The Seventh Function of Language

Simon tries to think as he drives around Place de la République. He doesn’t know where the nearest police stations are, but he remembers attending a July 14 party in the fire station near the Bastille, in the Marais, so he piles down Boulevard des Filles-du-Calvaire and barks at Hamed: “What’s it about? What’s the title?” Hamed is pale, but manages to articulate: “The seventh function of language.” But just as he starts to recite it, the DS comes up alongside the R16, the passenger-side window opens, and Simon sees a man with a mustache pointing a pistol at him. Just before the gunshot, Simon slams on the brakes with all his strength and the DS overtakes them as the bullet leaves the gun, but a 404 behind him crashes into the back of the R16, shunting it forward until it is, once again, level with the DS, so Simon yanks the steering wheel to the left and sends the DS into the line of oncoming traffic. By some miracle, however, the DS avoids a blue Fuego coming the other way and escapes into a side road at Cirque d’Hiver, then disappears in Rue Amelot, which runs parallel to Boulevard Beaumarchais, an extension of Filles-du-Calvaire.

Simon and Hamed believe they’ve shaken off their pursuers, but Simon is still heading toward the Bastille—it doesn’t cross his mind to lose himself in the labyrinth of little streets in the Marais—so when Hamed starts to recite mechanically “There exists a function that eludes the various inalienable factors of verbal communication … and which, in a way, encompasses all of them. This function we shall call…,” at that very moment, the DS speeds out of a perpendicular street and smashes into the side of the R16, which collides with a tree in a howl of steel and glass.

Simon and Hamed are still in shock when a mustachioed man armed with a pistol and an umbrella bursts out of the smoking DS, rushes over to the R16, and pulls open the loose passenger door. He aims his pistol, straight-armed, at Hamed’s face and squeezes the trigger, but nothing happens. His pistol jams. He tries again—click click—but it doesn’t work, so he wields his closed umbrella like a sword and attempts to stick it between Hamed’s ribs, but Hamed protects himself with his arm, knocking aside the umbrella’s point, which sinks into his shoulder. The sudden pain provokes a high-pitched cry. Then, his fear turning to rage, he wrenches the umbrella from the man’s hands, releasing his safety belt in the same movement, launches himself at his aggressor, and stabs him in the chest with the umbrella.

While this is happening, the other man has gone around to the driver’s door. Simon is conscious and tries to get out of the R16, but his door is blocked—he’s trapped inside—and when the second mustachioed man aims his gun at him, he is paralyzed with terror and stares at the black hole the bullet will emerge from before perforating his head, and he has time to think “A lightning flash, then night!” when suddenly a buzzing noise fills the air and a blue Fuego crashes into the man, who is sent flying and lands in a crumpled heap on the pavement. Two Japanese men get out of the Fuego.

Simon escapes through the passenger door and crawls over to Hamed, who is slumped over the body of Mustache No. 1. He turns Hamed over and discovers, to his relief, that he is still alive. One of the Japanese men comes over and supports the wounded young gigolo’s head. He feels his pulse and says “Poison,” but Simon initially hears “poisson” and he thinks of Barthes’s analyses of Japanese food before understanding dawns on him as he looks at Hamed’s yellow complexion and yellow eyes and the spasms that shake his body, and he yells for someone to call an ambulance and Hamed tries to say something to him, he struggles to sit up a bit, and Simon leans over and asks about the function but Hamed is completely incapable of reciting a word because everything is whirling inside his head: he sees his poor childhood in Marseille again and his life in Paris, his friends, his tricks, the saunas, Saïd, Barthes, Slimane, the cinema, croissants at La Coupole, and the silken reflections of the oiled bodies that he rubbed himself against, but just before dying, while the sirens scream in the distance, he has time to whisper: “Echo.”

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