The President's Hat

by Antoine Laurain

  ‘Very well, I want a Basquiat,’ he said, downing his champagne.

  No one reacted.

  ‘Did you hear me? I want to buy a Basquiat, right now, this minute.’

  ‘You’re going to spend 150,000 francs on a Basquiat?’ asked the man from the museum.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,’ replied Bernard.

  The man with the sandpaper beard asked him to wait quarter of an hour while he fetched his car.

  A tray of salmon canapés went past. He took one just as the speakers began pumping out a tune chanted by a woman begging someone called Andy to say yes. One hundred and fifty thousand francs wasn’t exactly small change, but he was past caring. If worst came to worst, he could always sell one of the smaller flats he had inherited, which would bring in a darn sight more than 150,000 francs – enough to buy several Basquiats. Damn, it felt good to live in the eighties and really make the most of it; he had not felt so alive in years.

  Monsieur Djian reappeared, offering his apologies for having had to say hello to so many people.

  ‘I hope you’re not bored?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all. I’m going to buy a painting.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he replied approvingly, before walking away again.

  Close by, Jack Lang was deep in conversation with a blonde woman smoking a gold-tipped Sobranie cigarette. She had to be an actress or a singer but, once again, Bernard failed to place her.

  When she walked away, Bernard took the opportunity to approach Lang on the subject of Buren’s Columns. He told him he had seen children playing and tourists throwing coins on them – music to the ears of the former minister.

  He looked Bernard in the eye. ‘Governments come and go. Life is the only movement that keeps going,’ he said with a solemn, knowing smile. He placed his hand on Bernard’s forearm and went on. ‘It’s all part of a great burst of creativity, a real exploration of the age we live in. You should join my movement, Allons z’Idées,’ he said, taking a sticker out of his pocket bearing a Warhol-style picture of himself.

  The minister was pulled away, there was movement among the guests and Bernard found himself once again standing next to Jacques Séguéla, who was saying: ‘Money doesn’t have ideas; only ideas can make money … and it’s our job to have ideas.’

  Making his way towards the exit, he brushed past Serge July, founder of Libération, who was informing a shaven-headed man that it was now impossible to tell where culture began and advertising finished. Bernard gathered his belongings, put on his Burberry trench coat and placed his hat on his head. He smoothed down the brim and ducked into the crowd one last time to say goodbye to his host.

  ‘An image is worth a thousand words, as Mao Zedong said,’ Jacques Séguéla was now telling a group of young people hanging on his every word, when his eye fell on Bernard. The man who traded on his flashes of genius then had one which passed over his own head.

  ‘It’s Mitterrand’s hat!’ he exclaimed, pointing to the Homburg.

  And how they all laughed at the joke from the man behind Mitterrand’s slogan: ‘La force tranquille’.

  The gallery owner switched on the strip lights which flickered for a while before settling down. Bernard had kept his hat on. He stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting for the owner to get ‘the Basquiats’ out for him.

  ‘Why isn’t he in the major galleries?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘Because he’s young and black,’ replied the owner.

  Black, as well, mused Bernard.

  ‘That’s him over there,’ he added, pointing to a small photo hanging on the wall.

  Bernard saw the face of a young witch doctor with intense eyes and spiky hair.

  ‘Jean-Michel’s a French name.’

  ‘That’s right, from Haiti, where Basquiat’s family come from.’

  ‘Does he speak French?’

  ‘When he feels like it,’ quipped the gallery owner.

  Then he produced three canvases, turned so that Bernard could only see their frames.

  ‘Close your eyes and prepare to see the work of a budding genius.’

  The three paintings had echoes of the artwork on the hoardings at the Louvre, yet they carried a force that was at once tribal and urban, unlike anything he had encountered before.

  Having been brought up on eighteenth-century landscapes, Bernard was completely unprepared for the impact they had on him. The power radiating off these pictures was almost radioactive. The paint strokes, the figures, the little planes and crossed-out phrases exploded out of the canvas like a jumbled message from a lost civilisation to be uncovered five thousand years down the line; our lost civilisation.

  Within their frames, they held the story of humanity’s primal rituals. The feast-day incantations and mystical elegies of man’s beginnings were fused with the noise of aeroplanes and the sirens of police cars. Blackened figures stared mask-like at the viewer, while childlike planes flew across the sky, colliding with words scattered over the canvas like a crazy game of Scrabble.

  Bernard stood in silence for several minutes, unable to take his eyes off the paintings, like a mouse transfixed at the sight of a snake.

  There was no going back. Tonight, a new Bernard Lavallière was coming to life between the cold, damp concrete walls of a modern art gallery. Whilst his friends and family would no doubt recoil from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works like a vampire from sunlight, putting that on his living-room wall would be a defining act. The mark of a man in the know, with his finger on the pulse.

  ‘What are they called?’ he asked softly.

  The salesman introduced them from left to right: ‘Sangre Corpus, Wax wing and Radium.’

  ‘I’d like thirty per cent off if I take all three.’

  ‘Fifteen …’ replied the dealer.

  The following week, Bernard began his grands travaux, literally and figuratively. The radical change in his outlook coincided with the arrival of a team of painters.

  His wife looked on in horror as the cornicing was ripped off and the fabric on the walls torn down to make way for a coat of perfectly white paint. Valuers from the Salle Drouot auction house came for the family furniture and Bernard watched it go without an ounce of regret. Not for the Louis XVI dresser and two Ming vases, or the gilt bronze carriage clock with Diana the huntress and a fawn; not for the Louis XIII cabinet, the six matching Louis XVI armchairs, the Louis-Philippe stool or the desk of the same era.

  The eighteenth-century landscapes of ruins filed past, followed by the pastel drawing of the woman gazing upwards, the Aubusson tapestry and even the Charles X crystal chandelier.

  With undisguised joy, he had given instructions for the clock-picture to be sold without a reserve. Charlotte Lavallière, née Charlotte de Gramont, removed all her family heirlooms to the safety of her boudoir. Everything else went to the auctioneers.

  Only the portrait of Charles-Édouard Lavallière survived this organised apocalypse and it was under his gaze, fixed in oil paint in 1883, that the Jean-Michel Basquiat canvases arrived one morning.

  Charlotte threatened to divorce him, but she did not go through with it. Bernard agreed to a compromise: one Basquiat in the living room, the other two in his office at AXA. They were the first in a long line of acquisitions, and Bernard sold a studio flat inherited from his ancestor to fund his newfound passion for art.

  ‘Supposing the Left get in again in ’88,’ the voices of the business world began to whisper. ‘Bernard would be a precious asset.’

  ‘Lavallière’s a socialist?’ asked some.

  ‘Of course,’ replied others, ‘he’s always been a Mitterrand man.’

  Bernard’s meteoric rise in the art-collecting world had given his career a boost too. At AXA, he was soon considered cutting edge. He was often photographed at private views for the society pages of Vogue or Elle, which his secretary excitedly passed around the office.

  He was sometimes seen, champagne in hand, at the side of Jack Lang or the actor
Pierre Arditi. He got on well with Claude Berri too – though the two men never saw eye to eye on Robert Ryman’s white monochrome paintings.

  The famous filmmaker even took him round to Serge Gainsbourg’s house one afternoon where, against all expectations, Bernard came up against a rather rigid character as far as painting was concerned, who lectured him on Cranach’s nudes which he ranked above all else in the history of art.

  One morning, as he went to buy his copy of ‘Libé’, one of those sudden, unexpected, absurd and totally out-of-the-ordinary events happened, the kind journalists with little knowledge of the basic principles of André Breton’s movement like to describe as ‘surreal’: Bernard had his hat stolen.

  It was all over in a matter of seconds; it happened so quickly he did not even have the presence of mind to cry out, still less run after his assailant. He was left standing on the pavement, dumbfounded and slightly dishevelled.

  Daniel Mercier felt as if he had the combined power of the French rugby team. He had never run so fast, for so long, through the streets of Paris, or any other city, for that matter. He stopped and leant against a heavy carriage door to catch his breath. To look at the hat, too, and check the presidential initials on the inside. Everything was fine. It was the right hat, and he had got it back. Even if his efforts to trace it had occupied every waking hour for several months.

  After reading Pierre Aslan’s last letter he had been able to piece together what had happened on the evening the perfumer had lost the hat at the brasserie. A man with the initials B.L. had left with Mitterrand’s hat. Daniel had the address of the brasserie and the date of the dinner.

  There was just one thing missing: the brasserie’s list of reservations for that evening. Customers who telephone to book a table have to leave their names. The relevant page in the restaurant’s diary might hold the key to the identity of the mysterious B.L. Daniel had confided his conclusions to his wife.

  ‘That hat will drive you insane if you’re not careful,’ she had warned.

  ‘I can’t give up now. I have to follow up any lead that might help me find the hat,’ he had retorted.

  So one Saturday morning, Daniel had driven to Paris and headed for the address given him by Aslan. When he got there, it struck him that all brasseries look the same with their big red awnings, the oyster bar outside and waiters in white aprons. The maître d’ had opened a big, rectangular book bound in claret leather.

  ‘Daniel Mercier … Ah yes, table 15. Waiter! Please take Monsieur to his table.’

  The maître d’ who held the object Daniel desperately wanted to consult was grey-haired and about fifty. He didn’t look as if he would be easy to coax information from, still less like he would be open to bribery.

  On the motorway coming to Paris, Daniel had run through all the ways he might be able to consult the restaurant’s diary, from the simplest – looking through it discreetly when the mâitre d’ left it next to the cash register – to the riskiest: snatching it out of his hands and making off with it as fast as his legs could carry him.

  Daniel had mused on the possible outcome of the latter solution, imagining himself being pursued by a pack of brasserie waiters, like the speeded-up chase scenes at the end of each episode of The Benny Hill Show.

  He had also considered bribing the mâitre d’ and had withdrawn a 500-franc note from the bank to that end. But judging by the look of the man now greeting a couple of English diners, he would never take the bait. The claret leather book passed in front of Daniel’s table several times, as though taunting him: Look, I’m right here with the head waiter and you’ll never get your hands on me.

  To calm his nerves, Daniel ordered a dozen oysters, a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and a plate of salmon with dill. He drank his first glass down in one. The chilled wine eased his anxiety. He would find a solution.

  What that was, he had no idea, but he would not leave this place without the information he needed. As the spoonful of shallot vinegar spread over the surface of a slightly milky oyster, Daniel held his breath. He worked the mollusc free with the small, flat fork, lifted it to his mouth and closed his eyes.

  No sooner had the combination of marine saltiness and vinegar touched his tongue than the President’s words rang out once more, as clear as when he had heard them for the very first time: ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week …’ Since his dinner en compagnie with the head of state, the same thing had happened each time he ate vinegared oysters.

  Daniel swallowed his last oyster and looked towards the bar. Customers not eating lunch were drinking coffee, or kirs, or glasses of Sauvignon, reading the capital’s daily paper, Le Parisien. Some were obviously regulars.

  The young barman, a blond chap with very short hair who looked no older than twenty-two or twenty-three, shook their hand when they arrived or left. When he wasn’t putting fresh glasses of white wine in front of the regulars, he was busy preparing coffees for the dining room at large and filling pitchers of water or carafes of wine.

  He must be a beginner in the business, thought Daniel, probably not that well paid, since he wouldn’t share in the tips left for waiters serving at the tables. He’s the one, thought Daniel, fixing his gaze on the young man. He’ll take my 500 francs. He will be my Trojan Horse, my way into the claret leather book.

  Daniel paid for his lunch, left a ten-franc tip in the chrome dish on the table, got to his feet, took a deep breath and headed for the bar, where only two customers were left, one finishing a kir, the other a glass of beer. Daniel perched on a stool and made a show of opening Le Parisien.

  ‘What can I get you, Monsieur?’ asked the young barman.

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  Daniel made his espresso last while he waited for the two men at the bar to clear off, hoping that others would not take their place. The one with the beer drank up and left without a word, closely followed by the kir drinker, who shook the barman’s hand. Voilà, Daniel was alone.

  ‘I’ll have another coffee,’ he said to the barman.

  Deftly, the young man detached the filter holder from the machine, scooped in a portion of ground coffee and replaced it, pulling the handle sideways to pack it tight. Daniel slipped his hand inside his jacket and and took out his wallet.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Two coffees, eight francs, Monsieur.’

  Daniel fished out the right money in coins, subtly taking out the 500-franc note at the same time. The young man placed the coffee on the bar in front of Daniel and collected the cash. Daniel chose his moment and unfolded the note on the marble counter. The barman glanced at the note, then looked at Daniel, who fixed him with a penetrating stare.

  ‘There’s something else you can do for me,’ he said, in tones as intense as his expression.

  ‘Really, I don’t think so,’ replied the young man, heading back to the coffee machine.

  ‘Five coffees on twelve!’ called a waiter.

  The barman set out the cups, then walked back to where Daniel was sitting, and leant across the bar.

  ‘Listen, I’m not a poof, OK?’ he said, in a low voice.

  Daniel had anticipated everything but this. Horrified that his approach had been mistaken for an attempted pick-up, he struggled to find a way to retrieve the situation as rapidly as possible. An idea – truly a stroke of genius, he was to reflect later – crossed his mind.

  ‘Me neither,’ he heard himself reply. ‘I’m a private detective.’

  The young man turned to look at him. A surprised, intrigued smile lit his features. Daniel knew he had won. The barman’s head would be full of images from films and TV series, he thought. And clearly, it was. The barman abandoned his row of coffee cups.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Deadly serious,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s about the restaurant bookings diary. Help me and the note’s all yours.’

  ‘Go on,’ said the barman, moving nearer.

  ‘Where are my five coffees?’ called the waiter.

&
nbsp; Unconsciously, Daniel had taken inspiration from his favourite fictional detective, Parisian gumshoe Nestor Burma and from Mike Hammer on Canal +. Véronique never missed an episode. Whenever he told someone that he was a private detective, Hammer, played by Stacy Keach, always got their full attention.

  And as it turned out it worked like a charm in real life, too. What’s more the fictional Frenchman and the American tough guy both sported Homburgs, which Daniel took as an excellent omen.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do; come back at seven,’ said Sébastien – his name was printed on his silver-plated identity bracelet.

  Getting further into character, Daniel tore the note in two, saying that he would be back that evening with the other half.

  He spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly around Paris, even visiting Parc Monceau where Mademoiselle Marquant said she had left the hat on a bench. Daniel sat down on a similar bench and thought back over the short story that had won the Prix Balbec. Here was the sequel, though Fanny would never know it.

  At seven o’clock sharp, he pushed open the door of the brasserie and headed for the bar. Three men were sipping drinks, while Sébastien wiped glasses. Daniel and Sébastien glanced at one another.