The supermarket was strangely empty, and I filled my trolley fast, in a surge of enthusiasm mixed with fear. For some reason, the word curfew crossed my mind. Some of the cashiers, lined up behind their deserted checkout counters, were listening to transistor radios. The protest was still going on, so far without any incidents of violence. That would come later, I thought, once the crowd began to disperse.
The storm broke, violently, the moment I left the shopping centre. Back at home I heated up some beef tongue in a Madeira reduction — rubbery, but edible — and turned on the TV. The fighting had begun. You could make out groups of masked men roaming around with assault rifles and automatic weapons. Windows had been broken, here and there cars were on fire, but the images, shot in the pelting rain, were of such poor quality it was impossible to get a clear idea of who was doing what.
III
Sunday, 29 May
I woke around four in the morning, lucid and alert. I took my time packing, assembling a small pharmacy and enough changes of clothing to last me a month. I even found the walking shoes — American, high-tech, never worn — that I’d bought a year before, when I thought I might take up hiking. I also packed my laptop, a stash of protein bars, an electric kettle and instant coffee. By five thirty I was ready to go. I had no trouble starting the car or getting onto the Périphérique. By six o’clock I was almost in Rambouillet. I had no plan, no exact destination, just a very vague sense that I ought to head south-west — that if a civil war should break out in France, it would take a while to reach the south-west. I knew next to nothing about the south-west, really, only that it was a region where they ate duck confit, and duck confit struck me as incompatible with civil war. Though of course, I could be wrong.
I didn’t actually know much about France. After spending my childhood and adolescence in Maisons-Lafitte, a bourgeois suburb par excellence, I moved to Paris and never left. I had never really visited this country of which I was, somewhat theoretically, a citizen. It was something I’d always meant to do, hence the VW Touareg, which I bought around the same time I bought those hiking boots. It was a powerful car. With its turbo-diesel V-8 and 4.2-litre common rail direct fuel injection, it could go 240 kilometres per hour. Although it was designed for motorway driving, it also had real off-road capabilities. When I bought it, I must have been imagining weekend expeditions, long drives down country roads, but nothing like that ever happened. I was content to spend my Sundays browsing the rare-book market in Parc Georges Brassens. And sometimes, I’m happy to say, I had spent my Sundays fucking — Myriam, mainly. My life would have been truly tedious and dreary if I hadn’t, every now and then, fucked Myriam. I pulled over at a service station called Mille Étangs — Thousand Ponds — just after the exit to Châteauroux. I bought a chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie and a large coffee at La Croissanterie, then I got back in the car to have my breakfast and think about the past, or nothing at all. The car park dominated the surrounding countryside, which was deserted except for a couple of cows — Charolais, probably. The sun was up now, but blankets of fog still drifted over the lower meadows. The landscape was rolling and quite beautiful, though there weren’t any ponds — or brooks, for that matter. To think about the future seemed unwise.
I turned on the car radio. The elections were off to a normal start; François Hollande had already voted in his ‘fiefdom’ of Corrèze. Turnout, as far as anyone could tell this early in the day, was high, higher than in the last two presidential run-offs. Some pundits argued that a high turnout favoured the ‘ruling party’ against the challengers. Others, just as well regarded, thought the opposite. For the moment, in other words, nobody had any idea what the high turnout meant, and it was a little early for listening to the radio. I turned it off and pulled out of the car park.
Not long afterwards, I saw I was low on petrol — almost down to a quarter tank. I ought to have filled up at the service station. I also noticed that the road was strangely empty. Motorways are never crowded on Sunday morning. That’s the moment when society takes a deep breath and decongests, when its members give themselves the brief illusion of an individual existence. Even so, I’d driven a hundred kilometres without passing another car. The only vehicle I’d passed was a Bulgarian tractor-trailer weaving in and out of the emergency lane, drunk with fatigue. All was calm, I drove past striped, fluttering windsocks. The sun shone on the meadows and woods like a trusted employee. I turned the radio back on, but now it wasn’t working: all my preprogrammed stations, from France Info to Europe 1, including Radio Monte-Carlo and RTL, were full of static. Something was happening in France, I knew it, and here I was, still driving along the hexagonal motorway system at two hundred kilometres per hour — and maybe that was the solution. Everything in the country seemed to be broken, for all I knew the traffic radar was down, too. At the speed I was going, I’d reach the border at Jonquet by four. Things would be different in Spain, civil war slightly less imminent. It was worth a try. Except I was out of petrol; yes, petrol was at the top of the agenda. I kept my eye out for the next service station.
Which turned out to be the service station at Pech-Montat. It had nothing special to recommend it on the information panel, no restaurant, no local crafts. This was a Jansenist station: its devotion to petrol was pure. At first I was tempted to hold out for the Jardin des Causses du Lot, fifty kilometres south, but then I pulled myself together. I could always make a petrol stop at Pech-Montat, then a pleasure stop at the Causses du Lot, where I’d load up on foie gras, Cabécou and Cahors. I’d have them that very night in my hotel room on the Costa Brava. It was a plan — a sensible, manageable plan.
The car park was deserted, and right away I could tell something wasn’t right. I slowed to a crawl before I pulled up, very carefully, to the service station. Someone had shattered the window, the asphalt was covered with shards of glass. I got out of the car and walked inside. Someone had also smashed the door of the fridge where they kept the cold drinks and knocked over the newspaper dispensers. I discovered the cashier lying on the floor in a pool of blood, her arms clasped over her chest in a pathetic gesture of self-defence. There was total silence. I walked over to the petrol pumps, but they were turned off. Thinking I might be able to find some way of turning them on behind the register, I went back into the shop and stepped reluctantly over the body, but I didn’t see anything that looked like an ON switch. After a moment’s hesitation, I helped myself to a tuna-vegetable sandwich from the sandwich shelf, a non-alcoholic beer and a Michelin guide.
The closest of the local hotels recommended by Michelin was the Relais du Haut-Quercy, in Martel. All I had to do was get on the D840 and it was ten kilometres away. As I drove towards the exit, I thought I saw two bodies lying near the car park reserved for tractor-trailers. I got out of the car and went closer. Sure enough, two young North Africans, dressed in the typical uniform of the banlieues, had been shot down. There wasn’t much blood, but it was obvious they were dead. One of them was still holding an automatic pistol in his hand. What could have happened? I tried the radio again, just in case, but still there was nothing — only the crackle of static.
Fifteen minutes later I’d reached Martel without incident. The road wound through a cheerful, wooded landscape. I didn’t pass a single car, and I started to think I was going crazy, then I decided that everyone was staying home for exactly the same reason I’d left Paris: a premonition of imminent catastrophe.