The Seventh Function of Language

“Well, it’s very simple!” (Another pause, but this one is the young professor’s. Bayard does not react at all, except for a slight quivering in the fingers of his right hand. The man in mauve lizard-skin boots starts singing a Rolling Stones song a cappella.) “When you came to see me at the end of the lecture earlier, you instinctively placed yourself in a position where you wouldn’t have your back to the door or the window. You don’t learn that at police school, but in the army. The fact that this reflex has stayed with you signifies that your military experience was not limited to the usual National Service but marked you sufficiently that you have kept some unconscious habits. So you probably went to war and you’re not old enough to have fought in Indochina, so I think you were sent to Algeria. You’re in the police, so you’re bound to be right-wing, as confirmed by your hostility to students and intellectuals (which was plain from the minute we started talking), but as an Algerian veteran you considered de Gaulle’s granting of independence as a betrayal. So you refused to vote for the Gaullist candidate, Chaban, and you are too rational (a condition of your job) to give your vote to a candidate like Le Pen, who has no chance of making it through to the second round, so your vote naturally went to Giscard. You came here alone, against all the rules of the French police, where officers always go about in twos, so you must have been given special dispensation, a favor that could only have been granted for a serious reason such as the death of a colleague. The trauma is such that you cannot bear the idea of having a new partner, so your superiors allow you to operate solo. That way, you can pretend to be Maigret, who, judging from your raincoat, is a role model, consciously or not. (Superintendent Moulin, with his leather jacket, is probably too young for you to identify with, and, well, you don’t have enough money to dress like James Bond.) You wear a wedding ring on your right hand, but you still have a ring mark on your left ring finger. You presumably wished to avoid the feeling that you were repeating yourself by changing your ring hand for the second marriage, as a way of warding off fate, or something like that. But apparently it didn’t work, because your rumpled shirt, this early in the day, proves that no one is doing the ironing at your house; and, in conformity with the petit-bourgeois model, which fits your sociocultural background, if your wife were still living with you, she would not have let you leave the house wearing an unironed shirt.”

The silence that follows this speech feels as if it might last twenty-four hours.

“And my daughter?”

With an air of false modesty, Herzog waves this invitation away. “It would take too long to explain.”

In fact, he was carried away by his momentum. He just thought a daughter seemed to fit the picture he had painted.

“All right. Follow me.”

“I beg your pardon? Follow you where? Am I under arrest?”

“I’m requisitioning you. You strike me as being less stupid than the rest of these long-haired louts, and I need a translator for all this bullshit.”

“But … I’m sorry, but that’s completely impossible! I have a class to prepare for tomorrow, and I have to work on my thesis, and there’s a book I have to take back to the library…”

“Listen, you little jerk: you’re coming with me. Got it?”

“Where?”

“We’re going to interrogate the suspects.”

“The suspects? But I thought it was an accident!”

“I meant the witnesses. Let’s go.”

The horde of young fans gathered around the man in boots chants “Spinoza fucks Hegel up the arse! Spinoza fucks Hegel up the arse! Down with dialectics!” On his way out, Bayard and his new assistant stand aside to let a group of Maoists pass; apparently they have decided to beat up the Spinozists.

12

Roland Barthes lived on Rue Servandoni, next to the Saint-Sulpice church, a stone’s throw from the Jardin du Luxembourg. I am going to park where I suppose Bayard parked his 504, outside the front door of number 11. I’ll spare you the now obligatory copy-and-paste of the Wikipedia page: the private mansion designed by such-and-such Italian architect for such-and-such Breton bishop, and so on.

It’s a handsome building, nice white stone, impressive wrought-iron gate. Outside the gate, a Vinci employee is installing an entry keypad. (Vinci is not yet called Vinci and belongs to CGE, the Compagnie Générale d’Electricité, later known as Alcatel, but Simon Herzog can’t know anything about all this.) They have to cross the courtyard and take Staircase B, on the right, just after the concierge’s office. Herzog asks Bayard what they are looking for here. Bayard has no idea. They climb the stairs because there is no elevator.