The speaker is a young man with thinning hair and pouty lips, a bit like Giscard, who, unlike the other guests, does not seem impressed by the little man. Mitterrand turns spitefully toward him: “Oh, I know what you think, Laurent! Like most of our contemporaries, you think that he is the most dazzling performer of all.”
Laurent Fabius protests, with an expression of disdain: “I did not say that…”
Mitterrand, aggressively: “Oh yes you did! Oh yes you did! What a good television viewer you make! It’s because there are so many good television viewers like you that Giscard is so good on television.”
Fabius does not flinch. Mitterrand gets more and more worked up: “I acknowledge that he’s marvelous at explaining how nothing is ever his fault. Prices went up in September? It’s the beef, by Jove. [Barthes notes Mitterrand’s use of “by Jove.”] In October, it’s melons. In November, it’s gasoline, electricity, the railways, and rents. How could prices not go up? Brilliant.” His face is disfigured by a malicious grin. His voice grows husky: “And we are wonder-struck at being initiated so easily into the mysteries of the economy, at being allowed to follow this erudite guide into the minutiae of high finance.” He is shouting now: “Oh yes, oh yes, it’s the beef! Those damn melons! The treacherous railways! Long live Giscard!”
The guests are petrified, but Fabius, lighting a cigarette, replies: “A bit over the top.”
Mitterrand’s smile becomes charming again, his voice returns to normal, and, without anyone knowing whether he is replying to Fabius or attempting to reassure his other guests, he says: “I was joking, of course. Although, not entirely. But let’s be honest: it takes a high degree of intelligence to do such a good job convincing people that governing is about not being responsible for anything.”
Jack Lang slips away.
Barthes thinks that what he’s up against here is a very good specimen of the manic-obsessive: this man wants power, and in his adversary he has crystallized all the rancor he might feel for a destiny that has denied him power for too long. It’s as if he is already raging about his next defeat, and at the same time one senses he is ready to do anything except give up. Perhaps he doesn’t believe in his victory, but it is in his nature to fight for it nevertheless. Or maybe life made him like that. Defeat is undoubtedly the best teacher. Suddenly filled by a faint melancholy, Barthes lights a cigarette as a smokescreen. But defeat can also make a man get stuck in a rut. Barthes wonders what this little man really wants. His determination can’t be questioned, but isn’t he trapped in a system? 1965, 1974, 1978 … Each one a sort of glorious defeat, for which he personally is not blamed. So he feels empowered to persevere in his raison d’être, and his raison d’être, of course, is politics. But perhaps it is also defeat.
Fabius speaks up again: “Giscard is a brilliant orator, and you know it. Not only that, but his style is tailor-made for TV. That’s what it means to be modern.”
Mitterrand, faux-conciliatory: “But of course, my dear Laurent, I’ve been sure of that for quite some time. I was already an admirer of his presentational gifts when he used to speak at the National Assembly. Back then, I remarked that he was the best orator I’d heard since … Pierre Cot. Yes, a radical who was a minister during the Popular Front era. But I digress. Monsieur Fabius is so young, he barely remembers the Programme Commun, so as for the Popular Front … [Timid laughter around the table.] But, if you insist, let us return to Giscard, that beacon of eloquence! The clarity of his discourse, the fluency of his delivery, studded with pauses that made his listeners feel they were allowed to think, like slow-motion replays on televised sport, even the way he holds his head … it all readied Giscard for invading our television screens. No doubt he put in a great deal of graft to supplement his natural abilities. The age of the amateur is over! But he got his reward. He makes the television breathe.”
Fabius is still unimpressed. “Well, it seems to work rather well. People listen to him, and there are even some who vote for him.”
Mitterrand replies, as if to himself: “I wonder, though. You talk about a modern style. I think he’s old-fashioned. Heartfelt, literary rhetoric is mocked these days. [Barthes hears the echo of the 1974 debate, still an open wound after his defeat.] And rightly so, more often than not. [Oh, how this admission must have pained him! Oh, how hard Mitterrand must have worked on his self-control to reach this point!] The affectations of language offend the ear like makeup offends the eye.”
Fabius waits, Barthes waits, everyone waits. Mitterrand is used to people waiting for him; he takes his time before continuing: “But not just rhetoric—rhetoric and a half. The rhetoric of the technocrat is already worn out. Yesterday it was precious. Now it’s ridiculous. Who said recently: ‘I am suffering with my balance of payments’?”
Jack Lang comes back to sit down, and asks: “Wasn’t it Rocard?”
Mitterrand lets his irritation show again: “No, it was Giscard.” He glares at the bespectacled young man who ruined his punch line, then goes on regardless: “One wants to palpate him like a doctor. Suffering with a headache? Suffering with heartburn, backache, stomachache? Everyone knows how those things feel. But suffering with his balance of payments? Where is that, between the sixth and seventh ribs? Some unknown gland? One of those little bones in the coccyx? Giscard isn’t over the line yet.”
The guests no longer know if they should laugh or not. In doubt, they hold off.
Mitterrand goes on, staring out the window: “He has common sense and he’s a reasonable technician. He knows and feels politics like no one else.”
Barthes understands the compliment’s ambiguity: for someone like Mitterrand, it is obviously the highest praise, but—via a schizophrenia inherent in politics, making use of a very rich polysemy—the term “politics” also suggests something disparaging, even insulting, in his mouth.
Mitterrand is unstoppable now: “But his generation is being wiped out along with economism. Margot, who dried his eyes, is starting to get bored.”
Barthes wonders if Mitterrand might be drunk.
Fabius, who seems increasingly amused, tells his boss: “Watch out. He’s still moving, and he knows how to aim straight. Remember his jibe: ‘You do not have a monopoly on the heart.’”
The guests stop breathing.
Unexpectedly, Mitterrand’s response is almost composed: “And I don’t claim to! My opinions concern the public man. I reserve judgment on the private man, whom I don’t know.” Having made this necessary concession and thus demonstrated his spirit of fair play, he is able to conclude: “But we were talking about technique, weren’t we? And it has become so important to him that he is no longer capable of the unexpected. The difficult moment in life—his, yours, mine, the life of anyone ambitious—is when you see the writing on the wall telling you that you are starting to repeat yourself.”
Hearing this, Barthes plunges his nose into his glass. He feels nervous laughter welling up inside him, but he contains it by reciting this saying to himself: “Every man laughs for himself.”
Reflexivity. Always reflexivity.
PART II
BOLOGNA
47
4:16 p.m.
“Fuck me, it’s hot!” Simon Herzog and Jacques Bayard wander the jagged streets of Bologna, the Red City, seeking refuge under its intersecting arches in the hope of a second’s respite from the blazing sun that in the summer of 1980 is beating down once again on northern Italy. Spray-painted on a wall, they read: Vogliamo tutto! Prendiamoci la città! Three years earlier, in this exact spot, carabinieri killed a student, triggering genuine mass protests that the minister of the interior chose to put down by sending in the tanks: like Czechoslovakia in 1977, but in Italy. Today, everything’s calm: the armored cars have returned to their burrows, and the entire city seems to be having a siesta.