Bayard sits down on the sofa. He has a feeling he’s going to have to listen to a lot of crap.
Simon objects: “But Connors is the archetype of the people, isn’t he? He’s the bad boy, the brat, the hooligan; he cheats, he argues, he whines; he’s a bad sport, a scrapper, a fighter, he never gives up…”
Deleuze interrupts impatiently: “Oh yes? Hmm, that’s an interesting point of view.”
Bayard asks: “It’s possible that someone wanted to steal something from Monsieur Barthes. A document. Would you know anything about that, Monsieur Deleuze?”
Deleuze turns toward Simon: “It is likely that the question what? isn’t the right kind of question. It’s possible that questions like who? how much? how? where? when? would be better.”
Bayard lights a cigarette and asks in a patient, almost resigned voice: “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s obvious that if you have come to find me, more than a week after the event, to question me about a moronic philosopher’s half-baked insinuations, it’s because Roland’s accident was probably not an accident at all. So you are searching for a culprit. Or, in other words, a motive. But you are a long way from why, aren’t you? I suppose that the line of inquiry relating to the driver didn’t get you anywhere? I heard that Roland had woken up. And he didn’t want to say anything? So you change the why.”
They hear Connors grunting each time he hits the ball. Simon glances out of the window. He notices a blue Fuego parked down below.
Bayard asks why, in Deleuze’s opinion, Barthes does not want to reveal what he knows. Deleuze replies that he has no idea, but he does know one thing: “Whatever happens, whatever the situation, there are always pretenders. In other words, there are people who claim: as far as this goes, I am the best.”
Bayard grabs the owl-shaped ashtray on the coffee table and drags it toward him. “And what do you claim to be the best at, Monsieur Deleuze?”
Deleuze emits a small noise somewhere between a snigger and a cough: “One always claims to be what one cannot be or what one was once and will never be again, Superintendent. But I don’t think that is the question, is it?”
Bayard asks what the question is.
Deleuze relights his cigarette: “How to choose from among the pretenders.”
Somewhere in the building, they hear the echo of a woman screaming. They can’t tell if it’s from pleasure or anger. Deleuze points at the door: “It is a common misconception, Superintendent, that women are women by nature. Women have a devenir-femme.” He stands up, panting slightly (yes, him, too), and walks off to pour himself a glass of red wine. “We’re the same.”
Bayard, suspicious, asks: “You think we’re all the same? You think that you and me, we’re the same?”
Deleuze smiles: “Yes … well, in a way.”
Bayard, trying to show willingness but revealing a sort of reticence: “So you’re searching for the truth too?”
“Oh my! The truth … Where it begins is where it ends … We’re always in the middle of something, you know.”
Connors wins the first set 6–2.
“How can we determine which of the pretenders is the right one? If you have the how, you’ll find the why. Take the Sophists, for example: according to Plato, the problem is that they claim something they don’t have the right to claim … Oh yes, they cheat, those little shits!” He rubs his hands together. “The trial is always a trial of pretenders…”
He downs the contents of his glass in a single gulp and, looking at Simon, adds: “This is as amusing as a novel.”
Simon meets his gaze.
19
“No, it’s absolutely impossible! I categorically refuse! I won’t go! That’s enough now! There’s no way I’m setting foot in that palace! You don’t need me to decode that bastard’s words! And I don’t need to hear him; let me summarize for you: I am the groveling servant of capital. I am the enemy of the working classes. I have the media in my pocket. When I’m not hunting elephants in Africa, I hunt down independent radio stations. I muzzle freedom of expression. I build nuclear power stations all over the place. I am a populist pimp who invites himself into poor people’s homes. I receive diamonds from dictators. I like pretending to be a prole by going on the metro. I like blacks, but only when they’re emperors or garbagemen. When I hear the word humanitarian, I send in the paratroopers. I use the back rooms of extreme right-wing organizations for my private purposes. I am … I am … a STUPID FASCIST PIG!”
Simon lights a cigarette, hands trembling. Bayard waits for his tantrum to end. At this stage of the investigation, given the available evidence, he handed in a preliminary report and had a feeling that this case would turn into something big … but, even so, he didn’t expect that he would be summoned here. With his young assistant in tow.
“Anyway, I won’t go I won’t go I won’t go,” says his young sidekick.
20
“The President will receive you now.”
Jacques Bayard and Simon Herzog enter a brightly lit corner office with walls covered in green silk. Simon looks like he’s in shock, but he instinctively notes the two chairs facing the desk behind which Giscard stands and, at the other end of the room, more chairs with a sofa beside a coffee table. The student immediately grasps the possibilities: depending on whether the president wishes to maintain some distance between himself and his visitors or, alternatively, give the meeting a more convivial feel, he can welcome them from behind his desk, which acts as a sort of shield, or sit around the coffee table and eat cakes and biscuits with them. Simon Herzog also spots a book on Kennedy, placed ostentatiously on an escritoire to suggest the young, modern head of state that Giscard also aspires to embody; two boxes, one red and one blue, set on a roll-top desk; bronze statues here and there; stacks of files at a carefully calculated height: too low, they would give the impression that the president was lazy, too high, that he couldn’t cope with his workload. Several old master paintings hang on the walls. Standing behind his massive desk, Giscard points to one representing a beautiful, severe-looking woman, arms outspread, dressed in a fine white dress open to the waist that barely covers her heavy, milk-white breasts: “I was lucky enough to obtain one of the most beautiful works in the history of French painting from the Museum of Bordeaux: Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, by Eugène Delacroix. Magnificent, isn’t it? I’m sure you know Missolonghi: it’s the city where Lord Byron died, during the war of independence against the Turks. In 1824, I believe.” (Simon notes the false modesty of that “I believe.”) “A terrible war. The Ottomans were so ferocious.”
Without leaving his desk, without any attempt to shake their hands, he invites them to sit. No sofa or cakes for them. Still standing, the president goes on: “Did you know what Malraux said about me? That I had no sense of the tragic in history.” From the corner of his eye, Simon observes Bayard in his raincoat, waiting silently.