The Eyes of Lira Kazan (24 page)

“So now you're just the same as everyone else!”

He said it as though Steffy had just announced that he had become heterosexual. Félix had always considered that announcing to his parents that he would never have a wife or children had been a decisive and revolutionary act. To him little arrangements with modern science that enabled gay people to push a pram were like a broken promise, a betrayal of all he stood for. That didn't prevent Steffy from carrying on in this febrile manner, grabbing his mobile every few minutes, turning it on, looking at it, putting it back in his pocket.

“Why don't you just leave it on the table, and then we can change the subject!” Félix suggested. He hadn't come to talk about nappies three days before Louchsky's coronation at Versailles.

“OK, so tell me about your trip to London…”

Félix did so, lying with a certain amount of inventiveness, describing shopping trips, parties, outrageous behaviour, Mark's friends, arguments they had had, the dilemma about their future together. Steffy listened, expertly winding his Thai noodles around his chopsticks.

“You're taking the piss,” he suddenly said, looking up into Félix's eyes.

Félix stopped talking.

“The British secret services forwarded their reports to the DGSE. They're in a great state over there, about Louchsky.
I've got a mate there who recognized your name. From what he told me, I can't believe you had the time to go to all those exhibitions…”

“I see. So now I'm being spied on by my own friends.”

“You should be thanking me! And, I might warn you, you're being watched here as well.”

“What the fuck's going on in this stinking country?” Félix was getting angry.

“It's what I told you would happen! You started treading on forbidden ground. Over here they think Louchsky is Father Christmas. He's handing out money and jobs, so it's the red carpet, Versailles, anything he wants. So I would just move on, there's nothing to see here.”

“Yes, of course, Versailles…”

“It's in three days' time. He'll have the Legion of Honour; there's a big dinner, fireworks, five hundred guests, the head of state, all the captains of industry, celebrities, they'll all be there. The tanks are rolling so get out of the way!”

“Go on, tell me who's coming – give me a laugh!”

“There are five hundred guests, I don't know them by heart.”

“The entire government I suppose…”

“Almost. And Douchet's wife's in charge of the table plans, I think she runs an events-organizing company.”

A light went on in Félix's brain. He tried to conceal it from Steffy. Douchet's wife. Hilar. The transfers. No, surely the sums were too large even for a party at Versailles. The events company must be a cover for the payment of some kind of commission.

“And they've got to leave room for the financial bosses,” Steffy continued. “And for the British Prime Minister and his entourage, the African oil moguls, the actresses, the journalists. There are a lot of ruffled feathers among those who haven't been asked. My minister gets the most pathetic text messages.”

“What about you, are you going?”

“I wrote the Minister's speech, but all I get is a pass to come into the grounds to watch the fireworks after the dinner. And don't expect me to smuggle you in, I don't want to crouch in the bushes watching the party.”

“Just as well. If I plant a bomb at least I won't have your death on my conscience.”

“Stop it, I'm going to start fancying you again – you'd make a very sexy Robin Hood!”

They both gave a forced laugh. In the past their lunches together had been funny and tender. They had exchanged little stories about the government, there had been vague yearnings and gestures which betrayed memories of their past relationship. Now each probably thought the other had changed. Steffy turned his mobile on again.

“I'm being careful,” he said. “A lot of people know about you and me. They may have tapped my phone. Did you hear about what happened to your judge?”

“No!” Félix jumped.

He had left London too soon to receive the judge's letter. Steffy told him all the latest news from the Chancellery. Félix listened, frozen. He could hardly touch his food or look at his friend.

“You see, Steffy,” he said finally, after a few moments, “I could never have predicted that it would be easier for me to be a gay man than a judge's clerk.”

“Well, and I could never have predicted that I might become a father. We'll probably both end up as disenchanted as any heterosexual man. That's what you can't bear, Félix, you thought you were above all that.”

A bit later, he added:

“Don't destroy your life. Look at your friend, that Russian journalist. At best she might be given the Sakharov Prize, at worst she'll get herself killed. And for what?”

Félix raised his eyes and stared at Steffy with utter contempt. He had just spoken about Lira like a civil servant in charge of giving a veneer to human rights at the Ministry.
He would be equally capable of producing an obituary or words of praise, it was all the same to him. It was just a matter of which pigeonhole to choose.

“And so, why isn't it her getting the Legion of Honour? Wasn't it once a medal given to members of the Resistance?”

“Look, I've no idea what it is you and your friends have got possession of that's putting those secret-service Brits into such a state, but I can assure you you haven't got the manpower,” Steffy reiterated.

Silence fell between them. Then the news came: the insemination had been successful. Steffy was thrilled, but Félix was unable to share his joy. Soon they went their separate ways. Steffy asked Félix if he planned to go back to work. Félix lied – “Yes” – not sure if he would be believed.

He felt very distant now from this man whom he had loved in the past, and who was still trying to protect him. He had now drawn another line between himself and other people. He walked for awhile, coming close to the area and then the street where his parents lived. He thought of paying them a surprise visit, but he remembered their last conversations on the telephone, and the way he always failed to say what they wanted to hear. So he continued on his way.

Round white tables were set like water lilies on a rippling pond; a low contented murmur rose up and echoed against the painted ceiling, eighty yards of military victories, and the political, economic and artistic triumphs of the long-gone France of the Sun King. And then there were the mirrors, which gave this gallery its name, three hundred and fifty-seven of them facing the windows, that evening reflecting long dresses, dinner jackets, rivers of diamonds, gleaming white teeth – all thought they could see in their reflection the fleeting image of a member of a ruling family.

Enter Sergei Louchsky. Forty years old today, with a falsely ecstatic grin on his face, his square head sitting hard and cold on his well-maintained body. His wife held his hand: she was ten years younger, with fine pale skin enhanced by the plunging neckline of a spangled midnight-blue ball gown. “Dior,” a jealous murmur went up among the other wives. Not many young people there that night.

How they were envied, for their youth, their riches and the glamour they brought with them from a Moscow that had hitherto only exported ancient carcasses in Soviet uniform or bearded dissidents. Everybody stood aside to let them pass, a double hedge of people such as used to form at the passage of great noblemen. There had once been a masked ball held here after the wedding of Marie-Antoinette to the Dauphin; they had been mere children – their combined age was less than thirty – terrified at the thought of ending the evening alone together, naked under their nightshirts, behind the curtains of their four-poster bed. They didn't yet know that their heads would be cut off. Kings nowadays were more relaxed, the Revolution was well behind them, and now the Republic was paying
court to them, drawing up contracts – all they had to do was enjoy their power. And on top of all that Elton John was going to sing that night.

Louchsky advanced, greeting his guests. He tried to show warmth, even though everything in him breathed only power, business and predatory attack. His table was at the centre of the room. The palace historians had suggested placing it at the end of the gallery, by the Salon de la Paix; that was where the king's throne was installed on great state occasions, but the organizers had decided that the centre would appear more convivial, more modern. Tonight was the celebration of a new world, which borrowed nothing from the old one except its splendour. Louchsky continued his advance, clapping the shoulders of an important Champs-Élysées jeweller, a big American industrialist, the Minister of Defence Douchet (Mrs Louchsky snapped at him: “So where's the President?”) and the Chelsea centre forward; he kissed the hand of an actress still glowing from her Oscar, and attempted a hearty joke with the number two in French luxury goods. He knew what good photos would come out of all this, little vignettes tossed to the press like crumbs or remains, for humble folk to pore over in the Métro.

But he was always looking elsewhere, busily scanning the crowd, that other mirror of power. They were all there, too, his future oil revenues, in the shape of the vice-president of the Brazilian oil company; as were the fund managers, the clever bloodhounds of the emerging economies, those “financial Mozarts” as
Paris Match
had described them, the twenty top names from the
Financial Times
's most recent list of the hundred most powerful financiers in the world.

Governor Finley's smile was as wide as a chunk of trans-Saharan pipeline. He wasn't hard to spot, he was one of only ten black faces at the party, if one was only counting the guests. Of course the proportion was greater among the staff. That evening they had recruited waiters with big shoulders who were supposed to look like bodyguards and
effortlessly whirled trays of champagne above the heads of the guests.

Finally Louchsky reached his table and sat down, a signal for everybody else to find their places. You could tell a lot from your position in this particular solar system. Vandel – the ex-president of the European bank who, since he retired, had been hired to advise the oligarch – had been punished by being placed close to the door, to his wife's fury: he should have anticipated the collapse of Grind Bank. French ex-golden boy Dellant realized then that he would now never get control of the Lagos container terminal, despite the fact that he ran forty other African ports. If he had been placed below Finley, it was because Louchsky wanted it that way. All he could do now was put up with his neighbour, a princess with a long nose, who was warmly congratulating him on his foundation against illiteracy. She seemed to know a lot more about it than he did.

Further away two art dealers who were famous enemies found themselves at the same table. “We've quarrelled, haven't we?” said one of them. The other answered: “Well, we've got one friend in common, I suppose.” Anne Vuipert, the French President's special adviser and linchpin of the special relationship with Louchsky, would have preferred it if the photographer had not immortalized her proximity to the head of Goldman Sachs, whose compensation had just been made public: twenty-two million dollars for a year's work. She stiffened. At least she wouldn't be smiling in the picture.

Finally the President and his wife arrived, crossing the room with all the confidence of people delayed by important affairs of state. They sat down at Louchsky's table, alongside the British Prime Minister; Germany had sent its finance minister. The President wasn't going to speak at this birthday party that looked like a summit conference. He had done that earlier in the day in the Élysée drawing room when he made Louchsky a Commander of the Legion of Honour,
and had declared “for the attention of cynics” that “just because you're friends doesn't mean your relationship is in any way unethical”. Louchsky had much appreciated this blank cheque. He carried on insistently patting the President's shoulder, while the two official photographers bombarded them with their flashes.

It was the Foreign Minister who made the speech. For this occasion he chose to recall Peter the Great's visit to this palace. He launched off, his voice imitating the vibrating tones of television documentaries about royalty: “On the morning of the twenty-fifth of May 1717, the Tsar sailed on the Grand Canal. He visited the Menagerie and then the Trianon. He observed everything and noted all the things he wanted to reproduce in St Petersburg. One of the features he was most struck by, apart from the splendour of the palace, was the layout of the town itself. He reproduced the chessboard design with the three avenues radiating outwards. He also noted the width of the streets, at that time lacking in Paris itself…”

The boss of France's largest civil engineering company sat at his table devouring the bread rolls on his side plate just as he had devoured the public markets in St Petersburg. He smiled to himself – his cement was flowing over there, as though perpetuating the greatness of France. Beside him, Metton, a top consultant on the Parisian stock market, wondered how to tell him that he had poppy seeds stuck in his teeth. The Foreign Minister was now recalling the historic friendship between the French and Russian people, who had so often found themselves thrown together by the vagaries of history. It was the old diplomat's trick – putting “the people” in places where they had never been invited: “Was it not here, in this very gallery, that the Treaty of Versailles was signed, putting an end to the First World War?” The Minister was getting carried away; his face was turning scarlet.

“The Russians were Bolsheviks in those days, not quite the same thing as this!” snarled an old Goncourt-prize winner. His remark was met with severe looks from his table companions, who would not tolerate bad manners.