Submission Page 8

  At exactly two o’clock, Marine Le Pen led the marchers down the Champs-Élysées towards the Arc de Triomphe, where she was scheduled to make a speech at three. I turned off the sound but went on looking at the screen. An immense banner stretched across the avenue, bearing the inscription ‘We Are the People of France’. Many of the demonstrators had been given small placards that read, more simply, ‘This Is Our Home’. That was the slogan they’d started using at extremist rallies – explicit, yet restrained in its hostility. The enormous cloud still hung there above the demonstration, motionless and threatening. After a few minutes I got bored and went back to En rade.

  Marie-Françoise called a little after six; she didn’t have much news. The National Council of Universities had met the day before, but no one was talking. In any case, she was sure that the university wouldn’t reopen till after the elections – probably not until autumn. The exams could always be given in September. In general, the situation seemed serious. Her husband was visibly worried. For the past week he’d been spending fourteen-hour days at headquarters – he’d even slept there the night before. Before we hung up, she promised to let me know if she heard any news.

  There was nothing to eat at home, and I didn’t want to deal with the Géant Casino – after work was the wrong time to go shopping in such a densely populated neighbourhood – but I was hungry. More than that, I felt like buying stuff to eat, blanquette de veau, pollock with chervil, Berber-style moussaka. Microwave dinners were reliably bland, but their colourful, happy packaging represented real progress compared with the heavy tribulations of Huysmans’ heroes. There was no malice in them, and one’s sense of participating in a collective experience, disappointing but egalitarian, smoothed the way to a partial acceptance.

  The supermarket was strangely empty, and I filled my trolley fast, in a surge of enthusiasm mixed with fear. For some reason, the word curfew crossed my mind. Some of the cashiers, lined up behind their deserted checkout counters, were listening to transistor radios. The protest was still going on, so far without any incidents of violence. That would come later, I thought, once the crowd began to disperse.

  The storm broke, violently, the moment I left the shopping centre. Back at home I heated up some beef tongue in a Madeira reduction – rubbery, but edible – and turned on the TV. The fighting had begun. You could make out groups of masked men roaming around with assault rifles and automatic weapons. Windows had been broken, here and there cars were on fire, but the images, shot in the pelting rain, were of such poor quality it was impossible to get a clear idea of who was doing what.

  III

  Sunday, 29 May

  I woke around four in the morning, lucid and alert. I took my time packing, assembling a small pharmacy and enough changes of clothing to last me a month. I even found the walking shoes – American, high-tech, never worn – that I’d bought a year before, when I thought I might take up hiking. I also packed my laptop, a stash of protein bars, an electric kettle and instant coffee. By five thirty I was ready to go. I had no trouble starting the car or getting onto the Périphérique. By six o’clock I was almost in Rambouillet. I had no plan, no exact destination, just a very vague sense that I ought to head south-west – that if a civil war should break out in France, it would take a while to reach the south-west. I knew next to nothing about the south-west, really, only that it was a region where they ate duck confit, and duck confit struck me as incompatible with civil war. Though of course, I could be wrong.

  I didn’t actually know much about France. After spending my childhood and adolescence in Maisons-Lafitte, a bourgeois suburb par excellence, I moved to Paris and never left. I had never really visited this country of which I was, somewhat theoretically, a citizen. It was something I’d always meant to do, hence the VW Touareg, which I bought around the same time I bought those hiking boots. It was a powerful car. With its turbo-diesel V-8 and 4.2-litre common rail direct fuel injection, it could go 240 kilometres per hour. Although it was designed for motorway driving, it also had real off-road capabilities. When I bought it, I must have been imagining weekend expeditions, long drives down country roads, but nothing like that ever happened. I was content to spend my Sundays browsing the rare-book market in Parc Georges Brassens. And sometimes, I’m happy to say, I had spent my Sundays fucking – Myriam, mainly. My life would have been truly tedious and dreary if I hadn’t, every now and then, fucked Myriam. I pulled over at a service station called Mille Étangs – Thousand Ponds – just after the exit to Châteauroux. I bought a chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie and a large coffee at La Croissanterie, then I got back in the car to have my breakfast and think about the past, or nothing at all. The car park dominated the surrounding countryside, which was deserted except for a couple of cows – Charolais, probably. The sun was up now, but blankets of fog still drifted over the lower meadows. The landscape was rolling and quite beautiful, though there weren’t any ponds – or brooks, for that matter. To think about the future seemed unwise.

  I turned on the car radio. The elections were off to a normal start; François Hollande had already voted in his ‘fiefdom’ of Corrèze. Turnout, as far as anyone could tell this early in the day, was high, higher than in the last two presidential run-offs. Some pundits argued that a high turnout favoured the ‘ruling party’ against the challengers. Others, just as well regarded, thought the opposite. For the moment, in other words, nobody had any idea what the high turnout meant, and it was a little early for listening to the radio. I turned it off and pulled out of the car park.

  Not long afterwards, I saw I was low on petrol – almost down to a quarter tank. I ought to have filled up at the service station. I also noticed that the road was strangely empty. Motorways are never crowded on Sunday morning. That’s the moment when society takes a deep breath and decongests, when its members give themselves the brief illusion of an individual existence. Even so, I’d driven a hundred kilometres without passing another car. The only vehicle I’d passed was a Bulgarian tractor-trailer weaving in and out of the emergency lane, drunk with fatigue. All was calm, I drove past striped, fluttering windsocks. The sun shone on the meadows and woods like a trusted employee. I turned the radio back on, but now it wasn’t working: all my preprogrammed stations, from France Info to Europe 1, including Radio Monte-Carlo and RTL, were full of static. Something was happening in France, I knew it, and here I was, still driving along the hexagonal motorway system at two hundred kilometres per hour – and maybe that was the solution. Everything in the country seemed to be broken, for all I knew the traffic radar was down, too. At the speed I was going, I’d reach the border at Jonquet by four. Things would be different in Spain, civil war slightly less imminent. It was worth a try. Except I was out of petrol; yes, petrol was at the top of the agenda. I kept my eye out for the next service station.

  Which turned out to be the service station at Pech-Montat. It had nothing special to recommend it on the information panel, no restaurant, no local crafts. This was a Jansenist station: its devotion to petrol was pure. At first I was tempted to hold out for the Jardin des Causses du Lot, fifty kilometres south, but then I pulled myself together. I could always make a petrol stop at Pech-Montat, then a pleasure stop at the Causses du Lot, where I’d load up on foie gras, Cabécou and Cahors. I’d have them that very night in my hotel room on the Costa Brava. It was a plan – a sensible, manageable plan.

  The car park was deserted, and right away I could tell something wasn’t right. I slowed to a crawl before I pulled up, very carefully, to the service station. Someone had shattered the window, the asphalt was covered with shards of glass. I got out of the car and walked inside. Someone had also smashed the door of the fridge where they kept the cold drinks and knocked over the newspaper dispensers. I discovered the cashier lying on the floor in a pool of blood, her arms clasped over her chest in a pathetic gesture of self-defence. There was total silence. I walked over to the petrol pumps, but they were turned off. Thinking I might be able to find some way of tur
ning them on behind the register, I went back into the shop and stepped reluctantly over the body, but I didn’t see anything that looked like an ON switch. After a moment’s hesitation, I helped myself to a tuna-vegetable sandwich from the sandwich shelf, a non-alcoholic beer and a Michelin guide.

  The closest of the local hotels recommended by Michelin was the Relais du Haut-Quercy, in Martel. All I had to do was get on the D840 and it was ten kilometres away. As I drove towards the exit, I thought I saw two bodies lying near the car park reserved for tractor-trailers. I got out of the car and went closer. Sure enough, two young North Africans, dressed in the typical uniform of the banlieues, had been shot down. There wasn’t much blood, but it was obvious they were dead. One of them was still holding an automatic pistol in his hand. What could have happened? I tried the radio again, just in case, but still there was nothing – only the crackle of static.

  Fifteen minutes later I’d reached Martel without incident. The road wound through a cheerful, wooded landscape. I didn’t pass a single car, and I started to think I was going crazy, then I decided that everyone was staying home for exactly the same reason I’d left Paris: a premonition of imminent catastrophe.

  The Relais du Haut-Quercy was a large white limestone building, two storeys high, located just outside the village. The gate opened with a slight creak. I crossed the gravel courtyard and climbed the steps to the reception area. There was nobody there. Behind the counter, the room keys hung on their board. None of the keys was missing. I called out several times, each time louder than before, but no one answered. I went back outside. At the rear of the hotel was a terrace surrounded by rose bushes, with small round tables and wrought-iron chairs, where they must have served breakfast. I followed a broad path lined with chestnut trees for fifty metres or so before I came to a grassy esplanade with a view of the surrounding countryside. Deckchairs and umbrellas awaited hypothetical guests. For a few minutes I contemplated the landscape, rolling and peaceful, then I turned back towards the hotel. As I reached the terrace a woman came out, blonde and fortyish, in a long grey woollen dress, her hair pulled back in a headband. She started when she saw me. ‘The restaurant is closed,’ she called out. I told her that I only wanted a room. ‘We don’t serve breakfast, either,’ she elaborated. Only then did she admit, with obvious reluctance, that there was a room to be had.

  She led me upstairs, opened a door and handed me a tiny scrap of paper. ‘The gate locks at ten. After that, you have to use the code.’ She turned and left without another word.

  Once I’d opened the blinds, the room wasn’t so bad, except for the wallpaper, which was patterned with hunting scenes in dark magenta. I couldn’t get the TV to work: there was no signal on any of the channels, just swarms of pixels. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working, either. There were several networks that had names beginning with Bbox or SFR – those must have belonged to people in the village – but nothing that sounded like Relais du Haut-Quercy. I found an information sheet in a drawer. It listed various local attractions, there was also information on the local cuisine, but nothing about the Internet. Staying connected was obviously not a priority in this establishment.

  After I’d unpacked, hung up the clothes I’d brought, plugged in my tea kettle and my electric toothbrush, and turned on my phone to find no messages, I started to wonder what I was doing there. This very basic question can occur to anyone, anywhere, at any moment in his life, but there’s no denying that the solitary traveller is especially vulnerable. If Myriam had been with me, I’d still have had no good reason for being in Martel, yet the question simply wouldn’t have arisen. A couple is a world, autonomous and enclosed, that moves through the larger world essentially untouched; on my own, I was full of chips and cracks, and it took a certain amount of courage for me to slip the information sheet into my jacket pocket and go out into the village.

  In the middle of Place des Consuls stood a grain market. It was clearly very old. I know almost nothing about architecture, but the houses on either side of it, built of a beautiful yellow stone, had to be a few centuries old at least. I’d seen things like that on TV, generally on shows hosted by Stéphane Bern, and these were just as good as the ones on TV, maybe better. One of the houses was really big, practically a palace, with groin-vaulted arcades and turrets, and when I went up close I learned that indeed the Hôtel de la Raymondie had been built between 1280 and 1350, and that it first belonged to the Vîcomtes de Turenne.

  The rest of the village was more of the same. I walked down picturesque, deserted lanes until I reached the church of Saint-Maur. Massive, nearly windowless, it was a sort of ecclesiastical fortress. The information sheet said it had been built to resist the many attacks of the infidels who used to populate the region.

  The D840, which crossed the village, continued on to Rocamadour. I had heard of Rocamadour, a well-known tourist destination with lots of Michelin stars. I even wondered whether I hadn’t seen Rocamadour, on a Stéphane Bern show. Still, it was twenty kilometres away. I opted for the smaller, winding road to Saint-Denis-les-Martel. After a hundred metres I happened on a tiny gatehouse made of painted wood where you could buy tickets for a tour of the Dordogne Valley by steam locomotive. That sounded interesting. It would be even better if you were a couple, I told myself with sombre relish. Anyway, there was no one in the gatehouse. Myriam had been in Tel Aviv for several days now, enough time for her to find out about classes, maybe she’d already enrolled, or maybe she was spending her days at the beach. She loved the beach. We’d never gone on holiday together, I realised, I had never been good at choosing where to go or making reservations. I claimed to love Paris in August, but the truth was I was incapable of leaving.

  A dirt path ran along the right-hand side of the railway track. I followed it up the gentle slope of a thickly wooded hill and, after a kilometre, I found myself at a scenic view with an orientation table. A pictogram of a folding camera confirmed that this was, by vocation, a scenic view.

  Below me flowed the Dordogne, encased between limestone cliffs some fifty metres high, obscurely pursuing its geological destiny. I learned from an information panel that the region had been inhabited since the dawn of prehistory. Cro-Magnon man had slowly driven the Neanderthals out of this valley. They had taken refuge in Spain, then disappeared.

  I sat on the edge of the cliff, trying and failing to lose myself in the landscape. After half an hour, I took out my phone and called Myriam’s number. She sounded startled to hear from me, but pleased. Everything was going well, she had a nice flat with good light in the centre of town. No, she hadn’t enrolled yet. How was I doing? Fine, I lied, but I missed her a lot. I made her promise to send me a very long email, filling me in on everything, as soon as possible – forgetting that I couldn’t go online.

  I’ve always hated making kissing sounds on the phone. Even when I was young, I dreaded it, and forty years later it struck me as plainly ridiculous. I did it anyway. As soon as we hung up, I was overwhelmed by a terrible loneliness, and I knew that I’d never have the courage to call Myriam again. The feeling of closeness when we talked on the phone was too violent, and the void that came afterwards too cruel.

  My attempt to interest myself in the natural beauty of the region was obviously doomed to failure, but I stuck it out a little longer, and night was falling as I made my way back to Martel. Cro-Magnon man hunted mammoth and reindeer; the man of today can choose between an Auchan and a Leclerc, both supermarkets located in Souillac. The only shops in the village were a baker – closed – and a cafe on Place des Consuls, which also seemed to be closed. There were no tables set up on the square. Inside, though, I could see dim lights. I pushed the door open and went in.

  Forty or fifty men were sitting in silence, watching a BBC News report on a TV hanging at the back of the room. No one turned to look when I walked in. They were locals, obviously, nearly all retirees, plus a few men who looked like manual labourers. I hadn’t spoken English for a long time, and the presenter was talking too fast fo
r me to really follow what he was saying. The others didn’t seem to be doing much better. The images, from various places – Mulhouse, Trappes, Stains, Aurillac – were of no obvious interest: community centres, nursery schools, empty gyms. It wasn’t until they showed Manuel Valls, looking pale under the harsh lights on the steps of the Hôtel Marignon, that I began to reconstruct the events of the day: twenty polling stations, across France, had been attacked by groups of armed men early that afternoon. There had been no casualties, but the ballots had been stolen. So far, no one had claimed responsibility. Under the circumstances, the government had no choice but to suspend the elections. An emergency meeting had been called for later that evening, the president would take appropriate measures; the law of the Republic, he concluded rather flatly, would prevail.

  Monday, 30 May

  I woke up around six to find the TV working again: the reception was bad on iTélé, but BFM was fine. Naturally, every programme was devoted to the events of the day before. The pundits emphasised the extreme fragility of the democratic process: as a matter of electoral law, if even one polling station failed to report its results, anywhere in France, that invalidated the entire election. It was also emphasised that, until now, no group had ever thought of exploiting this weakness. Late in the night, the prime minister had announced that new elections would be held the following Sunday, this time with all polling stations under military protection.

  As for the attacks’ political implications, there was complete disagreement. I spent half the morning following the various contradictory arguments, then I took a book to the park. Huysmans’ era had seen its own share of political strife. There had been the first anarchist attacks. There had been the anticlerical campaign of ‘Little Father’ Combes – so much more violent than anything in our day – when the government actually seized church property and broke up congregations. This touched Huysmans personally: he was forced to leave his retreat at Ligugé Abbey, and yet he barely mentions it in his work. He seems never to have taken the slightest interest in politics at all.