got on here, Okay? And when you’ve finished, come and find me at the counter. I need to see someone.”
I’ve had my fifteen minutes. She dumps me there and then pats my shoulder as she goes past. Looking around discreetly, I see that it’s a girl, a little brunette with short hair and thick glasses, nothing special to look at, who now has all her attention. The Hyena has her Ray-Bans back on, and she’s listening without moving a muscle. Once the memory stick is loaded up, I go over to give it to her. She barely registers me. Even through the dark glasses, you can tell she’s eating up this girl with her eyes. I thank Cro-Mag and get away as soon as I can. At the door, I turn around and see the Hyena lean slowly toward the girl, interrupting her in mid-sentence to kiss her. It’s just her head that’s moved closer to the other woman’s, her arms and hands haven’t budged. Then she returns to her initial position. She still isn’t smiling, it doesn’t seem to be part of her repertoire.
SHOWER. SHAMPOO. MOISTURIZER. IN HIS BATHROOM, standing in front of the mirror over the basin, he practices breathing through his nose, slowly. He regrets having agreed to this interview, his calendar’s already overbooked. There are dark circles under his eyes, he’s drunk too much these last few days. He thinks his complexion looks greenish. The sleeping pills probably. He can’t get used to graying at the temples. At least he’s not losing his hair, it could be worse. But seeing himself in the mirror is still an unpleasant shock. He can’t get used to being this middle-aged man. On the radio, a minister is talking about locking up pedophiles who might reoffend. Three psychiatrists have been invited along with him, to oppose the decision. François is irritated at their cautious tone. Are they afraid the pedophile might get bored in the end? The previous day, François recorded a TV broadcast at 9:00 a.m., with the minister of labor, who had just finished doing a radio show. He arrived accompanied by a team of four advisers. You wouldn’t have thought he was well-briefed though, seeing him on set. While they were doing his makeup, someone came to tell François Galtan that he must never reply directly to the minister, he must address all his comments through the presenter. It was a bit annoying, as if they were afraid he wouldn’t know how to behave. In any case, he could have jumped on the minister’s lap and given him a kiss and it wouldn’t have mattered, nobody watches the show. The places he gets asked when he’s just published a novel have about as much public exposure as the sandbox down in the garden. Le Figaro has still not published anything about his latest book. He calls his publicist, a bimbo who thinks she’s charming. She has big thighs and thick ankles, he can’t think where she gets her confidence from. She’s not there, of course. No doubt accompanying some author who’s farther up the best-seller list. He asks her to call back, knowing full well she’ll forget to. He can’t get used to the polite indifference that greets his books when they come out—three vaguely favorable reviews, two minor TV shows, three provincial radio stations, and that’s it. He can’t complain about being besieged by autograph hunters. Yet he believes in the book sincerely every time. A huge success, his comeback on the literary scene. He affects a dignified indifference to the pointlessness of his efforts, but in a few weeks he realizes it’s true, his novel has made no impact. Once more, he feels he’s going through hell.
His first novel had been well reviewed by François Nourissier. His enthusiasm hadn’t surprised Galtan, he considered the recognition no more than he deserved. You didn’t write novels like his without people noticing. He’d been invited on to the TV book show Apostrophes when the second one had come out: Rain. It had meant something in those days. You didn’t get on TV as easily as all that, and certainly not to do some chitchat about anything other than your writings. Some good reviews, a reputation for brilliance. Even Pierre Frank, in a short paragraph at the end of one of his articles, had mentioned François’s book. He’d had a few successes, nothing vulgar, nothing over the top. He’d been noticed, but he hadn’t won any prizes. He was still under thirty then, and convinced that one day he’d get the Prix Goncourt. He didn’t have any doubts. And he didn’t suspect anything. He counted the potential jury votes as he wrote his books. He had a prominent publisher, Le Seuil, and he’d been short-listed three times. Never won, though. Always an also-ran. People told him it wasn’t good to get it too young. He took it nonchalantly. He didn’t know that he’d already had his moment of glory, that this was it. A promising beginning. Followed by not very much. He didn’t have the right contacts, he wasn’t well-enough connected. No hook to make an impression. Nothing but his books. A bit late in the day, he’d discovered this wasn’t going to be enough. He would have liked to be able to console himself by concentrating on posterity, on the generations of young Japanese readers who would be moved to tears when they discovered him too late, and who’d write many biographies, indignant at the vulgar indifference that had greeted his publications during his lifetime. But the more years went by, the less likely that seemed. He didn’t lose confidence in his work, but he had his doubts about the world of the future. He’d published the early novels convinced that one day there’d be a Pléiade edition of his collected works, that his oeuvre would be looked at as a whole: readers would admire its coherence, its stability of purpose, with its clear progression, its willingness to take risks, and its striking intuitions. He hadn’t imagined what would happen in the early 1990s. That was the first sign of decline. The scruffy, uneducated, journalistic writers who’d become the best-sellers for their generation. He was ashamed, in retrospect, that he hadn’t anticipated what publishing would turn into: an industry as stupid as any other. A resentful and antiquated street-walker. Mincing about in tattered robes. Dependent on television and trendy magazines. Enemies whose nuisance value he hadn’t spotted. Neither left nor right wing. Neither classic nor modern. TV personalities. Celebrities of the day. Pitching a line, always on the lookout for fresh flesh, greedy for readership figures. At first, he had decided to laugh them off. And he wasn’t the only one. He remembers, with bitterness today, a dinner party at which an eloquent publisher had kept them in stitches talking about the current best-sellers, forecasting that the way things were going, one day people would want to read novels by young girls going into detail about their hemorrhoids. How they had laughed. No, he hadn’t seen it coming. Authors who wrote about their eating disorders, or getting raped by their fathers, writers who were illiterate sluts, writers who boasted of screwing teenage girls in Thailand, or of being high on coke. He hadn’t seen it coming at all. Not to mention that the 1990s, compared with what followed, were in the end quite tame. He could have adjusted. But then along came the Internet. Nowadays, he had to make a constant effort not to spend all day long searching the web, haggard and depressed. Reading the comments. The anonymous load of crap. The litany of nonstop insults delivered by the incompetent. As soon as he discovered them, he realized he had entered the tenth circle of hell. Parallel little comments, deaf to each other, all in the same format, laconic and sickeningly hostile. Mediocrity had found its voice: the comments on the Internet. He wasn’t even being insulted. He would have liked to be able to rage and complain about the way he was treated. But he wasn’t even interesting enough for these sick fashionistas to launch campaigns against him. He was reduced to writing under a pseudonym, a few words of subtly critical praise for himself on the literary forums and blogs. He did have a few loyal readers, but they didn’t feel any pressing need to discuss his work on the Internet. Still, he didn’t throw in the towel. For his latest novel, The Great Paris Pyramid, he’d tried to adapt. Without betraying himself. People were talking about the return of the great French novel; he thought his moment had come at last. Times had changed but he wouldn’t. This might finally do the trick. A bit of Egyptian history, which he was knowledgeable about, a romantic plot, young characters who listened to music on their phones and talked about sex with no holds barred. But it didn’t seem to be taking off. And yet writing it had been a real pleasure, such as he hadn’t felt for a long time. He’d taken it as a sign. He’d been drafting the first few pages while suffering with a terrible toothache. The dentist had prescribed Solupred pills, which would reduce the abscess enough for the tooth to be extracted. Never having taken them before, he didn’t realize he was particularly sensitive to the effects of cortisone. He finished the packet, after the tooth had been pulled, and asked a doctor friend to prescribe some more, then more again, and so on until the book was finished. He wrote for twelve hours
