A line thirty feet long has formed outside the Gratte-Ciel, which is guarded by a bulky, severe-looking black bouncer. Hamed spots Sa?d 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. Sa?d 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.
Sa?d 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 Sa?d replies: “For what?”
At the bar, the Sergeant has managed to get Bono to buy him a drink, and Slimane wonders what language the two of them are speaking. In fact, though, they do not appear to be talking to each other. The two mustachioed guys have gone to a corner of the room and ordered a bottle of Polish vodka, the one with bison grass in it, which has the effect of attracting a group of young people of various sexes to their table, with one or two B-list stars in their wake. Near the bar, Victor Pecci (dark-haired, shirt open, diamond earring) is chatting with Vitas Gerulaitis (blond, shirt open, clip earring). Slimane waves to a young anorexic girl who is talking to the singer of Taxi Girl. Just next to him, leaning against a concrete pillar designed to look like a square Doric column, Téléphone’s bassist doesn’t bat an eyelid as a girl licks his cheek, trying to explain to him how people drink tequilas in Orlando. The Sergeant and Bono have disappeared. Slimane is buttonholed by Yves Mourousi. Foucault emerges from the toilets and begins a heated conversation with one of the singers from ABBA. Sa?d shouts at Hamed: “I want some drugs, dope, blow, crack, smack, speed, poppers, whatever, but get me something, for fuck’s sake!” Hamed hands him the joint, which he grabs angrily, as if to say “This is what I think of your joint” and puts it to his mouth, sucking greedily, disgustedly on it. In their corner, the two mustaches are hitting it off with their new friends, clinking glasses and exclaiming “Na zdravie!” Jane Birkin is trying to say something to a young man who looks like he could be her brother, but the man makes her repeat it five times before shrugging helplessly. Sa?d yells at Hamed: “What’s left? The PAC? Is that the plan?” Hamed realizes Sa?d will be unbearable until he’s had his fix, so he grabs him by the shoulders and says, “Listen,” staring into his eyes as he would with someone in a state of shock or smashed out of their mind, and he takes a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. It’s an invitation for the Adamantium, a club that has just opened opposite the Rex, where a dealer he knows ought to be this evening, supplying the atmosphere for what the flyer calls, above a large drawing of a face that vaguely resembles Lou Reed, a special ’70s night. He asks Alice Sapritch for a pen and carefully writes the name of the dealer on the back of the flyer in block capitals, which he hands solemnly to Sa?d, who slides it tenderly into his inside jacket pocket and takes off immediately. In their corner, the two badly dressed men with mustaches look like they’re having a great time; they have invented a new pastis-vodka-Suze cocktail, and Inès de La Fressange has joined them at their table, but when they see Sa?d heading toward the exit, they suddenly stop laughing, politely brush aside the attentions of the drummer from Trust, who wants to kiss them while yelling “Brat! Brat!,” and stand up together.
On the Grands Boulevards, Sa?d walks determinedly, blind to the two men who are following him at a distance, armed with their umbrellas. He calculates the number of tricks he’ll have to perform in the Adamantium’s toilets in order to pay for his gram of cocaine. Maybe he’ll have to take amphetamines: they’re not as good, but not as expensive either. Though they last longer. But anyway. Five minutes to pull a client, five minutes to locate an empty cubicle, five minutes for the trick, so a quarter of an hour altogether, three tricks should be enough, maybe two if he finds a couple of really horny rich guys—and surely the Adamantium wants to attract VIPs? It doesn’t look like a cheap lesbian junkie kind of place. All being well, he’ll have the drugs in an hour. But the two men have drawn closer, and just as he is about to cross Boulevard Poissonnière, the first one points his umbrella down and stabs him in the leg through his stonewashed jeans while the second—as Sa?d cries out, startled by the sudden pain—reaches inside his jacket and purloins the flyer from the pocket. By the time he has turned around, the two men have already run to the other side of the pedestrian crossing, and Sa?d feels his leg throbbing. He also felt the furtive touch of the man’s hand on his chest, so he thinks the two men must have been pickpockets, and he checks that he still has his papers (he has no money), but his head starts to spin when he realizes they’ve stolen his invitation, and he runs after them, shouting, “My invitation! My invitation!” But he grows dizzy, feels weak, his vision blurs, his legs give way beneath him, and he stops in the middle of the road, puts his hand over his eyes, and collapses amid the blare of car horns.
Tomorrow, in Le Parisien Libéré, there will be stories about the deaths of two people: a twenty-year-old Algerian, victim of an overdose in the middle of the street, and a drug dealer tortured to death in the toilets of the Adamantium, a recently opened nightclub, which has now been closed by the authorities.
30
“Those guys are looking for something. The only question, Hamed, is why they didn’t find it.”
Bayard chews his cigarette. Simon fiddles with paper clips.
Barthes run over, Sa?d poisoned, his dealer murdered, his apartment trashed … Hamed decided it was time to go to the police, because he didn’t tell them everything he knew about Roland Barthes: during their last meeting, Barthes gave him a paper. The clatter of typewriters echoes through the offices. The Quai des Orfèvres hums with police and administrative activity.
No, the people who searched his apartment didn’t find it. No, it is not in his possession.
How can he be sure, then, that they haven’t got hold of it? Because it wasn’t hidden in his room. And for a very good reason: he burned it.
Okay.