The Seventh Function of Language

But the man is not going in that direction. He wants to escape by car, but two policemen left on guard outside prevent him from picking up his vehicle, parked at the end of the street, so he runs toward the Jardin du Luxembourg while behind him the two officers shout their first warnings. Through the double doors, Bayard shouts, “Don’t shoot!” He wants the man alive, of course. When his men finally manage to free the mechanism, by pressing on the button embedded in the wall, the guy has disappeared but Bayard has sounded the alert. He knows that the area is being sealed off and the man won’t get far.

The man runs through the Jardin du Luxembourg and he can hear the policemen blowing their whistles behind him, but the passersby, used to joggers and the park guards’ whistles, pay no notice until he finds himself face-to-face with a cop. The cop tries to tackle him, but the man runs smack into him, like a rugby player, knocks him down, steps over him, and continues running. Where is he going? Does he know? He changes direction. One thing is sure: he has to get out of the park before all the exits are blocked.

Bayard is now in the van, giving orders by radio. Police officers have fanned out around the Latin Quarter. The fugitive is surrounded. He’s screwed.

But this man is resourceful. He hurtles down Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, a narrow one-way street, which prevents any cars from following him. For some reason known only to him, he must cross over to the Right Bank. Coming out of Rue Bonaparte, he runs onto the Pont-Neuf, but that is where his race ends, because at the other end of the bridge, police vans block the way, and when he turns around he sees Bayard’s van cutting off his retreat. He’s trapped like a rat. Even if he jumps in the river, he won’t get far, but maybe he has one last card to play, he thinks.

He climbs onto the parapet and holds out a piece of paper he has taken from his jacket. Bayard approaches him, alone. The man says one step farther and he’ll throw the paper in the Seine. Bayard stops dead, as if he’s just walked into an invisible wall. “Calm down.”

“Don’t come any nearrrer!”

“What do you want?”

“A car with a full tank of gas. If not, I thrrrow the document in the rrriver.”

“Go ahead, throw it in.”

The man’s arm twitches. Bayard shivers, in spite of himself. “Wait!” He knows that this scrap of paper might solve the mystery of at least four deaths. “Let’s talk, okay? What’s your name?” Simon has joined him. At both ends of the bridge, the police have the man in their sights. Out of breath, chest wheezing from the effort, he moves his other hand to his pocket. At that precise instant, there is the sound of a gunshot. The man swivels. Bayard yells: “Don’t shoot!” The man drops like a stone, but the paper flutters around above the river, and Bayard and Simon, who have rushed to the stone balustrade, lean over to watch the graceful curves of its erratic descent as if hypnotized. At last, it lands delicately on the water. And floats. Bayard, Simon, and the policemen who have instinctively understood that this document was their real objective, all stare, petrified, breath held, as the sheet of paper drifts along with the current.

Then Bayard tears himself from this contemplative torpor and, deciding that all hope is not yet lost, yanks off his jacket, his shirt, and his trousers, steps over the parapet, hesitates for a few seconds. And jumps. Disappears in a huge splash.

When he resurfaces, he is about sixty feet from the paper and, from up on the bridge, Simon and the policemen start shouting at him, all at the same time, indicating which direction to take, like supporters at a football match. Bayard starts swimming, as hard as he can. He tries to get closer, but the paper is carried away by the current. Still, the gap is gradually reduced. He’s close now, he’s going to catch it, only another ten feet, and then they disappear under the bridge and Simon and the policemen run to the other side and wait for them to reappear, and when they reappear the shouting starts up again. Three more feet and he’ll have it, but at that moment a riverboat passes, creating little waves that submerge the paper just as Bayard is about to reach out and grab it. The paper sinks, so Bayard dives after it, and for a few seconds all they can see is the pair of underpants he’s wearing, poking up out of the water. When he resurfaces, he is clutching the soaked paper in his hand and he swims doggedly over to the bank amid cheers and hurrahs.

But when he hauls himself onto the grass, he opens his hand and realizes that the sheet of paper is now merely a shapeless paste and that the writing has been dissolved because Barthes wrote with a fountain pen. This isn’t CSI and there will not be any way of making the text reappear: no magic scanner, no ultraviolet light. The document is lost forever.