We might as well face facts: Marronnier is the sort of guy who wears polka-dot ties and picks up girls.
Once upon a time there was him and the rest of the world. Just a guy wandering down the boulevard Malesherbes. Desperately banal, i.e. unique. That’s him heading to the party of the year. Do you recognise him? He’s got nothing better to do. He’s an unforgivable optimist. (Though it must be said the pigs never pull him over and ask for his papers.) He heads towards the festivities with complete impunity. ‘The Festivity is what is waited for, what is expected.’ (Roland Barthes, Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse.)
‘Shut the fuck up, you legendary stiff,’ grumbles Marronnier. ‘Wait long enough, you’ll ALWAYS get run over by a dry-cleaning van.’
A few steps later, Marc changes his mind. ‘Actually, Barthes is right. All I ever do is wait and I’m ashamed of it. At sixteen I wanted to take on the world, I wanted to be a rock star, or be a great writer, or be president of France, or die young. But here I am at twenty-seven, already resigned to my fate, rock is too complicated, cinema too elitist, great writers too dead, France too corrupt and nowadays I want to die as old as possible.’
My good-for-nothing city-dweller lives and
is set free by the variety of the night.
The night is a long and lonely party
Mi callejero no hacer nada vive y se suelta por la variedad de la noche. La noche es una fiesta larga y sola.
Jorge Luis Borges
Casi Juicio Final from Moon Across the Way
It is important to live dangerously, but from time to time Marc likes to have a snack at Ladurée.
Careful not to be too punctual, he orders a hot chocolate and composes this bilingual haiku:
Un homme au cou de giraffe Mangeait des clous de girofle.
And in her mouth he came Drinking Château-Yquem.
The elderly waitress brings him his drink and he is suddenly seized by violent anguish: the cocoa almost certainly came from Africa, it had to be picked, shipped, before being processed in a Van Houten factory transforming it into soluble powder, then shipped again; one had to boil the milk which came from a cow locked up in another factory in Normandy (Candia or maybe Lactel), the saucepan had to be watched to ensure it didn’t boil over, in short, thousands of people had to work hard just so he could let it sit there and go cold. All those people for a simple cup of hot chocolate. Maybe some of the factory workers died, crushed by the fearsome machines which press the cocoa beans, just so that Marc could stir it slowly. He feels as if all these people are watching him, telling him: ‘Drink your chocolate, Marc, drink it while it’s hot, it’s not your fault that this single cup of hot chocolate represents a year’s salary for us.’ He gets up from the table and, wrinkling his brow, gets the hell out of there. As you’ve already been advised, his behaviour is not always entirely rational. He is easily terrified by geometrically patterned wallpaper, the numbers on a car licence plate, even an overweight man eating pizza.
The Church of the Madeleine has not moved from the Place. Already there is a crowd queuing outside Shit. A ballet of rubbernecks and paparazzi. The vast loudspeakers sing Schubert’s ‘An die Nachtigall’ in a remix with Julee Cruise’s ‘The Nightingale’. Undoubtedly the first vesperal invention of Joss Dumoulin.
The vast toilet bowl in white marble is bathed in a mist of dry ice and surrounded by vertical spots which light up the sky. They look like columns of light from a Star Trek teleporter, or a V2 alert during the Blitz. Inquisitive bystanders are clustered like spermatozoa around the egg.
‘And you are … ?’ asks the human pit bull guarding the entrance. Since an accurate reply to this question would have taken hours, Marc simply says: ‘Marronnier’. The security guard repeats the name into his walkie-talkie. There is a tumbleweed moment. It’s the same deal every time you go out. ‘Let me just check the guest list.’ People think of nightclub doormen as watchdogs, but it’s not true: in fact they are directly descended from the Sphinx of Thebes. Their riddles raise genuine existential problems. Marc wonders whether he answered correctly. At length, the pit bull receives a burst of approving crackle in his headset. Marc exists! He’s on the list, therefore he is! The chamberlain deferentially parts the velvet rope a fraction to allow him through. The crowd parts just like the Red Sea for Moses, except that Marc is clean-shaven.
On the wall, a mosaic inscription reads: ‘Built by Porcine Industries, Paris–Revin 1905’ and just above it, a small blue hologram shows a naked girl, smiling, with a tattoo on her belly that reads: ‘Shit, Paris–Tokyo 1993’.
Joss Dumoulin greets his guests at the entrance, behind the metal detector and the TV crews setting up their spots. His hair is slicked back, his dinner jacket double-breasted, his bodyguards brick shit-houses, his telephone mobile.
‘Heeeeeeey! If it isn’t the great Marc Marronnier! How many years has it been?’
They kiss warmly in a showbiz style, making it easier for them to hide their actual emotions.
‘Great to see you again, Jocelyn.’
‘Bastard – don’t call me that,’ laughs Joss. ‘These days I’m young.’
‘So this is, like, your club?’
‘The Bog? Nah, the club belongs to some Japanese friends. You know, the kind with at least one finger missing … Jesus, I’m really happy you came, Bro.’
‘What, when one of us has finally made it big for once – I wasn’t going to miss that. And anyway, I wanted to know what it takes to become “Joss Dumoulin”.’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the star system for you. I’ll let you in on my secret: talent. Well? Don’t I get a laugh? Since I’ve been famous it’s mad how people always laugh at my jokes. Go on, go with the flow.’
‘Ha, ha, ha,’ Marc forces a laugh, ‘what a wit! Well, it’s been real, but can you point me to the nymphomaniacs?’
‘What’s the hurry, you old Reuben! Baroness, how aaaaaaare you?’
Joss Dumoulin kisses the Baroness Truffaldine greedily like a starving man devouring a slice of fresh bread, when in fact she looks like a slab of butter someone has stuck a pair of trifocals into. Then he turns back to Marc:
‘Get yourself a drink, you old bastard, I’ll be right over. And don’t worry about nymphos, the place is full of them. I just have to greet my six hundred nymphomaniac friends. Like Marguerite here! Oh my God, Marguerite, you look like such a nympho!’
There he goes, mispronouncing the name of Marjorie Lawrence, a fashion model famous in the fifties and ever since the fifties. Marc kisses her hand ceremoniously (with just a hint of urbane gerontophilia). Twisting people’s names seems to be one of Joss’s favourite sports. With most people, DJs are as sympathetic as the nervous system of the same name: it’s fight or flight.
Marc does as he is told and heads for the bar. It’s time to armour himself.
Hey – one important detail, he’s stopped frowning.
‘Two Lobotomies over ice, please.’
He is accustomed to ordering drinks in pairs, especially when they’re free. It gives him an excuse for not shaking hands with people.
While preserving the turn-of-the-century rococo style of the toilets, the architects have turned this vast hall into a high-tech neo-brutalist extravaganza which their Nippon backers will surely appreciate. Spread over two enormous floors