‘That’s the first fighting we’ve had in Paris,’ Lempereur remarked, in a neutral tone. Just then we heard a new round of gunfire, this time quite distinct, as if nearby, and a much louder explosion. All the guests turned towards the sound. A column of smoke was rising into the sky above the buildings. It must have been coming from somewhere near Place de Clichy.
‘Well, it looks as if our little soirée is breaking up,’ Alice said. Indeed, many of the guests were trying to use their phones, and some had begun to move towards the exit, but slowly, one step at a time, as if to show that they were in control and would under no circumstances take part in a stampede.
‘We could continue our conversation at my house, if you like,’ Lempereur offered. ‘I live just round the corner, in the rue Cardinal Mercier.’
‘I have a class tomorrow in Lyon, and my train’s at six,’ Alice said. ‘I’d better head home.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. It’s odd, I’m not the least bit afraid.’
I looked at her, wondering whether I should insist, but strangely I wasn’t afraid, either. Somehow, I don’t know why, I was convinced the fighting would go no farther than the boulevard de Clichy.
Alice’s Twingo was parked at the corner of the rue Blanche. ‘I’m not sure this is such a great idea,’ I told her, after we’d said our goodbyes. ‘Will you at least call me when you get home?’ She said she would, and drove away. ‘What a remarkable woman,’ said Lempereur. I agreed, even as it occurred to me that I knew almost nothing about her. Apart from titles and promotions, sexual indiscretions were pretty much the only things my colleagues and I ever talked about, and yet I’d never heard so much as a whisper about Alice. She was smart, stylish, pretty — how old could she be? My age, more or less, early forties, and as far as I could tell she lived alone. She was too young to give up, I thought. Then I remembered that I’d just given up the day before. ‘Remarkable,’ I echoed, and tried to put the idea out of my mind.
The shooting had stopped. As we turned at the rue Ballu, which was deserted at this hour, we stepped back into the precise era of our favourite writers, a fact I pointed out to Lempereur. Nearly all the buildings dated from the Second Empire or the start of the Third Republic and were unusually well preserved. ‘It’s true,’ he answered. ‘Even Mallarmé’s Tuesday evenings took place just over there, in the rue de Rome. Where do you live?’
‘Avenue de Choisy. Vintage 1970s — an era less well known for its writers, obviously.’
‘That’s Chinatown, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly. Right in the heart of Chinatown.’
He seemed to give this some thought. ‘That may turn out to have been an intelligent choice,’ he said. We had reached the corner of the rue de Clichy. I stopped, transfixed. A hundred metres north of us, Place de Clichy was completely enveloped in flames; we could see the burned-out husks of cars and a bus. The statue of Maréchal Moncey, black and imposing, stood out in the middle of the blaze. There was no one in sight and no sound but the repetitive wail of a siren.
‘How much do you know about the career of Maréchal Moncey?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘He served under Napoleon. He won distinction defending the Clichy barrier against the Russians in 1814 … You know,’ Lempereur continued in the same tone, ‘if the ethnic fighting spreads within Paris itself, the Chinese will stay out of it. Chinatown may become one of the last safe neighbourhoods in the city.’
‘You think that could actually happen?’
He shrugged. At that moment I was amazed to see two riot police in Kevlar, machine guns slung over their shoulders, walking calmly down the rue de Clichy towards Gare Saint-Lazare. They were chatting away, and didn’t give us so much as a glance.
‘They …’ I was dumbstruck. ‘They’re acting as if nothing’s going on.’
‘Indeed.’ Lempereur had stopped and was thoughtfully stroking his chin. ‘At this point, it’s hard to say what is, or isn’t, possible. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a fool or a liar. I don’t think anyone has any idea what the next few weeks will bring. Well …’ he said, after another pause, ‘my place is up this way. I hope your friend is all right.’
~ ~ ~
Quiet and deserted, the rue du Cardinal Mercier led to a fountain surrounded by colonnades. On either side stood massive entrances, mounted with surveillance cameras and, behind them, courtyards planted with trees. Lempereur touched his finger to a small aluminium plaque, which must have been a biometric reader: a metal grate rolled open before us. At the end of the courtyard, behind the plane trees, I could just make out a small hôtel particulier, typically Second Empire, cosy and elegant. There was no way he lived here on a teacher’s salary. How did he do it?
For some reason, I’d pictured my young colleague in pared-down, minimalist surroundings, with lots of white. On the contrary, the furniture matched the building exactly. The living room was full of comfortable chairs upholstered in silk and velvet, the tables elaborately inlaid with marquetry and mother-of-pearl. A large, imposing painting, likely an original Bouguereau, hung over an ornate mantelpiece. I sat on a narrow ottoman with bottle-green stripes and was given a glass of pear brandy.
‘If you like, we can try to find out what’s going on,’ he offered, as he handed me the glass.
‘No, I know there won’t be anything on the networks. Maybe on CNN, if you have a dish.’
‘I’ve been trying. There’s nothing on CNN — or YouTube, either. No surprise there. Sometimes they show a few snippets on RuTube, mobile-phone footage mainly, but it’s very hit-and-miss. It’s been days since I’ve been able to find anything.’
‘But why the blackout? I don’t understand what the government is trying to accomplish.’
‘I think they’re terrified the National Front is going to win the election. Any images of urban violence mean more votes for the National Front. So now the far right is stirring things up even more. Of course the guys in the banlieues retaliate, but you’ll notice that every time things have got out of hand these last few months, it started with an anti-Muslim provocation: somebody desecrating a mosque or forcing a woman to lift her veil, that kind of thing.’
‘And you think the National Front is behind all this?’
‘No, no. They can’t do it themselves, that’s not how it works. There are, shall we say, backchannels.’
He finished his brandy and poured us each another glass in silence. The Bouguereau above the fireplace showed five women in a garden, some in white tunics, others half-nude, surrounding a nude infant with curly hair. One of the nude women hid her breasts with her hands. The other couldn’t — she was holding a bouquet of wild flowers. She had lovely breasts, and the artist had executed her drapery to perfection. It was little more than a century old, and that seemed so long ago that at first I felt bewildered by this incomprehensible object. Slowly, gradually, you could imagine your way into the skin of a nineteenth-century bourgeois, one of the frock-coated grandees who had commissioned the painting; you could feel, as they had, erotic stirrings before these Grecian nudes; but it was a hard, laborious climb back into the past. Maupassant, Zola, even Huysmans were much more immediately accessible. I should probably have spoken of that — of the uncanny power of literature — and yet I chose to go on discussing politics. I wanted to know more, and he seemed to know more. At least, that was the impression he gave.