The Seventh Function of Language

Simon says nothing because he agrees: it’s not a bad comeback, but it does have the feel of something too obviously prepared in advance. At least it has the effect of relaxing Mitterrand, though, like an ice-skater who has just pulled off a triple axel.

There follows a good battle over the French and global economies, and at least the viewers feel that the candidates have earned their keep. Bayard finally serves his main course: a lamb tagine. Simon is wide-eyed: “Whoa, who taught you to cook?” Giscard paints a horrifying picture of a future France under socialism. Bayard says to Simon: “I met my first wife in Algeria. You can play the smart-ass with your semiology, but you don’t know everything about my life.” Mitterrand reminds Giscard that it was de Gaulle who initiated mass nationalizations in 1945. Bayard opens a bottle of red, a 1976 Côte-de-Beaune. Simon tastes the tagine: “But this is really good!” Mitterrand keeps taking off his glasses and putting them back on. Bayard explains: “Seventy-six was a very good year for Burgundies.” Mitterrand declares: “Portugal nationalized its banks, and it is not a socialist country.” Simon and Bayard savor the tagine and the Côte-de-Beaune. Bayard deliberately chose a meal that would not necessitate a knife, the stewed meat being tender enough to be cut with the side of a fork. Simon knows that Bayard knows that he knows this, but the two men ignore it. Neither is keen to mention Murano.

While this is going on, Mitterrand shows his teeth. “The bureaucracy is down to you. You are the one in government. If you make all these speeches complaining now of all the administration’s misdeeds, where do you think the blame lies? You are governing, so you are responsible! You beat your chest three days before an election—of course you do, I understand perfectly why you do it, but why should I believe that in the next seven years you would do anything differently from what you have done during the last seven?”

Simon notes the shrewd use of the conditional but, absorbed by the delicious tagine and by more bitter memories, his concentration wavers.

Surprised by this sudden aggression, Giscard tries to parry it with his customary disdain: “Please, let us maintain an appropriate tone.” But now Mitterrand is ready to let rip: “I intend to express myself exactly as I wish.”

And he hits home: “One and a half million unemployed.”

Giscard tries to correct him: “Job seekers.”

But Mitterrand is no longer in a mood to let anything go: “I am well aware of how you can split hairs.”

He goes on: “You have had both inflation and unemployment, but what’s more—this is the flaw, this is the sickness that risks being fatal for our society: sixty percent of the unemployed are women … most of them are young people … it is a tragic attack on the dignity of man and woman…”

To start with, Simon does not pay attention. Mitterrand speaks faster and faster, he is more and more aggressive, more and more precise, more and more eloquent.

Giscard is on the ropes, but he is not about to give up without a fight. He suppresses his country squire accent and calls out his Socialist opponent: “The rise in the minimum wage—how much?” Small businesses will not survive it. All the more so since the Socialist program is irresponsible enough to plan to lower social thresholds and extend employees’ rights in companies with fewer than ten employees.

The bourgeois from Chamalières has no intention of surrendering.

The two men trade blows.

But Giscard makes a mistake when he asks Mitterrand to tell him the exchange rate of the deutsche mark: “Today’s.”

Mitterrand replies: “Here, I am not your student and you are not president of the Republic.”

Simon drains his glass of wine thoughtfully: there is something self-fulfilling, something of the performative, in that phrase …

Bayard goes off to fetch the cheese.

Giscard says: “I am against the suppression of family tax benefits … I am in favor of a return to a system of flat-rate taxation…” He reels off a whole series of measures with the precision of the good Polytechnique graduate that he is, but it’s too late: he has lost.

The debate goes on though, fierce and technical, over nuclear power, the neutron bomb, the Common Market, East-West relations, the defense budget …

Mitterrand: “Is Monsieur Giscard d’Estaing trying to say that the Socialists would be bad French people, unwilling to defend their country?”

Giscard, off screen: “Not at all.”

Mitterrand, not looking at him: “If he didn’t mean that, then his speech was pointless.”

Simon is troubled. He grabs a beer from the coffee table, wedges it under his armpit, and tries to remove the cap, but the bottle slips out and falls onto the floor. Bayard waits for Simon to explode with rage because he knows how much his friend hates it when daily life reminds him that he is disabled, so he wipes up the beer that has spilled onto the floorboards and is quick to say: “No big deal!”