The Seventh Function of Language

Superintendent Bayard reports to the emergency room of Pitié-Salpêtrière, where he is given Roland Barthes’s room number. The case he is investigating can be summarized as follows: a man, sixty-four years old, knocked over by a laundry van, Rue des Écoles, Monday afternoon, while on a pedestrian crossing. The driver of the van, one Yvan Delahov, of Bulgarian nationality, tested positive for alcohol but was below the limit: 0.6 g, while the legal maximum is 0.8. He admitted that he was running late, delivering his shirts. Nevertheless, he claimed that he was not driving at more than 60 kilometers per hour. The victim was unconscious when the ambulance arrived, and had no papers on his person, but he was identified by one of his colleagues, a certain Michel Foucault, a lecturer at the Collège de France and a writer. The man, it turns out, was Roland Barthes, also a lecturer at the Collège de France and a writer.

So far, nothing justified sending an investigator, never mind a superintendent from the Renseignements Généraux, the French police’s intelligence service. Jacques Bayard’s presence is, in truth, down to one detail: when Roland Barthes was run over, on February 25, 1980, he had just eaten lunch with François Mitterrand, on Rue des Blancs-Manteaux.

In theory, there is no link between the lunch and the accident, nor between the Socialist candidate for the following year’s presidential election and some laundry firm’s Bulgarian driver, but it is the habit of Renseignements Généraux to gather information about everything, and especially, during this lead-up to the election campaign, about François Mitterrand. Michel Rocard is more popular in the opinion polls (Sofres survey, January 1980: “Who is the best Socialist candidate?” Mitterrand 20 percent, Rocard 55 percent), but presumably those in high places do not believe that he will dare to cross the Rubicon: the French Socialists believe in following the rules, and Mitterrand has been reelected as leader of the party. Six years ago, he gained 49.19 percent of the vote against Giscard’s 50.81 percent: the smallest margin of defeat recorded in a presidential election since the establishment of universal suffrage. So it’s impossible to dismiss the risk that a left-wing president could be elected for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic; that is why the RG have sent an investigator. Jacques Bayard’s mission consists essentially in verifying whether Barthes drank too much at Mitterrand’s apartment or, better still, whether he took part in a sadomasochistic orgy involving dogs. The Socialist leader has been involved in so few scandals in recent years that one might almost imagine he was deliberately watching his step. The fake kidnapping in the Observatory Gardens has been forgotten. The Francisque medal awarded by the Vichy regime is now taboo. They need something new. Officially, Jacques Bayard’s task is to establish the circumstances of the accident, but he doesn’t need to have spelled out what is expected of him: to find out if there is any way of damaging the Socialist candidate’s credibility by investigating and, if necessary, smearing him.

When Jacques Bayard reaches the hospital room, he discovers a line several yards long outside in the corridor. Everyone is waiting to visit the victim. There are well-dressed old people, badly dressed young people, badly dressed old people, well-dressed young people, people of all kinds, long-haired and short-haired, some North African types, more men than women. While waiting their turn, they talk among themselves, speaking in loud voices, sometimes yelling, or they read books, smoke cigarettes. Bayard is yet to fully appreciate just how famous Barthes is and must be wondering what the hell is going on. As is his prerogative, he walks to the front of the line, says “Police,” and enters the room.