They ring the bell at the concierge’s office to return the keys, but no one answers. The workman installing the keypad offers to give them back to the concierge when she returns, but Bayard prefers to go back upstairs and hand them to the younger brother.
When he comes back down, Simon Herzog is smoking a cigarette with the workman, who’s taking a break. Out in the street, Bayard does not get back in the 504. “Where are we going?” Simon Herzog asks him. “To the Café de Flore,” replies Bayard. “Did you notice, the guy installing the keypad?” Simon says. “He had a Slav accent, didn’t he?” Bayard grumbles: “As long as he’s not driving a tank, I couldn’t care less.” As they cross Place Saint-Sulpice, the two men pass a blue Fuego and Bayard says, with the air of an expert: “That’s the new Renault. It’s only just gone on sale.” Simon Herzog thinks automatically that the workers who built this car wouldn’t be able to afford it even if ten of them got together. And, lost in his Marxist thoughts, doesn’t pay attention to the two Japanese men inside the car.
13
At the Flore, they see a man squinting through thick glasses, seated next to a little blonde. He looks sickly, and his froglike face is vaguely familiar to Bayard, but he is not the reason they are there. Bayard spots some men in their twenties and goes over to talk to them. Most are gigolos who pick up clients in the area. Do they know Barthes? Yes, all of them. Bayard interrogates them a bit while Simon Herzog observes Sartre out of the corner of his eye: he is definitely not in good shape; he keeps coughing as he smokes his cigarette. Fran?oise Sagan pats his back solicitously. The last one to have seen Barthes is a young Moroccan: the great critic was negotiating with a new guy, he doesn’t know his name, they left together the other day, he doesn’t know what they did or where they went or where he lives but he knows where they can find him tonight: at the Bains Diderot, a sauna at the Gare de Lyon. “A sauna?” Simon Herzog asks, surprised, when suddenly a scarf-wearing maniac appears and begins yelling at anyone who will listen: “Look at them! Look at their faces! They won’t look like that much longer! Seriously, I’m telling you: a bourgeois must reign or die! Drink! Drink your Fernet to the health of your company! Enjoy it while you can! Drink to your downfall! Long live Bokassa!” A few conversations come to an abrupt halt. The regulars observe this newcomer gloomily, and the tourists try to enjoy the show without really understanding what it’s about, but the waiters ignore it and continue serving. His arm sweeps the room in theatrical outrage and, addressing an imaginary opponent, the scarf-wearing prophet proclaims victoriously: “No need to run, comrade. The old world is ahead of you!”
Bayard asks who this man is; the gigolo tells him it is Jean-Edern Hallier, some aristocratic writer who is always making a fuss and who reckons he will be a minister if Mitterrand wins next year. Bayard notes the inverted-V mouth, the shining blue eyes, the typical upper-class accent that verges on mispronunciation. He returns to his questioning: What is this new guy like? The young Moroccan describes him as an Arab with a southern accent, a small earring, and hair that falls over his face. Still shouting at the top of his voice, Jean-Edern haphazardly extols the virtues of ecology, euthanasia, independent radio stations, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Simon Herzog watches Sartre watching Jean-Edern. When the aristocrat notices that Sartre is there, he starts to tremble. Sartre stares at him contemplatively. Fran?oise Sagan whispers into his ear, like a simultaneous translator. Jean-Edern narrows his eyes, which makes him look even more weasel-like under his thick, frizzy hair, is silent for a few seconds, apparently thinking, and then starts shouting again: “Existentialism is a contagion! Long live the third sex! Long live the fourth! Don’t despair, La Coupole!” Bayard explains to Simon Herzog that he must come with him to the Bains Diderot to help him find this unknown gigolo. Jean-Edern Hallier goes over to stand in front of Sartre, holds his arm up in the air, hand flat, clicks his loafers together, and yells: “Heil Althusser!” Simon Herzog protests that his presence is not absolutely essential. Sartre coughs and lights another Gitane. Bayard says, on the contrary, a queer little intellectual will be very useful in locating the suspect. Jean-Edern starts singing obscene lyrics to the tune of “The Internationale.” Simon Herzog says it’s too late to buy a pair of swimming trunks. Bayard laughs and tells him there’s no need. Sartre unfolds Le Monde and starts doing the crossword. (As he is almost blind, it is Fran?oise Sagan who reads the clues to him.) Jean-Edern spots something in the street and rushes outside, yelling: “Modernity, I shit on you!” It is already seven o’clock, and night has fallen. Superintendent Bayard and Simon Herzog go back to the 504, parked outside Barthes’s apartment block. Bayard yanks three or four parking tickets from under the windshield wiper and they head off toward Place de la République, followed by a black DS and a blue Fuego.
14
Jacques Bayard and Simon Herzog walk through sauna steam, little white towels tied around their waists, amid sweaty figures who furtively brush against one another. The superintendent left his card in the changing room, so they are incognito. The aim of the game is not to scare off the gigolo with the earring, if they find him.
In truth, they make a fairly credible couple: the old, beefy, hairy-chested guy, looking around inquisitively, and the skinny, young, clean-shaven one, who glances at his surroundings surreptitiously. Simon Herzog, looking like a frightened anthropologist, excites some lustful looks—the men who pass him stare for a long time, and circle back toward him—but Bayard gets a fair amount of attention too. Two or three young men shoot him flirtatious glances, and a fat man stares from a distance, fist balled around his penis: apparently the Lino Ventura look has its fans here. If Bayard is angry that this gaggle of queers can take him for one of them, he is professional enough to conceal it, merely adopting a faintly hostile expression intended to discourage approaches.
The complex is divided into different spaces: the sauna itself, a Turkish bath, a swimming pool, back rooms in various configurations. The fauna is quite varied too: all ages, all sizes, all degrees of corpulence are here. But in terms of what the superintendent and his assistant are searching for, there is a problem: half of the men here are wearing an earring, and for the under-30s the figure reaches almost 100 percent, nearly all of whom are North Africans. Unfortunately, the description of the man’s hair is not much more useful: young men with bangs over their eyes are undetectable in here because it’s a natural reflex to slick back wet hair.
And so to the final clue: the southern accent. But that requires, at some point, verbal contact.