The President's Hat

by Antoine Laurain

  ‘That woman is remarkably beautiful,’ said François Mitterrand, quietly.

  Daniel followed his gaze. The President was looking at the brunette in the red dress. Dumas took advantage of the arrival of the main courses to turn round discreetly. The large man did the same.

  ‘A very beautiful woman,’ he concurred.

  ‘I agree,’ murmured Dumas.

  Daniel felt a sense of communion with the head of state. François Mitterrand had ordered the same wine as him, and now he had spotted the same woman. It was quite something to have the same tastes as the First Frenchman. Indeed, the convivial exchange of half-expressed appreciations of womenkind had cemented many a masculine friendship, and Daniel fell to daydreaming he was the fourth man at the President’s table. He too had a black leather diary from which the former Foreign Minister would be delighted to copy out contacts. The fat man’s cellar held no secrets for him, indeed he visited it regularly, savouring saucisson and lighting up the finest Havana cigars the world had ever seen. And of course, he accompanied the President on his Parisian walks, along the quaysides of the Seine, past the bouquinistes’ stalls, both of them with their hands clasped behind their backs, discoursing on the way of the world, or simply admiring the sunset from the Pont des Arts. Passers-by would turn back to look at their familiar silhouettes, and people he knew would murmur, sotto voce, ‘Oh yes, Daniel knows François Mitterrand very well …’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  The waiter’s voice interrupted Daniel’s reverie. Yes, everything was very good indeed. He would make his seafood platter last as long as was necessary. Even if he had to stay until closing time, he would not get up from his seat on the banquette before the President left. He was doing it for himself, and for others, so that one day he would be able to say: ‘I dined beside François Mitterrand in a brasserie in November 1986. He was right next to me, this close. I could see him as clearly as I can see you now.’ In his mind, Daniel was already rehearsing the words he would use in the decades to come.

  Two hours and seven minutes had gone by. François Mitterrand had just disappeared into the night, flanked by Dumas and the large man, after the maître d’ had ceremoniously held the door for them. All three had finished their meal with a crème brûlée. The large man had removed a cigar from a leather case, telling them he would light it outside and smoke it while they walked. Dumas had paid with a 500-franc note.

  ‘Shall we?’ the President had asked.

  Dumas had got to his feet. The cloakroom attendant had appeared and helped him on with his coat. She had done the same for Michel, who had complained he could still feel his lumbago, but the President had put on his own coat, and then his red scarf. As he did this he had turned towards the brunette and their eyes had met. She had smiled, very slightly, and the President had doubtless responded in kind, but Daniel had not been able to see that. All three had then headed for the door. In the restaurant, everyone had leant towards their fellow diners and conversations were quieter for a few seconds.

  Voilà. It was over.

  Nothing remained but the empty plates, the cutlery, the glasses and the barely crumpled white napkins. Now it was just a table like any other, thought Daniel. In a few minutes, the dishes would be cleared away, the tablecloth refreshed, and a new diner would settle himself onto the banquette for the second sitting, never suspecting that the President of the Republic had occupied the very same seat less than an hour earlier.

  Daniel had kept back one last, slightly milky oyster, which had been waiting its turn on the melting ice for the last twenty minutes at least. He tipped a teaspoon of red-wine vinegar over it and tasted it. The iodine spread across his tongue, mixed with the bitter, peppery vinegar: ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week …’ He was certain now – he would remember those words for the rest of his life.

  Daniel swallowed his last mouthful of Pouilly and put his glass back down on the table. The dinner had been unreal – and he could so easily have missed it. He could have decided to go home and make his own supper, he could have chosen a different brasserie, there might not have been a free table, the customer who’d booked the table might not have cancelled … The important events in our lives are always the result of a sequence of tiny details. The thought made him feel slightly dizzy – or was it the fact that he’d drunk a whole bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé?

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds, breathed deeply, shifted his shoulder and massaged his neck. As he raised his left hand to do this, Daniel touched the brass rail at the top of the banquette. His fingers encountered the cold metal, and then something else as well. Something soft and yielding, something that had just squirmed, like the oyster. Daniel turned to look: the hat was still there. Instinctively, he glanced over to the door of the brasserie. The President had left several minutes ago. There was no one in the doorway.

  François Mitterrand had forgotten his hat. The phrase took shape in his mind. This is François Mitterrand’s hat. Here, right next to you. Proof that this evening was real; absolute proof that it had really happened. Daniel turned to look again at the hat which had been carefully placed between the brass rail and the mirror. Behind the black hat, the whole restaurant was reflected.

  Instead of calling over the head waiter to say self-importantly, ‘I think the customer at the table next to me has left his hat behind,’ and receiving obsequious thanks, Daniel acted on impulse. He felt as if he had a double and that another Daniel Mercier now stood in the middle of the dining room, witness to the simple, irreversible action that would be taken in the next few seconds. Daniel watched as he raised his own hand to the brass bar, lifted the black hat carefully by the brim and slipped it onto his lap, where it remained hidden from view under the table.

  The whole operation took no more than three and a half seconds, but it seemed to him to have been performed in desperately slow motion, so that when the sounds of the dining room reached his ears once more, he felt as if he was emerging from a long period underwater. The blood beat in his temples and his heart thumped in his chest. What if someone came back to claim the hat now, he thought, in a brief moment of panic. A bodyguard? The President himself? What would he do? What could he possibly say? How could he explain the sudden transfer of the hat to his lap?

  He had just committed an act of theft. The last time he had stolen something was in early adolescence, in a shopping centre in Courbevoie, egged on by a friend after school. They had stolen a record: ‘Aline’, a hit single by the pop star Christophe. Since that afternoon back in 1965, he had never done such a thing again.

  What he had just done was far worse than sneaking a record into his schoolbag in a supermarket. Daniel sat motionless, his eyes darting around the room at the other diners. No, no one had seen him, he was sure of that. Nothing to fear on that score. But now he had to leave before anything untoward happened, before the President asked someone to call the restaurant, looking for his hat; before the waiters came scurrying to the table under the furious gaze of the maître d’.

  Daniel asked for the bill, saying he would pay by card. The waiter returned with the credit card machine. Daniel hardly noticed the amount. Nothing mattered any more. He signed the slip and took his receipt. He rummaged in his pockets for a tip and put it in the chrome dish. The waiter bowed slightly in a gesture of thanks and walked away.

  Now, said Daniel to himself. His mouth was dry so he poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down, then delicately extracted the presidential hat from under the tablecloth and put it on his head. Yes, it fitted perfectly. He put on his coat and headed for the door, feeling as if his legs were about to give way. The maître d’ would stop him: ‘Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur! S’il vous plaît! The hat, Monsieur …?’

  But nothing of the kind happened. Daniel had left a fifteen-franc tip, and the waiters all nodded respectfully as he passed; even the mâitre d’ attempted a smile which lifted the tips of his narrow moustache. The door was held open for him, and he stepped out into
the cold, turning up the collar of his coat and heading for his car. Mitterrand’s hat is on my head, he told himself.

  Once in the driver’s seat, with the hat still on his head, Daniel angled the rear-view mirror and gazed at his reflection in silence for several minutes. He felt as if his brain was bathed in a refreshing dose of sparkling aspirin. Bubbles of oxygen were fizzing through zones that had slumbered for too long. He turned the key in the ignition and drove off slowly into the night.

  Daniel drove through the streets for a long while, circling his neighbourhood several times before leaving the car on level five of his building’s underground car park. He could have driven like that for hours, his mind a complete blank. He felt buoyed up with a confidence that was as comforting as a warm bath.

  In the deserted living room, he sat down on the sofa and looked at his reflection in the blank television screen. He saw a man sitting with a hat on his head, nodding slowly. He stayed like that for a good hour, contemplating his own image, his entire being suffused with an almost mystical feeling of serene calm. It was two in the morning before he listened to his wife’s message on the answering machine. Everything was fine in Normandy, Véronique and Jérôme would be back next day, arriving at Gare Saint-Lazare at 9.45 p.m. Daniel undressed. The last item he removed was the hat. He gazed in wonder at two letters embossed in gold on the band of leather running round the inside:

  F.M.

  In his account of the evening, Daniel allowed himself just one slight alteration – the seafood platter now featured no more than twenty-four oysters, half a crab and a few winkles. He knew that if he gave the full details of his sumptuous dinner, there was a danger Véronique would concentrate solely on the expense. Comments like ‘Well, you certainly look after yourself when we’re not around,’ or ‘I see, dining in solitary splendour!’ would interfere with the re-telling of his adventure. In Daniel’s version of the story, the arrival of the head of state assumed near-biblical proportions, and the phrase accompanying the vinegared oysters, ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week’, rang out like a divine commandment from the cavernous halls of heaven.

  ‘Still, I’m shocked.’

  ‘Shocked? Why?’ said Daniel.

  ‘That you stole the hat. It’s not like you.’

  ‘I didn’t steal it as such,’ he objected, irritated, although much the same thought had occurred to him as well. ‘Let’s just say I didn’t give it back.’

  Véronique seemed to accept that. He managed to convince her that he had, in fact, done the right thing by holding on to the hat because the moustachioed maître d’ would probably have kept it for himself. Worse, if he hadn’t spotted it, another customer might have taken it, unaware of the identity of its illustrious owner.

  When they’d finished supper and Jérôme had gone to bed, they returned to the sitting room. Véronique carefully picked up the felt hat and sat stroking it, as if seized by a sudden melancholy. She regretted that Daniel hadn’t been quicker to spot that François Mitterrand had left it behind: he could have called after the President and given it back to him with a smile.

  ‘There would have been an understanding between you,’ she remarked, sadly.

  ‘Yes, but he was too far away,’ Daniel pointed out. He still preferred the real-life version of the story, the one that ended with him wearing the presidential hat on his own head.

  ‘I don’t share your point of view at all, Monsieur Maltard,’ said Daniel, shaking his head. He touched the hat that he’d placed in front of him on the big conference-room table.

  Jean Maltard and the ten other members of the finance department summoned to the eleven o’clock meeting stared at him dumbfounded. Daniel allowed a few moments of silence to pass, a sphinx-like smile playing on his lips, then heard himself refute, point for point, the arguments put forward by the new departmental director.

  With unprecedented confidence, he watched himself negotiate the complex layers of diplomacy with the ease of a dolphin leaping through the waves. When he had finished stating his case, a great silence fell upon the room. Bernard Falgou stared at him open-mouthed. Michèle Carnavan ventured a small cough, then, despairing of her spineless male colleagues, spoke out.

  ‘I think Daniel has summarised our concerns perfectly.’

  ‘Brilliantly,’ added Bernard Falgou quickly, as if prodded by a tiny electric shock.

  Maltard gazed impassively at Daniel. ‘Nice work, Monsieur Mercier,’ he announced icily.

  Jean-Bernard Desmoine, head of Finance, had travelled up specially to attend the meeting, called to put the finishing touches to SOGETEC’s new objectives for the Paris-Nord section. He kept his eyes fixed on Daniel as he made his case, scribbling a few brief notes when he explained with perfect clarity, and the figures to back him up, that they couldn’t sensibly split the department into three divisions, but two at the very most.

  ‘Thank you for coming, everyone,’ said Jean-Bernard Desmoine. ‘I’ll let you get back to your desks. I’d like a word, Monsieur Maltard.’

  Maltard agreed with a meek, insincere smile, then glared at Daniel. Only Bernard Falgou caught the look of cold hatred directed at his subordinate by the new departmental director. As soon as they had left the conference room, Falgou took Daniel by the arm.

  ‘You slaughtered him, you slaughtered Maltard!’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ protested Daniel, blinking.

  ‘But you did!’ insisted Françoise. ‘He’s out on his ear, no doubt about it. That’s what Desmoine’s telling him right now. You demolished every one of his arguments.’

  They gathered round him, excited to discover in their colleague a man of quiet strength, capable of defending their interests better than the most radical union representative, the best, most articulate lawyer. They praised his calm demeanour, his air of assurance, the extraordinary way he had of saying the unpalatable with the utmost tact.

  ‘True class,’ said Michèle Carnavan.

  *

  Back in his office, Daniel settled into his swivel chair, stroked his hat, which he had placed on the desk in front of him, and savoured the quiet of the room. He closed his eyes. He had got through the meeting without being assailed by one of the waves of anxiety that had plagued him since early childhood. On the contrary, he had experienced a sense of serene calm. Just a few days ago, the very idea of a confrontation with Jean Maltard would have raised his blood pressure and brought on an attack of heartburn with the last bite of lunch. Tense as a bowstring, he would have played back their exchange over and over again in his mind, castigating himself all afternoon for some clumsy phrase, some word or point that had, unquestionably, caused him to hand the argument to Maltard. Daniel would have emerged ashen and drained at the end of the day.

  Not so now. He felt fine, as one might at the seaside, walking in the sand, late on a summer’s afternoon. This new state of affairs came as no great surprise. It was as if the real Daniel Mercier had finally stepped out into the light of day. The earlier model was just some unfinished prototype, a work in progress. He raised the Venetian blind on his office window, letting the winter sunshine stream in, and immersed himself in his SOGETEC files once more.

  It was well past seven o’clock when Jean Maltard pushed open his deputy’s glass door, without knocking.

  ‘Staying the night?’ he asked drily. ‘There’s no overtime for deputy departmental managers …’

  Daniel looked at him, unruffled. ‘I’m just finishing the SOFREM file, then I’m going home.’

  ‘Finish it tomorrow,’ Maltard cut him off. ‘Close of play. Department’s all cleared off home. You do the same.’

  Without a word, Daniel put the top back on his Parker pen, engraved with his initials, a present from Véronique on their fifth wedding anniversary. He got to his feet, switched off his computer and his Minitel terminal, and put on his felt Homburg. Wearing a hat gives you a feeling of authority over someone who isn’t, he thought to himself.

  Sure enough, Jean Maltard sudden
ly looked a great deal smaller. He seemed to be shrinking before Daniel’s very eyes. A bug shrinking down into the pile of the carpet, buzzing furiously. Daniel had only to tread it underfoot …

  ‘You’re not going to get away with this!’ said Maltard suddenly. ‘You’re waiting for a call from Desmoine, aren’t you?’ he added, with a venomous smile.

  ‘He’s already called actually.’

  That was a shock to Maltard, who stared at Daniel dumbfounded. ‘He’s already called you?’ He pronounced each word slowly and carefully.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Daniel evenly, putting on his coat.

  ‘What did he want?’ demanded Maltard.

  ‘Breakfast. On Friday.’

  ‘Breakfast with you,’ said Maltard under his breath, as if muttering a spell that must not be spoken aloud for fear of the consequences.

  ‘Yes, that’s what he said.’ Daniel bent down to slip a folder into his briefcase. There was a long silence, then he shut the clasps, the metallic snap signalling that it was time to leave.

  The two men rode down in the lift without speaking, and parted in front of the entrance without shaking hands. Maltard watched as Daniel walked away, then went into the nearest café and ordered a double rum. The departing figure of his deputy in his coat and black hat haunted him for a good part of the night.

  The secretary brought croissants and eggs which looked as if they were wearing woolly winter hats. Daniel supposed the crocheted accessories were there to keep the eggs at the right temperature. I’ll have to tell Véronique, he thought. Jean-Bernard Desmoine sat opposite him. Both men were installed in large white leather armchairs near a window on the eighteenth floor of the SOGETEC building, overlooking Paris. Having such an elevated office must surely give its occupant a feeling of superiority.