In the metro I examined the business card that my new acquaintance had given me. It was elegant and tasteful, at least I thought so. Rediger provided his personal phone number, two office numbers, two fax numbers (one personal, one office), three email addresses, ill-defined, two mobile numbers (one French, the other British) and a Skype handle. This was a man who let you know how to get in touch. Clearly, since my meeting with Lacoue, I’d made my way into the inner circle. It was almost unnerving.
He gave a street address, too: 5 rue des Arènes, and for now that was all I needed to know. I remembered the rue des Arènes. It was a charming little street off the Square des Arènes de Lutèce, in one of the most charming parts of Paris. There were butcher shops, cheese shops recommended by Petitrenaud and Pudlowski – as for Italian speciality shops, forget it. This was all reassuring in the extreme.
At the Place Monge metro station, I made the mistake of going out the Arènes de Lutèce exit. Geographically, I wasn’t wrong – the exit led straight to the rue des Arènes – but I’d forgotten that there wasn’t an escalator, and that the Place Monge metro station was fifty metres below street level. I was completely exhausted and out of breath by the time I emerged from that curious metro exit, a hollow carved out of the walls of the park, its thick columns, cubist typography and generally neo-Babylonian appearance all completely out of place in Paris – as they would have been pretty much anywhere else in Europe.
When I reached 5 rue des Arènes, I realised that Rediger didn’t just live in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, he lived in his own maison particulière in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, and that this maison particulière was historic to boot. Number 5 was none other than that fantastical neo-Gothic construction (flanked by a square turret like a castle keep) where Jean Paulhan lived from 1940 until his death in 1968. Personally I could never stand Jean Paulhan, I didn’t like him as an éminence grise and I didn’t like his books, but there was no denying that he’d been one of the most powerful figures in French publishing after the war. And he’d certainly lived in a very beautiful house. My admiration for the Saudis’ funding only grew.
I rang the bell and was greeted by a butler whose cream-coloured suit and Nehru collar were somewhat reminiscent of the former dictator Gaddafi. I told him my name, he bowed slightly: I was expected. He left me to wait in a little entrance hall, illuminated by stained-glass windows, while he went to tell Professor Rediger that I’d arrived.
I’d been waiting two or three minutes when a door opened to my left and in walked a teenage girl wearing low-waisted jeans and a Hello Kitty T-shirt, her long black hair loose over her shoulders. When she saw me, she shrieked, tried awkwardly to cover her face with her hands, and dashed back out of the room. At that very moment, Rediger appeared on the landing and came down the stairs to greet me. He had witnessed the incident, and shook my hand with a look of resignation.
‘That’s Aïcha, my new wife. She’ll be very embarrassed that you saw her without her veil.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, don’t apologise. It’s her fault. She should have asked whether there was a guest before she came into the front hall. She doesn’t know her way around the house yet, but she will.’
‘Yes, she looks very young.’
‘She just turned fifteen.’
I followed Rediger up the stairs and into a large study with a ceiling that must have been almost five metres high. One of the walls was entirely covered with bookshelves. At a glance I noticed lots of old editions, mainly nineteenth century. Two solid metal ladders, mounted on rollers, provided access to the higher shelves. On the other side of the room, potted plants hung from a dark wooden trellis that ran the length of the wall. Ivy, ferns and Virginia creeper cascaded from ceiling to floor, twining along the edges of various picture frames, some of which held hand-lettered verses from the Koran, others large, matted photos of galaxy clusters, supernovas and spiral nebulas. In one corner a massive Directoire desk stood at an angle to the room. Rediger led me to the opposite corner, where two worn armchairs, upholstered in red-and-green stripes, were placed around a low, copper-topped table.
‘I do have tea, if you like,’ he said, inviting me to sit. ‘Or perhaps a drink? I have whisky, port – well, I have everything. And an excellent Meursault.’
‘The Meursault, then,’ I said, but I was a little bit confused. I had some idea that Islam prohibited drinking alcohol, at least that’s what I’d heard. To be honest, it wasn’t a religion I knew much about.
He left the room, presumably to see about the wine. My armchair faced a high, old, lead-mullioned window overlooking the Roman arena. The view was really something, I think it was the first time I’d had such a complete view of the terraces. And yet after a few minutes I found myself perusing the bookshelves. They were impressive, too.
The two bottom shelves were full of bound photocopies. These were dissertations from various European universities. As I browsed the titles, my eye was drawn to a philosophy dissertation, presented at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, entitled ‘René Guénon: Reader of Nietszche’, by Robert Rediger. I was just pulling it from the shelf when Rediger came back into the room. I jumped, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong, and tried to slip it back in place. He walked over to me, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, there are no secrets here. And besides, why shouldn’t you be curious about the contents of a bookshelf? For a man like you, that’s almost a professional duty.’
Coming closer, he saw the title. ‘Ah, you’ve found my dissertation.’ He shook his head. ‘They gave me my doctorate, but it wasn’t much of a thesis. Nothing like yours, anyway. My reading was, as they say, selective. In retrospect, I don’t think Guénon was all that influenced by Nietszche. His rejection of the modern world was just as vehement as Nietzsche’s, but it had radically different sources. In any case, I’d write the thing very differently today. I have yours, too …’ he said, pulling another bound copy from the shelf. ‘As you know, we keep five copies in the university archives. So, considering how few researchers actually consult them in a given year, I thought I might as well keep one for myself.’
I could barely hear what he was saying – I was on the verge of collapse. It was almost twenty years since I’d been in the presence of ‘Joris-Karl Huysmans: Out of the Tunnel’. It was extraordinary how thick it was, almost embarrassing – it was, I suddenly remembered, 788 pages long. To be fair, it also contained seven years of my life.
Still holding my dissertation, he led us over to the armchairs. ‘It really is a remarkable piece of work …’ he insisted. ‘It reminded me very much of the young Nietzsche, the Nietzsche of The Birth of Tragedy.’
‘Please, you’re exaggerating.’
‘I don’t think I am. The Birth of Tragedy was, after all, a sort of dissertation. And in both you find the same incredible profligacy, the same profusion of ideas, all simply flung onto the page, without the slightest preparation so that, really, the text is almost impossible to read – the astonishing thing is that you managed to keep it up for almost eight hundred pages. By the time he wrote the Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche had calmed down. He realised that you can’t overwhelm the reader with too many concepts at once, that you have to structure your argument and give him time to breathe. The same thing happened to you in Vertigos of Coining, which made it a more accessible book. The difference between you and Nietzsche is that Nietzsche kept going.’
‘I’m not Nietzsche.’
‘No, you’re not. But you’re you – and you’re interesting. And if you’ll forgive me for being blunt, I want you on my team. I might as well put my cards on the table, since you already know why you’re here: I want to convince you to come back and teach at the Sorbonne. I want you to work for me.’
At that moment the door opened, just in time to save me from having to answer. It was a plump woman, perhaps forty years old, with a kind face, carrying a tray of warm canapés arranged around an ice bucket. This
held the promised bottle of Meursault.
‘That’s my first wife, Malika,’ he said once she’d left. ‘You seem to be meeting all my wives today. I married her when I was still living in Belgium … Yes, my family’s Belgian. So am I, for that matter. I was never naturalised, though I’ve lived here for twenty years.’
The canapés were delicious, spicy but not too; I tasted coriander. And the wine was sublime. ‘I don’t think people talk enough about Meursault!’ I said, with gusto. ‘Meursault is a synthesis. It’s like a lot of wines in one, don’t you think?’ I wanted to talk about anything besides my future as an academic, but I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew he’d return to the subject at hand.
After a decent interval of silence, he returned to the subject at hand. ‘I’m so glad it worked out with the Pléiade edition. It’s the obvious thing, the right thing – well, it’s a good thing all round. When Lacoue mentioned it to me, what could I tell him? I said you’d be the natural choice, the right choice, and that you happened to be the best choice, too. Now, I’ll be perfectly frank with you: apart from Gignac, I haven’t managed to enlist any faculty who are truly respected, who have real international reputations. It’s hardly a disaster, the university just opened. But the fact is, I want something from you and I haven’t got much to offer you in return. That is, I can offer you plenty of money, as you know, and money isn’t nothing. But from an intellectual standpoint, a teaching position at the Sorbonne is much less prestigious than editing a Pléiade. I know that. What I can promise is that nothing would be allowed to interfere with your real work. That’s a personal promise. No hard classes, just a couple of first- and second-year lectures. No dissertations to advise – I know what those are like, I’ve done enough of them myself. I’d arrange everything with the department.’
He stopped there. I got the distinct feeling that he’d used up his first round of arguments. He tasted the Meursault, I poured myself a second glass. It occurred to me that I had never felt so desirable. Glory had been a long time coming. Maybe my dissertation really had been as brilliant as he claimed, the truth was I remembered almost nothing about it; the intellectual leaps I made when I was young were a distant memory to me, and now I was surrounded by a kind of aura, when really my only goal in life was to do a little reading and get into bed at four in the afternoon with a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky; and yet, at the same time, I had to admit, I was going to die if I kept that up – I was going to die fast, unhappy and alone. And did I really want to die fast, unhappy and alone? In the end, only kind of.
I finished my wine and poured myself a third glass. Through the bay window, I watched the sun setting over the arena. The silence became a little bit embarrassing. Well, if he wanted to put his cards on the table, two could play at that game.
‘There’s a condition, though …’ I said, cautiously. ‘And it isn’t trivial …’
He gave a slow nod of the head.
‘You think … You think I’m someone who could actually convert to Islam?’
He gazed at the floor, as if lost in intense personal reflections, then he looked me in the eye. ‘I do.’
The smile he gave me was luminous, innocent. It was the second time he’d graced me with it, so it came as slightly less of a shock. But still, his smile was awfully effective. At least now it was his turn to talk. I swallowed two lukewarm canapés in quick succession. The sun vanished behind the terraced steps; night washed over the arena. It was amazing to think that fights between gladiators and wild beasts had actually taken place here, two thousand years before.
‘You aren’t Catholic, are you? That could be a problem.’
No, in fact; I couldn’t say that I was.
‘And I don’t think you’re really an atheist, either. True atheists are rare.’
‘Really? On the contrary, I’d have said that most people in the Western world are atheists.’
‘Only on the surface, it seems to me. The only true atheists I’ve ever met were people in revolt. It wasn’t enough for them to coldly deny the existence of God – they had to refuse it, like Bakunin: “Even if God existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.” They were atheists like Kirilov in The Possessed. They rejected God because they wanted to put man in his place. They were humanists, with lofty ideas about human liberty, human dignity. I don’t suppose you recognise yourself in this description.’
No, in fact, I didn’t; even the word humanism made me want to vomit, but that might have been the canapés. I’d overdone it on the canapés. I took another glass of the Meursault to settle my stomach.
‘The fact is, most people live their lives without worrying too much about these supposedly philosophical questions. They think about them only when they’re facing some kind of tragedy – a serious illness, the death of a loved one. At least, that’s how it is in the West; in the rest of the world people die and kill in the name of these very questions, they wage bloody wars over them, and they have since the dawn of time. These metaphysical questions are exactly what men fight over, not market shares or who gets to hunt where. Even in the West, atheism has no solid basis. When I talk to people about God, I always start by lending them a book on astronomy …’
‘Your photos really are very beautiful.’
‘Yes, the beauty of the universe is striking, but the sheer size of it is what staggers the mind. You have hundreds of billions of galaxies, each made up of hundreds of billions of stars, some of them billions of light years – hundreds of billions of billions of kilometres – apart. And if you pull back far enough, to a scale of a billion light years, an order begins to emerge. The galaxy clusters are distributed according to a vast cosmic graph. If you go up to a hundred people in the street and lay out these scientific facts, how many will have the nerve to argue that the whole thing was created by chance? Besides, the universe is relatively young – fifteen billion years old at the most. It’s like the famous monkey and the typewriter: How long would it take a chimpanzee, typing at random, to rewrite Shakespeare’s plays? Well, how long would it take blind chance to reconstruct the universe? A lot more than fifteen billion years … And I’m not just speaking for the man in the street. The greatest scientists have thought so, too. In all of human history there may never have been a mind as brilliant as Isaac Newton’s – just think what an amazing, unheard-of intellectual effort it took to discover a single law that accounted for the fall of earthly bodies and the movement of the planets! Well, Newton believed in God. He was such a firm believer that he spent the last years of his life writing an exegesis of the Bible – the one sacred text that was really available to him. Einstein wasn’t an atheist, either. The exact nature of his belief is harder to define, but when he told Bohr, “God does not play dice with the universe,” he didn’t mean it as a joke. To him it was inconceivable that the universe should be ruled by chance. The argument of the “watchmaker God”, which Voltaire considered irrefutable, is just as strong today as it was in the eighteenth century. If anything, it’s become even more pertinent as science has drawn closer and closer connections between astrophysics and the motion of particles. At the end of the day, isn’t there something ridiculous about some puny creature, living on an anonymous planet, in a remote spur of an ordinary galaxy, standing up on his hind legs and announcing, “God does not exist”? But forgive me, I’m rambling on …’
‘No, don’t apologise, I’m really interested,’ I said, sincerely. It’s true that I was starting to feel a little bit fucked up. When I glanced over at the table, I saw that the bottle of Meursault was empty.
‘You’re right,’ I went on, ‘that I don’t have any very solid grounds for my atheism. It would be presumptous to claim that I did.’
‘Presumptous – that’s the word. At the end of the day, there’s something incredibly proud and arrogant about atheist humanism. Even the Christian idea of incarnation is laughably pretentious. God turned Himself into a man … Why man and not an inhabitant of Sirius, or the Andromeda galaxy? Wouldn’t th
at be more likely?’
‘You believe in extraterrestrial life?’ I interrupted. I was surprised.
‘I don’t know, I haven’t given it much thought, but as a question of arithmetic, if you take all the myriad stars in the universe, each with its multiple planets, it would be shocking if life occurred only on earth. But that’s not important. All I’m saying is that the universe obviously bears the hallmarks of intelligent design, that it’s clearly the manifestation of some gigantic mind. Sooner or later, that simple idea is going to come back round. I’ve always known this, ever since I was young. All intellectual debate of the twentieth century can be summed up as a battle between communism – that is, “hard” humanism – and liberal democracy, the soft version. But what a reductive debate. Since I was fifteen, I’ve known that what they now call the return of religion was unavoidable. My family was Catholic – or rather, they were lapsed; really it was my grandparents who were Catholic – so naturally I started off turning towards the Church. Then, in my first year at university, I joined the nativist movement.’