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The Seventh Function of Language

As it happens, this was just an inspired guess: Simon recognized the model of rifle, a Mauser, the weapon used by elite German marksmen. (Simon has always been partial to Second World War stories.) He deduced from this that the young man had inherited it from his father and this offered two possible hypotheses: either his father had come into possession of the rifle by fighting for the Italian army alongside the Wehrmacht, or quite the opposite: he had fought against them as a partisan and taken the gun from the corpse of a German soldier. As the first hypothesis offered him no hope of being saved, he gambled on the second. But he is careful not to reveal his reasoning and, turning to Bianca, he says: “I also know you lost family members during the earthquake.” Bianca translates: “Isse sape ca è perzo à coccheruno int’o terremoto…”

The politician shouts: “Basta! Spara mò!”

But the Camorra member, o zi—“the uncle,” as the “system” calls the young men it gets to do its dirty work—listens attentively as Simon explains the role played by the man he has been ordered to protect in the tragedy of the terremoto that struck his family.

The politician protests: “Nun è over’!”

But the young “uncle” knows it is true.

Simon asks innocently: “This man killed members of your family. Does vengeance mean anything to you?”

Bianca: “Chisto a acciso e parienti tuoje. Nun te miette scuorno e ll’aiuta?”

How did Simon guess that the young “uncle” had lost his family in the terremoto? And how did he know that, one way or another, without having any proof to hand, the “uncle” would consider it plausible that the politician could be held responsible? In his critical paranoia, Simon does not want to reveal this. He does not want the novelist, if there really is a novelist, to understand how he did it. Let it not be said of him that anyone can read him like a book.

In any case, he is too busy taking care of his peroration: “People you loved were buried alive.”

Bianca no longer needs to translate. Simon no longer needs to speak.

The young man with the rifle turns to the politician, who is pale as the volcano’s clay.

He hits him in the face with the butt of his rifle and pushes him backward.

The corrupt politician, so paunchy and cultivated, overbalances and falls into the boiling mud pit. “La fangaia,” whispers Bianca, hypnotized.

While his body floats for a moment, emitting horrible noises, the politician is able, just before being swallowed by the volcano, to recognize Simon’s voice, as toneless as death, telling him: “See? It’s my tongue you should have cut off.”

And the geysers of sulfur continue to burst from the bowels of the earth, billowing toward the sky and poisoning the atmosphere.

ALSO BY LAURENT BINET

HHhH

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurent Binet was born in Paris, France, in 1972. His first novel, HHhH, was named a notable book of 2012 by The New York Times and received the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. He is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature. You can sign up for email updates here.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Sam Taylor has written for The Guardian, the Financial Times, Vogue, and Esquire, and has translated such works as Laurent Binet’s HHhH and the international bestseller The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Joël Dicker. You can sign up for email updates here.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Part I: Paris

Part II: Bologna

Part III: Ithaca

Part IV: Venice

Part V: Paris

Epilogue: Naples

Also by Laurent Binet

A Note About the Author and Translator

Farrar, Straus and Giroux