It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or rather, I could refuse, obviously, but it would mean renouncing all intellectual and social ambition — all ambition, full stop. Was I really ready for that? There was no way I could think it over without a second Calvados. After thinking it over, I decided that the really prudent thing was to go out and buy another bottle.
Just two days later, I found myself meeting Bastien Lacoue. His office was exactly the way I’d imagined it, old-fashioned, up three flights of steep wooden stairs, overlooking a dishevelled courtyard. Lacoue himself was a modern-day intellectual with frameless little oval glasses, a jovial man. He radiated satisfaction with himself, the world and his position in it.
I’d done some preparation, and told him that I thought Huysmans’ works should be divided into two volumes, the first containing everything from Le drageoir à épices to La retraite de Monsieur Bougram (I held 1888 to be the most likely year of composition), the second devoted to the Durtal novels, from Là-bas to L’oblat, and of course Les foules de Lourdes. This division was simple, logical, even obvious, and without hidden complications. As always, the real question was how to handle the notes. Certain pseudo-scholarly editions had seen fit to provide biographical notes for the innumerable writers, musicians and painters mentioned by Huysmans. This struck me as utterly useless, even if the notes were relegated to the back. Not only would they weigh the books down, but also you could never know whether you’d said too much — or not enough — about Lactance, Angela de Foligno or Grünewald. Readers who wanted to know more could go and find out for themselves, and that was that. As for the relationships between Huysmans and other writers of his time — Zola, Maupassant, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Gourmont or Bloy — I thought these were best dealt with in the preface. Lacoue was quick to second this opinion.
Huysmans’ use of obscure words and neologisms, on the other hand, did justify a certain amount of apparatus — I was imagining footnotes rather than endnotes, so as not to slow the reader down. He was enthusiastic in his agreement. ‘You’ve already done most of the work in your Vertigos of Coining!’ he said heartily. I lifted my right hand in a gesture of deep reservation. On the contrary: in the book he was good enough to mention, I had barely touched on the question. No more than a quarter of Huysmans’ linguistic corpus had been dealt with. He lifted his left hand in a gesture of deep appeasement: he certainly hadn’t meant to understate the considerable work it would take to complete this edition. They hadn’t set a deadline, I could rest easy on that score.
‘Yes, you work for eternity …’
‘It always sounds a little pretentious to say so, but yes — at least, that’s the hope.’
We shared a little moment of silence after this declaration, which was made with just the necessary drop of unction. It was going well, I’d say: we were coming together around shared values. This Pléiade was going to be a cinch.
‘Robert Rediger was very sorry to see you leave the Sorbonne after the … the regime change,’ Lacoue began again, in a sadder voice. ‘I know because he’s a friend of mine. A close friend.’ Now I detected a note of defiance. ‘Some teachers — senior teachers — stayed. Others, just as senior, left. Each one of those departures wounded him personally, including yours.’ This last he said almost gruffly, as if the duties of courtesy and friendship had been warring in his breast.
I had absolutely nothing to say to this, as he eventually realised after a minute or so of silence. ‘Well, I’m very happy that you’ve accepted my little project!’ he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together, as if we were about to pull some kind of prank on the world of letters. ‘You know, I thought it was a shame that someone like you … someone at your level, I mean, should find himself out of work from one day to the next, with no publications — with nothing!’ Aware that this might have sounded melodramatic, he stirred imperceptibly in his chair. I rose, too, with more alacrity.
Presumably in honour of the deal we’d just made, Lacoue didn’t just walk me to the door but went with me down all three flights of stairs (‘Careful, the steps are uneven!’) and down the corridor (‘It’s a maze!’ he laughed, but it wasn’t really: there were two corridors that met at a right angle, and they led straight to the lobby), all the way to the front door of Éditions Gallimard, in the rue Gaston-Gallimard. The weather had grown brisk, and I suddenly realised that we hadn’t discussed my fee. As if he’d read my mind, he brought a hand to my shoulder — without actually touching it — and said, ‘I’ll be sending you a contract in the next couple of days. By the way,’ he added in the same breath, ‘there’s going to be a little reception next Saturday for the reopening of the Sorbonne. I’ll make sure you get an invitation. I know Robert would be very happy to see you there, if you’re free.’ This time he gave me a real pat on the shoulder, then he shook my hand. It sounded off the cuff, but I had a feeling that, in reality, this invitation explained and justified all the rest.
~ ~ ~
The reception was at six, on the top floor of the Institute of the Arab World, which had been hired for the occasion. I felt nervous as I showed my invitation: Who would be there? Some Saudis, definitely: the invitation guaranteed the presence of a Saudi prince whose name I recognised as that of the main donor behind the new Sorbonne. There would probably be some of my old colleagues, too, at least the ones who’d agreed to work under the new administration — but I didn’t know anyone who had, except for Steve, and Steve was the last person I wanted to see.
I did recognise one former colleague, when I stepped inside the large, chandelier-lit hall. I didn’t know him personally, though we’d spoken once or twice, but Bertrand de Gignac was world-famous in the field of medieval literature. He was regularly invited to lecture at Columbia and Yale, and he was the author of the standard reference work on the Chanson de Roland. As far as recruitment went, he was the one major success the new university president could claim. Beyond that, I didn’t have much to talk to him about, the field of medieval literature being basically terra incognita to me, so I wisely accepted several mezes — they were excellent, the hot and the cold ones, too. So was the wine, a Lebanese red …
Still, I got the feeling that the reception wasn’t a total success. Small groups of three to six people, Arab and French, made their way around the elegant hall, barely speaking. The Arabo-Andalusian background music, piercing and sinister, didn’t help, but that wasn’t the problem, and after walking around with the other guests for forty-five minutes, after a dozen mezes and four glasses of wine, I suddenly saw the problem: we were all men. No women had been invited, and to keep up a sociable atmosphere without any women around, and without falling back on football — which would have been inappropriate in what was, after all, an academic setting — turned out to be a serious challenge.
Just then I caught sight of Lacoue, standing in a thicker group that had retreated to a corner of the hall. Besides him there were maybe ten Arabs and two Frenchmen, all talking with great intensity, except for one middle-aged man with a hooked nose and a fat, scowling face. He was dressed simply, in a long white djellaba, but I could see he was the most important man in the group, probably the prince himself. The others were talking over one another, offering what seemed to be justifications, but he just stood there, and although he nodded his head every now and then, his face remained impassive. Clearly there was some kind of problem, but it had nothing to do with me, so I went back the way I came, accepting a cheese samboussek and fifth glass of wine.