LE HARENG ROUGE

The elements were leading him a merry dance. The wind, in particular, was winding him up. He paused to remonstrate with his umbrella, which seemed to have developed a mind of its own since blowing inside out. Its erratic movements resembled those of a divination rod gone haywire. Buffeted on all sides, the man gripped the shaft with both hands, holding on for dear life. Oh, the gusto of those gusts! Loren pictured him soaring away like Mary Poppins — an unlikely prospect in view of his corpulence. Besides, the disjointed canopy lay presently in a puddle at his feet. The man gazed ruefully at the carnage of twisted ribs. Turning his chubby face skywards, he closed his eyes for a few seconds while the righteous rain streamed down his hirsute features. Ah, those rivers of rivulets! Whether he was communing with God, steeling himself for the next stage of his pilgrimage, or simply weathering the weather, Loren knew not. In fact, he was adrift on a vulva-shaped rowing boat in the middle of a fjord, sailing into darkness. The kind of absolute darkness where you can see the light, if only you look hard enough. And there it was, shimmering in the distance, and he was tingling all over and everything everywhere was growing luminous and numinous. He was alive. Right now, he was alive. Drenched — but alive. It was pouring and he was porous; part of everything. Never again would he take existence for granted. He resolved, there and then, to spurn the dead hand of stultifying routine and seek out the spiritual in the everyday. So he beat on, borne back ceaselessly onto the ground he had just covered, but eventually inching forwards through hard-won incremental triumphs. At a glacial pace, he thus contrived to travel the length of the bistro from whence Loren, transfixed, had observed the whole saga. This, she thought, is what happens when nothing happens. Nothing was happening before her very eyes.

No sooner was he out of sight than the man reappeared, making haste to the entrance with the wind now in his sails. ‘A storm is blowing from Paradise,’ he boomed jovially, closing the door behind him. No reaction. A lone voice in the wilderness. When he turned round he discovered, to his astonishment, that the establishment was almost empty despite the inclement climatic conditions and the full house in the hipster coffee shop next door. The sole customer, tapping away daintily at her MacBook Pro, was the epitome of effortless Gallic chic, which precluded her from being French, let alone Parisian. American, perhaps, or English, which would be even worse. Nation of philistines. The reviewers over there had never appreciated his plays. Did not understand them. He could not help noticing her long legs though. This too, he rationalised, fell within his purview. It was all part of his quest for the quotidian — his all-embracing remit. The rich tapestry of life. The wonderful everyday… Was that Stanley Cavell? Or Ikea? He could not remember. One of the two.

A lofty young fellow flitted in and out of the penumbra at the back. A waiter, no doubt — clearly intent on making him wait as long as possible. The man was having none of it though. He slowly unwound his silk scarf — once an elaborate paisley affair; now a stringy, sodden mess — and started wringing the water out of it as if throttling a theatre critic. A vein throbbed in his temple; a puddle expanded at his feet. That would show him. Responding to this provocation, the aggrieved waiter loomed, cursing under his breath and wielding a large menu. He gestured towards a table, seemingly at random, before retreating into the shadows, leaving the menu behind like a ticking time bomb.

The man divested himself of his coat, which he hung on the back of the chair across the table, then sat down with the exalted mien of a holy fool. He suddenly got up again to examine the papers he had spotted on the bar — a copy of L’Inhumanité and the latest issue of The End Times, the international anglophone journal whose headquarters, in Amsterdam, had been raided by the anti-terrorist squad. An old Nice Matin too, which struck him as rather odd. He retreated to his seat, switching his attention to the large TV screen mounted on the brick wall.

A reporter, standing outside Shakespeare and Company, was piecing together the events which had led to the aborted abduction of a celebrated British author, now resident in the French capital. After attending a party thrown by Sylvia Whitman, she was approached by a man in a balaclava, who attempted to bundle her away in a car driven by an accomplice. The feisty novelist had managed to wrestle her assailant to the ground and taken flight, finding refuge among a cluster of distinguished guests including Marie Darrieussecq and Hari Kunzru. The story concluded with a close-up of the baseball cap the victim had been sporting — presumably in order to go about incognito — when she was accosted. Laying forlorn beside a Wallace fountain, it was cordoned off by red-and-white tape as though the true crime had consisted in donning the offending article in the first place. The reporter — now holding up an umbrella — stared at the camera with furrowed brow. She fumbled with her earpiece nervously, waiting for a signal. Back in the studio, the newsreader was enquiring if a connection could be made with the murders of Solange de la Turlutte, Jonathan Titterington Jones, the Marquis de Perlimpinpin, and Firmin Lepiador. The reporter, still visibly cue-less, remained silent, eyes narrowed in concentration, on the threshold of some revelation. The newsreader swivelled round in his chair and, with consummate professionalism, apologised for this technical glitch — les aléas du direct — before bringing us up to speed. The author’s whereabouts were currently unknown, the baseball cap had gone missing; anyone who had seen a Simca 1000 in the Latin Quarter, on Thursday night, was invited to contact the police. Following a momentary pause during which he shuffled the papers on his desk, the newsreader segued into a related item concerning a spate of attacks on the publishing industry across the Channel. Shocking footage of a sensitivity reader, who had been tarred and feathered and then shackled to the railings on Mecklenburgh Square, was broadcast. The camera zoomed in on the sign hanging around his neck: ‘Be kind’ scrawled next to a smiley face.

Marimba. Less a ringtone than its Platonic ideal. The man picked up, cleared his throat, and started speaking in heavily-accented French. He was glad to be back in Paris. As always. What’s not to like?… Okay then, sure: he agreed to join his interlocutor at Le Rostand later on. They could even go for a stroll in the Jardin du Luxembourg, weather permitting… Yes, just like Beckett… He was meeting her tomorrow at that little Japanese restaurant… Yes, on rue Monsieur-le-Prince… What wouldn’t he do for the sake of sake, eh? Haha!… The critics, here, had really engaged with his new play… À la recherche du pain perdu in French… Very pleased with the translation, very pleased… That’s right — Victorine Gribiche… Le Monde had described his work as a masterpiece, and who was he to argue, eh? Haha!… Yes… The guy said he had rarely seen so many spectators leave before the interval: it was that good! Put Edward Bond to shame. The final act, he wrote, was performed in front of a near-empty auditorium — an infallible barometer of a play’s profundity in his eyes… People seldom gravitate towards gravitas, do they? Only the happy few, right?… He had some reservations about one of the lead actors, though… Yes, that one! How did he guess? He laughed again, triggering a coughing fit, before resuming the conversation in a Scandinavian language. It was unclear whether he was still conversing with the same person.

Alexis Boyer, the winner of a cooking reality show was being interviewed on television alongside the runner-up, Anaïs Chevalier. From her rearguard position, Loren contemplated the man’s straggly grey ponytail with a mixture of pity and disgust. It put her in mind of roadkill. Now that his noisy phone call was over, she could get back to work, scouring Adam Wandle’s collection of non-fiction in a bid to locate some quotations she wished to collate. They had all disappeared, though. Every single one. Could they have slipped out of the book? Might she have dreamt them up? Loren, it is true, had read the text so many times that the overly familiar words seemed to be printed in disappearing ink.

A deep intake of breath. Back to square one. The preface was called ‘The Draft of the Medusa’…

---

Loren Ipsum will be out soon with Dodo Ink. More info here.

Andrew Gallix is an Anglo-French writer and occasional translator, who teaches at the Sorbonne and edits 3:AM Magazine. His work has featured in the Guardian, Financial Times, Irish Times, Stinging Fly, New Statesman, Independent, Literary Review, Times Literary Supplement, London Magazine, Aeon, Apollo, Dazed & Confused, and elsewhere. His books include Unwords (Dodo Ink, 2024) and We’ll Never Have Paris (Repeater Books, 2019) alongside Love Bites: Fiction Inspired by Pete Shelley (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019) and Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (Zero Books, 2017) which he co-edited.