“Too bad,” he said, very curtly.
She was sorry she’d given her opinion about Dante. She had almost forgotten she was at their mercy. At his mercy. He terrified her. He was not like the others. Not like the ones you see on TV. The ones who had burned cars for two months. Those people were far from her world, far from her. This one was getting too close to be harmless, like the sun to the earth. He was in her home! In her home, my God! She’d been so dumb she felt like crying.
He interrupted her thoughts and began speaking again.
“Yes, madame, hell exists. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it in those devastated farms where everything had been looted, destroyed, trampled on. I’m not talking about human beings, I’m talking about objects, madame, just objects. Believe me, they have a soul. Like you and me.”
He was preventing her from thinking. He was trying to distract her — worse, he was lecturing her. He horrified her now.
“So leave the paintings and take my jewels, take all of them. They’re in the safe, behind the Dubuffet you like so much. The key is stuck to the bottom of the frame.”
She was on the verge of hysteria.
“That is not very prudent, madame. Anybody could find it there.”
Rachid came back into the living room. He wasn’t alone anymore. When she saw him, Madame Hauvet began blubbering softly.
“Silence!”
He was accompanied by a pale girl. For Big Brother, she seemed to have come out of a Modigliani. For Rachid, she was just kind of skinny and tall. Above all, she was scared to death.
Her whole body was trembling, her eyes still foggy with sleep. She couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“That’s my darling granddaughter!”
The old woman was sobbing now.
“Shut the fuck up!”
She stopped sobbing and Big Brother turned the portrait over, removed the key, and opened the safe. Inside, an ebony box: He lifted the cover. Necklaces, bracelets, several pairs of earrings. He examined the contents under the light of a lamp and closed the little box of black wood again.
“I thought I could trust you,” he said. “You’re really disappointing me.”
“I don’t understand... no, I don’t understand.”
But she did understand. The jewelry was fake. That’s why she wasn’t protecting it. The Dubuffet was a copy as well. Big Brother knew that too. But he liked to give any human being a second chance, even a third one. In Bosnia he had learned that men and women in some places never even got the slightest chance.
He walked up to the old lady, turned her over on her belly, grabbed her hand, and cut off her little finger with the large knife. He threw it onto the white carpet. A spot of blood began flowering like a rose. He had stuck her head into the couch cushion to stifle her screams.
Rachid hardly had a chance to hold her up in his arms — the girl who looked like a Modigliani model fainted. He laid her gently out on the carpet.
When the old woman stopped moving, Big Brother turned her over so she wouldn’t get smothered to death. When she came to, he said, “Now let’s stop playing games. Where are the jewels?”
The old woman was trying to speak through bloody lips. She had bitten them out of pain. Pink bubbles welled up in her mouth and exploded on her chin. Big Brother had to put his face up close to hear her tell him where the jewels were.
He got up and this time walked over to a little writing desk. He ignored the only visible drawer, kneeled down, and stuck his head under the desk. He groped around and found it. He slid a little wooden panel and the precious objects tumbled onto the carpet. He picked them up and shoved them into the pocket of his Hugo Boss jacket. What cop would search a man dressed like him? Especially if he was coming back home in a taxi.
“I have some bad news,” he said to the old lady. “My friend and I cannot allow ourselves to be recognized. By anybody.”
“Oh my God! Oh, my God! I beg you. Please, I’m begging you. Let me live, please! I won’t say a word. I swear to you. I’m imploring you. I don’t deserve to die.”
“No one deserves to die, madame. And yet, one day or another... And just think: You have lived well up to now. You have never wanted for anything.”
“I implore you, for the love of God, take her! Take her. Take my granddaughter. Isn’t she beautiful? You’ll like her a lot, I’m sure of it. Please, please don’t kill me. I don’t deserve it. I’m giving her to you, take her!”
This kind of reaction no longer surprised him. It was, after all, a very human reaction. An old she-bear would have reacted differently, but not a grandmother.
“She deserves to live too,” he said very gently. “She’s so young. Consider what a long way she has to go in life. All the good things she can do for humanity. And believe me, I know something about humanity.”
The old woman began to spit blood.
“She’ll be of no use to anybody. She’s a slut. A lousy bitch.
She’s, she’s... she’s a whore, that’s what she is.”
Big Brother had heard enough and took care of the old woman.
The girl was still lying on the carpet, languid as an odalisque. She was beautiful. And she was sleeping like a princess in a fairy tale. Big Brother was happy she hadn’t seen all that. He was happy for her. Perhaps she would even sleep through her own night, a night without end, a night without glory.
Berthet’s leaving[6]
by Jérôme Leroy
Gare du Nord
1
Berthet and Counselor Morland are having lunch at Chez Michel on rue de Belzunce. Berthet and Counselor Morland have ordered fricassée of langoustines with cèpes as their first course, and grouse with foie gras as follow-up operations.
It’s autumn.
Berthet and Counselor Morland are men of the world before. Berthet and Morland favor only restaurants with seasonal products, and Berthet and Morland still believe in History, loyalty, and things of that nature.
Berthet and Counselor Morland know that they are out of step, but that’s just how it is. Berthet and Morland were born before the first oil crisis, and Morland way way before. Berthet and Morland are among those Europeans over forty who’ve been spared the microchip submission implant.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland to find a temperature of twenty-seven degrees Celsius normal on the third of November.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland that the market economy and its related carnage are not one big lie.
It would never occur to Berthet or Morland to eat sandwiches standing up or to listen to MP3 players plugged directly into their brains.
Berthet and Morland are informed of the coming end of the world.
Sometimes Counselor Morland jokes. This is rare for this high-ranking operative; also Protestant. Very rare. But it happens.
“Berthet,” Morland says, “I have a mistress who’s not even thirty, and you know, sometimes I feel like I’m gonna find myself in a USB port instead of her pussy.”
Berthet says nothing. Berthet is nervous. Berthet does not know Morland’s mistress and Berthet is not even sure Mor-land has a mistress.
What Berthet knows about Morland:
he has a cover as a European bureaucrat;
he has a tall, fuckable wife who teaches philosophy at the French high school in Brussels;
he has no children;
he has twenty-five years’ service in The Unit, at a very high level;
he has a predilection that does him credit for the literature of the unlucky, forgotten ’50s writers Henri Calet and Raymond Guérin;
he has a slightly less honorable predilection for the complete repertoire of the singer Sacha Distel;
he’s Berthet’s boss;