The disappearance of Ferrer’s antiques obviously represented a heavy loss. Financing for the expedition to the Great North, in which he had invested a fair amount of capital, was gone, pure deficit. And as the time had come when nothing was selling at the gallery—mediocre offerings combined with the slow season—it was of course also the moment his creditors chose to remind him of their existence, artists to demand their fees, and bankers to voice their concern. Then, when summer’s end appeared on the horizon, as in each year at that time there would be no delay in the arrival of all kinds of taxes, threats of fiscal reform, various fees and dues, the renewal of his lease accompanied by registered letters from the building manager. Ferrer began to feel at bay.
Before anything else he had to file a complaint, of course. As soon as he’d noticed the theft, Ferrer had called the main police station of the 9th arrondissement and a weary officer from Criminal Investigations had shown up within the hour. The man had noted the damage, registered the complaint, and asked the name of his insurance company.
“Well, that is,” Ferrer said, “it so happens that these objects weren’t insured quite yet. I was about to see to it, but—”
“You’re a prize imbecile,” the policeman had crudely interrupted, making him feel ashamed of his negligence and pointing out that the fate of vanished objects was as uncertain as could be, the chances of finding them microscopic. This kind of case, he expounded, was rarely solved, given the highly organized nature of art smuggling: in the best of circumstances, the matter would drag on for a long time. They’d see what they could do, but they weren’t off to a very good start. “Anyway, I’ll send somebody from Criminal Identification,” the detective concluded, “see if he can come up with anything. Meanwhile, of course, you’re to touch nothing.”
The technician arrived a few hours later. He didn’t introduce himself immediately, first spending a moment in the gallery to examine the art. He was a small, thin myope with overly fine blond hair, smiling continuously and not appearing all that eager to get to work. Ferrer had at first taken him for a potential client—“Are you interested in modern art?”—before the man identified himself, showing the insignia of his profession. Detective Paul Supin, Bureau of Criminal Identification.
“That must be fascinating,” said Ferrer. “Your job.”
“You know,” the other said, “I’m just a lab technician. Take me away from my electron microscope and I don’t really see much. But yes, it’s true, I am interested in all this.”
In Ferrer’s studio he had unpacked his little kit, a tool box containing the classic accessories: camera, vials of transparent liquids, powder and tweezers, gloves. Ferrer watched him work until the other took his leave. He was demoralized, would have to recoup his losses quickly; it began to feel inordinately hot.
The summer progressed slowly, as if the heat had made time itself viscous, its passage seemingly impeded by the friction of its molecules raised to a high temperature. With most of the movers and shakers on vacation, Paris was more supple and sparse but no more breathable in the still air rich in toxic gases like a smoky bar before closing time. Here and there the city took advantage of the reduced traffic to dig up the streets and put them back together: rumblings of jackhammers, rotations of steam drills, gyrations of cement mixers, flows of fresh tar in the sun veiled by various exhalations. To all this Ferrer paid scant attention: too many other things to think about as he crossed Paris in a taxi from one bank branch to another, trying without much success to borrow money, beginning to envision mortgaging the gallery. So it is that we find him at eleven in the morning, under the crushing heat, on Rue du 4-Septembre.
This Rue du 4-Septembre is very wide and very short and money is what makes it tick. All more or less the same, its Napoleon III–style buildings contain international and other kinds of banks, headquarters of insurance agencies, brokerage firms, temporary employment services, editorial offices of financial publications, currency exchange and appraisal offices, estate administrators, managing agents for co-ops, real estate storefronts, lawyers’ offices, rare-stamp dealerships, and the charred debris of the Crédit Lyonnais. The only brasserie in the neighborhood is called L’Agio. But you can also find the head offices of a Polish airline, photocopying services, travel agencies and beauty parlors, a world-champion hairstylist, and a commemorative plaque to a Resistance fighter who gave his life for France at the age of nineteen (In Memoriam).
And there are also, on Rue du 4-Septembre, thousands of square feet of renovated office space for rent and uncompleted spaces under strict electronic surveillance: they gut the old buildings, preserving the facades, columns, and caryatids, the sculpted crowned heads overhanging the street entrances. They restructure the floors, adapting them to the laws of bureaucracy, and create spacious suites, scenic and double-paned, the better to accumulate more and still more capital. As everywhere in Paris in summer, hard-hatted workmen scurry around, unfold blueprints, bite into sandwiches, and express their views into walkie-talkies.
It was the sixth bank in two days that Ferrer had approached to solicit a loan; once again he walked out without success, his damp fingers leaving their imprints on the documents with which he had armed himself. After the aforesaid had let him down once again, the elevator doors opened at the ground floor onto a wide entrance foyer, containing no people but many sofas and low tables. As he walked across this space, Ferrer had neither the will nor the energy to go home right away; he preferred to sit for a moment on one of the sofas. What tells us, physically, that he was weary, pessimistic, or discouraged? The fact, for instance, that he kept his jacket on despite the heat; that he stared fixedly at a mote of dust on his sleeve without thinking to brush it off; that he did not even push back a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes; but perhaps most of all, that he sat without reacting when a woman passed through the foyer.
Given this woman’s appearance, this is the most surprising part. By all logic, as we slightly know him, Ferrer should have been interested. She was a tall, slender young woman with statuesque contours, well defined lips, long, light-green eyes, and wavy copper-colored hair. She was wearing high heels and a loose black ensemble, cut low in the back, decorated with small light-colored chevrons on her hips and shoulders.
As she passed near him, anyone else, or he himself in his normal frame of mind, would have judged that these clothes were there only to be taken off her, even ripped off her. The blue folder, moreover, that she was carrying under her arm, the pen that thoughtfully brushed against her lips seemed purely formal accessories, she herself looking like an actress in a hard-core porn film during the preliminary scenes, when people say anything at all while waiting for the situation to heat up. That said, she wore not a drop of makeup. Ferrer had just enough time to notice this detail, though without according it any more interest than to the decor of the foyer, when a pervasive weakness engulfed him, as if all the parts of his body were suddenly deprived of air.
A thousand-pound weight then seemed to crash down on his shoulders, skull, and chest all at once. A taste of sour metal and dry dust invaded his mouth, his forehead, filled his neck and throat, creating a stifling mixture: swelling of a sneeze, violent hiccup, profound nausea. It was impossible to react in any way whatsoever; his wrists seemed bound by handcuffs and his mind saturated by a feeling of suffocation, acute anxiety, and imminent death. Pain ripped through his chest, spiraling from his throat to his pelvis, from his navel to his shoulders, irradiating his left arm and leg, and he saw himself fall off the sofa, saw the floor rush up toward him at top speed, though at the same time in slow motion. Once he was lying on the ground, at first it was impossible to move; then, having lost his balance, he lost consciousness—for how long is impossible to know, but it was just after recalling for an instant what Feldman had warned him about regarding the effects of extreme temperatures on coronary cases.
He came to almost instantly, even though it was now impossible to utter a word: it was not blackness that engulfed the screen like a turned-off television, no, his field of vision continued to function the way a video camera fallen to the ground still goes on filming after the sudden death of its operator, and records in static shot whatever falls into its lens: a corner of wall and wooden flooring, a badly framed plinth, a piece of tiling, some excess glue at the edge of the rug. He wanted to stand but fell back more heavily still when he tried. Persons other than the young woman in black must have come running, for he felt them leaning over him, removing his jacket and laying him on his back, looking around for a telephone, then the firemen came quickly in their truck.
The firemen were handsome, strapping young fellows, calm and reassuring, equipped with navy blue uniforms, leather accessories, and snap hooks on their belts. Gently they settled Ferrer on a stretcher and precisely slid the stretcher into their truck. Ferrer felt protected now. Without thinking that this episode had more than a little in common with the one from February, albeit much less pleasant, he tried to recover the rudimentary use of speech in the fire truck, but he was kindly told to keep quiet until they reached the hospital. Which he did. Then he fainted again.