Submission (18 page)

‘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.

An old, thin, very tall man with a long salt-and-pepper beard went up to the prince, who stepped aside to speak to him in private. Having lost its centre, the group instantly broke up. Wandering aimlessly through the hall with one of the other Frenchmen, Lacoue saw me and walked up with a small nod hello. He seemed out of his element, and he made his introductions so quietly that I didn’t even catch the name of his companion, whose hair was slicked back, each strand carefully arranged. He wore a magnificent three-piece suit of midnight-blue fabric with nearly invisible white stripes. It had a light sheen and looked immensely soft. I thought it had to be silk and almost reached out to touch it, but I caught myself in time.

The prince, Lacoue explained, was horribly put out because the minister of education hadn’t come to the reception despite having formally promised to do so. Not only that – there wasn’t a single representative from the ministry, not one, ‘not even the secretary of universities’. He was beside himself.

‘I already told you, there is no more secretary of universities,’ his companion growled. According to him, the situation was even worse than Lacoue thought: the minister had definitely meant to come, he’d confirmed just the day before, but Ben Abbes himself had intervened for the express purpose of humiliating the Saudis. This was in line with other recent measures, of much broader importance, such as relaunching the nuclear energy programme and funding research into electric cars. The government was racing towards total independence from Saudi oil. Obviously, none of this had anything to do with the Islamic University of Paris-Sorbonne, but I supposed it was the university president who’d have to deal with the fallout. Just then Lacoue turned towards a middle-aged man, a new arrival, who was striding in our direction. ‘Here’s Robert!’ he cried, hugely relieved, as if he were greeting the Messiah.

Before he brought Rediger up to date, Lacoue introduced me, this time audibly. Rediger clasped my hand energetically, nearly crushing it between his powerful palms, all the while saying how happy he was to meet me and how long he’d looked forward to the pleasure. Physically, he was a fairly remarkable specimen, quite tall and solidly built. In fact, with his broad chest and his muscles, he looked more like a rugby tackle than a professor. His face was tanned and deeply lined, and although his hair was completely white, it was very thick. He had a crew cut, and he was dressed, rather unexpectedly, in jeans and a black leather aviator jacket.

Lacoue quickly filled him in. Rediger nodded, and muttered that he’d had a feeling something like this might happen. Then he thought a moment. ‘I’ll call Delhommais,’ he said. ‘Delhommais will know what to do.’ He took out a small, almost feminine mobile phone – it looked tiny in his hand – and stepped a few metres away to make his call. Lacoue and his companion watched without daring to go near him, both rigid with suspense. They were starting to bore me, these two, with their little dramas. What’s more, they struck me as complete idiots. Obviously these petro-dollars required a certain amount of care and feeding, as it were, but in the end all they had to do was take some flunkey and introduce him, not as the minister they’d seen on TV, but as his chief of staff. The joker in the three-piece suit would have made a perfect chief of staff (just to start with who was on hand) and the Saudis would have been none the wiser. Really, they were making everything more complicated than it needed to be. But that was their problem. I helped myself to another glass of wine and went out onto the terrace. The view of Notre-Dame truly was magnificent. It was warmer out than before, and the rain had stopped. The moonlight flickered on the ripples of the Seine.

I must have spent a long time in this reverie, and when I went back inside the guests, still all men, of course, had thinned out. I didn’t see Lacoue or the three-piece suit. At least the evening hadn’t been a complete waste, I told myself, as I took a menu from the caterer. The mezes really had been good, plus they delivered – it would be a change from Indian. While I was waiting for my coat, Rediger walked up. ‘You’re not leaving?’ he asked, with a crestfallen spreading of the arms. I asked whether he’d managed to resolve the breach of protocol. ‘Yes, it’s all sorted out. The minister won’t come tonight, but he called the prince personally and invited him to breakfast tomorrow at the ministry. Schramek was right, I’m afraid: Ben Abbes is actively trying to humiliate them, now that he’s reconnecting with his old friends the Qataris. We’ll have plenty more trouble where that came from. But what can you do …’ He waved the subject away, then he laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m awfully sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk. You should come over sometime for tea, so that we can have a real conversation …’ And all at once he smiled. He had a lovely smile, very open, almost childlike, and extremely disarming in such a masculine man. I think he knew it, and knew how to use it. He gave me his card. ‘Next Wednesday, shall we say, five-ish? If you’re free.’ I said I was.

In the metro I examined the business card that my new acquaintance had given me. It was elegant and tasteful, at least I thought so. Rediger provided his personal phone number, two office numbers, two fax numbers (one personal, one office), three email addresses, ill-defined, two mobile numbers (one French, the other British) and a Skype handle. This was a man who let you know how to get in touch. Clearly, since my meeting with Lacoue, I’d made my way into the inner circle. It was almost unnerving.

He gave a street address, too: 5 rue des Arènes, and for now that was all I needed to know. I remembered the rue des Arènes. It was a charming little street off the Square des Arènes de Lutèce, in one of the most charming parts of Paris. There were butcher shops, cheese shops recommended by Petitrenaud and Pudlowski – as for Italian speciality shops, forget it. This was all reassuring in the extreme.

At the Place Monge metro station, I made the mistake of going out the Arènes de Lutèce exit. Geographically, I wasn’t wrong – the exit led straight to the rue des Arènes – but I’d forgotten that there wasn’t an escalator, and that the Place Monge metro station was fifty metres below street level. I was completely exhausted and out of breath by the time I emerged from that curious metro exit, a hollow carved out of the walls of the park, its thick columns, cubist typography and generally neo-Babylonian appearance all completely out of place in Paris – as they would have been pretty much anywhere else in Europe.

When I reached 5 rue des Arènes, I realised that Rediger didn’t just live in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, he lived in his own
maison particulière
in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, and that this
maison particulière
was
historic
to boot. Number 5 was none other than that fantastical neo-Gothic construction (flanked by a square turret like a castle keep) where Jean Paulhan lived from 1940 until his death in 1968. Personally I could never stand Jean Paulhan, I didn’t like him as an
éminence grise
and I didn’t like his books, but there was no denying that he’d been one of the most powerful figures in French publishing after the war. And he’d certainly lived in a very beautiful house. My admiration for the Saudis’ funding only grew.

I rang the bell and was greeted by a butler whose cream-coloured suit and Nehru collar were somewhat reminiscent of the former dictator Gaddafi. I told him my name, he bowed slightly: I was expected. He left me to wait in a little entrance hall, illuminated by stained-glass windows, while he went to tell Professor Rediger that I’d arrived.

I’d been waiting two or three minutes when a door opened to my left and in walked a teenage girl wearing low-waisted jeans and a Hello Kitty T-shirt, her long black hair loose over her shoulders. When she saw me, she shrieked, tried awkwardly to cover her face with her hands, and dashed back out of the room. At that very moment, Rediger appeared on the landing and came down the stairs to greet me. He had witnessed the incident, and shook my hand with a look of resignation.

‘That’s Aïcha, my new wife. She’ll be very embarrassed that you saw her without her veil.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, don’t apologise. It’s her fault. She should have asked whether there was a guest before she came into the front hall. She doesn’t know her way around the house yet, but she will.’

‘Yes, she looks very young.’

‘She just turned fifteen.’

I followed Rediger up the stairs and into a large study with a ceiling that must have been almost five metres high. One of the walls was entirely covered with bookshelves. At a glance I noticed lots of old editions, mainly nineteenth century. Two solid metal ladders, mounted on rollers, provided access to the higher shelves. On the other side of the room, potted plants hung from a dark wooden trellis that ran the length of the wall. Ivy, ferns and Virginia creeper cascaded from ceiling to floor, twining along the edges of various picture frames, some of which held hand-lettered verses from the Koran, others large, matted photos of galaxy clusters, supernovas and spiral nebulas. In one corner a massive Directoire desk stood at an angle to the room. Rediger led me to the opposite corner, where two worn armchairs, upholstered in red-and-green stripes, were placed around a low, copper-topped table.