“Did you pass by the gallery?” he asked, in an attempt to start the conversation on neutral ground. He was astonished that in his own view his pictorial work had become neutral ground.
“Yes, and I liked it a lot. It’s … original. It looks like nothing I’ve seen before. But I always knew you had talent.”
A heavy silence followed.
“Little Frenchman,” Olga said, her ironic tone failing to disguise her true emotion, and again Jed felt uncomfortable, on the verge of tears. “Successful little Frenchman …”
“We could meet,” Jed replied quickly. Someone had to say it first; there, it was him.
“I’ve an enormous amount of work this week.”
“Oh, really? How come?”
“We start our broadcasts on the second of January. There are still lots of things to sort out.” She thought for a few moments. “There’s a party the channel is throwing on the thirty-first. I can invite you.” She stopped again for a few seconds. “It would give me great pleasure if you came.”
That evening, he received an e-mail containing all the details. The party was taking place in the private home of Jean-Pierre Pernaut, who lived in Neuilly, on the boulevard des Sablons. His theme was, unsurprisingly, “the Provinces of France.”
Jed thought he knew everything about Jean-Pierre Pernaut, but the Wikipedia entry contained a few surprises. Thus he learned the popular host was also the author of many books. Alongside A Taste of France, Festive France, and At the Heart of Our Regions, he found The Magnificent Crafts of the Artisans, in two volumes, all published by Éditions Michel Lafon.
He was also surprised by the laudatory, almost ecstatic tone of the entry. He remembered that Jean-Pierre Pernaut had sometimes been the target of criticism, but all that seemed forgotten now. Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s stroke of genius, the author stressed from the outset, had been to understand that after the “flash your cash” 1980s, the public hungered for ecology, authenticity, and true values. Even if Martin Bouygues could be credited with putting his trust in him, the one o’clock news on TF1 completely bore the imprint of his visionary personality. Taking as his point of departure the current news—violent, rapid, frenetic, and senseless—Jean-Pierre Pernaut carried out a messianic task that consisted of guiding the terrorized and stressed viewer toward the idyllic regions of a protected countryside, where man lived in harmony with nature, with the rhythm of the seasons. More than a mere news program, the one o’clock news on TF1 took on the dimension of a march to the star, ending in a psalm. The author of this entry—though he admitted that he himself was a Catholic—did not, however, hide the fact that if the Weltanschauung of Jean-Pierre Pernaut perfectly suited a France both rural and “the eldest daughter of the Church,” it would have gone just as well with a pantheistic, or even epicurean, wisdom.
The following day, at the France Loisirs bookshop in the Italie 2 mall, Jed bought the first volume of The Magnificent Crafts of the Artisans. The subdivision of the book was simple, based on the materials used: earth, stone, metal, wood … Reading it (which was quite easy, as it was made up almost uniquely of photos) did not really suggest a particular attachment to the past. By systematically dating the appearance of the different crafts he described, and the major developments made in their practice, Jean-Pierre Pernaut seemed to make himself less an apologist for immobility than one for gradual progress. There perhaps were, Jed thought, some points of convergence between Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s thinking and that of William Morris—socialist commitment apart, of course. If most viewers placed him rather on the right, Jean-Pierre Pernaut had always demonstrated, in the daily content of his program, extreme deontological care. He had even avoided appearing to support Hunting, Fishing, Nature, and Traditions, a movement founded in 1989—exactly one year after he’d taken control of the one o’clock news on TF1. There had certainly been a shift at the very end of the 1980s, Jed thought, a major historical shift, that at the time went unnoticed, as was almost always the case. He also remembered “Calm Strength,” the slogan invented by Jacques Séguéla that had made possible, against all expectations, the re-election of François Mitterrand in 1988. He could still picture the posters depicting the old Pétainist mummy against a background of church towers and villages. He was thirteen years old, and it was the first time in his life that he paid any attention to a political slogan or a presidential election.
If he constituted the most significant and durable element of this serious ideological shift, Jean-Pierre Pernaut had always refused to reinvest his immense fame in any attempt at a political commitment or career; right to the end, he had wanted to remain in the camp of the entertainers. Unlike Noël Mamère, he hadn’t even grown a mustache. And while he probably shared the values of Jean Saint-Josse, the first president of Hunting, Fishing, Nature, and Traditions, he’d always refused to support him publicly. Nor had he done so for Frédéric Nihous, his successor.
Born in 1967 in Valenciennes, Frédéric Nihous had received his first rifle at the age of fourteen, a present from his father after gaining the high-school diploma. With a degree in international and European Community law, as well as a degree in national defense and European security, he had taught administrative law at the University of Cambrai; he was also president of the Association of Pigeon and Migrant Bird Hunters in the Nord department. In 1988, he had finished first in a fishing tournament in the Hérault by catching “a nakin carp weighing 7.256 kilograms.” Twenty years later, he would provoke the collapse of the movement he now led by making the mistake of forming an alliance with Catholic right-winger Philippe de Villiers—for which the hunters of the Southwest, traditionally anticlerical and rather radical or socialist, would never forgive him.
On 30 December, in the middle of the afternoon, Jed telephoned Houellebecq. The writer was in top form. He’d just spent an hour chopping wood, he announced. Chopping wood? Yes, his house in the Loiret now had a fireplace. He also had a dog—a two-year-old mongrel that he’d taken in on Christmas Day from the pet shelter in Montargis.
“Are you doing anything on New Year’s Eve?” Jed inquired.
“No, nothing in particular; I’m rereading Tocqueville at the moment. You know, in the countryside we go to bed early, especially in winter.”
For an instant Jed had the idea of inviting him, but realized just in time that he could hardly invite someone to a party he wasn’t giving himself; anyway, the author would certainly have refused.
“I’m going to bring your portrait, as promised. In the first days of January.”
“My portrait, yes … Please do, please do.” He didn’t seem to care at all. They chatted pleasantly for a few more minutes. There was in the voice of the author of The Elementary Particles something that Jed had never noticed before, that he’d never expected to find, and that he took some time to identify, because basically he hadn’t found it in anyone, for many years: he seemed happy.
23
Some Vendée peasants armed with pitchforks mounted the guard at each side of the porch leading to Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s townhouse. Jed handed one of them the e-mail invitation he’d printed out and proceeded into the large cobbled courtyard, which was entirely lit by torches. A dozen guests were walking toward the broad, open doors that led into the reception rooms. With his velvet trousers and his C&A Sympatex blouson, he felt awfully underdressed: the women were in long dresses, and most of the men in dinner jackets. Two meters in front of him he recognized Julien Lepers, accompanied by a magnificent black girl who was easily a foot taller; she was wearing a sparkling long white dress, with gold facing and open at the back right down to her ass, the torchlight reflecting on her bare skin. The host himself—wearing an ordinary dinner jacket, the one he used for “grandes écoles special editions,” his working dinner jacket in a way—seemed buried in some difficult discussion with a small, hot-headed man who looked nasty and gave the impression of having corporate responsibilities. Jed moved past them and, entering the first reception room, was greeted by the insi
stent complaint of a dozen Breton bagpipers, who had just started a tortured and interminable Celtic tune that was almost painful to listen to. Keeping a good distance, he entered the second room and accepted an Emmental-flavored canapé and a glass of “vendange tardive” Gewürztraminer, offered by two Alsatian waitresses wearing headdresses and white-and-red aprons who circulated among the guests with their trays; they were so alike that they could’ve been twins.
The reception area was made up of four conjoining rooms with ceilings at least eight meters high. Jed had never seen such a huge apartment; he’d no idea that such an apartment could exist. However, it probably wasn’t much, he thought in a flash of lucidity, compared with the residences of those who bought his paintings. There must have been two or three hundred guests, and the din of the conversations gradually drowned the wailing of the pipes. Feeling he was going to pass out, he leaned against a stand of Auvergnat products, and accepted a Jésus-Laguiole brochette and a glass of Saint-Pourçain. The powerful, earthy smell of the cheeses restored his balance a little; he emptied his glass of Saint-Pourçain, asked for another, and resumed his advance through the crowd. He was beginning to feel a bit too hot, and realized he should have left his coat at the cloakroom. His coat was truly at odds with the dress code, he scolded himself again. All the men were in evening dress, absolutely all of them, he repeated desperately to himself, and at just that instant he found himself in front of Pierre Bellemare, dressed in Tergal petrol-blue trousers and a white shirt with a jabot covered in grease stains—his trousers were held up by wide braces in the colors of the American flag. Jed warmly held his hand out to the French king of teleshopping, who, taken aback, shook it and started off again, slightly reassured.
It took him more than twenty minutes to find Olga. Standing in a doorway, half hidden by a curtain, she was deep in a clearly professional conversation with Jean-Pierre Pernaut. He was the main one speaking, declaiming sentences punctuated by determined movements of his right hand; she nodded from time to time, absorbed and attentive, and formulated very few objections or remarks. Jed stood there frozen, just a few yards from her. Two bands of cream-colored cloth—tied behind her neck and encrusted with small crystals—covered her breasts and joined at her navel, pinned together by a silver brooch representing the sun, before attaching to a short, figure-hugging skirt, also studded with crystals, that revealed her white garters; her tights, also white, were extremely sheer. Aging, and especially apparent aging, is in no respect a continuous process. Life could rather be characterized as a succession of levels, separated by sudden falls. When we meet someone we have lost sight of for some years, we sometimes have the impression that he has aged; sometimes, on the other hand, that he hasn’t changed at all. This is a complete fallacy, since decay is still secretly making its way inside the organism before bursting out into the broad daylight. For ten years, Olga had kept herself at a radiant level of beauty—without this being enough to make her happy. Nor had he, Jed believed, changed all that much over the last ten years; he had produced a body of work, as they say, without ever encountering, or even contemplating, happiness.
Jean-Pierre Pernaut stopped talking and drank some Beaumes-de-Venise; Olga looked a few degrees away and suddenly saw Jed, standing there in the crowd. A few seconds can be enough to decide a life, or at least to reveal its main direction. She put her hand lightly on the host’s forearm, giving him a word of apology, and in a few bounds she was in front of Jed and kissing him on the mouth. Then she stepped back, taking him by the hands. For a few seconds they remained silent.
Avuncular in his Arthur van Aschendonk tails, Jean-Pierre Pernaut saw them turn toward him. His unguarded expression in that moment suggested that he understood life and even felt at ease with it. Olga made the introductions.
“I know you!” the host exclaimed, his smile widening even more. “Come with me!”
Quickly crossing the last room, accidentally brushing the arm of Patrick Le Lay (who had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy shares in the channel), he led them down a wide corridor with high, vaulted walls made of thick limestone. More than a townhouse, Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s residence reminded you of a Romanesque abbey, with its corridors and crypts. They stopped in front of a thick door padded with brown leather. “My office,” said the host.
He stopped at the doorway, letting them enter the room. A line of acajou bookcases mainly contained tourist guides, of all kinds—the Guide du Routard next to the Guide Bleu, the Petit Futé next to the Lonely Planet. The books by Jean-Pierre Pernaut himself, from The Magnificent Crafts of the Artisans to A Taste of France, were exhibited on display shelves. A windowsill contained the five Sept d’Or awards he had won in the course of his career, as well as sports trophies of uncertain origin. Deep leather armchairs spread themselves around a mahogany executive desk. Behind the desk, and discreetly lit by halogen lamps, was one of the photos from Jed’s Michelin period. Curiously, the host had not chosen a spectacular, immediately picturesque image, like those he had made of the Var corniche or of the gorges of Verdon. The photo, centered on Gournay-en-Bray, was treated with solid colors, without any lighting or perspective. Jed remembered that he had taken it directly from above. The white, green, and brown spots were distributed equally, traversed by the symmetrical network of the departmental roads. No agglomeration stood out clearly, each seeming to have the same importance, which gave the overall impression of calm, balance, and almost abstraction. This landscape, he realized, was probably the one he had flown over at low altitude, immediately after departing from Beauvais, when he went to visit Houellebecq in Ireland. In the presence of the concrete reality, of that discreet juxtaposition of meadows, fields, and villages, he had felt the same thing: balance, a peaceful harmony.
“I know that you’ve now turned to painting,” Jean-Pierre Pernaut went on, “and that you’ve made a painting of me. To tell you the truth, I tried to buy it; but François Pinault bid higher, and I couldn’t follow.”
“François Pinault?” Jed was surprised. The Journalist Jean-Pierre Pernaut Chairing an Editorial Meeting was a quiet painting, classical in technique, which didn’t correspond at all to the the Breton businessman’s usual, much wilder choices. No doubt he’d decided to diversify.
“Perhaps I should have …” He paused. “I’m sorry … Perhaps I should have introduced a sort of preference clause for the subjects portrayed.”
“It’s the market,” Pernaut said with a wide, beaming, rancorless smile, going so far as to pat him on the shoulder.
The host led them back down the vaulted corridor, the basques of his tails slowly floating behind him. Jed glanced at his watch: it was almost midnight. They again passed through the double doors leading to the reception rooms: the din was now at its peak; new guests had arrived, swelling the gathering to four or five hundred people. In the middle of a small group, a very inebriated Patrick Le Lay was perorating noisily; he had swiped a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and was guzzling long swigs of it. The host Claire Chazal, visibly tense, put her hand on his arm, trying to interrupt him; but the president of the channel had manifestly crossed certain red lines. “TF1 are the biggest!” he was shouting. “I don’t give Jean-Pierre’s channel six months! M6 are the same, they thought they could screw us with Loft Story, but we doubled the price with Koh-Lanta and we fucked them up the ass! Up the ass!” he repeated, and threw the bottle over his shoulder. It grazed the skull of Julien Lepers and smashed at the feet of three middle-aged men, in gray three-piece suits, who stared at him sternly.
Without hesitation, Jean-Pierre Pernaut walked over to his former boss and stood straight in front of him. “You’ve drunk too much, Patrick,” he said calmly; his muscles were tense under the fabric of the tails, his face hardened as if he was preparing for a fight. “Okay, okay …” said Le Lay, obsequiously indicating that he’d calmed down. “Okay, okay …” At that moment, a resonant tenor voice, of incredible power, rose up from the second room. Other voices, baritone and then bass, took up the same t
heme, without words, in a round. Many guests turned in this direction, recognizing a famous Corsican polyphony group. Twelve men of all ages, wearing black trousers, smocks, and berets, gave a vocal performance that lasted a little more than two minutes: it was at the limit of what one could call music, more a war cry, of surprising savagery. Then they suddenly stopped. Spreading his arms slightly, Jean-Pierre Pernaut went to meet the crowd, waited for silence to fall, then said in a loud voice: “Happy New Year to you all!” A volley of champagne corks popped. The host then went over to the three men in gray suits and shook hands with each of them. “They belong to the Michelin board of directors …” Olga whispered to Jed before approaching the group. “Financially, TF1, next to Michelin, counts for nothing. And it seems that Bouygues is sick of mopping up their losses,” she had the time to add before Jean-Pierre Pernaut introduced her to the three men. “I was slightly expecting Patrick to make a scene,” he was saying to the directors. “He took my departure very badly.”
“At least that proves our project doesn’t leave him cold,” the oldest one said. At that very moment, Jed saw a man of about forty approach, wearing track-suit bottoms and a hooded sweater, with a rapper’s cap stuck backwards on his head, whom he recognized incredulously as Patrick Forestier, the communications director of Michelin France. “Yo!” he shouted to the three directors before slapping their hands. “Yo,” they each replied in turn, and it was at that moment that things started spiraling out of control. The conversational din intensified all of a sudden, while the Basque and Savoyard orchestras began to play at the same time. Jed was sweating; for a few minutes he tried to follow Olga, who was going from one guest to another to wish each a happy New Year, all smiling and warm. From the friendly but serious expressions worn by the people she approached he understood that she was addressing her staff.
The Map and the Territory Page 16
