The pedestrians are hieratic and sane, their eyes are cold and lucid, their features hard. The motors and the little taps on brakes slowly approach music theory. I slow my pace to relax. The wills of destiny seize me like an animal. Stay in line to see what will happen.

  I haven’t reached Carrefour de l’Odéon yet, but I already feel all the pedestrian and automobile traffic strung together by the hint of a future lyrical creation, by the warm and metallic decision of some angel rolling about in the spheres of floors and roofs installed above us, so close to us, in multidirectional circles, like the master of an organ’s keyboard whose sonorous mechanisms are the people of Paris and their machines, happily obsolete despite their elegant gears.

  I hardly even feel Rue Monsieur-le-Prince before I find myself stopped in front of a record shop that is curiously open at this time of the morning, as if my hunger and insomnia had started hundreds of businesses off to a celebration of dawn, even though today is a public holiday. And a turntable plays a song that spills out of the shop. A young woman’s voice sings about me, Jacques Besse, or simply of a strange seducer who carries my name. One of us is sung about as a femme fatale. The singer swoons with desire for this unattainable man. But it’s not me she’s singing about, that’s impossible, this little aria isn’t about either hunger or sleep. A fraction of a second later, the silence that surrounds me while I search for the meaning of my celebrity stirs up my anger again, and I want to enter the shop and say, “It’s me, me alone, Jacques Besse, I’m hungry and sleepy. Give me some money!”

  But a smile comes to me and I move away from the shop, almost unconsciously respectful of a myth that I don’t dare crush lest it radiate across town and serve me in a way that I’m nowhere near bold enough to consider.

  I head back to Boulevard Saint-Germain. The noise of motors and brakes, the footsteps of pedestrians clinch their incipient musicality. Everything waits for something to organize it into music that could make the greatest concerts in our tradition pale in comparison. Everything and everyone, subjects and patients, all are waiting for what will emerge from the already-symphonic calls launched by their bodies and mechanisms.

  And the sole body of the only Jacques Besse, traversing the southern sidewalk of Carrefour de l’Odéon, approaches the boulevard in the direction of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. And at the exact same moment, the trembling introduction gives way to a dancing, bacchic allegro, then a clear and complex counterpoint, clinging tightly to the tonality and progressively escaping to increasingly polymodal dissonances, in a flight of surreal clarinets punctuated by great stabs of accelerating car brakes. The hypnotized passersby, their eyes still fixed forward, don’t change their pace, nobody speaks. This skillful, beautiful dance for anybody and everybody is already carrying me away. I begin to dance awkwardly and imperceptibly, I whistle, I have the audacity to add a whistling voice to the huge, joyously pagan choir, I almost act like a spirit from another world, I make a mistake toward the end of the phrase, I say “oh,” and my “oh” is in tune and on time, and it’s followed by a half-second of loudly squealing brakes.

  The enormous angel musician and maybe even the next creators that it hunts and harnesses don’t seem to hold my little mistake against me. I laugh. Have I forever risked my mastery? Still dancing awkwardly, I take the crosswalk to the sidewalk on the north side of the boulevard. As the cars that had stopped to let me cross depart joyously to the delight of the hard and closed faces within, they lead a choir that’s accompanied by a reprise developed out of the Dionysian counterpoint. An enormous shiver seems to run across the boulevard, beneath the lower sky that winds around the balconies, and I’m no longer the only person dancing clumsily, the bourgeois, the bourgeois unconsciously walk along more rhythmically, in the comfort of squealing brakes that are increasingly in tune.

  I stop dead in my tracks near Rue Grégoire-de-Tours. I settle in like a priest at the center of a whirlwind that doesn’t mislead anyone about its daily gestures, as long as every movement of every Parisian yields to its triumphant rhythm.

  Standing still and proud, I try to understand what the choir is singing. I don’t understand the lyrics, but I don’t care as long as the music is beautiful, filled with the most sacred of profane beauties, like that of an Offenbach who would reach Rameau with all the riches of our current language.46 I nevertheless understand that the choir sings of wine and victory in love, and I, no longer suffering from hunger and exhaustion, despite my nights in the street, I’m brought to orgasm not as a mystified victim, but as a friend of the conqueror, as if this victory of love and wine celebrated demonically on this Easter Monday reinvigorated every possible man. Every possible man, or every chosen one? Would I be chosen? I’m suddenly afraid of this feeling, since I’m coming up on what will soon be nine years against the division of Humanity into the chosen and the damned. And what if I’d been disobeyed by God but still chosen by this judgment I didn’t want, and what if my persistence in his refusal damned me now? But no, how can I be called damned with this joy that cuts through hunger, cold, and exhaustion, which I experience in the celebration of such a happy triumph? And then, at the edge of the crosswalk, on the southern side, among the bourgeois and some workers, I see a good sister in a cornette who is also dancing stiffly, who, in the staccato of cars, dances carelessly across the street! I’m foolishly reassured. You see, the Church is in on it. Across from the dancer in the heavy gray skirt and the cornette, I raise both of my arms, with my fingers spread. Do I seem like a chosen demon, a Benedictine Abbot and singer of bacchic white masses, or simply the Pontifex Maximus that I’m perhaps called somewhere? Then an unarticulated voice, hardly more than a mental perfume, breathes “Apollo!” to me and shows me the blessed atmosphere of a dancing boulevard without even a movement in the mysterious depths of my brain.47 Without fear or shame, I surreally release sustained trumpet notes out over the choir, over the leaping orchestra, a cantus firmus that dominates the enthusiastic polyphony.48 And I end it right in tune and on time, as the supernatural choir and orchestra also end their Dionysiac song in a rhythm that is applauded by a hundred brakes and motors vigourously bound together.

  For a few seconds, the noises become run-of-the-mill again; there are sighs of relief and of love too, but none of the passersby or shopkeepers speak. In these few seconds, I return to the banality of my unlikely adventure. I turn down Rue de l’Echaudé to see if l’Oiseau Gris is open. Strengthened by my forty-eight hours without food or sleep, I’ll ask for ten francs so I can get drunk down to the depths of my body. But the bookshop is closed, my friends must be celebrating elsewhere. I lightly touch the closed door, return toward the boulevard, and begin strolling back and forth along the little street, from the closed shop to the large hypnotized thoroughfare.

  The concert of angels, of demons, or of some of their devoted fellows worthy enough to surreally improvise a vast choral allegro, and not just like myself with a simple part consisting of long trumpet notes, the concert has already resumed. And I believe it’s Apollo who’s singing. I listen and I feel the sentiment of joy grow more complicated than that which the original choir evoked in me.

  I have the time to notice a degradation in the style of music. It’s for the best that Rameau vanished with the initial choir. And the soloist is now singing a sort of jolly and perverse romance in the style of Edmond Audran. I suddenly have the impression that it’s addressed to me, that I’m the victim of its triumph, and that it can’t celebrate this loving triumph without enjoying the defeat of its victim. I listen, still calm and happy, hardly troubled at all, I’m interested in the beauty of his song, filled to the brim with love, and it doesn’t make me suffer. Anyway, I’m not Marsyas, despite the musical error of my whistle a bit earlier, despite my condition that’s brought me down and out the last three days in my native city, in this immense Paris that parades my name about while it pretends to ignore me!49

  Well, this singer isn’t really Apollo and I’m not really Marsyas. Despite the cold and the hunger, despite my dirty clothes, I don’t feel skinned alive by the joy some happy lover perhaps had to give to one of my loves. Deep down, aren’t I the real lover, despite all appearances? Well, the singer up above isn’t really Apollo and I’m not, and I’m sure of this, really Marsyas. Rather, aren’t we living out the famous duel between the Father and the Son, in which the son is first defeated, before having the right to shine, due to either the softening of the Father or the influence of his fellows? Now the Son is still walking along Rue de l’Échaudé, back and forth between l’Oiseau Gris and the boulevard, I feel the effect of the decreasing beauty of the concert, I feel bound, like the judge of the dominating high tenor. What, the judge of my Father? I decide to change everything because I don’t want this absurd fight between the Father and Son. I turn around, come to a standstill on the sidewalk near the boulevard, and begin to respond to the victor in the same avant-garde operetta style, with the same surreal forces:

  Don’t believe the suffering

  You thought you’d imposed

  Has damned me through ignorance

  Of angels, proud of your sin.

  Finally, victimless triumph

  Father of Apollo, of Mars-Isaac,

  Love is sweeter without the crime

  Of damning the weak that you hunt.

  May the gentle duplicity

  Of Venus who wants us both

  Blissfully reconcile

  The father of terrible triumph

  And his son who is unafraid,

  The Father of terrible triumph,

  And his son

  And his son

  And his Son who is unafraid

  To wait for a happy rival!

  My song of the next bipedal, somewhat in the style of Hervé, is broadcast to the balconies caressed by bluish spheres, as purely as those of the conqueror. In the second verse, the song of a worldly lover begins again, as if he hadn’t heard me, or as if he were incapable of responding to the accident of my improvised message. I’m touched. He isn’t God anymore and although I’m not either, I ask myself if, bound to the celebration of his victory, he doesn’t need a son in a greasy overcoat and torn pants who will deliver him from such a destiny! And I don’t even dare write what I evoke above, I’ll only say that I feel progress, in myself and also across my entire city, at least among those haven’t participated in the horrors of the Algerian War.

  I stand still for over a minute to sing my plea, and then I see a man, also motionless on the edge of the boulevard, who is looking at me. He’s really muscular, with clean and strong features, seems a little moronic, the kind of guy whose appearance usually frightens me, but today I’m not really afraid of anything.

  The singing’s ended. The music continues, its conclusion punctuated by brakes and motors. The big guy comes toward me slowly, moving to the rhythm of the supernatural orchestra.

  He comes within a meter, pulls a badge out of his pocket, and says to me:

  “Police. Your papers.”

  I take out my driver’s license, totally normal, since he’s like any other cop, and since this morning’s astounding miracle has protected, perhaps ironically, the norms of every Parisian’s actions.

  “Your address?”

  I respond proudly, almost joyously:

  “I don’t have one!”

  “What are you doing on this street?”

  I point at l’Oiseau Gris.

  “I’m waiting for this shop to open. They’re friends.”

  “Do you have any money?”

  With the same pride:

  “No.” I look him in the face, is it hypnosis, like a hero in the movies.

  “I need you to come with me to the station!” He keeps my driver’s license.

  We leave together on boulevard Saint-Germain, which is gradually returning to its prosaic nature. We must make for a strange couple. We’re being watched. Someone says to the detective:

  “What a disgrace!”

  And I’m finally starting to tremble. Are they going to beat me because of my sympathies for the National Liberation Front, even though my own particular situation, go on and laugh, I know very well, even though nobody speaks to me about it, has kept me from joining the group for fear of compromising it through the extensive surveillance I believe is directed at me? Some two years ago, I even said so to my mistress, Judith, the Algerian. Judith, I don’t know where she is, far from Paris, in Algiers, she told me, unless she’s living out other adventures without me and decided to hide me, like a heroine from the old Boulevard theatre.50

  I’m trembling more and more as we approach the police station. How will they see me? A vagrant, a member of the National Liberation Front, a fall guy to deliver to some cult hankering for a human sacrifice to finish off this mysterious morning that it foolishly wanted to be black, whereas I didn’t feel anything but white?

  We enter the police station at Place Saint-Sulpice. I’m escorted without a word to a room in the back, where three detectives look at me and say nothing. High up in this dark room, there’re some little windows that open on to a tiny courtyard, and the smell of electric shock torture still hangs in the air. I’m trembling inside, I’m afraid they can see it, I experience an anguish stronger than at any point during my walk over the last three days. Where are you, Pontifex Maxmimus?! Was it really angels that you heard sing, with whom you made music, or was it deranged and brave highbrow musicians who got mixed up with Jacques Besse, from the Union of the Socialist Left? This isn’t any crazier than the silent way I’ve been treated for a number of years. Am I going to be tortured for owning up to a network that doesn’t exist? It wouldn’t be any crazier. Total anguish, I rejoice, if one can rejoice in such a situation, I rejoice over the prudence by which the one and only Jacques Besse stayed out of networks!

  The detective who had arrested me had left to say or do something threatening! I can’t imagine anything else. He returns and, making a little gesture:

  “Follow me, we’re going to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés station.”

  He seems more relaxed and so do I. After the atrocious station across from Place Saint-Sulpice, the station on Rue de l’Abbaye seems like a tea parlor. I’ve been in and out of there so many times! It seems like I’m escaping the mystery. On Rue Bonaparte, I can’t control myself, I begin talking to the cop:

  “What’s happening to me is so stupid. The morning was astounding! What beautiful weather! What a lovely occasion!”

  “Yes,” he says, “it’s nice out this morning!”

  And these are the only words that two Parisians, including me, exchange on this stupendous Monday of Easter, 1960. It must also be said that we are at war and that I just remembered.

  We enter the Saint-Germain-des-Prés precinct. But wait, this isn’t a tea parlor. The detective shows me to a bench.

  “Sit down.”

  He picks up the telephone and begins speaking in a strange argot that I don’t understand, occasionally looking at me. The internal trembling starts up again as I apparently look like a lucky survivor of a shipwreck, in my greasy clothes and with my three-day beard.

  The detective hangs up the phone. He hurries over to the captain’s office. I settle into my anguish, it changes into torpor, my body slumps on the bench, my shoulders sag, am I looking, as they say, “overwhelmed”?

  This lasts for five interminable minutes.

  The detective returns, vaguely smiling, and asks:

  “Where are you going now?”

  “To l’Oiseau Gris, with some friends. I’m getting some money for breakfast.”

  “You’re free to go.”

  He returns my driver’s license, shows me to the door, and leaves with me. An absurd joy comes over me, as if I were suddenly free after months in prison.

  We find ourselves together on Rue de l’Abbaye. I say to him:

  “I hope the rest of the day will be as favorable as its beginning!”

  He doesn’t respond. I add, “Good evening, Monsieur,” and head toward the boulevard. Should I have said, “fuck the cops,” or better, “peace and independence for Algeria”? What would have been most idiotic: the two platitudes I dropped on the officer, the heaviest of the negations jammed up inside me, or militant slogans for an historical biography?

  I’m on the boulevard, where the concert has ended. There’s still some buzzing, some rhythmic squeals of brakes, the horizontal has become normal again, the vertical too, the bubbles of superspace have disappeared from the balconies.

  I turn up looking stupid at l’Oiseau Gris, which just opened:

  “What a day! I was arrested and released this morning, I don’t even know why.”

  My friend the bookseller seems distant and half-heartedly says hello.

  “I haven’t eaten or slept for two days. And I’m afraid of not having money after what happened this morning. Any chance you have a thousand francs?”

  Suddenly, he turns toward me, looks at me with a big smile, and digs into his pocket.

  “Here, Jacques Besse,” and he hands me ten new francs, a bill that brings me pleasure in advance, an almost erotic joy.

  I rock back and forth, from one foot to the other:

  “Did you hear, this morning? It was phenomenal.”

  The bookseller is silent. He walks off and starts arranging the shelves.

  “Was it something to do with me?”

  He barely turns his head. He asks:

  “Any news from your clinic?”

  I’m not even angry.

  “My clinic? I don’t need a clinic. My dear brother, a businessman, will give me some money tomorrow, and I’ll pay you back what you’ve leant me!”

  With a sweeping and powerful gesture:

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. Whenever you like.”

  On the doorstep, I turn back, and in a somewhat theatrical voice, using the third person like Julius Caesar:

 

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