10:28
At night, the avenues of New York are rivers of diamonds. At night, in this city, it is not night. Convinced I am unique, I walk down the West Side Highway at 10:28 PM as if walking onstage to accept an Oscar. Death wanted none of me in New York. The current situation in the West is often compared to the fall of the Roman Empire. Am I decadent? I don’t think so. My lifestyle is suicidal, not me. I’m just a nihilist who doesn’t want to die. Night falls over the Site: a clearing in a forest of glass. A year and a half after the tragedy, all that remains of the World Trade Center is a wasteland, a gray plateau surrounded by a wire fence. I will never know if what took place is as I imagined, nor will you. A siren in the night: the blaring ricochets in the narrow streets. White smoke rises from the drain between a Cadillac “For Sale” and the cracked sidewalk. The same smoke, ever-present in the past—we look at it differently now. A dead world, haunted by pretzel vendors. Not far from the Holocaust Memorial (18 First Place, south of Battery Park City), I look up: music sneaks out of an apartment and women’s laughter, the tinkle of ice in glasses and the yellow glow of American parties. I know this song: a global hit (“Shine on Me”) by the Praise Cats with a demented rhythmic piano and crazy lyrics like all disco hits: “I’ve got peace deep in my soul / I’ve got love making me whole / Since you opened up your heart and shined on me.”) I suddenly feel an incredible burst of joy, the same burst of gratitude that I felt on August 29, 1999, when I held you in my arms and welcomed you to earth. I play with the little blue Tiffany box in my pocket with the engagement ring inside. The foghorn is silent now. Only the melody dong dong dong tzing tzing tzing drifts from the window like a stream of warm air lifts flimsy summer curtains, the rest is silence. I mumble the words like a psalm. “I’ve got peace deep in my soul, I’ve got love making me whole.” I’m ashamed of my Catholic joy. Obscene in front of the largest crematorium in the world. Obscenely, inexplicably happy to be alive simply because I’m thinking about the people I love. Planes smash into walls and our society with them. We are kamikazes who want to live. Love alone gives me the right to hope. Freighters pass in the darkness—red lights like a nautical airport gliding across the black mirror. Birds fly off toward the dead stars. I pass the Cunard Building where, a century before, people bought their tickets to travel on the Titanic. The mouth of the contaminated river meets the sky. We flirt constantly with oblivion, death is our sister, it is possible to love, no doubt our happiness is hidden somewhere in that chaos. Will there be a worldwide democracy in thirty years’ time? In thirty years I and the rest of the planet will be forcibly disillusioned but I don’t care because in thirty years I’ll be nearly seventy. Somewhere, far off on the sea, the moon will soon be reflected and the water will look like a dance floor or a tombstone. I am sorry to be alive but my time will come. My time will come.
10:29
The plane taking me back to Paris, cleaving the clouds with its shark’s-fin aileron, doesn’t fly anymore. Sitting in an armchair at 1,250 miles per hour over this fathomless ocean, I was crossing the clouds to come back and ask you for your hand. I could feel life coursing through my veins like an electric current. I got up to stretch my legs. Leaned forward. And then I had an idea. I lay down on the floor, on the carpet in the aisle, fists clenched stretched toward the cockpit. The stewardess smiled, convinced I was doing some stretching exercise. And do you know what I thought? That if I just closed my eyes and took away the cabin, the engines and all the other passengers, I’d be alone in the ether, 30,000 feet up, speeding through the blue at supersonic speed. Yes, I thought I was a superhero.
Paris-New York City, 2002-2003
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Bruce Springsteen for his latest album, and also to Suicide, Robbie Williams, Sigur Ros, The White Stripes, Richard Ashcroft, Zwan, and of course thanks to Cat Stevens-Yusuf Islam for his boxed set: In Search of the Center of the Universe (A&M Records).
Thanks to Amélie Labrande for becoming Amélie Beigbeder.
Thanks to Emmanuel Auboyneau for the financial jargon, to Francisca Matteoli for the photo of Windows on the World, and to René Guitton for the two Towers of Babel.
Thanks to the New York Times (article “120 minutes: last words at the Trade Center” by Jim Dwyer, Eric Lipton, Kevin Flynn, James Glanz, and Ford Fessenden).
Thanks to the collection of eyewitness accounts compiled by Dean E. Murphy: September 11: An Oral History (Doubleday).
Thanks to Bruno Lavaine for the Burt Bacharach song.
To Thierry Gounaud for the cover.
And to Canal+ for the redundancy settlement.
And to Vogalàne, Smecta, Lexomil, without which this book would not have seen the light of day.
Thanks to Walk in Hemingway’s Paris by Noel Riley Fitch (St Martin’s Griffin, New York): proof that some Americans know Paris better than we do.
Thanks to Marc de Gontaut-Biron for taking me to visit the Cielo, the Lotus, and the Ta.
Thanks to Julien Barbera for reserving the best table for me at Cipriani Downtown.
Thanks to Yann Le Gallais for his champagne.
Thanks to Nicolas Bonnier for the spliff.
Thanks to David Emil and Joey du Noche.
Thanks to Concorde…
And long live Sean Penn!
About the Author
Frédéric Beigbeder was born in 1965 and lives in Paris. He works as a publisher, literary critic and broadcaster.
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Praise for Windows on the World:
‘Frédéric Beigbeder is that rarest of beings – a French intellectual with a deep and sympathetic understanding of American life and culture. Windows on the World is an audacious, not to say outrageous imaginative exercise, as well as a sober and erudite meditation on the meaning of the most painful chapter in our recent history. Norman Mailer recently suggested it would be at least a decade before an American novelist would come to terms with this event; in the meantime we’re lucky to have Beigbeder’s perspective, with its remarkable combination of empathy and the wisdom of distance’
JAY MCINERNEY
‘[This] novel – cleverly executed, and beautifully translated – forces us to face the unfathomable in a new and unexpected way’
Irish Times
‘This could have been a feast of bad taste, but Beigbeder brings it off thanks to his electrifying intelligence and vaulting sympathy with all the victims’
Independent
‘A terribly clever, powerful, fatalistic book’
PATRICK SKENE CATLING, Spectator
‘Beigbeder’s approach…is honest, unsentimental and true’
Sunday Times
‘A brave, powerful story…You know how it ends but it will still hit you hard’
Arena
‘A genuine attempt to experience and understand the pain of that day’
LAURENCE PHELAN, Independent on Sunday
‘Unpredictable, irreverent and free of cant’
Daily Telegraph
‘Beigbeder writes with enjoyable cynicism’
Guardian
By the same author
9.99
Copyright
Harper Perennial An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2005
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2004
Copyright © Frédéric Beigbeder 2004
Translation copyright © Frank Wynne 2004
This English language edition differs in parts from the original French
Frédéric Beigbeder asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
&nb
sp; A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
‘The Windows of the World’ – Words and Music by Burt Bacharach & Hal David
© Copyright 1988 Universal/MCA Music Limited (50%)/Windswept Music (London)
Limited (50%). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
‘Father and Son’ – Words and Music by Cat Stevens.
© 1970 Cat Music Limited. Sony Music Publishing UK. All Rights Reserved.
‘Pop Star’ – Words and Music by Cat Stevens.
© 1970 Cat Music Limited. Sony Music Publishing UK. All Rights Reserved.
‘Time’ – Words and Music by Cat Stevens.
© 1970 Cat Music Limited. Sony Music Publishing UK. All Rights Reserved.
‘Trouble’ – Words and Music by Cat Stevens.
© 1970 Cat Music Limited. Sony Music Publishing UK. All Rights Reserved.
‘Where Do the Children Play?’ – Words and Music by Cat Stevens.
© 1970 Cat Music Limited. Sony Music Publishing UK. All Rights Reserved.
‘Jenny from the Block’ – words and music by Jennifer Lopez/Samuel Barnes/ Jean Claude Olivier/Troy Oliver/Andre Deyo © 2002 Nuyorican Publishing/Enot Publishing LLC/Ekop Publishing LLC/Tunesmith Advancements/Milk Chocolate Factory Music. Sony/ATV Music Publishing Ltd.
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* Genesis, XI:1-3.
*Genesis, XI:4.
*Genesis, XI: 5-8.
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