Anastasia asks him to tell her about Barthes. Simon says that he was very fond of his mother and of Proust. Anastasia knows Proust, of course. And the great Lenin illuminated our path. Anastasia says that Barthes’s family was worried because he didn’t have his keys on him, so they wanted to change the locks, which would cost money. We were raised by Stalin to be true to the people. Simon recites this couplet to Anastasia, who informs him that, after Khrushchev’s report, the anthem’s words were altered and the reference to Stalin removed. (This did not happen until 1977, however.) Whatever, thinks Simon, we grew our army in battles … The Bulgarian stands up and puts on his jacket; he’s about to leave. Simon considers following him, but prudently decides to stick to his mission. We shall in battle decide the fate of generations. The Bulgarian looked him in the eyes when he tried to execute him. The policeman never did. It’s less dangerous, more certain that way, and he knows, now, that the cop is mixed up in the business somehow. On his way out, the Bulgarian stares at Anastasia, who smiles at him sweetly. Simon feels death brush past him. His whole body stiffens, he lowers his head. Then the policeman leaves. Anastasia smiles at him, too. Well, she’s a woman who is used to being looked at, Simon thinks. He watches the policeman head up toward Monge and knows he must react quickly if he doesn’t want to lose him, so he takes out a twenty-franc note to pay for the tea and the martini and, without waiting for his change (but pocketing the receipt), he takes the nurse by the arm and leads her out of the café. She seems a little surprised but lets him do it. “Partiya Lenina, sila narodnaya…” Simon smiles at her. He felt like getting some fresh air and he’s in a bit of a rush; would she like to accompany him? In his head, he finishes the chorus: “… Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot!” Simon’s father is a Communist, but he doesn’t see any need to mention this to the young woman, who thankfully seems amused by his slightly eccentric behavior.
They walk about thirty feet behind the policeman. Night has fallen. It’s a bit cold. Simon is still holding the nurse’s arm. If Anastasia finds his attitude strange or cavalier, she doesn’t show it. She tells him that Barthes was very popular—too popular, in her opinion. There were always people trying to get into his room. The policeman turns off toward La Mutualité. She tells him that on the day of the incident, when he was found on the floor, the three people who came in and made a scene really insulted her. The policeman goes down a small street near the square outside Notre-Dame. Simon thinks about the friendship of peoples. He explains to Anastasia that Barthes was renowned for his ability to detect the symbolic codes that govern our behavior. Anastasia nods, frowning. The policeman comes to a halt outside a heavy wooden door, set just below the pavement. By the time Simon and Anastasia get there, he has disappeared inside. Simon stops. He still hasn’t let go of Anastasia’s arm. She says nothing, having noticed the rising tension in the air. The two young people look at the iron gate, the stone staircase, the wooden door. Anastasia frowns again.
A couple that Simon did not hear approaching walk around them, open the gate, descend the steps, and ring the doorbell. The door is half-opened, and a pasty-faced man of indeterminate age, a cigarette in his mouth, wool scarf wrapped around his neck, stares at the couple and then lets them through.
Simon wonders: “What would I do if I were in a novel?” He would ring the doorbell, obviously, and walk in with Anastasia on his arm.
Inside, there would be a secret gambling den. He’d sit at the policeman’s table and challenge him to a game of poker while Anastasia sipped a Bloody Mary beside him. He would ask the man in a knowing voice what had happened to his finger. And the man, equally knowing, would reply threateningly: “Hunting accident.” Then Simon would win the hand with a full house, aces over queens.
But life is not a novel, he thinks, and they carry on walking as if nothing had happened. When he turns around at the end of the street, however, he sees another three people ring the doorbell and enter. Equally, he does not see the dented Fuego parked on the opposite pavement. Anastasia starts telling him about Barthes again: when he was conscious, he asked for his jacket several times, as if he were looking for something. Does Simon have any idea what it might have been? Realizing that his mission is over for tonight, Simon feels as if he is waking up and, finding himself standing next to the young nurse, he is disconcerted. He stammers that, maybe, if she’s free, they could have a drink together. Anastasia smiles (and Simon is unable to interpret the sincerity of this smile): isn’t that what they just did? Simon, piteously, suggests they have another drink, another time. Anastasia stares deeply into his eyes, smiles again, as if upping the ante on her natural smile, and tells him simply: “Maybe.” Simon takes this as a rejection, and he is probably right because, repeating “another time,” she leaves without giving him her phone number.
In the street, behind him, the Fuego’s headlights come on.
41
“Approach, great speakers, fine rhetoricians, deep-lunged orators! Take your place in the lair of madness and reason, the theater of thought, the academy of dreams, the school of logic! Come and hear the clamor of words, admire the interlacing of verbs and adverbs, taste the venomous circumlocutions of the duelers of discourse! Today, for this new session, the Logos Club is offering not one digital combat, not two, but three, yes, three digital combats, my friends! And now, to whet your appetite, the first joust pits two rhetoricians against each other with the following thorny geopolitical question: Will Afghanistan be the Soviets’ Vietnam?
“Glory to the logos, my friends! Long live dialectics! Let the party begin! May the verb be with you!”
42
Tzvetan Todorov is a skinny guy in glasses with a big tuft of curly hair on the top of his head. He is also a linguistics researcher who has lived in France for twenty years, a disciple of Barthes who worked on literary genres (fantasy, in particular), a specialist in rhetoric and semiology.
Bayard has come to interrogate him, at Simon’s suggestion, because he was born in Bulgaria.
Having grown up in a totalitarian country evidently aided the development of a very strong humanist conscience, which comes out even in his linguistic theories. For example, he believes that rhetoric can truly blossom only in a democracy, because it requires a venue for debate that, by definition, neither a monarchy nor a dictatorship can offer. As proof, he cites the fact that in imperial Rome, and later, in feudal Europe, the science of discourse abandoned its objective of persuasion, focusing not on the receiver’s interpretation but on the spoken word itself. Speeches were no longer expected to be effective, simply beautiful. Political issues were replaced by purely aesthetic issues. In other words, rhetoric became poetic. (This is what is known as the seconde rhétorique.)
He explains to Bayard, in immaculate French but with a still very noticeable accent, that the Bulgarian secret services (the KDC), as far as he knows, are active and dangerous. They are supported by the KGB and are therefore in a position to mount sophisticated operations. Assassinating the pope? Maybe not, but they are certainly capable of eliminating individuals whose existence is inconvenient. That said, he does not see why they would be involved in Barthes’s accident. What possible interest could they have in a French literary critic? Barthes was not political and had never had any contact with Bulgaria. Sure, he went to China, but you couldn’t say he returned a Maoist, any more than he did an anti-Maoist. He was neither a Gide nor an Aragon. When he came back from China, Barthes’s anger, Todorov remembers, was focused mainly on the quality of Air France’s in-flight meals: he even thought of writing an article on the subject.
Bayard knows that Todorov has pinpointed the central difficulty of his investigation: discovering a motive. But he also knows that in the absence of any other information he must make do with the objective evidence at his disposal—a pistol, an umbrella—and, even though in theory he sees no geopolitical implications in Barthes’s murder, he continues to interrogate the Bulgarian critic about the secret services of his country of origin.
Who is in charge of them? A Colonel Emil Kristoff. His reputation? Not especially liberal, but not particularly well versed in semiology either. Bayard has the unhappy impression that he is going farther down a dead end. After all, if the two killers had been from Marseille or Yugoslavia or Morocco, what would he have deduced from that? Without knowing it, Bayard is thinking like a structuralist: he wonders if the Bulgarian connection is relevant. He mentally reviews the other clues that he has not yet investigated. Just to be sure, he asks:
“Does the name Sophia mean anything to you?”
“Well, yes, it’s the city where I was born.”
Sofia.
So the Bulgarian lead really is a lead, after all.
At this moment, a beautiful young Russian woman in a dressing gown makes her appearance and crosses the room, discreetly greeting the visitor. Bayard thinks he can detect an English accent. So maybe this bespectacled egghead doesn’t lead such a boring life. He notes automatically the silent, erotic complicity between the Anglophone woman and the Bulgarian critic, the sign of a relationship that he assesses—not that he cares, it’s just a professional reflex—as being either nascent or adulterous or both.
While he’s at it, he asks Todorov if “echo,” the last word pronounced by Hamed, means anything to him. And the Bulgarian replies: “Yes, have you heard from him recently?”
Bayard does not understand.
“Umberto. How is he?”
43