The next morning I had a monstrous hangover. The worst of it was I woke at daybreak. I don’t know if this happens to you, but alcohol stops me from sleeping and my eyes are wide open at first light and no way can I close them again.
I waited for a moment. I felt as though I had been eating plaster. I lit up, but the effect was awful. I felt seasick. What I really needed was a winsome Negro maid with dimples of Venus to bring me black coffee and not be averse to a little roll in the hay. To sober me up and relax me so delightfully that I could go back to sleep. But fat chance. And here I was with these thoughts that gave me hard-ons so big they almost hurt. I imagined the Dimple Haig pooling in the blood vessels of my organ. What if it burst?
Anyway, moving right along, no black soubrette, and not a sound or movement in the place. I got up, buckled on the holster still hanging on the chair at my bedside, and went downstairs without shaving—I hate shaving, and I shave only every other day as a rule, or else one day in the morning, the next day in the evening, then skip a day, and so on.
I went down to the kitchen. It was only half past seven. The whole place was slumbering, including the help. I couldn’t face making joe. I took the big Mercedes, not a bad ride, and drove to Ozoir-la-Ferrière and treated myself to a very substantial breakfast in a touristy hotel that also served dawn’s farmworkers.
I found a Gypsy Queen pinball machine, a four-flipper model I love, in which playing cards can light up to make combinations either horizontal, creating four of a kind, for a straight. Either of these earns a free game, which of course you may also win by accumulating points if you light up “specials.” A very exciting game. Unfortunately this type is increasingly hard to come across. These machines are like automobiles: novelty is always what thrills, and old models, once they have been used, are replaced by new, even if the new are not always better. I think of the Gypsy Queen as the Bugatti of pinball. But there’s no good crying over spilt milk. What happened was that I spent several hours in that crappy hotel, so entranced was I by the machine. What was more, I just kept on winning.
I was drinking little shots of rum. You have to maintain, and the fact is that a little straight alcohol is the best thing to take the morning after a drunk. The hair of the dog. Either it kills you or it completely reinvigorates you. It never killed me. The best of all is absinthe on the rocks, but you can no longer find it—it’s like Gypsy Queens or Bugattis, or real works of art. What Eddy does every morning is empty a beer mug containing six beaten eggs and Martell. Which is good, but a bit overwhelming.
Be that as it may, noon was approaching by the time I got back to the country place. Everyone was up, or rather sitting on the lawn with sunshades and coffee. The Admiral, who had put his Lord Nelson outfit back on, wagged his big head at me with irritation on seeing me return and get out of the Mercedes.
Just as I was crossing the lawn between the garage and the area where everyone was working on their tans and stuffing themselves, a skinny young Negro, no more than twenty, bounded over the predominantly prunus boundary hedge and made straight for N’Gustro, braying like a donkey.
I was stunned to see him draw from his jacket an all-metal kitchen knife so sharpened that its point was like a knitting needle.
Not only was I stunned for a moment but as I said the Colt .45 automatic was very heavy and it took me ages to get it out as I too ran, yelling I don’t know what or why.
I reached my objective but it was all over. Had the assassin approached in silence he might have had a chance, but by shouting as he did—very impolite things, seemingly, in his dialect from back home—he brought the whole gang down on his neck. N’Gustro showed barely any emotion. The Admiral, at once haughty and furious, had hold of one of the hit man’s arms while two minor monkeys gripped the other. The formidable blade lay on the grass while the prisoner screamed, wept, driveled, and strove to kick the Admiral in the crown jewels.
All the same, I needed to show willing. I took aim at the guy and dispassionately smashed the butt of my gun into the middle of his face. His nasal cartilages exploded so violently that it was slightly disgusting. Blood spurted to every point of the compass. I caught the joker’s foot, in a very pointy shoe, right in my privates. In my pain I lashed at him quite furiously. I had to be restrained, otherwise I would have finished him off. I sat down on the grass with my junk hurting terribly. The other fellow must be suffering much more than me, I thought, but that was cold comfort. Debourmann had gone to call the cops.
N’Gustro made a swift exit. He had a plane to catch, and could not afford to miss the Tricontinental Conference on account of some idiotic investigation.
Everything was sorted out in the next few days. The hit man was just a lunatic. Intertribal stuff. I’ll never be able to make head or tail of their argy-bargy.
All in all, though, and despite its belatedness, I think my violent intervention made a good impression. The Admiral looked at me in an odd way after that, the same way teachers used to look at me after I got back from Algeria. There has always been a violence in me that can frighten people.
A few days later I got together with Eddy because in a corner of his mind he had retained the idea of our writing a screenplay based on my life. He showed up at my place with a forgettable piece of fluff, and we squatted on cushions and polished off a liter of wine before we really began to talk; then I recounted what had happened at the country house, how N’Gustro was attacked and how I fixed the attacker’s wagon. Eddy was enormously excited at the prospect of scamming the MPLZ by making propaganda films for them.
“You’ll only burn your fingers that way,” I said. “N’Gustro is a man you don’t scam.”
I don’t know what ever made me say that.
“I’ve got better ideas,” I went on. “This N’Gustro, we should sell him. He’s a character. We should hustle some other mark by using N’Gustro.” I was warming to my subject. “That’s how I see it.”
Eddy disagreed to begin with. I had to bring him around.
“A serial killer like Landru sells easily,” he argued. “But you can’t sell left-wingers. Folks who are loaded are not going to help you dig their graves by lionizing revolutionaries.”
“What about Viva Villa!? Viva Zapata!? Vera Cruz and all that? That’s not selling revolution, you say? Listen, old pal, revolution sells.”
“Don’t tell me you can imagine a movie about Castro,” he responded stubbornly. “You think the Americans would go for that, for instance?”
“That’s because they are at loggerheads with him now. But not so with Africa. Nobody even really knows where it is, or what goes on there. A great big continent with hordes of Negroes fighting it out—you can bet they’ll get a hard-on for it. Just so long as the tone is humanistic.”
“Still, Castro . . .”
“Just wait till he’s dead. Then they’ll make pictures about him.”
“Ideally, N’Gustro should be dead, right?”
We laughed. We shouldn’t have. I added that I had to think it over, check some things, contact some people here and there.
The next day, a Saturday, I went to Rouen. I can see myself now, armed with a typewriter and masses of photos liable to inspire me. I am a firm believer in the system according to which, when you write about anything, you think up characters with the faces of actors you know, or even of other celebrities. You say to yourself: What if Elizabeth Taylor was locked up in the cellar of a ruined house along with Nasser and Michel Jazy? You follow this up a little bit, and bingo! you’ve got a plot for whatever you like.
What I was doing now was rather different, trying to put myself in the mindset of the masses. I mean, I knew that N’Gustro was opposed to the cult of the personality, so if we made any proposal to him it would have to show his life and the life of the little people in parallel—what it was to be a Negro, in that time, in Africa, and all that sort of thing. So I surrounded myself with photos of the bush and the jungle and wild animals, photos of black demonstrations, played a record of African songs, and let my mind wander. I was here in this very room where I am now.
Just as I felt inspiration coming, the doorbell rang. I went to answer, probably not in a very good humor.
Goémond again! But this time he wasn’t alone. With him was a tall square-shouldered guy, looking affluent, well preserved. Lots of dough, a tad sporty, he checked me out in an affable way, which always makes me suspicious. But he didn’t seem like another cop. Goémond introduced him with a “Monsieur.”
“Monsieur Laveuglant.”
I asked them in, but not very far in.
“I come as your neighbor,” explained Goémond. “And Monsieur Laveuglant wanted to meet you.”
As he spoke, I stood in this Laveuglant’s path. But he practically pushed me aside, proceeded very calmly, led the way into my study, and began leafing through photographs. I was passably annoyed, but a sixth sense prevented me from booting his ass out of the house. I sensed a power in him. A gent whose balls you wouldn’t kick because he would be the one to hurt you if you did. The sort of character worth knowing. He spoke to me then about N’Gustro.
“I’m interested in all of this,” he said unctuously, “as an amateur.”
An amateur of what, he didn’t say.
“I’ve heard about the role you played recently.”
“My role?”
Like a damn fool, I thought about films. He straightened me out.
“Your role during the assassination attempt. How you took care of that young maniac.”
Shit! I thought to myself. My God, the guy is a barbouze.*
I have an instinct for that kind of thing.
Laveuglant continued with his classy chatter.
“I have business in Zimbabwin,” he said. “That is why I follow the political development of that country with such keen interest. All this turmoil is regrettable. Sometimes one gets the feeling that ill will is the motor of History. If only people understood one another better, there would be so much less misapprehension, violence and destruction, as the great philosopher Leibniz pointed out. For my own part, I do the best I can for peace and for the protection of human property and lives. Should N’Gustro revisit France, you should let me know; with my connections, it would be child’s play to ensure his perfect security.”
He added that he had every faith in my abilities, but that two layers of security were better than one and it was in everyone’s interest to know everyone else. Weirdly confusing. I suspected some hidden meaning. I didn’t trust him at all.
“If you don’t trust me, which would be quite natural,” he went on, “you might ask Colonel Battistini for his opinion of me.”
“I see,” I said. “So you know each other.”
“We were adversaries once, but now that’s all in the past; it is time to pull together.”
He talked like that, making no sense unless there was some hidden meaning that I didn’t get. They left very politely. I was also very polite. I felt it was in my interest. My sixth sense . . .
I went back to my work, which their visit had interrupted. Rather than taking notes I allowed my thoughts to roam freely and reflected on a host of ideas that occurred to me. At the time I was convinced we were going to make the film about N’Gustro no matter what.
I rarely have such enthusiasms—and I’m pretty sure that this one was my last—but on those rare occasions when I did I would be rather eager to share my joy. So I tucked my files under my arm and went off to have a word with Jacquie, not least because she might be useful to me, seeing that she must know people other than Hourgnon’s crew, but in the same world, who might be interested in my proposals.
She was at home. We chatted. She wanted to hook me up with some idiots. She wanted to work on scripts with me. As I was telling her that sometimes she seemed not to have taken a good look at me, I realized the power balance between us had effectively swung in my favor, because now it was she who would be happy to work for me, which was proof positive that I could indeed make headway with this N’Gustro idea.
We parted company on a fairly bitter note—in her case, at any rate.
I went back to Paris on that Sunday with my notes and that evening went straight in search of Eddy, because I was sure that in the end the bread would be coming from his quarter. I stopped at Élysée-Store. No luck there: Eddy had hooked a big one just the night before and had left to scout locations. He wanted to make a vampire movie with a snow setting; the guy, a ski manufacturer, was thrilled by the idea and the pair of them had left for Garmisch with two or three tootsies in tow. I knew the story. This might last all week. I was seriously pissed off. Then I bumped into Debourmann at the Lido.
Having nothing better to do, I let him buy me a Guinness. We drank standing up at one of the little tables in the alley outside. I happened to tell him about my ideas and my problem. He latched on right away. He claimed to have resources, financially speaking, and to have known people forever throughout the American movie world who were left-wingers —all ousted, one had thought, by McCarthy, but all of whom except for a handful had found their way back in, being members of an intelligentsia affecting mild dissent but in the end highly employable. In short, Debourmann had many friends who might serve our purposes, or so he said.
The very next day we paid visits to likely prospects. Some were interested. Things were looking up. Myself, I believed utterly in the idea. How tenacious illusions can be! But then, were these really illusions? It was hard to rid myself of the idea that hidden forces were at work.
For a while euphoria reigned. Ben moved into my place. I pounded the typewriter like a mad thing while he cut open grapefruits for us. Between grapefruits he read what I was writing. Sometimes he simply approved, but for the most part he offered criticisms that were exceedingly useful. He had an intuitive feeling for effect. And he was very good at clarifying the ideas that my script needed to champion. The idea, for instance, that the power of a free press trumped the power of money. Obviously a quite laughable notion, but people like it and it sells well, so I was perfectly happy to incorporate it.
Debourmann for his part seemed actually to believe this. I did not pursue the matter with him. What good would it do for us to fall out? He was just another intellectual. If I had to take issue with every intellectual I ran into, where would I be?
Very quickly we had a screenplay written with everything needed to get even a mildly liberal producer’s juices running. We went back to the one who had been the most favorable. He wasn’t remotely on board, wouldn’t even read the script, and wouldn’t give his reasons.
We went to see the others. Same story.
Just as we were leaving the place of one of them we bumped into Defeckmann, the irascible journalist from the N’Gustro press conference, who offered to drop us somewhere. Since my Matra happened to be in for an oil change, I accepted, even though Ben pulled a face—clearly the other guy did not occupy a special place in his heart.
Off we went.
“So it’s like that,” said Defeckmann. “You’ve fallen in love with that Negro?”
I told him to get fucked, that that wasn’t it at all, we were just making a film.
He said that we hadn’t considered the consequences.
What consequences? I didn’t get him at all. Was he threatening us or what?
“I’m serious,” he said. “Because, whatever his personal qualities, N’Gustro is an objective ally of worldwide subversion, of totalitarianism. If N’Gustro were to prevail, even if he himself is not utterly pro-Soviet, he would trigger a process that would turn Zimbabwin lickety-split into a Communist and anti-Semitic dictatorship. Within the ranks of the MPLZ itself are many young Communist and even pro-Chinese militants liable to drag the revolutionary movement further and further into bellicose and racist delusions quite antithetical to freedom.
“Now,” he went on, “freedom is what I fight for and will always fight for.”
“Your freedom,” cried the liberal Marxist Debourmann, “is the freedom of the rich to oppress the poor. Individual freedom in the context of collective servitude. What we want is collective freedom, so that the greatest number may be delivered from natural and social scourges, and too bad if certain individuals must suffer provisionally.”
This seemed to me like the moment to descend into the melee by quoting Marx when he said more or less that communism would render impossible everything existing independently of individuals. I thought this would calm the two jokers down, but it didn’t at all. Defeckmann pretended outrage and stated that Marx certainly never said such a thing, while Debourmann, wearing a critical expression, added: “Unless it was the young Marx.” Myself, I knew nothing about it, and besides they were getting on my nerves.
I stopped listening. Roughly, Defeckmann and Debourmann were accusing each other of oppressing who knew whom. Maybe me. I nodded off.
In any case, what use were discussions of this kind? A few days later the naked truth emerged, and it was that no one now wanted to produce my film. I still maintain that pressure was brought to bear, and it is not hard now to guess what its source was. I am going to shine a bright light on all of it.
*Barbouzes: A secret police force initially mobilized against the OAS. (Trans.)