The President's Hat (2 page)

Two men sat down opposite the head of state. One was large and stocky with glasses and curly hair, the other slender, with grey hair swept back in an elegant wave. The latter bestowed a brief, benevolent smile on Daniel, who summoned what remained of his composure and attempted to smile back. He recognised that face with its piercing eyes and narrow lips. And then he remembered who it was. It was Roland Dumas, who had been the Foreign Minister. Dumas had handed over to a successor when the Socialist Party had lost its parliamentary majority eight months ago.

I am dining next to the President of the Republic, Daniel kept repeating to himself, trying to convince himself that, irrational as it might seem, it was really happening to him. He barely noticed the taste of his first oyster, so preoccupied was he by his new neighbour. The strangeness of the situation made him feel as if he might wake up any moment at home in bed and find that it was all a dream. Around the restaurant, other diners were
pretending not to gaze in the general direction of the table next to Daniel's.

As he picked up his second oyster he glanced discreetly to his left. The President had put on his glasses and was reading the menu. Daniel took in the famous noble profile, seen in magazines, on television and every New Year's Eve for the past five years. Now he was seeing that profile in the flesh. He could have put out a hand and touched François Mitterrand.

The waiter returned and the President ordered a dozen oysters, and the salmon. The large man chose mushroom pâté and a rare steak, while Roland Dumas followed the President's lead with oysters and fish. A few minutes later, the wine waiter appeared with a silver ice bucket on a stand containing another bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé bathed in ice. He uncorked the bottle smoothly and poured a little into the presidential glass. François Mitterrand tasted it, approving it with a brief nod.

Daniel poured himself another glass of wine, and drank it down almost in one, before taking a teaspoon of the red shallot vinegar and dressing an oyster.

‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week …' Daniel heard François Mitterrand say as he ate his oyster. Never again, he told himself, would he be able to eat oysters with vinegar without hearing those words: ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week'.

A waiter placed a small carafe of red in front of the large bespectacled man who immediately poured himself a glass, as another waiter brought the starters. The fat man tasted the pâté, which he said was good, and launched
into a story about wild mushroom terrine. The President swallowed an oyster while Daniel removed a pin from the cork covered in silver paper, ready to make a start on the winkles.

‘Michel has some wonderful wines in his cellar,' confided Roland Dumas, with a knowing air.

The President looked up at him, and Michel continued with an account of his cellar in the country, where he also kept cigars from all over the world, and dried
saucisson
. He was as proud of his
saucissons
as he was of his cigars.

‘How original, to collect
saucissons!
' said François Mitterrand, squeezing his lemon.

Daniel swallowed his tenth winkle and glanced once more to his left. The President had finished his last oyster and was wiping his mouth with the spotless white napkin.

‘Before I forget,' he began, addressing Roland Dumas, ‘our friend's telephone number …'

‘Yes, of course,' murmured Dumas, reaching into his jacket pocket.

The President turned to his coat, picked up his hat and placed it behind the brass bar that ran around the top of the banquette. He took a leather notebook from his coat pocket, put his glasses back on and leafed through the pages.

‘The last name at the bottom,' he said, handing the notebook to Dumas, who took it, silently copied the name and number into his own diary, then passed the book back to François Mitterrand, who put it back in his coat pocket.

Michel began another anecdote about a man whose name meant nothing to Daniel. Dumas looked as if he was
enjoying the story and François Mitterrand smiled, saying, ‘That's a bit harsh,' but he said it jokingly, encouraging the speaker to continue.

‘I assure you it's true, I was there!' the large man insisted, spreading the last of his pâté on a piece of bread.

Daniel listened to the story. He felt as if he were sitting in on a private, rather risqué gathering. The other diners in the brasserie counted for nothing. It was only the four of them now.

‘And what about you, Daniel, what do you think?'

Daniel would have turned to the head of state, and uttered things of great interest to François Mitterrand. The President would have nodded in agreement, and then Daniel would have turned to Roland Dumas and asked his opinion. Dumas would have nodded, too, and Michel would have added enthusiastically, ‘I agree with Daniel!'

‘That woman is remarkably beautiful,' said François Mitterrand, quietly.

Daniel followed his gaze. The President was looking at the brunette in the red dress. Dumas took advantage of the arrival of the main courses to turn round discreetly. The large man did the same.

‘A very beautiful woman,' he concurred.

‘I agree,' murmured Dumas.

Daniel felt a sense of communion with the head of state. François Mitterrand had ordered the same wine as him, and now he had spotted the same woman. It was quite something to have the same tastes as the First Frenchman. Indeed, the convivial exchange of half-expressed appreciations of womenkind had cemented many a masculine friendship,
and Daniel fell to daydreaming he was the fourth man at the President's table. He too had a black leather diary from which the former Foreign Minister would be delighted to copy out contacts. The fat man's cellar held no secrets for him, indeed he visited it regularly, savouring
saucisson
and lighting up the finest Havana cigars the world had ever seen. And of course, he accompanied the President on his Parisian walks, along the quaysides of the Seine, past the
bouquinistes
' stalls, both of them with their hands clasped behind their backs, discoursing on the way of the world, or simply admiring the sunset from the Pont des Arts. Passers-by would turn back to look at their familiar silhouettes, and people he knew would murmur,
sotto voce,
‘Oh yes, Daniel knows François Mitterrand very well …'

‘Is everything all right?'

The waiter's voice interrupted Daniel's reverie. Yes, everything was very good indeed. He would make his seafood platter last as long as was necessary. Even if he had to stay until closing time, he would not get up from his seat on the banquette before the President left. He was doing it for himself, and for others, so that one day he would be able to say: ‘I dined beside François Mitterrand in a brasserie in November 1986. He was right next to me, this close. I could see him as clearly as I can see you now.' In his mind, Daniel was already rehearsing the words he would use in the decades to come.

Two hours and seven minutes had gone by. François Mitterrand had just disappeared into the night, flanked by Dumas and the large man, after the maître d' had ceremoniously held the door for them. All three had finished their meal with a crème brûlée. The large man had removed a cigar from a leather case, telling them he would light it outside and smoke it while they walked. Dumas had paid with a 500-franc note.

‘Shall we?' the President had asked.

Dumas had got to his feet. The cloakroom attendant had appeared and helped him on with his coat. She had done the same for Michel, who had complained he could still feel his lumbago, but the President had put on his own coat, and then his red scarf. As he did this he had turned towards the brunette and their eyes had met. She had smiled, very slightly, and the President had doubtless responded in kind, but Daniel had not been able to see that. All three had then headed for the door. In the
restaurant, everyone had leant towards their fellow diners and conversations were quieter for a few seconds.

Voilà
. It was over.

Nothing remained but the empty plates, the cutlery, the glasses and the barely crumpled white napkins. Now it was just a table like any other, thought Daniel. In a few minutes, the dishes would be cleared away, the tablecloth refreshed, and a new diner would settle himself onto the banquette for the second sitting, never suspecting that the President of the Republic had occupied the very same seat less than an hour earlier.

Daniel had kept back one last, slightly milky oyster, which had been waiting its turn on the melting ice for the last twenty minutes at least. He tipped a teaspoon of
red-wine
vinegar over it and tasted it. The iodine spread across his tongue, mixed with the bitter, peppery vinegar: ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week …' He was certain now – he would remember those words for the rest of his life.

Daniel swallowed his last mouthful of Pouilly and put his glass back down on the table. The dinner had been unreal – and he could so easily have missed it. He could have decided to go home and make his own supper, he could have chosen a different brasserie, there might not have been a free table, the customer who'd booked the table might not have cancelled … The important events in our lives are always the result of a sequence of tiny details. The thought made him feel slightly dizzy – or was it the fact that he'd drunk a whole bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé?

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, breathed deeply,
shifted his shoulder and massaged his neck. As he raised his left hand to do this, Daniel touched the brass rail at the top of the banquette. His fingers encountered the cold metal, and then something else as well. Something soft and yielding, something that had just squirmed, like the oyster. Daniel turned to look: the hat was still there. Instinctively, he glanced over to the door of the brasserie. The President had left several minutes ago. There was no one in the doorway.

François Mitterrand had forgotten his hat. The phrase took shape in his mind. This is François Mitterrand's hat. Here, right next to you. Proof that this evening was real; absolute proof that it had really happened. Daniel turned to look again at the hat which had been carefully placed between the brass rail and the mirror. Behind the black hat, the whole restaurant was reflected.

Instead of calling over the head waiter to say
self-importantly,
‘I think the customer at the table next to me has left his hat behind,' and receiving obsequious thanks, Daniel acted on impulse. He felt as if he had a double and that another Daniel Mercier now stood in the middle of the dining room, witness to the simple, irreversible action that would be taken in the next few seconds. Daniel watched as he raised his own hand to the brass bar, lifted the black hat carefully by the brim and slipped it onto his lap, where it remained hidden from view under the table.

The whole operation took no more than three and a half seconds, but it seemed to him to have been performed in desperately slow motion, so that when the sounds of the dining room reached his ears once more, he felt as if he was
emerging from a long period underwater. The blood beat in his temples and his heart thumped in his chest. What if someone came back to claim the hat now, he thought, in a brief moment of panic. A bodyguard? The President himself? What would he do? What could he possibly say? How could he explain the sudden transfer of the hat to his lap?

He had just committed an act of theft. The last time he had stolen something was in early adolescence, in a shopping centre in Courbevoie, egged on by a friend after school. They had stolen a record: ‘Aline', a hit single by the pop star Christophe. Since that afternoon back in 1965, he had never done such a thing again.

What he had just done was far worse than sneaking a record into his schoolbag in a supermarket. Daniel sat motionless, his eyes darting around the room at the other diners. No, no one had seen him, he was sure of that. Nothing to fear on that score. But now he had to leave before anything untoward happened, before the President asked someone to call the restaurant, looking for his hat; before the waiters came scurrying to the table under the furious gaze of the maître d'.

Daniel asked for the bill, saying he would pay by card. The waiter returned with the credit card machine. Daniel hardly noticed the amount. Nothing mattered any more. He signed the slip and took his receipt. He rummaged in his pockets for a tip and put it in the chrome dish. The waiter bowed slightly in a gesture of thanks and walked away.

Now, said Daniel to himself. His mouth was dry so he
poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down, then delicately extracted the presidential hat from under the tablecloth and put it on his head. Yes, it fitted perfectly. He put on his coat and headed for the door, feeling as if his legs were about to give way. The maître d' would stop him:
‘Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur! S'il vous plaît!
The hat, Monsieur …?'

But nothing of the kind happened. Daniel had left a fifteen-franc tip, and the waiters all nodded respectfully as he passed; even the mâitre d' attempted a smile which lifted the tips of his narrow moustache. The door was held open for him, and he stepped out into the cold, turning up the collar of his coat and heading for his car. Mitterrand's hat is on my head, he told himself.

Once in the driver's seat, with the hat still on his head, Daniel angled the rear-view mirror and gazed at his reflection in silence for several minutes. He felt as if his brain was bathed in a refreshing dose of sparkling aspirin. Bubbles of oxygen were fizzing through zones that had slumbered for too long. He turned the key in the ignition and drove off slowly into the night.

Daniel drove through the streets for a long while, circling his neighbourhood several times before leaving the car on level five of his building's underground car park. He could have driven like that for hours, his mind a complete blank. He felt buoyed up with a confidence that was as comforting as a warm bath.

In the deserted living room, he sat down on the sofa and looked at his reflection in the blank television screen. He
saw a man sitting with a hat on his head, nodding slowly. He stayed like that for a good hour, contemplating his own image, his entire being suffused with an almost mystical feeling of serene calm. It was two in the morning before he listened to his wife's message on the answering machine. Everything was fine in Normandy, Véronique and Jérôme would be back next day, arriving at Gare Saint-Lazare at 9.45 p.m. Daniel undressed. The last item he removed was the hat. He gazed in wonder at two letters embossed in gold on the band of leather running round the inside:

F.M.