The President's Hat

by Antoine Laurain

  The rain had stopped and Fanny took off the hat. She noticed two letters embossed in gold on the leather band running round the inside of the hat: F.M. Could fate really have meant the hat for her? Here were Fanny Marquant’s own initials.

  ‘Well, then … I’m not letting go of you, my friend, no way’, she murmured, stroking the hat.

  Then she tied her hair up, put the hat back on and set off down the road with an even more determined stride.

  The Batignolles district was deserted but for a few indistinct figures far off in the distance, disappearing into the shadows of apartment blocks. The hotel was not far from here and Édouard would be waiting for her in their room. He would be watching TV or else lying on the bed reading Le Monde.

  As she walked through the lobby, she passed the receptionist. He nodded at her with a knowing smile. Fanny could not stand the man, who knew all the ins and outs of her love life. With his leering smile and creepy nod, she could imagine him roaming the corridors after dark, listening out for the sighs of lovers forced to meet at this crappy hotel. She began climbing the stairs, dragging her case after her, convinced he was looking at her legs. Second floor, room 26.

  As she reached the door, she could hear the television was on. A fierce debate was raging, a chorus of voices speaking all at once. It could only be Droit de réponse, the talk show Édouard liked to watch. The guests sat around the set smoking, shouting and getting worked up; as things got more and more heated, the host, Michel Polac, simply looked on in amusement, puffing on his pipe and narrowing his eyes. Fanny knocked on the door just as the round-up of the week in pictures was starting: Siné, Plantu, Wolinski and Cabu had drawn cartoons to illustrate the news. The actress Monique Tarbès provided the ironic commentary, rounding off with a jaunty ‘See you next week!’ worthy of a market trader.

  ‘Come in, it’s open.’ Édouard was lying on the bed in his open shirt and boxers, and as Fanny came in he propped a pillow behind his back and stared at her. ‘What’s with the hat?’

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ she replied, bending down to give him a kiss.

  Édouard kissed her tenderly, stroking up and down her neck the way she liked to be touched. He was about to move up to her hair and brush the hat off, when she stepped back sharply.

  ‘Hands off my hat.’

  ‘Your hat?’ he said, emphasising the possessive with a note of sarcasm. ‘Where did you get it from anyway?’

  ‘It’s a secret, but it is my hat.’

  On the television screen, a man with a cigar hanging from his mouth was busily stating the obvious. In protest, a small, bald man leapt out of his chair and appealed to Michel Polac, who once again appeared delighted to sit back and watch his programme sliding into chaos.

  ‘It’s a man’s hat,’ Édouard pointed out. He got up to turn the volume down.

  ‘So?’ said Fanny, readjusting it over her hair.

  ‘So that means a man gave it to you,’ continued Édouard, staring straight at her.

  Fanny gave him a strange little smile. ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘I might be. You come into our room wearing a present from someone else …’

  The mood in the room had suddenly shifted. Fanny studied Édouard carefully. She loved his body, his hands; she loved his face, his voice, his hair. For the last two and a half years, she had loved all of that. She had been jealous of a phantom wife she had never laid eyes on and whose existence meant she could not be with Édouard. He, on the other hand, had never been jealous, yet this evening she could see the signs of it appearing on his face. How far could she take this little game with the hat Édouard took to be a gift from another man?

  All the way, she realised in a burst of lucidity, surprising even herself. In the space of a few moments, the felt hat had emerged as the source of strength she had waited so long for. All at once, the cowardice which had prevented her talking to Édouard, perhaps even breaking it off, had vanished. Now she understood Michel Polac’s approach: push it as far as it will go until the whole thing explodes, then sit back and survey the damage. Fanny shivered with fear and excitement. She took a step back, perched on the table and tilted her head to one side, all the while keeping her eyes on Édouard. She was about to leap into the unknown and it was a delicious feeling, more satisfying than any sexual position.

  ‘Yes, the hat was a present,’ she said softly.

  ‘Who gave it to you?’

  The question opened a gaping hole at Fanny’s feet. ‘A man,’ she heard herself reply. ‘A man I met on the train.’

  ‘Like me?’ Édouard instinctively pulled the white sheet up over his chest, as if literally to protect his feelings.

  ‘Yes, like you.’

  ‘How old is he? It’s an old man’s hat!’ cried Édouard, too loudly for the time of night (though no sound came from behind the walls of sleeping Batignolles).

  ‘He’s older than you, it’s true,’ began Fanny, gazing off into space, ‘but it doesn’t matter. He’s not handsome the way you are; he’s beautiful in a different way. He’s thoughtful and considerate, he loves me and he wants to live with me. I borrowed his hat – it’s a little game we play – and I wore it all round Le Havre. I even wore it once when we were making love – I put it on and got on top …’

  Édouard stared at her, rooted to the spot.

  ‘So he bought me one of my own, just like his. He got my initials put in it and gave it to me to remind me of him.’

  Fanny took off her hat and smoothly passed it to Édouard, who turned it over to read the gold letters inside.

  ‘You’ll never leave your wife and I’ll never be anything more than the girl you meet in hotels at weekends, so I’m going to leave you, Édouard. Like that Gainsbourg song: “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais.”’

  The words had come out of her mouth perfectly calmly and yet, inside, Fanny was in turmoil.

  Édouard breathed deeply, keeping his eyes on her, trying to decide how to react – though since Fanny appeared to have made up her mind, his options were somewhat limited. He had lost. He had lost her.

  ‘Fine,’ he said crossly. ‘You could have saved me a wasted weekend coming here. You could have just told me by Minitel.’

  He got off the bed and grabbed his trousers. Fanny watched as though from a distance, as if Édouard were no more than a silhouette moving in the sunlight at the far end of a beach. He put on his trousers and angrily buttoned his shirt, his fingers fumbling with the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons.

  ‘Waiting until half past midnight to tell me that …’ he grumbled, scowling at her. ‘You want to leave me but I’m the one who’s getting out of here!’ he announced before kneeling down to look for his loafers under the bed.

  It was as if the floor was on fire, as though the whole room was about to go up in flames. Yet in spite of his fury, he was surprised to find himself feeling a sense of relief. All the questions about his wife would finally come to an end now, along with his terse replies about needing time. He was tired of trotting out the same old empty excuses. OK, he had been dumped, but the truth was the break-up took a weight off him. As he put on his jacket, he was ashamed to admit he was both mortified and glad. Perhaps that was the most painful part of it.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to try and stop me?’

  ‘No,’ replied Édouard breathlessly. ‘No. You’re cheating on me, you’re leaving me, I’m going.’ He did up the metal strap of his Kelton quartz watch and stood in front of Fanny. ‘Goodbye,’ he said coldly, ‘you can keep the room until midday tomorrow.’ Then he picked up his overnight bag.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked gently, though the answer mattered little to her.

  ‘Maybe Lyon. That’s where everyone thinks I am,’ he replied, opening the door and slamming it behind him.

  Fanny leant against the table, listening to Édouard’s footsteps fading along the corridor, and closed her eyes. Her head was spinning. She slowly took off her jacket, then her skirt, her bra and shoes and fi
nally her knickers and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, naked save for the hat on her head.

  She took her perfume, Solstice, out of her bag and sprayed it over the pillows to mask the smell of Édouard. She took off the hat, laid it on the bed and turned out the light. She slid under the sheets and closed her eyes. Sitting beside her on top of the bed covers, the hat was caught in the moonlight. Fanny brushed her fingers over the soft felt before falling asleep.

  The winter sun shone through the net curtains, casting pools of light on Fanny’s breasts. She slowly opened her eyes. The events of the previous night came back to her bit by bit, unlike dreams which drift away the moment you wake up: Édouard under the sheets, listening to her; Édouard scrambling to his feet; Édouard inspecting the initials inside the hat, then the sound of the door slamming shut and, ‘You could have saved me a wasted weekend.’ Then his footsteps in the corridor.

  So it was over. It wasn’t a dream, it really was over. Never again would Fanny return to the hotel room in Batignolles; never again would they fix secret dates in Paris or at Norman ports; never again would she turn on the Minitel in the middle of the night looking for Alpha75. It was over. How could you disappear from someone’s life just like that? Perhaps, when all was said and done, it was just as easy to leave someone’s life as to enter it. A stroke of fate and a few words could be enough to start a relationship. A stroke of fate and a few words could end it too. Before it, nothingness. Afterwards, emptiness. What was left of Édouard? Zilch. Not even a poxy present to pin her feelings on. No cigarette lighter, no key-ring, no scarf, still less a photo of the two of them together or a letter with his handwriting on. Nothing.

  She lay there for a long while, the patches of sunlight warming her breasts and belly, before turning her head to the left. Still sitting on the sheet, the hat had not moved an inch. She remembered that you weren’t supposed to put hats on beds, a stupid old wives’ tale like the ones about ladders and black cats. Fanny didn’t believe in that sort of hocus pocus. All this fuss over a hat, she mused. So who was this F.M.? If only he knew what a chain of events his felt Homburg had set in motion …

  She tried to put a face to the man she had invented the previous evening, that wonderful lover who had given her a hat just like his own and had her initials put in it as a sign of his affection. No man she had ever known would do such a thing, would ever have such class, such panache. Was he tall, slender, or average build? Did he have brown, blond or grey hair?

  No face came to mind. She had lied for the first time in as long as she could remember and it had worked. At no point had Édouard stood up and declared, ‘I don’t believe you! You’re lying.’ No. The idea that Fanny might be spinning a yarn had not even crossed his mind. For that matter, it occurred to her, he had never read a single one of her stories. She was reminded of the subject of the competition: ‘A True Story’. The story of Fanny and Édouard had come to an end. And all because of a hat. That was the tale she must tell.

  From the moment she had sat down at the table of the little café on Place Félix-Lobligeois, she had not put down her pen. She filled page after page of the pink notebook with her rounded handwriting, drawing little circles on top of every ‘i’. The words told the story of her split from Édouard, the misunderstanding over the hat and all the feelings she was experiencing: relief, anxiety, sadness and nostalgia. Towards the end of her account, she wrote: ‘This hat was no longer of use to me; it had served its purpose, and even though it bore my initials, I resolved to leave it somewhere in the city.’

  Leave the hat behind? Fanny chewed the end of her pen. It struck her as a romantic idea. If she discarded the hat somewhere in Paris before getting her train, her story could reflect the truth right up to the end. This small act of sacrifice might even bring her luck. Filled with doubt, she looked up from her page to see a gypsy and her daughter walking towards her. Fanny smiled and turned away.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a clairvoyant, I’ll tell you your fortune,’ said the woman, whose dark-brown hair was swept up under a red headscarf. She had a tattoo between her eyes and a line under her bottom lip.

  ‘No, I’d rather you didn’t,’ Fanny insisted, smiling once again, ‘really.’ She looked down at the child, who was staring at her oddly.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to tell you.’

  Fanny shook her head and withdrew her hands.

  The woman placed her dark, papery hand on the hat but pulled it away again immediately as though the felt were boiling hot. ‘It’s not yours, this hat.’ Her expression had changed – she looked almost frightened. Her hand hovered above the hat. ‘This is a man’s hat, he is very powerful,’ she said, crossing herself.

  ‘Oi, you! Stop bothering the customers!’ shouted a waiter with a grey goatee.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ Fanny told him.

  ‘It’s not all right, young lady. This is my terrace and I’m not putting up with that.’

  ‘Whose hat is it?’ Fanny asked regardless.

  ‘You know him, everyone they know him.’

  ‘No,’ replied Fanny, ‘you’re wrong, I don’t know him.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Well then, tell me his name.’

  ‘You give me money, give me twenty francs.’

  ‘No, I don’t have twenty francs for that.’

  ‘Give me fifteen.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Will you leave the young lady alone!’

  The gypsies stepped away as the waiter came over, flicking his tea towel as though trying to scare off cats.

  ‘They’ll tell you any old rubbish and then you look down and find your wallet’s gone. They pulled the same trick last week,’ he grumbled.

  Fanny watched the woman and her little girl disappear around the corner. You know him. It was ridiculous, how could you know the owner of a hat you’d found on a train? She must not let herself be put off. She had to finish her story; she had poured two and a half years of her life into it. If she could land the Prix Balbec, it would be the best possible consolation prize for an unhappy love affair.

  An hour and a quarter later, Fanny was beginning to doubt anything interesting ever happened in parks. Her feet had taken her far beyond Batignolles to the gates of Parc Monceau on Boulevard de Courcelles. She had gone in, passing the usual park wildlife of children and old people. As she stood on the main path looking at the row of benches, it occurred to her to place the hat on one of them. The fourth one along was empty; she put it down there and retreated to watch discreetly from the bench opposite. No one had seen her do it; now all she had to do was wait.

  But since then, nobody had stopped or even turned to look at the solitary black hat. She wasn’t so sure now about her poetic gesture; after all the hat belonged to her, it even had her initials inside it, and what did it matter really if the ending of her story was true or not?

  Just as she was getting up to retrieve it, a bearded man in jeans and a sheepskin jacket stopped beside the bench. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before sitting down. He was wearing round, black-rimmed glasses and must have been about sixty. He turned to look at the hat, observing it as though it was a silent, mysterious creature. He reached for it and turned it over. Then, bizarrely, he held it up to his nose and seemed to sniff it. He smiled and glanced at his watch, then he stood up, turned back to face the hat, paused, and snatched it up again. Fanny watched him leave. He held the headwear in his hand, without putting it on. He disappeared out of the entrance to the park.

  Fanny took out her fountain pen and wrote: ‘The man with the grey beard took the hat away. Who was he? I will never know.’ She suddenly felt incredibly tired. Perhaps it was only just sinking in that she had really left Édouard. After a brief dizzy spell she could not bring herself to record in her story, Fanny stood up and went the same way as the man who had taken the hat.

  She passed through the wrought-iron gates and stopped on the pavement. ‘He is very power
ful,’ the gypsy had said, crossing herself. ‘You know him, everyone they know him.’ Fanny could not take her eyes off the cover of Le Nouvel Observateur, which had been blown up and plastered all over the newspaper kiosk. The picture showed François Mitterrand with a red scarf around his neck, a dark coat and a black felt hat on his head. He was staring into the camera with a mischievous glint in his eye, and Fanny had the distinct impression the President was looking straight at her.

  Sicilian lemon, bergamot, green mandarin, tangerine, cypress, basil, juniper berry, cumin, sandalwood, white musk, ylang-ylang, patchouli, amber and vanilla. Pierre Aslan identified the scent as Eau d’Hadrien, created by Annick Goutal in 1981. But there was also another perfume on the hat, a more recent addition: bergamot, pink jasmine, sweet myrrh, vanilla, iris and tonka bean. Pierre could have recited the ingredients of the second scent forwards or backwards. It was that mythical perfume Solstice. His perfume. Invented by him, Pierre Aslan, the nose.

  He could not have said why he had picked up the hat. He had long since given up trying to find reasons for his bizarre behaviour, which had previously been a source of such confusion. He sniffed the hat again: there were definitely two perfumes, Eau d’Hadrien, for men, and Solstice, for women. The felt of the hat was impregnated with Eau d’Hadrien; Solstice was only just beginning to take its place.