Sunday, 15 May
I’d always loved election night. I’d go so far as to say it’s my favourite TV show, after the World Cup finals. Obviously there was less suspense in elections, since, according to their peculiar narrative structure, you knew from the first minutes how they would end, but the wide range of actors (the political scientists, the pundits, the crowds of supporters cheering or in tears at their party headquarters … and the politicians, in the heat of the moment, with their thoughtful or passionate declarations) and the general excitement of the participants really gave you the feeling, so rare, so precious, so telegenic, that history was coming to you live.
To avoid a repeat of the last debate, which I’d spent dealing with my microwave, I bought taramasalata, hummus, blini and salmon roe. The day before, I’d stocked the fridge with two bottles of Rully. As soon as David Pujadas went on the air at 7.50, I knew this election night would be top-notch and that I was about to experience some exceptional TV. Pujadas was always very professional, of course, but there was no mistaking the gleam in his eye: the results, which he already knew, and which in ten minutes he’d be allowed to divulge, had come as a shock. The French political landscape was about to be turned upside down.
‘Tonight will go down in history,’ he began, as they reported the first returns. The National Front was way ahead, with 34.1 per cent of the vote. That part was more or less expected. It was what the polls had said all month — Marine Le Pen had gained only a few points in the last weeks of the campaign. But behind her, the Socialists had 21.8 per cent and the Muslim Brotherhood 21.7 per cent — they were neck and neck. With such a slim margin, they could easily switch positions, and probably would several times before the night was over: so far only the polling stations in Paris and the other big cities had reported. With 12.1 per cent of the vote, the conservative Union for a Popular Movement was clearly out of the running.
The UMP candidate, Jean-François Copé, didn’t appear on-screen until 9.50. Haggard, badly shaven, tie askew, he looked even more than usual as if he’d just been through an interrogation. With pained humility, he agreed that the conservatives had suffered a setback, a serious setback, and that he took full responsibility, though he didn’t go so far as to say he was retiring from politics, like Lionel Jospin in 2002. As for which candidate the UMP would support in the run-off, he said only that the executive bureau of the party would meet in a week to make their determination.
At ten o’clock neither the Socialists nor the Muslim Brotherhood had pulled ahead. The latest results showed them in a dead heat. This state of uncertainty spared the Socialist candidate from having to give what would have been a difficult speech. Was it really all over for the two parties that had dominated French political life since the birth of the Fifth Republic? The prospect was so amazing that, as the commentators blew by, you could see they all secretly wanted it to happen — even David Pujadas, whom no one suspected of being especially friendly to Islam, and who was said to be friends with Manuel Valls. Christophe Barbier, flashing around his trademark red scarf, was without question the star pundit of the night: he appeared on one channel after another so fast that he seemed to enjoy the gift of ubiquity, and kept the scarf trick going until a very late hour, easily eclipsing the ashen Renaud Dély, whose Observateur had failed to predict the upset, and even Yves Thréard, of Le Figaro, who usually put up a better fight.
It was just after midnight, as I finished my second bottle of Rully, that they announced the final results: Mohammed Ben Abbes, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, had come in second with 22.3 per cent of the vote. With 21.9 per cent, the Socialists were out. Manuel Valls gave a short, very sober speech congratulating the two winners. Pending a meeting of the Socialist leadership, he withheld any endorsement.
Wednesday, 18 May
When I went in to teach my class, I finally felt that something might happen, that the political system I’d grown up with, which had been showing cracks for so long, might suddenly explode. I don’t know exactly where the feeling came from. Maybe it was the attitude of my postgrad students: even the most apathetic and apolitical looked tense, anxious. They were obviously searching their smartphones and tablets for any news they could find. Or at any rate, they were more checked out than ever. It may also have been the way the girls in burkas carried themselves. They moved slowly and with new confidence, walking down the very middle of the hallway, three by three, as if they were already in charge.
I was equally struck by my colleagues’ lack of concern. They seemed completely unworried, as if none of this had anything to do with them. It only confirmed what I’d always thought — that, for all their education, university professors can’t even imagine political developments having any effect on their careers: they consider themselves untouchable.
At the end of the day, as I turned down rue de Santeuil on my way to the metro, I caught sight of Marie-Françoise. I almost ran to catch up with her, and after a quick hello I asked her straight out: ‘Do you think our colleagues are right to be so calm? Are our jobs really that safe?’
‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, with a gnome-like grimace that did nothing to improve her looks, and lit a Gitane. ‘I was starting to think everyone in the whole fucking place was asleep. Our jobs are certainly not safe, not by a long shot, and I know whereof I speak …’
She considered for a moment, then replied.
‘My husband works at the DGSI.’ I gazed at her in wonder. It was the first time, in all the ten years I’d known her, that I realised she had once been a woman — that she still was a woman, in a sense — and that once upon a time a man had felt desire for this squat, stumpy, almost frog-like little thing. Fortunately, she misread my look. ‘I know,’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘Everyone’s always surprised … You do know what the DGSI is, don’t you?’
‘Intelligence, right? Kind of like the DST?’
‘There is no DST any more. It merged with police intelligence to form the DCRI, which then became the DGSI.’
‘Your husband’s a kind of spy?’
‘Not really, the spies are mainly at the DGSE, in the Ministry of Defence. The DGSI is part of the Ministry of the Interior.’
‘So they’re like secret police?’
She smiled again, this time more discreetly, which was an improvement. ‘They don’t call themselves that, officially — but basically, yes. One of their main jobs is to keep an eye on extremist movements, the ones that could turn terrorist. You should come by the house for a drink, my husband can tell you all about it. At least, he’ll tell you as much as is allowed. I can never keep track of what’s classified. In any case, big changes are in store after the elections, and believe me, they’ll feel them at school.’
They lived in Square Vermenouze, a five-minute walk from the university. Her husband didn’t look anything like my idea of a secret agent (but what had I imagined, after all? Some kind of Corsican, I guess, part gangster, part aperitif distributor). He was a neat, smiling man, with a skull so smooth it looked polished. He wore a tartan smoking jacket, but I could see him in a bow tie at the office, possibly a waistcoat. Everything about him exuded an old-fashioned elegance. From the moment I saw him, I got an impression of nearly abnormal brain power. He was probably the only graduate of the École Normale ever to have passed the entrance exam for the police academy. ‘As soon as I received my commission, I asked to be assigned to police intelligence. It was a calling, you might say,’ he added with a little smile, as if secret operations were a sort of innocent hobby.