Simon runs every traffic light he sees, honking his horn constantly, so much so that it sounds like an air-raid siren warning the Tenth Arrondissement of an imminent bombardment. Behind, the DS stays close to him, like a fighter plane that’s locked an enemy plane in its crosshairs. Simon hits a 505, bounces off a van, skids onto the pavement, almost runs over two or three passersby, and enters Place de la République. Behind him, the DS weaves between obstacles like a snake. Simon slaloms through traffic, avoiding pedestrians, and yells at Hamed: “The text! Recite the text!” But Hamed can’t concentrate; his hand is clinging to the handle above the window and not a single word escapes his lips.
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, Sa?d, 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.”
31
When Jacques Bayard arrives, the police have secured the area but the Japanese have disappeared and so has Mustache No. 2, the man knocked over by the Fuego. Hamed’s body is still laid out flat on the pavement alongside his attacker’s, whose umbrella is sticking out of his chest. Simon Herzog is smoking a cigarette, a blanket wrapped around him. No, he has nothing. No, he doesn’t know who those Japanese guys are. They didn’t say anything, they just saved his life and then left. With the Fuego. Yes, the second mustachioed man is probably injured. He must be hard as nails to have gotten up after being hit like that in the first place. Jacques Bayard contemplates the two wrecked cars, perplexed. Why a DS? Production of that model ended in 1975. The Fuego, on the other hand, is so new that it’s fresh from the factory and is not yet on sale. Someone draws an outline in chalk around Hamed’s corpse. Bayard lights a Gitane. So the gigolo’s calculation was wrong: the information he possessed did not protect him. Bayard concludes that the men who killed him did not want to make him talk but to shut him up. Why? Simon tells him Hamed’s last words. Bayard asks what he knows about this seventh function of language. Still in shock, but professorial by instinct, Simon explains: “The functions of language are linguistic categories that were once the subject of a theory by a great Russian linguist named…”
Roman Jakobson.
Simon goes no further in the lecture he was about to give. He remembers the book on Barthes’s desk, Essays in General Linguistics by Roman Jakobson, opened at the page on the functions of language, and the sheet of notes that served as a bookmark.
He explains to Bayard that the document for which four people have already been killed was perhaps right under their noses when they searched the apartment on Rue Servandoni, and pays no heed to the policeman standing behind them who then walks away to make a telephone call once he’s heard enough. He cannot see that the policeman has a finger missing on his left hand.
Bayard, too, thinks he’s heard enough, even if he still doesn’t really understand this thing about Jakobson; he pushes Simon inside his 504 and zooms off toward the Latin Quarter, escorted by a van full of uniformed officers, including the one with the severed finger. They arrive in Place Saint-Sulpice, sirens howling, and that is probably a mistake.
There is an entry code beside the heavy double doors, and they have to hammer on the window of the concierge’s office. She opens it for them, stupefied.
No, nobody has asked to see the attic room. Nothing special has happened since the installation of the entry code by a Vinci technician last month. Yes, the one with the Russian accent, or maybe it was Yugoslav, or maybe Greek. Actually, it’s funny, he came back today. He said he wanted to do an estimate for installing an intercom. No, he didn’t ask for the key to the seventh-floor room, why? It’s hanging on the board, with the others, look. Yes, he went upstairs not five minutes ago.
Bayard takes the key and climbs the stairs two by two, followed by half a dozen policemen. Simon remains downstairs with the concierge. On the seventh floor, the door to the attic room is locked. Bayard inserts the key in the lock, but it’s obstructed by something: another key, on the inside. The key that was not found on Barthes, thinks Bayard, as he bangs on the door and shouts, “Police!” They hear a noise inside. Bayard orders the door smashed down. The desk looks intact, but the book is no longer there, nor is the page of notes, and there is nobody in the room. The windows are shut.