The Seventh Function of Language

After four or five days, Hamed finally decides to go home, at least to check whether he might have a clean T-shirt lying around somewhere, so he drags himself up the six or seven flights of stairs that lead to his attic room, where he can’t take a shower because there’s no bathroom but he can at least collapse on his bed for a few hours to purge himself of physical and nervous fatigue and the vanity of the world and existence. But when he turns the key in the lock, he feels something odd and notices that the door has been forced, so he gently pushes it open—it creaks discreetly—and finds his room in a state of chaos: the bed turned over, the drawers pulled out, the baseboard torn off, his clothes spread all over the floor, his fridge open with a bottle of Banga left intact in the door, the mirror over the sink broken into several pieces, his cans of Gini and 7 Up scattered to the far corners of the room, his collection of Yacht Magazine torn out page by page as well as his comic-book history of France (the volume on the French Revolution and the one on Napoleon seem to have disappeared), his dictionary and his books thrown haphazardly around, the tape from his music cassettes unraveled and his stereo partially dismantled.

Hamed respools a Supertramp tape, puts it in the cassette player, and presses PLAY to see if it still works. Then he collapses onto his upside-down mattress and falls asleep, fully clothed, door wide open, to the opening chords of “The Logical Song,” thinking that when he was young he, too, thought that life was a miracle, beautiful and magical, but that, while things have certainly changed, he doesn’t yet feel very responsible nor very radical.

29

A line thirty feet long has formed outside the Gratte-Ciel, which is guarded by a bulky, severe-looking black bouncer. Hamed spots Saïd and Slimane with a tall, wiry lad known as “the Sergeant.” Together, they skip the line, greeting the bouncer by name and telling him that Roland, no, Michel, is waiting for them inside. The doors of the Gratte-Ciel open for them. Inside, they are assailed by a strange smell, like a mix of curry, cinnamon, vanilla, and fishing port. They meet Jean-Paul Goude, who leaves his belt in the cloakroom, and they can tell instantly that he is wasted. Saïd leans toward Hamed to tell him, no, the Giscard years must come to an end, the cost of living is too high, but he has to get some dope. Slimane sees the young Bono Vox at the bar. On the stage, a gothic reggae group is playing a vulgar, ethereal set. The Sergeant is nonchalantly wiggling his hips to the drum machine, behind the beat, watched by the curious, miserable-looking Bono. Yves Mourousi talks to Grace Jones’s stomach. Brazilian dancers slalom between the customers, executing the fluid movements of capoeira. A former minister of some standing under the Fourth Republic tries to touch the breasts of a young, almost famous actress. And there is always that procession of boys and girls wearing live lobsters on their heads or walking them on leashes, the lobster being, for reasons unknown, the fashionable animal in Paris, 1980.

At the entrance, two badly dressed men with mustaches slip the bouncer a five-franc note and he lets them in. They leave their umbrellas in the cloakroom.

Saïd asks Hamed about drugs. Hamed gestures to relax and rolls a joint on a coffee table shaped like a naked woman on all fours, like the one in the Moloko Bar in A Clockwork Orange. Next to Hamed, on a corner sofa, Alice Sapritch takes a drag through her cigarette holder, an imperial smile on her lips, a boa around her neck (a real boa, thinks Hamed, but he also thinks it is a stupid affectation). She leans toward them and yells: “So, my darlings, is this a good night?” Hamed smiles as he lights his joint, but Saïd replies: “For what?”