‘Hear, taste and drink, weep and chant, knock at the door of Love!’ exclaimed the ecstatic Longeat. On the morning of the third day I realised I had to leave. The whole thing had been a mistake all along. I explained to Brother Pierre that, to my dismay, unforeseen professional obligations, of literally unbelievable importance, required me to cut my spiritual journey short. With that Pierre Moscovici face of his, I knew he’d believe me. He might even have been Pierre Moscovici, in his previous life, and Pierre Moscovicis are all on the same page. I was sure we’d get through this without any unpleasantness. As we were saying goodbye in the entrance hall, he expressed a hope that my journey among them had been a journey in the light. Not to worry, I assured him, I’d had a terrific time. And yet, at that moment, I felt that I was somehow letting him down.
During the night, a low-pressure system, originating over the Atlantic, had moved in from the south-west. The temperature had risen by six degrees; the countryside around Poitiers was wrapped in fog. I had called ahead for a taxi, and now I found myself with almost an hour to kill. I spent it at the Bar de l’Amitié, whose front door was fifty metres from the monastery, mindlessly downing Leffes and Hoegaardens. The waitress was thin and wore too much make-up. The other customers were talking in loud voices, mainly about property and holidays. It gave me no satisfaction to be back among people like myself.
‘If Islam is not political, it is nothing.’
– Ayatollah Khomeini
At the Poitiers railway station, I had to change my ticket. The next TGV to Paris was almost full, so I paid for the upgrade to Pro Première. According to the national rail service, it was a universe of privilege, with a guaranteed highspeed connection, larger tables for spreading out work papers, and electrical sockets so that you’d never find your laptop dying on you because you’d stupidly forgotten to charge it; otherwise, it was normal first class.
I found a seat by myself, with no one opposite me. On the other side of the aisle a middle-aged Arab businessman, dressed in a long white djellaba and a white keffiyeh, had spread out several files on the two tables in front of his seat. He must have been coming from Bordeaux. There were two young girls facing him, barely out of their teens – his wives, clearly – who had raided the news-stand for sweets and magazines. They were excited and giggly. They wore long robes and multicoloured veils. For the moment, one was absorbed in a Picsou comic, the other in the latest issue of Oops.
Opposite them, the businessman looked as if he was under some serious stress. Opening his email, he downloaded an attachment containing several Excel spreadsheets, and after examining these documents, he looked even more worried than before. He made a call on his mobile phone. A long, hushed conversation ensued. It was impossible to tell what he was talking about, and I tried, without a great deal of enthusiasm, to get back to my Figaro, which covered the new regime from a property and luxury angle. From this point of view, the future was looking extremely bright. The subjects of the petro-monarchies were more and more eager to pick up a pied-à-terre in Paris or on the Côte d’Azur, now that they knew they were dealing with a friendly country, and were outbidding the Chinese and the Russians. Business was good.
Peals of laughter: the two young Arab girls were hunched over the copy of Picsou, playing ‘Spot the Difference’. Looking up from his spreadsheet, the businessman gave them a pained smile of reproach. They smiled back and went on playing, now in excited whispers. He took out his mobile again and another conversation ensued, just as long and confidential as the first. Under an Islamic regime, women – at least the ones pretty enough to attract a rich husband – were able to remain children nearly their entire lives. No sooner had they put childhood behind them than they became mothers and were plunged back into a world of childish things. Their children grew up, then they became grandmothers, and so their lives went by. There were just a few years where they bought sexy underwear, exchanging the games of the nursery for those of the bedroom – which turned out to be much the same thing. Obviously they had no autonomy, but as they say in English, fuck autonomy. I had to admit, I’d had no trouble giving up all of my professional and intellectual responsibilities, it was actually a relief, and I had no desire whatsoever to be that businessman sitting on the other side of our Pro Première compartment, whose face grew more and more ashen the longer he talked on the phone, and who was obviously in some kind of deep shit. Our train had just passed Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. At least he’d have the consolation of two graceful, charming wives to distract him from the anxieties facing the exhausted businessman – and maybe he had two more wives waiting for him in Paris. If I remembered right, according to sharia law you could have up to four. What had my father had? My mother, that neurotic bitch. I shuddered at the thought. Well, she was dead now. They were both dead. I might have seen better days, but I was the only living witness to their love.
It was warmer in Paris, too, but not as warm. A fine cold rain was falling on the city. Traffic was bad on the rue Tolbiac, which struck me as strangely long. I thought I had never seen a street so long, so dreary, dull and endless. I wasn’t expecting to come home to anything in particular, just various headaches. And yet, to my surprise, there was a letter in my mailbox – or at least something that wasn’t junk mail, or a bill, or a bureaucratic request for information. I glanced at my living room in disgust, unable to pretend that I felt any special pleasure at coming home to this apartment where no one was loved, this apartment that nobody loved. I poured myself a large Calvados and then I opened the letter.
It was signed by Bastien Lacoue, who had apparently replaced Hugues Pradier as head of Éditions de Pléiade a few years before. I hadn’t known anything about that. He began by saying that, thanks to some inexplicable oversight, Huysmans was not yet in the Pléiade catalogue, although he obviously belonged to the canon of classic French literature; as to that, I could only agree. He went on to express his conviction that, given my universally recognised contributions to the field, there was no one to whom the Pléiade could better entrust the editing of Huysmans’ work than me.
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or rather, I could refuse, obviously, but it would mean renouncing all intellectual and social ambition – all ambition, full stop. Was I really ready for that? There was no way I could think it over without a second Calvados. After thinking it over, I decided that the really prudent thing was to go out and buy another bottle.
Just two days later, I found myself meeting Bastien Lacoue. His office was exactly the way I’d imagined it, old-fashioned, up three flights of steep wooden stairs, overlooking a dishevelled courtyard. Lacoue himself was a modern-day intellectual with frameless little oval glasses, a jovial man. He radiated satisfaction with himself, the world and his position in it.
I’d done some preparation, and told him that I thought Huysmans’ works should be divided into two volumes, the first containing everything from Le drageoir à épices to La retraite de Monsieur Bougram (I held 1888 to be the most likely year of composition), the second devoted to the Durtal novels, from Là-bas to L’oblat, and of course Les foules de Lourdes. This division was simple, logical, even obvious, and without hidden complications. As always, the real question was how to handle the notes. Certain pseudo-scholarly editions had seen fit to provide biographical notes for the innumerable writers, musicians and painters mentioned by Huysmans. This struck me as utterly useless, even if the notes were relegated to the back. Not only would they weigh the books down, but also you could never know whether you’d said too much – or not enough – about Lactance, Angela de Foligno or Grünewald. Readers who wanted to know more could go and find out for themselves, and that was that. As for the relationships between Huysmans and other writers of his time – Zola, Maupassant, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Gourmont or Bloy – I thought these were best dealt with in the preface. Lacoue was quick to second this opinion.
Huysmans’ use of obscure words and neologisms, on the other hand, did justify a certain amount of apparatus – I was imagin
ing footnotes rather than endnotes, so as not to slow the reader down. He was enthusiastic in his agreement. ‘You’ve already done most of the work in your Vertigos of Coining!’ he said heartily. I lifted my right hand in a gesture of deep reservation. On the contrary: in the book he was good enough to mention, I had barely touched on the question. No more than a quarter of Huysmans’ linguistic corpus had been dealt with. He lifted his left hand in a gesture of deep appeasement: he certainly hadn’t meant to understate the considerable work it would take to complete this edition. They hadn’t set a deadline, I could rest easy on that score.
‘Yes, you work for eternity …’
‘It always sounds a little pretentious to say so, but yes – at least, that’s the hope.’
We shared a little moment of silence after this declaration, which was made with just the necessary drop of unction. It was going well, I’d say: we were coming together around shared values. This Pléiade was going to be a cinch.
‘Robert Rediger was very sorry to see you leave the Sorbonne after the … the regime change,’ Lacoue began again, in a sadder voice. ‘I know because he’s a friend of mine. A close friend.’ Now I detected a note of defiance. ‘Some teachers – senior teachers – stayed. Others, just as senior, left. Each one of those departures wounded him personally, including yours.’ This last he said almost gruffly, as if the duties of courtesy and friendship had been warring in his breast.
I had absolutely nothing to say to this, as he eventually realised after a minute or so of silence. ‘Well, I’m very happy that you’ve accepted my little project!’ he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together, as if we were about to pull some kind of prank on the world of letters. ‘You know, I thought it was a shame that someone like you … someone at your level, I mean, should find himself out of work from one day to the next, with no publications – with nothing!’ Aware that this might have sounded melodramatic, he stirred imperceptibly in his chair. I rose, too, with more alacrity.
Presumably in honour of the deal we’d just made, Lacoue didn’t just walk me to the door but went with me down all three flights of stairs (‘Careful, the steps are uneven!’) and down the corridor (‘It’s a maze!’ he laughed, but it wasn’t really: there were two corridors that met at a right angle, and they led straight to the lobby), all the way to the front door of Éditions Gallimard, in the rue Gaston-Gallimard. The weather had grown brisk, and I suddenly realised that we hadn’t discussed my fee. As if he’d read my mind, he brought a hand to my shoulder – without actually touching it – and said, ‘I’ll be sending you a contract in the next couple of days. By the way,’ he added in the same breath, ‘there’s going to be a little reception next Saturday for the reopening of the Sorbonne. I’ll make sure you get an invitation. I know Robert would be very happy to see you there, if you’re free.’ This time he gave me a real pat on the shoulder, then he shook my hand. It sounded off the cuff, but I had a feeling that, in reality, this invitation explained and justified all the rest.
The reception was at six, on the top floor of the Institute of the Arab World, which had been hired for the occasion. I felt nervous as I showed my invitation: Who would be there? Some Saudis, definitely: the invitation guaranteed the presence of a Saudi prince whose name I recognised as that of the main donor behind the new Sorbonne. There would probably be some of my old colleagues, too, at least the ones who’d agreed to work under the new administration – but I didn’t know anyone who had, except for Steve, and Steve was the last person I wanted to see.
I did recognise one former colleague, when I stepped inside the large, chandelier-lit hall. I didn’t know him personally, though we’d spoken once or twice, but Bertrand de Gignac was world-famous in the field of medieval literature. He was regularly invited to lecture at Columbia and Yale, and he was the author of the standard reference work on the Chanson de Roland. As far as recruitment went, he was the one major success the new university president could claim. Beyond that, I didn’t have much to talk to him about, the field of medieval literature being basically terra incognita to me, so I wisely accepted several mezes – they were excellent, the hot and the cold ones, too. So was the wine, a Lebanese red …
Still, I got the feeling that the reception wasn’t a total success. Small groups of three to six people, Arab and French, made their way around the elegant hall, barely speaking. The Arabo-Andalusian background music, piercing and sinister, didn’t help, but that wasn’t the problem, and after walking around with the other guests for forty-five minutes, after a dozen mezes and four glasses of wine, I suddenly saw the problem: we were all men. No women had been invited, and to keep up a sociable atmosphere without any women around, and without falling back on football – which would have been inappropriate in what was, after all, an academic setting – turned out to be a serious challenge.
Just then I caught sight of Lacoue, standing in a thicker group that had retreated to a corner of the hall. Besides him there were maybe ten Arabs and two Frenchmen, all talking with great intensity, except for one middle-aged man with a hooked nose and a fat, scowling face. He was dressed simply, in a long white djellaba, but I could see he was the most important man in the group, probably the prince himself. The others were talking over one another, offering what seemed to be justifications, but he just stood there, and although he nodded his head every now and then, his face remained impassive. Clearly there was some kind of problem, but it had nothing to do with me, so I went back the way I came, accepting a cheese samboussek and fifth glass of wine.
An old, thin, very tall man with a long salt-and-pepper beard went up to the prince, who stepped aside to speak to him in private. Having lost its centre, the group instantly broke up. Wandering aimlessly through the hall with one of the other Frenchmen, Lacoue saw me and walked up with a small nod hello. He seemed out of his element, and he made his introductions so quietly that I didn’t even catch the name of his companion, whose hair was slicked back, each strand carefully arranged. He wore a magnificent three-piece suit of midnight-blue fabric with nearly invisible white stripes. It had a light sheen and looked immensely soft. I thought it had to be silk and almost reached out to touch it, but I caught myself in time.
The prince, Lacoue explained, was horribly put out because the minister of education hadn’t come to the reception despite having formally promised to do so. Not only that – there wasn’t a single representative from the ministry, not one, ‘not even the secretary of universities’. He was beside himself.
‘I already told you, there is no more secretary of universities,’ his companion growled. According to him, the situation was even worse than Lacoue thought: the minister had definitely meant to come, he’d confirmed just the day before, but Ben Abbes himself had intervened for the express purpose of humiliating the Saudis. This was in line with other recent measures, of much broader importance, such as relaunching the nuclear energy programme and funding research into electric cars. The government was racing towards total independence from Saudi oil. Obviously, none of this had anything to do with the Islamic University of Paris-Sorbonne, but I supposed it was the university president who’d have to deal with the fallout. Just then Lacoue turned towards a middle-aged man, a new arrival, who was striding in our direction. ‘Here’s Robert!’ he cried, hugely relieved, as if he were greeting the Messiah.
Before he brought Rediger up to date, Lacoue introduced me, this time audibly. Rediger clasped my hand energetically, nearly crushing it between his powerful palms, all the while saying how happy he was to meet me and how long he’d looked forward to the pleasure. Physically, he was a fairly remarkable specimen, quite tall and solidly built. In fact, with his broad chest and his muscles, he looked more like a rugby tackle than a professor. His face was tanned and deeply lined, and although his hair was completely white, it was very thick. He had a crew cut, and he was dressed, rather unexpectedly, in jeans and a black leather aviator jacket.
Lacoue quickly filled him in. Rediger nodded, and muttered that he’d had
a feeling something like this might happen. Then he thought a moment. ‘I’ll call Delhommais,’ he said. ‘Delhommais will know what to do.’ He took out a small, almost feminine mobile phone – it looked tiny in his hand – and stepped a few metres away to make his call. Lacoue and his companion watched without daring to go near him, both rigid with suspense. They were starting to bore me, these two, with their little dramas. What’s more, they struck me as complete idiots. Obviously these petro-dollars required a certain amount of care and feeding, as it were, but in the end all they had to do was take some flunkey and introduce him, not as the minister they’d seen on TV, but as his chief of staff. The joker in the three-piece suit would have made a perfect chief of staff (just to start with who was on hand) and the Saudis would have been none the wiser. Really, they were making everything more complicated than it needed to be. But that was their problem. I helped myself to another glass of wine and went out onto the terrace. The view of Notre-Dame truly was magnificent. It was warmer out than before, and the rain had stopped. The moonlight flickered on the ripples of the Seine.
I must have spent a long time in this reverie, and when I went back inside the guests, still all men, of course, had thinned out. I didn’t see Lacoue or the three-piece suit. At least the evening hadn’t been a complete waste, I told myself, as I took a menu from the caterer. The mezes really had been good, plus they delivered – it would be a change from Indian. While I was waiting for my coat, Rediger walked up. ‘You’re not leaving?’ he asked, with a crestfallen spreading of the arms. I asked whether he’d managed to resolve the breach of protocol. ‘Yes, it’s all sorted out. The minister won’t come tonight, but he called the prince personally and invited him to breakfast tomorrow at the ministry. Schramek was right, I’m afraid: Ben Abbes is actively trying to humiliate them, now that he’s reconnecting with his old friends the Qataris. We’ll have plenty more trouble where that came from. But what can you do …’ He waved the subject away, then he laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m awfully sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk. You should come over sometime for tea, so that we can have a real conversation …’ And all at once he smiled. He had a lovely smile, very open, almost childlike, and extremely disarming in such a masculine man. I think he knew it, and knew how to use it. He gave me his card. ‘Next Wednesday, shall we say, five-ish? If you’re free.’ I said I was.