Someone Else

  The engine fell silent at last. Thierry wandered through the debris just for the pleasure of trampling on it, then left the area for ever.

  *

  Lehaleur was back in touch sooner than he had anticipated and gave him a name over the telephone: Pierre-Alain Rodier.

  “We’ve worked together a few times. He’s coming towards the end of his career and is looking for someone to see him through the loneliness. He won’t pay you, but he can teach you everything there is to know about the job. I didn’t recommend you but I told him you would call.”

  Without holding out too much hope, Blin thought he would go with the flow until something came along to stop him. He managed to arrange a meeting with the man that same week.

  Pierre-Alain Rodier had his agency right next to his apartment in a bourgeois building in the Eighth Arrondissement. Old carpet, a desk with a computer on it, encyclopedias, a jumble of files behind a door, a little frame displaying the house rates, another with a portrait of Vidocq. Rodier was fifty-eight years old, and had the build of a contented little man. He was on the slim side, with hair yellowed by years of smoking, a grey moustache and tired eyes, but a truly impish smile. Blin played it straight (he was a framer, he wanted to change jobs and something drew him towards detective work), and Rodier did the same (he had much less patience than he once had, he needed the company and he wanted to pass on what he knew before taking his final bow). The successful candidate had to be available day and night, including weekends. He did not even given Blin an opportunity to discuss the workings of that last point.

  “When can you start?”

  “Pretty soon.”

  “Tomorrow, 7am?”

  An expectant silence.

  “70 Rue de Rennes. It can be your first tailing job.”

  “Sorry?”

  “There’s no other way to learn.”

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  So was this alcoholism, then? He had always been told that someone who drinks suffers a thousand wounds every day, his blood vessels, organs and skin eaten away, sour, prey to gradual decomposition; his whole body gives off an acrid smell; everything leading inevitably to the pitiful, the definitive day when the people gathered around the poor man’s grave can be heard saying: he drank. To Nicolas, all that was nothing compared to the real tragedy of every alcoholic, the distress in the pit of his heart from the moment he woke up, the regret for having felt happy at last the previous day. When all was said and done, that really was the only thing that he felt was too high a price to pay. Alcohol should be forbidden to the anxious, they are such easy prey: they are weak enough to believe, for the space of an evening, that they have a right to their share of happiness.

  There was nothing he could do about it, not a scalding hot shower jetting fiercely onto his forehead, not coffee or sparkling water, not aspirin, not the holy ghost, or the promise that he would never touch it again. He swore that he would not go through the torture of a permanent hangover again. As he passed the coffee shop, he remembered a piece of advice that he should never have taken.

  “A beer, please.”

  He had ordered a glass without thinking, amid the morning bustle when the smell of coffee was spreading through the atrium. He thought better of it and asked for a can of Heineken, which he slipped carefully into his briefcase. He had scarcely set foot in his office before he pressed the ice-cold metal against his forehead. Where the heat of the shower had failed, he could have sworn the vice was releasing its grip already. He drank several mouthfuls, like chilled water after physical exertion.

  A second later, he emerged from the rut and started believing in miracles.

  “Nicolas, have you got a moment?”

  Mergault, from the accounts department, was peeping through the door with his hand on the handle, very impressed to see his colleague gulping back a Heineken.

  “Can’t you knock? Haven’t you ever seen anyone drinking beer before? Don’t bother looking at your watch, it’s exactly half past nine in the morning.”

  Defeated, Mergault closed the door again. With no sense of regret, Nicolas drank the last few mouthfuls, alert to the effects of the alcohol on his distress, and nothing in the world could distract him from this feeling of deliverance. He settled deep into his chair, snug and warm, with his eyes closed, stranded halfway between two worlds.

  All he could remember was talking to a girl in a bar. If he had not gone and ruined everything he might well have woken up beside her this morning. He would have gone through the whole day touched by the memory of her, impregnated by the smell of her. Fate had never allowed him an experience like that. All the women he had known were part of the furniture and had fallen into his arms for logical reasons; people he had to meet – some planned, others hardly surprising – women who happened to be in the same place as him and had let him know . . . In no circumstances was he the sort of man who walked into a bar for a drink and came out with a woman on his arm. The night before he had missed a unique opportunity to become part of that species, a species he had always admired.

  So, what do you do in life?

  Why had the girl yesterday got so upset over such an inoffensive question? Nicolas had probably not been sufficiently drunk to avoid all the clichés we feel obliged to come out with in situations like that, but there had been no ulterior motive in his question. He had not even wanted to know what the woman did, there were a thousand things he would rather have known before that.

  So, in life, what is it you do?

  That was where his headache stemmed from. The regret that he had not been able to help himself being the same man he always was, the regret that he had not had it in him to be the man who walks into a bar for a drink and comes back out with a woman on his arm. He had almost been that man, he already moved like him with his malice and his sense of the here and now, and he spoke his language almost fluently. He tried to reason with himself: approaching a woman in a bar was to set sail for a hazy destination, for the chronicle of a shipwreck foretold and of a feeling of shame in the morning. That moment when the other person is no longer the only other person in the world, but the only one you would like to be on the other side of the world. A brief moment of horror.

  Actually, what do I know about it? he asked himself, quite justifiably, as it had never happened to him.

  The beer was proving much more effective than anything else: he had the peculiar impression that his brain was returning to its normal size. He was emerging gradually from his husk of tiredness, the day could begin.

  “Hello, it’s Muriel. You don’t know where Monsieur Bardane is, do you? I’ve got a call for him.”

  “He was meant to be back this morning.”

  “I’m not sure what to do. This person’s called back several times.”

  Just when he least expected it, Nicolas felt a distant, featherlight touch of euphoria stirring. He had a sudden urge to do something rather clever.

  “Who is it?”

  “Monsieur Vernaux, from Vila Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Put him through to me.”

  “. . . But . . . he called for Monsieur Bardane . . .”

  “I’ve been landed with following up on this file, and I want to avoid getting it all wrong at the last minute because the good man isn’t here.”

  When Vila Pharmaceuticals had merged with the Scott organization, they had asked for tenders from several communications agencies, including Parena, to create a new visual identity for them as well as finding a new name and a new logo. Bardane had had his graphic designers toiling away without giving them clear guidelines, forcing them to improvise.

  “Monsieur Vernaux? Nicolas Gredzinksi, I’m standing in for Alain Bardane while he’s away. Looking through the file, I think I’m right in saying you weren’t happy with the graphics our art department suggested for you.”

  He was not in the least interested in usurping his boss’s position, he was only hoping to salvage something from a mistake. To him, Bardane looked more and more like
a waste of space who was about to lose his umpteenth contract.

  “You know about that?”

  “And I think you’re wrong.”

  A questioning silence.

  “The problem is you want something beautiful when we’re offering you something effective. The logo we suggested isn’t necessarily ‘beautiful’ but you’ll be seeing it for the next hundred years.”

  “If I understand correctly, you’re telling me I have absolutely no taste.”

  “No, I’d even say you have too much. If you ask one of our competitors for something beautiful, they’ll give it to you, they’d give you anything you wanted to have you as a client.”

  Another silence.

  “If you’re honest, do you think the packaging for Pepsi is beautiful? Millions of dollars in takings every year. But the packaging for Mariotti coffee is gorgeous, pure Raphael – they went into liquidation last year. I should know, they were one of our clients. He wanted a Renaissance feel, and he got it.”

  Still no reply.

  “I might agree with you on the colour, I’m not that keen on that almond green, too obvious, too deceptive; I’d see it with something more dynamic, a vermilion. For the typeface, we could find something simpler, less modern. What was the name we suggested again?”

  “Dexyl.”

  “Not brilliant. All these interchangeable, pseudo-modern, artificial names, there’s nothing to them. Make the most of the merger to merge the names together too – why can’t you just call yourselves Vila-Scott? Now, that would give me a feeling of confidence on a box of aspirin.”

  “I hope you realize you’re criticizing the work of your own creative team.”

  “Would you like us to have one last go at this?”

  “. . . Look . . . I . . .”

  “I’ll fax it to you before the end of the morning.”

  “Just to see, then . . .”

  “Will you call me back as soon as you’ve had a chance to look at it?”

  “Of course, Monsieur . . .?”

  “Nicolas Gredzinski.”

  As he hung up he burst out laughing. He had just fallen out with the art department, and Bardane was going to want to skin him for the simple fact that he had spoken to a client and modified a job without his approval. His predicted trajectory within the company would be set back twenty years.

  To his considerable surprise, he could not have cared less.

  *

  Steak haché and gratin dauphinois. Nicolas let himself be tempted by a small carafe of red wine. In the six years he had been working for the Group he had never tasted it. As soon as he put the carafe on his tray, he stopped by the cheese to give himself a clear conscience, and took a portion of brie, knowing that no one would notice that but they would all have something to say about the wine.

  Cécile found a table where five of them could sit together. He had hardly sat down before he caught sight of Nathalie’s sideways glance.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Wine.”

  “Wine . . .?”

  “Yes, wine, you know, the sour red stuff which changes the way people behave.”

  “So you drink wine then?” Hugo asked.

  “I didn’t know you drank wine,” said Cécile.

  Nicolas sat there with a fixed smile on his face, having to hold back his rising exasperation.

  “It’s not that ‘I drink wine’, I just wanted a change. And you’ve got to admit that cheese with water’s pretty dismal at any time of day.”

  “It can’t be that good,” said Cécile, wrinkling her nose.

  “What, the brie?”

  “The wine.”

  “If I have wine at lunchtime, it sends me to sleep,” said José, “then I can’t do anything for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “I’d happily have some,” said Hugo, “if I wasn’t worried about getting blotchy skin and breath like a sailor.”

  Nicolas could not have hoped for all this. What would they have said if they had seen him the day before, under the influence of vodka, facing a woman whose dreams flourished on a good Bordeaux and a Zippo fuelled by Miss Dior? Nicolas suddenly felt a sort of chasm opening up between him and the rest of the table, an insidious but very real rift. His little parcel of land was detaching itself from the continent and drifting slowly away. For the first time in his life, he had been perceived as someone who drinks. Something told him it would not be the last.

  Nicolas did not follow his colleagues to the coffee shop; he preferred the more peppery smell of Côtes du Rhône to the aroma of coffee. I only drink wine. Loraine had said that incredibly unaffectedly, with a combination of gravity and pleasure which seemed to be deeply rooted. Unlike José, Nicolas felt his power to work reappearing at last. There was even more to it than that: a surge of energy shot through with optimism made him want to say hello to people he came across year in, year out without ever really talking to them. He did not have a chance.

  “Monsieur Bardane wants to see you urgently!” said Muriel.

  “Is he here at last?”

  Nicolas made his way to his boss’s office to get it over and done with. What had to happen happened, but in a very sorry way; he had to endure the most mediocre dressing down because Bardane had absolutely no talent for intimidation, no skill in using imperatives and no subtlety in his threats. He did not try to have any sort of exchange, settling instead for systematically rejecting anything Nicolas might have said in his own defence. The only surprise was the verdict.

  “The mistake is too serious for me to take the risk of covering it up, so you’ll have to come with me to the directors’ meeting. I’ve spoken to Broaters about it. It’s in his hands.”

  Nicolas had never been asked to attend a meeting in the presence of one of the Group’s director generals, not even the one from his own sector, Christian Broaters. Bardane, whose authority had recently been questioned by the whole art department, had found the perfect opportunity to make an example.

  “I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes on the eighth floor.”

  Defeated, Nicolas turned for the door. Bardane waited till his back was turned before delivering his coup de grâce.

  “Gredzinski . . . have you been drinking?”

  Nicolas did not know what to say, left the office, went down to the Nemrod and ordered a vodka; now was the time to see whether he could rely on it for help. Bardane had been innovative in the realms of punishment; from now on Nicolas would set a precedent, the man who had made a professional mistake worth a million francs (that was the budget for the Vila contract). He had not even taken the time to savour or even drink his glass before downing a second one. He could picture himself, starting tomorrow, sitting alone at the zinc bar of a bistro to sew up a day spent flogging all over town trying to find work, reading ads, smiling at Human Resources executives and listening to them saying they were very sorry but they would not be keeping his records on file. Over the next few days, the cocktail hour would get earlier and earlier until Nicolas grasped the fact that the perfect time was immediately after waking up. He was quite capable of that, he had had the proof that very morning.

  The director’s PA welcomed him in and asked him to wait in a little lobby where a handful of managers were standing waiting. Having very little to lose, he took the liberty of sitting down on the sofa. It would not change anything in what was a predictable verdict: he would not be made redundant but would have to make amends. As far as the team leader Bardane was concerned, men fell into two very distinct categories, and Gredzinski was in the second. Nevertheless, Bardane was not familiar with one law that Nicolas knew, having always been an underling: those who are arrogant will one day be servile. In other words, the more you trample on the weak, the more you are inclined to lick the boots of the strong.

  Broaters greeted them all with an elegant nod of the head, which meant he could avoid shaking so many hands, and suggested they went through to the conference room. Nicolas headed for the back like the naughty schoolboy t
hat he was, to discover an extraordinarily empty room with no notebooks, bottles of water, marker pens or overhead projector, nothing except a magnificent circular table in pink marble and a mantelpiece, which was also perfectly empty. In amongst so many smart austere suits, he could not help noticing the famous Alissa, a beautiful fifty-year-old from Mauritius who was the boss’s assistant and did pretty much everything for him. No one actually claimed that they were lovers, which demonstrated the woman’s genuine power. One of Broaters’ right-hand men spoke first, but Nicolas did not listen to a word; unlike the others, he had no need to understand what was being said, nor to visualize, anticipate or conceptualize everything that was at stake in the meeting. Like dunces who exempt themselves from listening to lessons, he was being asked to wait for his rap over the knuckles with a ruler before he left the room.

  “Krieg will entrust us with their communications only if we can guarantee them the lobbying with the ministry. I have, incidentally, discovered that Dieulefils from Crosne & Henaut is a great friend of the Principal Private Secretary, but I’ve also heard tell that he is less and less a friend of Crosne.”

  Feeling a wave of heat rising inside him, Nicolas finally understood what people meant by “seeing double” when they talked about drinkers: the gift of double vision. His eyes could see beyond physical presences, and his senses were sharpened to the point that he could perceive the least sign, grasp every element of the scene playing out before him. Over and above the responsibilities, hierarchies, roles, codes, wordings and implications, he found he was just sitting amongst men and women, little creatures who, like him, were struggling through this life, more often than not barely coping with it despite considerable effort. Filled with a sudden rush of kindness, he found them touching and endearingly naive, feverishly eager and prepared to be led astray, like children.