Windows on the World. Frédéric Beigbeder

be sure that I wouldn’t cry too and then David was likely to get in on the act. But David never cries, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now.

      “You have to admit the special effects are pretty mind-blowing: the smoke coming out of everywhere, and all the customers who’re paid to panic, it’s pretty well put together!”

      Around us, people were getting to their feet, still staring at each other, petrified. Some, who’d dived under the table like we did, look up now, a little embarrassed that they weren’t hero material. Jerry’s pancakes were lying on the floor, covered with bits of porcelain. The pot of maple syrup dripped between the overturned chairs. Outside the Windows on the World, you couldn’t see a thing: a dense black curtain blocked the view. Night had fallen, New York had disappeared and the ground rumbled. I can tell you, everyone in the place had only one idea, neatly summed up by the head chef:

      “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

      Now I think about it, I would like to have been in one of those brainless disaster-movie blockbusters. Because pretty much all of them have a happy ending.

       8:48

      Other possible names for the World Trade Center restaurant:

       Windows on the Planes

       Windows on the Crash

       Windows on the Smoke

       Broken Windows

      Sorry for that bout of black humor: a momentary defense against the atrocity.

      

      The New York Times collated a number of eyewitness accounts of Windows on the World at that moment. Two amateur videos show smoke seeping into the upper floors at incredible speed. Paradoxically, the restaurant is more smoky than the floors just above the point of impact because the smoke has taken some fifty feet to thicken. We have fragments of a call made by Rajesh Mirpuri to his boss, Peter Lee at Data Synapse. He says he can’t see more than fifteen feet. The situation is rapidly deteriorating. At Cantor Fitzgerald (on the 104th floor), fire blocks the elevators. Employees take refuge in the offices on the north face, fifty of them in a single conference room.

      At that moment, the majority still believe this is an accident. There is considerable evidence to suggest that most of them were still alive until the building collapsed at 10:28 AM. They suffered for 102 minutes, the average running time of a Hollywood film.

      Extract from Against the Grain by Huysmans:

      It was the vast, foul bagnio of America transported to our Continent; it was, in a word, the limitless, unfathomable, incommensurable firmament of blackguardism of the financier and the self-made man, beaming down, like a despicable sun, on the idolatrous city that grovelled on its belly, hymning vile songs of praise before the impious tabernacle of Commerce.

      “Well, crumble then, society! perish, old world!” cried Des Esseintes, indignant at the ignominy of the spectacle he had conjured up…

      I knew it. The person really responsible for this attack wasn’t Osama bin Laden, but the incorrigible Des Esseintes. I thought that decadent dandy was behaving a little oddly. Having for so long found nihilism cool, spoiled children now root for serial killers. All those weird little boys who sniggeringly advocate hatred now have blood on their shirt fronts. No dry cleaner will ever get the blood spatters out of their designer vests. Dandyism is inhuman; the eccentrics, too cowardly to act, prefer to suicide others rather than themselves. They murder the ill-dressed. Des Esseintes, with his pale hands, murders children whose only crime is to be ordinary. His snobbish contempt is a flamethrower. How can anyone forgive the murder of the old woman in Florida on page 201 of my previous novel? We point the finger at those who are indirectly guilty, anonymous, impersonal pension funds, dummy organizations. But at the end of the day, those who scream, who plead, who bleed, are real. At the end of the world, satire becomes reality, metaphor becomes truth, even political cartoonists feel embarrassed…

       8:49

      Your first instinct is to grab your cellphone. But since it’s a first instinct, everyone else has had the same idea and the networks are jammed. As I anxiously press the green “redial” button, I try to convince the boys that this suffocating darkness is just a funfair ride.

      “You’ll see: any minute now they’ll send in a fake rescue team, it’s gonna be wicked! That black cloud’s really well done, isn’t it?”

      The stockbroker couple look at me pityingly.

      “Jesus!” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren. “Let’s get the hell out of this sauna.”

      The dark-haired guy gets up and runs for the elevators, dragging his lover by the hand. I fall in behind, a child on each arm. But the elevators are out of order. Behind her desk, the receptionist is sobbing.

      “I’m not trained for this kind of thing…We’re supposed to evacuate via the stairs. Follow me…”

      The majority of Windows on the World customers haven’t waited for her. They’re already crammed into the smoke-filled stairwell. They cough in single file. A black security guard throws up in a trash can. He’s already been down four floors.

      “I’ve just been down there, it’s hell, don’t go, the whole place is blazing!”

      We go anyway. It’s utter chaos: the crash has knocked out all means of communication with the outside world. I turn to Jerry and David who have started whimpering.

      “C’mon, kids, if we’re gonna win the game, we can’t let them think they’ve fooled us. So, no panicking, please, otherwise we’ll be eliminated. Just follow your dad and we’ll try and get downstairs. You both played Dungeons and Dragons, right? The winners are always the ones who are best at bluffing the enemy. If we show any signs of weakness, we’ll lose the game, got it?”

      The two brothers nod politely.

      I realize I’ve forgotten to describe myself. I used to be striking, later I was handsome, later still, not so bad, now I’m all right. I read a lot of books, and underline the sentences I like (like all autodidacts) (that’s why autodidacts are often the most cultivated people: they spend their whole life preparing for an exam they never took). On a good day I look like Bill Pullman, the actor (he was the President in Independence Day). On a bad day I look more like Robin Williams if he was prepared to play a Texan realtor with a funny walk, a receding hairline, and crow’s feet around the eyes (too much sun, yeah!). In a couple of years’ time, I’ll be a perfectly good candidate for the “George W. Bush lookalike contest”; if I survive, that is.

      Jerry’s my oldest son, that’s why he’s so serious. The first-born have to put up with the teething problems. He reminds me of my mother. I like the way he takes everything so seriously. I can get him to believe anything, he’ll swallow anything, but afterwards, he hates me for lying to him. Honest, sincere, brave: Jerry is the man I should have been. Sometimes I think he despises me. I think I disappoint him. Oh well: it’s a father’s destiny to disappoint his son. Look at Luke Skywalker, his father is Darth Vader! Jerry is exactly like I was at his age: he believes in the order of things, he’s impatient for everything to come good. Later, he’ll lose his illusions. I hope he doesn’t. I hope his eyes will always be so honest, so blue. I need you, Jerry. In the old days, kids depended on their parents to guide them. Now it’s the opposite.