The Seventh Function of Language

It’s a beautiful day outside and a black DS is parked by the curb in the empty street. Hamed enjoys the fresh air while listening to Blondie on his Walkman and doesn’t notice as the black DS starts up and slowly follows him. He crosses the Seine, passes the Jardin des Plantes, thinks that with a bit of luck there’ll be someone at the Flore to buy him a real coffee. But at the Flore there are only his gigolo colleagues and two or three old guys who aren’t in the market; Sartre is already there too, coughing and smoking his pipe, surrounded by a little circle of sweater-wearing students, so Hamed asks for a cigarette from a passerby who’s walking a sad-eyed beagle, and smokes outside the Pub Saint-Germain, which is not yet open, with some other young gigolos who, like him, look as if they didn’t get enough sleep, drank too much and smoked too much, and most of whom forgot to eat the night before. There’s Saïd, who asks him if he went to the Baleine Bleue yesterday; Harold, who tells him he almost had it off with Amanda Lear at the Palace; and Slimane, who got beaten up, but can’t remember why. They all agree that they’re bored shitless. Harold would like to see Le Guignolo in Montparnasse or Odéon, but there’s no showing before 2:00 p.m. On the opposite pavement, the two guys with mustaches have parked the DS and are drinking a coffee at the Brasserie Lipp. Their suits are crumpled as if they’d slept in their car and they still have their umbrellas with them. Hamed thinks he’d be better off going home and sleeping, but he can’t be bothered to climb the six flights of stairs, so he bums another cigarette from a black guy coming out of the metro and wonders whether he should go to the hospital or not. Saïd tells him that “Babar” is in a coma, but that he might be happy to hear his voice; apparently people in comas can hear, like plants, when you play classical music to them. Harold shows them his black-and-orange reversible bomber jacket. Slimane says he saw a Russian poet they know yesterday with a scar, and that he was even more handsome like that, and this makes them giggle. Hamed decides to go to La Coupole to see if I’m there, and walks up Rue de Rennes. The two mustaches follow him, leaving their umbrellas behind, but the waiter catches up with them, yelling, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” He brandishes the umbrellas like swords, but no one pays any attention, even though it looks like it’s going to be a sunny day. The two men get their umbrellas back and start tailing their target again. They stop outside the Cosmos, which is showing Tarkovsky’s Stalker and a Soviet war film, and a little gap opens up between them and Hamed, but he keeps pausing to look in the windows of clothing stores, so there’s no danger of them losing him.

Nevertheless, one of them goes back to fetch the DS.

18

At Rue de Bizerte, between La Fourche and Place Clichy, Gilles Deleuze receives the two investigators. Simon Herzog is thrilled to meet the great philosopher, in his own home, among his books, in an apartment that smells of philosophy and stale tobacco. The TV is on, showing tennis, and Simon notices lots of books about Leibniz scattered all over the place. They hear the poc-poc of balls. It’s Connors versus Nastase.

Officially, the two men are here because Deleuze was implicated by BHL. The interrogation begins, then, with A for Accusation.

“Monsieur Deleuze, we’ve been informed of a dispute between yourself and Roland Barthes. What was it about?” Poc-poc. Deleuze lifts a half-smoked but extinct cigarette to his mouth. Bayard notices his abnormally long fingernails. “Oh, really? No, no, I didn’t have any quarrel with Roland, beyond the fact that he supported that nonentity, the moron with the white shirt.”

Simon notices the hat hanging on the hat rack. Added to the one on the coat rack in the entrance hall and the other on the dresser, that’s a lot of hats, in various colors, similar to the one Alain Delon wore in Le Samouraï.

Poc-poc.

Deleuze settles himself more comfortably in his chair: “You see that American? He’s the anti-Borg. Well, no, the anti-Borg is McEnroe: Egyptian service, Russian soul, eh? Hmm, hmm. [He coughs.] But Connors, hitting the ball full on, that constant risk-taking, those low, skimming shots … it’s very aristocratic, too. Borg: stays on the baseline, returns the ball, well above the net, thanks to his topspin. Any prole can understand that. Borg is inventing a tennis for the proletariat. McEnroe and Connors, obviously, play like princes.”

Bayard sits down on the sofa. He has a feeling he’s going to have to listen to a lot of crap.

Simon objects: “But Connors is the archetype of the people, isn’t he? He’s the bad boy, the brat, the hooligan; he cheats, he argues, he whines; he’s a bad sport, a scrapper, a fighter, he never gives up…”

Deleuze interrupts impatiently: “Oh yes? Hmm, that’s an interesting point of view.”