11
“Just to be clear, Superintendent, I am not a specialist in Barthes, nor strictly speaking am I a semiologist. I have an MAS in modern criticism of the historical novel, I’m preparing a linguistics thesis on acts of language, and I also run a tutorial. This semester, I’m giving a specialized course in semiology of the image, and last year I ran an introductory course on semiology for first-year students. I taught them the basics of linguistics because that’s the foundation of semiology; I told them about Saussure and Jakobson, a bit of Austin, a bit of Searle; we worked mainly on Barthes because he’s the most accessible and because he often chose his subjects from popular culture, which are more likely to pique my students’ interest than, say, his critiques of Racine or Chateaubriand, because these kids are doing media studies, not literature. With Barthes, we could spend a lot of time discussing steak-frites, the latest Citroën, James Bond … it’s a more playful approach to analysis, and that is in a sense the definition of semiology: it applies literary criticism methods to nonliterary subjects.”
“He’s not dead.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said ‘we could.’ You were talking in the past tense, as if it were no longer possible.”
“Um, no, that’s not what I meant…”
Simon Herzog and Jacques Bayard walk side by side down the university’s corridors. The young lecturer holds his satchel in one hand and a sheaf of photocopies in the other. He shakes his head when a student tries to hand him a leaflet. The student calls him a fascist, and he responds with a guilty smile, then corrects Bayard:
“Even if he did die, we could still apply his critical methods, you know…”
“What makes you think he might die? I didn’t mention the seriousness of his injuries.”
“Well, er, I doubt whether superintendents are sent to investigate all road accidents, so I deduce from that that it’s serious, and that there’s something fishy about the circumstances.”
“The circumstances are pretty straightforward, and the victim’s condition is really nothing to be worried about.”
“Really? Ah, well, I’m glad to hear it, superintendent…”
“I didn’t tell you I was a superintendent.”
“No? I just thought Barthes was so famous that the police would send a superintendent…”
“I’d never even heard of this guy until yesterday.”
The young postgrad falls silent. He looks disconcerted; Bayard is satisfied. A student in socks and sandals hands him another tract: Waiting for Godard: A One-Act Play. He puts it in his pocket and asks Herzog:
“What do you know about semiology?”
“Um, well, it’s the study of the life of signs within society.”
Bayard thinks about his Roland Barthes Made Easy. He grits his teeth.
“And in plain French?”
“But … that’s Saussure’s definition…”
“This Chaussure, does he know Barthes?”
“Er, no, he’s dead. He was the inventor of semiology.”
“Hmm, I see.”
But Bayard does not see anything. The two men walk through the cafeteria. It looks like the ruins of a warehouse and smells strongly of merguez sausage, pancakes, and marijuana. A tall, awkward-looking guy in mauve lizard-skin boots is standing on a table. Cigarette in mouth, beer in hand, he harangues some students who listen, eyes shining. As Simon Herzog has no office, he invites Bayard to sit down and, automatically, offers him a cigarette. Bayard refuses, takes out a Gitane, and says:
“So, in concrete terms, what’s the point of this … science?”
“Um, well … understanding reality?”
Bayard grimaces imperceptibly.
“Meaning?”
The young lecturer takes a few seconds to think about this. He gauges his interrogator’s capacities for abstraction—clearly quite limited—and adapts his response accordingly. If not, they’ll be going around in circles for hours.
“In fact, it’s simple. There are loads of things in our environment that have, uh, a function of use. You see?”
Hostile silence from the policeman. At the other end of the room, the guy in mauve lizard-skin boots is telling his young disciples about the events of May ’68, which, in his account, sound like a mixture of Mad Max and Woodstock. Simon Herzog tries to keep his explanation as simple as possible: “A chair is for sitting on, a table is for eating on, a desk for working at, clothes for keeping warm, et cetera. Okay?”
Icy silence.
“Except that, in addition to their function of … um, their usefulness … these objects also possess a symbolic value … as if they could speak, if you like: they tell us things. That chair, for example, that you’re sitting on, with its zero design, its low-quality varnished wood, and its rusted frame, tells us that we are in a community that doesn’t care about comfort or aesthetics and that has no money. Added to this, those mingled smells of bad food and cannabis confirm that we’re in a higher-education establishment. In the same way, your manner of dressing signals your profession: you wear a suit, which indicates an executive job, but your clothes are cheap, which implies a modest salary and/or an absence of interest in your appearance; so you belong to a profession in which presentation doesn’t matter, or not very much. Your shoes are badly scuffed, and you came here in a car, which signifies that you are not deskbound—you are out and about in your job. An executive who leaves his office is very likely to be assigned some kind of inspection work.”
“I see,” says Bayard. (A long silence, during which Herzog can hear the man in lizard-skin boots telling his fascinated audience how, back when he was head of the Armed Spinozist Faction, he defeated the Young Hegelians.) “Then again, I know where I am, because there’s a sign saying ‘University of Vincennes—Paris 8’ over the entrance. And the word ‘Police’ is also written in bold on the red, white, and blue card I showed you when I came to talk to you after your lecture, so I don’t really see where you’re going with this.”
Simon Herzog starts to sweat. This conversation brings back painful memories of oral exams. Don’t panic, just concentrate. Don’t focus on the seconds passing in silence; ignore the falsely sanctimonious attitude of the sadistic examiner who is secretly enjoying his institutional superiority and the suffering he’s inflicting on you because in the past he suffered the same himself. The young postgrad thinks fast, attentively observing the man facing him, and proceeds methodically, stage by stage, as he’s been taught. Then, when he feels ready, he lets a few further seconds pass, and says:
“You fought in Algeria; you have been married twice; you are separated from your second wife; you have a daughter under twenty, with whom you have a difficult relationship; you voted for Giscard in both rounds of the last presidential election, and you’ll do the same again next year; you lost a colleague in the line of duty, perhaps it was your own fault, in any case you blame yourself or feel bad about it, though your superiors decided it was not your responsibility. And you went to see the latest James Bond film at the cinema, but you prefer a good Maigret on TV or films starring Lino Ventura.”
A very, very long silence. At the other end of the room, the reincarnation of Spinoza is recounting, to the cheers of the crowd, how he and his gang overcame the Fourier Rose group. Bayard mutters tonelessly:
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, it’s very simple!” (Another pause, but this one is the young professor’s. Bayard does not react at all, except for a slight quivering in the fingers of his right hand. The man in mauve lizard-skin boots starts singing a Rolling Stones song a cappella.) “When you came to see me at the end of the lecture earlier, you instinctively placed yourself in a position where you wouldn’t have your back to the door or the window. You don’t learn that at police school, but in the army. The fact that this reflex has stayed with you signifies that your military experience was not limited to the usual National Service but marked you sufficiently that you have kept some unconscious habits. So you probably went to war and you’re not old enough to have fought in Indochina, so I think you were sent to Algeria. You’re in the police, so you’re bound to be right-wing, as confirmed by your hostility to students and intellectuals (which was plain from the minute we started talking), but as an Algerian veteran you considered de Gaulle’s granting of independence as a betrayal. So you refused to vote for the Gaullist candidate, Chaban, and you are too rational (a condition of your job) to give your vote to a candidate like Le Pen, who has no chance of making it through to the second round, so your vote naturally went to Giscard. You came here alone, against all the rules of the French police, where officers always go about in twos, so you must have been given special dispensation, a favor that could only have been granted for a serious reason such as the death of a colleague. The trauma is such that you cannot bear the idea of having a new partner, so your superiors allow you to operate solo. That way, you can pretend to be Maigret, who, judging from your raincoat, is a role model, consciously or not. (Superintendent Moulin, with his leather jacket, is probably too young for you to identify with, and, well, you don’t have enough money to dress like James Bond.) You wear a wedding ring on your right hand, but you still have a ring mark on your left ring finger. You presumably wished to avoid the feeling that you were repeating yourself by changing your ring hand for the second marriage, as a way of warding off fate, or something like that. But apparently it didn’t work, because your rumpled shirt, this early in the day, proves that no one is doing the ironing at your house; and, in conformity with the petit-bourgeois model, which fits your sociocultural background, if your wife were still living with you, she would not have let you leave the house wearing an unironed shirt.”