ever received. The description of your hat corresponds in every detail to a black felt hat I picked up on a bench in Parc Monceau. In fact, I mentioned that very hat in the only interview I have given recently, in Paris Match. Alas! I no longer have the hat, which I regret, because I was very sentimentally attached to it. Life is like that; objects pass from hand to hand, but people and perfumes remain.

  With best wishes,

  Pierre Aslan

  ASLAN

  Monsieur,

  My press secretary has again passed on a letter from you. As you are being so persistent, I will try to make my reply as clear as possible: I don’t have your hat any more because I lost it in a brasserie. To be even more specific, that evening there was an unfortunate mix-up. The cloakroom attendant gave me back a hat that was identical to yours in every particular, except that the golden initials were not F.M., they were B.L. I only noticed this when it was too late. I went back to the brasserie the next day but the hat was no longer there.

  I hope that I have enlightened you sufficiently in this matter and I would ask you not to write to me again. I like my solitude, very rarely answer the telephone and almost never reply to letters.

  Yours sincerely,

  Pierre Aslan

  ASLAN

  Monsieur,

  Please find enclosed the answer to your third request, the address of the brasserie where I lost the hat that means so much to you, along with details of the exact date and time of the loss. This now concludes our correspondence once and for all.

  You will also find enclosed a bottle of my latest creation which you may offer to the woman of your choice. This letter requires no response.

  Aslan

  Bernard Lavallière slammed the door of his Peugeot 505. The dinner had gone badly and his wife had not said a word to him since their bust-up in the car. Pierre and
Marie-Laure de Vaunoy had invited them to their apartment on the Champ-de-Mars, along with three other couples. It should have been like any other dinner party, when you expect at least to relish the conversation, if not what’s on the menu.

  The food is always terrible in town, especially amongst the aristocracy. The upper classes might get out the family china and crested silverware, but they very often take a perverse pleasure in serving food the cobbler or the concierge would turn their nose up at.

  The only way to get a decent dinner is to eat with the people, Bernard liked to say; not that he had sat down to eat ‘with the people’ for several decades, but he cherished childhood memories of the housekeeper’s cooking at the family estate in Beaune – memories he had no one to share with and which from time to time, when the meal in front of him was really too awful to stomach, he felt he could almost taste again.

  Yet the evening’s drama could not wholly be put down to the de Vaunoys’ cooking. ‘It is worse than a crime, Sire, it’s a mistake,’ Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe had said to Napoleon on learning of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien in the moat at Vincennes. Bernard Lavallière hadn’t put anyone in front of a firing squad, but his mistake had rung out like a gunshot in the middle of the meal.

  It all began with a glass of champagne – just the one, and distinctly mediocre – served with dry crackers the hostess was eager to point out had been bought on the cheap from Félix Potin.

  The guests had arrived punctually, a few at a time. They rang the doorbell to be greeted by cries of ‘Ah, here they are! Do come in!’ or ‘Why, look who it is! Come in, we’ve been longing to see you …’ – the usual over-the-top exclamations hammed up further by Marie-Laure de Vaunoy’s apparent amazement at finding each invitee on her doorstep, as though it were by some incredible coincidence that they had turned up there.

  The ladies left their shawls and handbags in the entrance hall before making their way to the living room where the men were shaking hands and complaining about how long it had taken to find a parking space. The husbands who had arrived before them sympathised with resigned, manly sighs.

  In the car on the way there, Bernard had already begun to dread that they would once again have to endure the de Vaunoys’ chicken with apricots. After a starter of cucumber and cream, the Spanish girl serving the food brought out a large silver platter. The fowl took pride of place in the centre of the dish, but was covered in a dubious-looking sauce and surrounded by shrivelled apricots. Bernard had a breast which turned out to be so dry it made him thirsty for the rest of the night.

  Luckily, the wine was within reach. He intended to employ a straightforward technique: keep offering the bottle around to his neighbours so he could top himself up as often as he liked. The conversation hummed around the topic of visits to the theatre, cinema and concerts.

  ‘We had dinner next to Esther Kerwitcz just last night,’ said Charlotte Lavallière, certain of getting a reaction. She let the gasps die down before telling the story of visiting the splendid brasserie with a couple of friends and spotting the famous pianist just a few tables away, having dinner with her husband and son.

  Marie-France Chastagnier was envious – what luck to have seen such a great artist close up! – and gushed as she recalled an Esther Kerwitcz concert at the Salle Pleyel three years earlier. Her husband made a face and declared he preferred Rubinstein, to which Marie-Laurence de Rochefort replied that Rubinstein didn’t play Bach.

  Jean-Patrick Le Baussier brought up the name Glenn Gould. Colonel Larnier stated matter-of-factly that all the great musicians were Jewish.

  For his part, Gérard Peraunot pointed out that Esther Kerwitcz was a very beautiful woman, earning him a furious glance from his wife, and then they moved on to talking about their children.

  A variety of anecdotes about Scout and Brownie weekends ensued, and plans to make pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela were shared. Everyone sang the praises of Father Humbert, who was so good with the children and whom they described deferentially as a holy man. (No one had any inkling that the clergyman would be arrested sixteen years later as part of a huge police operation which would uncover no less than 87,000 indecent images of children on the hard drive of his computer.)

  The upbringing of their offspring led them on to the topic of television, root of all evil, a devilish device which did little more than hold a mirror up to their decadent society.

  The presenter Stéphane Collaro was singled out for particular scorn: not content with dulling the brains of the nation’s youth, his programme Cocoboy was also guilty of tainting Saturday nights with ‘you know what’ since it showed – or so they had been told – a girl performing a most risqué striptease.

  The Larniers confessed to keeping their set solely for the purposes of watching Apostrophes. This weekly dose of culture left them with the impression that they had read every book discussed on the show. The colonel’s wife thus felt quite entitled to give her opinion on any novel reviewed on Apostrophes, while adding that she had not actually got around to buying a copy. Serge Gainsbourg’s appearance on the show the previous December, tanked up on Pastis 51 and Gitanes and treating a fellow guest like a peasant, had outraged the Larniers. They had seriously considered getting rid of their television, but the reassuring sight of a respectable writer on the following week’s programme put that rash idea out of their heads.

  The mere mention of Michel Polac provoked a chorus of indignation from the guests, but – thank goodness – the new owner of channel TF1 had just rid France of the shouting match that was Droit de réponse. Hubert and Frédérique de la Tour were struggling to follow all this, but they weren’t sorry; they prided themselves on not owning a television.

  Their steadfast refusal to purchase a set meant one whole French family had never heard of Michel Drucker; a permanent chat-show fixture, he could have been a fourth-century Hindu mathematician for all they knew. They knew exactly who the Mourousis were: an old aristocratic Phanariot Greek family originally from Mourousa, near Trabzon – but they had no idea that one of their number was the presenter of the one o’clock news.

  They never went to the cinema either, and lived happily in a world of stills somewhere between the eras of Niépce and Nadar. Pierre de Vaunoy, as master of the house, found the one way to put an end to all the talk of television:

  ‘What can I say? It’s all down to the lefties …’

  ‘True,’ chimed in Jean-Patrick Teraille, ‘but this won’t be the end of it. Just you wait: I’ll bet you anything Mittrand stands again.’

  ‘Can you please pronounce his name correctly.’

  *

  Bernard Lavallière spoke, then swallowed the last of his wine. By the time he put his glass down, silence had descended and everyone was staring at him.

  ‘Mittrand’, that contraction favoured by old-school, vieille France right-wingers, which hinted at more extreme views. And yet this was not the first time he had heard the word used; the seventh, sixteenth and eighth formed the leading triumvirate of Paris arrondissements in which it was regularly uttered at dinner parties. Staunch Gaullists, solid UDF centrists, closet Front National supporters and proud royalists joined forces to mispronounce the head of state’s name with the unspoken purpose of marking themselves out as members of the same club.

  ‘Mittrand’ served as a password among them. This brotherhood of the right, ranging from the most respectable to the furthest fringes, delighted in breaking the rules of French pronunciation with their non-standard use of the silent ‘e’. Bernard’s unexpected, abrupt correction had left the dining room several degrees cooler. The chicken, already cold, seemed colder, the apricots yet more shrivelled and the glasses frosted.

  Not even Bernard could have explained what had made him come out with such a thing. The sentence had spoken itself. Was it the memory of those childhood lunches coming back to him as he chewed the revolting fowl? Could it be the fact that, unlike him, Jean-Patrick Teraille still owned his ancestral home in Poi
tou? Had he simply drunk too much wine? … No, it really was inexplicable.

  ‘I’ve always called him Mittrand and I always will – if it’s all the same to you, Bernard,’ Jean-Patrick Teraille replied icily, while Colonel Larnier glared at him, clenching his jaw, as though presiding over a court martial for high treason.

  ‘You haven’t gone leftie on us, have you, old chap?’ Pierre Chastagnier asked slyly.

  ‘Batting for the other side now, are we?’ chuckled Frédérique de la Tour.

  Bernard felt something inside he could not put his finger on; a sensation of total peace and warmth was enveloping him, spreading all the way up his spine. It reached his neck, then his head, and a mysterious smile played on his lips.

  ‘What exactly do you have against Mitterrand?’ he asked softly. ‘We’re all sitting around this table the same way we did three years ago, six years ago, eight, ten, fifteen years ago. What difference has 10 May 1981 made to our lives?’