no gutter, nothing for a person to hang on to. There’s a little ledge under my window, but it’s narrow. And even then you still have to get there, and somehow stay there.”
“Thorough report.”
“The police arrive rapidly and get to work. There are four of them, debonair but industrious. They survey the surroundings of the hotel with flashlights, they smoke out some cats, drive out three spiders, cry out in bruxellois, but they don’t find anything human. They leave, taking down my statement. According to them, it must have been like in a circus act: three or four men climb on one another’s shoulders, the one on top reaches the window, enters the room, and grabs any objects of value. Then they disappear into the neighboring thickets—beautiful thickets, by the way, I recommend them, look up the Parc Léopold. I think to myself that I dodged a bullet, given that my laptop was on the shelf right by the window. All the secrets of the Kingdom—ours, not Belgium’s—will remain secret. I go back to sleep, pretty perplexed.”
“And the metal noises?”
“Forgotten! I had more important things to do than wonder about the whisper of the world. The next morning: toilet, shower, shave, after-shave—the ritual of a minister on a mission. I start to get dressed and then, stupor and shudders, as a local author once said: no more trousers! Nada, niente! I had left them folded, flat on the suitcase, close to the window. And at that hour, they were conspicuously absent! In a flash, I understand everything: the thief had taken my trousers, in which I had left a pile of change. And it was these coins, falling out of the pockets, that had woken me up!”
“Voilà, mystery solved.”
“One hell of a lucky break, I said to myself in petto. Normally, I empty the pockets of my trousers before folding them at night. But that night, for whatever reason, I hadn’t. The noise woke me up and the thief left without my computer, which holds the plans for the nuclear missiles stashed under the Place Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech. However, I had also left some bills in the pockets, and so I’m out 320 euros. Bah, money isn’t everything…The problem—or should I say the tragedy?…the catastrophe?—is that I don’t have any other trousers. For the two-day trip, I had brought only the saroual I was wearing. Why complicate things? Two shirts, yes, but only one pair of pants: I’m not Patino the Tin King, or an English lord. So, nix pairs of trousers and Europe awaits me at nine o’clock sharp. I go down to the reception in my pajamas. The manager is there, impeccably dressed. He is already up-to-date on my misadventure. Alas, he tells me, all the stores are still closed at this morning hour. Brow furrowed, he thinks through a few different possibilities. He could go to his house and bring me one of his pairs of trousers, or he could ask the employees, but these suggestions, born of Belgian goodwill, come crashing down when faced with this irrefutable reality: I am taller than all these Samaritans. I would look like a half-drowned Nixon! Standing in the hotel lobby, we look at each other, sheepish, and the seconds pass.
“‘I hardly dare suggest it to you…’ he says to me while adjusting his glasses with an extremely distinguished air.
“‘Go on, go on! Anything would be better than being stark naked or wearing a barrel around my waist!’
“‘Two minutes from here, at the corner of rue de l’Étang, there’s an Oxfam Solidarité shop that sells used clothing.’
“‘But it’ll be closed!’
“‘My aunt is the manager, call her, she’ll open the shop. She lives right around the corner.’”
Dassoukine swallows a mouthful of coffee and assumes a tragic air.
“He who has never crossed the Place Jourdan in his pajamas, hair disheveled, searching for an act of charity even though he is the grandson of a kaid, has no concept of the absurd. I rush into the shop where an old woman is waiting for me with an angelic smile.
“‘My God, you’re a giant,’ she chirps, panicked.
“‘At your service, madame.’
“‘The only thing we have in your size is this.’
“She unhooks a rag and hands it to me. Prepare the funeral arrangements! They’re golf trousers, the work of a mad tailor, the trappings of a clown. Oh they have lived, possibly several lives, and hard ones at that. The original colors are now faded but it’s obvious they must have clashed violently in the old days. You can see beneath the fabric, beneath the canvas, I should say, a yellow, a yucky brown, an evanescent green, a burnt amber, red diamonds layered on top…but we mustn’t entirely write off the wreckage, because there is one undeniable advantage: they are exactly my size. I throw five euros on the counter, I forget my pajamas and rush toward the assembly hall: it’s right around the corner, at the end of rue Froissart. The orderly raises an eyebrow when he notices my trousers but my papers are in order and he grants me entry while deploring in a low voice the end of European civilization. I enter the hall, where my interruption causes a sensation. The members of the committee, who are already there, on a sort of platform, gawk at me with bulging eyes, looking only below the belt, as if I had been reduced to two legs.”
“We are but ants in the grand scheme of things.”
“I sit down on a chair opposite these messieurs-dames of Europe and I prepare to present my plea. I fix my gaze on the eyes of the committee…and then I nearly fall out of my chair. For who is presiding over the committee? I’ll give you three guesses.”
“Uhh…”
“The Hungarian!”
“Attila the Hun?”
“No, moron! The Hungarian from the day before, civilized to the core, the grandson of the Archduke and the Bourbons. He looks at me, knitting his brow (‘I know that face…’), then his mouth gapes open (‘No, not him, not the waiter from yesterday!’), and then I have before me the personification of Hungarian stupefaction and commiseration (‘It’s really him!’), and then he leans toward his colleagues, distraught, and starts speaking to them in a low voice. He forgets to turn off his microphone; the interpreter, imperturbable, thus continues to translate—it is his job after all—and so I intrude on this discussion centered on me, and in particular on my trousers. Monsieur Hongre recounts the reception from the night before and tells them I was the waiter and that, with great dexterity, I walked around with a tray filled with petits fours and incidentally almost poured them onto him; but, he adds with a sense of fairness through which I recognize the true son of a grande tente family (even if they are Habsburgs), that I deserve credit for serving them with great professionalism. The Archduke’s report flabbergasts his peers. Then Europe, as always, divides itself. The Slovak reckons I was making off with the leftovers from the buffet because I didn’t have any money, but the Englishman retorts that I came here on a plane and not a flying carpet, and therefore I must have some means, I couldn’t be completely ‘skint.’ The Italian taps his chin, suspecting some combinazione, but what? The Spaniard grumbles something about the ‘Moros’ who never learn. Was I perhaps staging a hoax, for whatever obscure reason? The Frenchman, Cartesian to his eyebrows, expresses his doubts: being very familiar with Morocco, he can’t imagine a minister of His Majesty arriving dirt poor (much like the wheat) in Brussels; what if he was a doppelgänger?
“‘Doppelgänger?’ interrupts the German. Ach so…But which one? Yesterday’s Kellner or this guy, here, on the stand?’
“The committee, as one single man, straightens up and examines me with a suspicious air. Am I really myself? Or a clown imposter? Or a lackey with a big head?
“The
