I was driving at top speed on the West Autoroute. I was down in the mouth. The thing had been looking so good. What had gone wrong?
I had Anne next to me in the Matra. She had asked me for a ride to Rouen so she could see her mother. She respected my silent fuming.
As we were getting into Rouen I suddenly realized that everything repelled me. I didn’t want to see my family house again, much less imprison myself there. What for? To look at my map in the mirror, write rubbish, go out drinking? Without thinking twice, I suggested to Anne that we not stop but continue, straight on out to the sea. For who knows what obscure reason she agreed. You couldn’t say we had a passionate relationship, but I suppose the time in the old days when I subjected her to my will must have marked her more than she thought. So we passed through the city and its awful outskirts, crossed the half moon of Maromme and all that, and headed for Dieppe as soon as we could escape the industrial Basse-Seine’s factories and cobblestone streets. I have no particular affection for nature. I like landscapes only in movies, and I put up with lawns solely if drinks are being served on them. But I have to admit that greenery beats the city’s squalid outskirts, so I relaxed little by little as we drove into the verdant rolling countryside that characterizes the western end of the Bray Buttonhole.
Instinctively I had picked the beach where we first got to know each other, Anne and I. When you have the tiniest need for companionship, or even a mild desire for it, you must become a master of the delicate touch, especially when the companion in question is female; women appreciate the delicate touch or, of course, great passion (not my style). Except in the case of guys like Eddy, who take every liberty just because they can. Attraction is not then part of the story because their needs are in a sense very limited: the objects of their desire are infinitely interchangeable, and broads get that, feel the precariousness of their situation, and if they want to get something out of an Eddy they know not to push things. Anne would certainly never not push things. But Eddy would not interest her anyway, nor she him. Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, and vice versa, and everybody is happy.
We went down to the beach and spent the day there. Once I went and got fries at a stand, and sausages. We took it easy. Anne babbled. We listened to her transistor. I played ducks and drakes. I was bored stiff.
All of a sudden the radio was talking about Zimbabwin, at least indirectly. President César Pandore would visit Évian to take the waters; this trip had been linked to the simultaneous presence in Geneva of Dieudonné N’Gustro, secretary general of the MPLZ. President Pandore was said to be thinking of reshuffling his government in the wake of the student agitation in Souk and Medina or somewhere, and bringing in some opposition figures. When questioned about this, Dieudonné N’Gustro denied having had any communication with the Palace; he had stressed that his visit to Peking was still scheduled for the end of the month and that he would therefore be out of Europe when President Pandore was taking his cure.
Right, I thought, but there was no smoke without fire. A political détente in Zimbabwin would hardly be good for my plans. The little hero of my screenplay was in danger of losing a good deal of his fine plumage. Then I realized I was still automatically thinking as though I was going to make the film. Had I known what was actually going to happen, I would have had little cause to smile.
That same night—because we had decided after all to go back to Rouen—I was sitting up shit’s creek with a glass of vodka when the phone rang. A long-distance call, and guess who was on the line. Monsieur Laveuglant.
“Would you care to come by my office on Monday?” asked the excellent Monsieur Laveuglant. So I asked the said excellent Monsieur Laveuglant why. He didn’t want to tell me, but he assured me I wouldn’t regret it; he alluded obscurely to movies. I connected the dots.
In short, we agreed I should go and see him Monday, and I went.
He had a fine office, Laveuglant, fine carpet on the floor, fine glass doors, fine wood furniture, fine titties on the receptionist in the anteroom. I was ushered in immediately. The excellent Monsieur Laveuglant did not beat about the bush. He wanted me to take advantage of my relationship with N’Gustro to engineer an impromptu meeting between him and Marshal George Clemenceau Oufiri, the minister of justice—in other words the head cop—of Zimbabwin.
“N’Gustro would never go for it,” I informed him.
“Well then,” said Laveuglant in a smarmy way, “we might set aside any idea of telling him, and let him be the beneficiary of a happy coincidence.”
“A big surprise,” I said.
“That’s right. A surprise.”
“I could never do such a thing.”
“Just wait,” said the excellent Monsieur Laveuglant blithely.
He offered me a cigar. I had no reason to refuse. We settled into egg chairs. He really seemed very pleased.
“I quite appreciate,” he said, “that it would be difficult for you to take N’Gustro to some particular place. You would have no excuse for doing so.”
“Oh,” I answered brilliantly, “I’m never short of excuses.”
I wanted him to get the idea that for me this was in fact a moral issue. Instead he simply continued, unsmiling but genial.
“So we strove to provide you with a plausible motive, a valid motive, and if I may say so a seductive motive. For you, that is, as well as for your friend.”
“Hold on a minute,” I cut in. “You could have left that to me.”
We all have our little weaknesses. One of mine was that I could not abide Laveuglant or anyone else managing my deceptions. In the end, however, I am rather glad his people took charge of the dirty tricks, because it meant that they considered me incapable, so my later actions may have surprised them. I would bet money that their taking me for an idiot is the reason I am still alive. But at present they no longer take me for an idiot. The logical consequence is liable to follow, in which case I’ll show them a few dirty tricks of my own.
Anyway, there in his swish office, Laveuglant ignored what I was saying, contemplated the tip of his Partagas, and droned on.
“We are aware of your projected film on the life of Dieudonné N’Gustro, and we also know about a variety of obstacles that have been placed in its way.”
Those were his very words. My intuition had not been wrong.
“Defeckmann?” I asked.
He assented with a nod. Which meant nothing certain. The excellent Laveuglant was a dirty little liar. That was his job, among others.
“There will be no further obstacles,” he said. “Better still, you will have your own feature production company.”
I have to admit that this took my breath away.
“I’ll finance you,” he pronounced. “Offices on the Champs-Élysées. Accounting in Geneva. And the funds needed to incorporate the business. What would you like to call it?”
“Just a second,” I said, still caught a bit short. “What exactly do you mean by all this? What must I do in exchange?”
“Simply what we were just talking about.”
It was only he who had been talking about it, but I let that go.
“The fee seems too high. There has to be a catch.”
“There’s no catch,” he said. “It so happens that all my operations are a little mixed up. It so happens that I am not unhappy to invest in a film production company. It so happens that I’ve always been slightly tempted to get into cinema. In addition I have plans to use you later on, with the business working quite normally and honestly but taking advantage of my connections, my international connections, so I feel sure, Butron, that you see where this might lead you.”
I could indeed see. Any half-witted documentary on a chain of gas stations commands a bloated budget. I thought I understood Laveuglant’s game. He would pull in an immense amount of dough, probably from Marshal Oufiri, presumably for making unencumbered arrangements for the surprise meeting; afterward he would keep the film company, and his money would make babies. The excellent Laveuglant never left himself out of his prayers. That, at any rate, was what I figured. In fact, however, it was my first reaction that had it right: the fee was too high because there was a catch.
“Trust me,” said Laveuglant.
And trust him I did. What an asshole!
He foxed me with art, and he foxed me with vanity. In an instant I had but one idea in my head: “Henri Butron Films,” an engraved copper plaque on my door, and a super-duper secretary who gave great head, with velvety breasts and a rhythmic pelvis. And my name on the opening credits too: Henri Butron Films. Black and Red Will Be My Forests—that was the title I had thought up. Screenplay by Henri Butron and Ben Debourmann. Directed by Henri Butron—I certainly wanted to direct if I was going to be my own producer. I shared my thinking with Laveuglant.
“Let me be frank with you,” he said. “It is not certain that your film will be made.”
“Well, for me,” I responded elegantly, “making the film is a sine qua non.”
He thought about it.
“We’ll lose money.”
I explained to him that not at all. I gave him my opinion on the commercial prospects of this kind of subject. I felt I was enlightening him, showing him things, almost convincing him and eventually obtaining his agreement.
What a lying bitch! It was all playacting.
The excellent Monsieur Laveuglant won’t get away with it. I hereby accuse him of assassinating Dieudonné N’Gustro or, more precisely, of having him abducted and assassinated by killers in his pay, and I accuse him further of working for the Zimbabwinite government, of which he is a puppet.