The Seventh Function of Language

The evening draws to a close. Lacan’s mistress will go home with BHL. The Bulgarian linguist will accompany the Canadian feminist. The Chinese woman will go back alone to her delegation. Sollers will fall asleep and dream about the orgy that didn’t happen. Out of nowhere, Lacan makes this observation, in a tone of infinite weariness: “It’s curious how a woman, when she ceases being a woman, can crush the man she has under her thumb … Yes, crush him. For his own good, of course.” There is embarrassed silence among the other guests. Sollers declares: “The king is he who wears on his sleeve the most vivid experience of castration.”

40

This thing about the severed fingers must be cleared up, so Bayard decides to put a tail on the policeman who shot the Bulgarian on the Pont-Neuf. But as he has the uneasy feeling that the police force has been infiltrated by an enemy whose identity—and, in truth, whose nature—he knows nothing about, he doesn’t ask his superiors to organize this tail, but tells Simon to do it. As usual, Simon protests, but this time he thinks he has a valid objection: that policeman saw him on the Pont-Neuf; Simon was with the others when Bayard dived into the Seine, and then the two of them were seen together, deep in discussion, after he emerged from the water.

Never mind. He can disguise himself.

How?

They’ll cut his hair and get him out of those rags that make him look like an overgrown student.

This is too much. He’s been fairly easygoing up to now, but Simon is categorical: it’s absolutely out of the question.

Bayard, who knows about public employment, brings up the thorny question of transfers. What will become of young Simon (or not so young, actually; how old is he?) once he has finished his thesis? He could easily be transferred to a secondary school in Bobigny. Or maybe they could help get him tenure at Vincennes?

Simon doesn’t believe things work like that in National Education, and that string-pulling by Giscard in person (especially Giscard!) will not help him get a job at Vincennes (the university of Deleuze, of Balibar!), but he is not entirely sure. On the other hand, he is sure that a transfer to somewhere unappealing as a form of punishment is perfectly possible. So he goes to the hairdresser and gets his hair cut—short enough that he feels genuinely uneasy as he contemplates the results, as if he were a stranger to himself, recognizing his face but not the identity that he has unwittingly constructed, year after year—and he lets the Ministry of the Interior pay for a suit and tie. Despite not being cheap, the suit is rather so-so, inevitably a bit big in the shoulders, a little short at the ankles, and Simon has to learn not only to tie his tie but to make the wide part cover the narrow part neatly. And yet, once his metamorphosis is complete, standing in front of the mirror, he surprises himself by feeling—beyond that sensation of strangeness mixed with repulsion—a sort of curiosity and interest in this image of himself, himself without being him, a him from another life, a him who decided to work in a bank or in insurance, or for a government organization, or as a diplomat. Instinctively, Simon adjusts the knot of his tie and, beneath the cuffs of his jacket, pulls at the sleeves of his shirt. He is ready for his mission. And the part of him that appreciates the playful aspects of existence decides to try enjoying this little adventure.

Outside the Quai des Orfèvres he waits for the policeman with the missing finger to finish his shift, and he smokes a Lucky Strike paid for by France, because the other upside of being under government orders is that he has the right to an expense account. So he has kept the receipt from the tobacconist (three francs).