The President's Hat. Antoine Laurain

The fading light held the promise of a bachelor evening. What a pleasing phrase.

      ‘A bachelor evening,’ he repeated, slamming the door of the Golf.

      Daniel was experiencing the need ‘to find himself,’ as one of the guests had said on a recent programme on Antenne 2. The guest was a psychotherapist who’d written a book about stress at work and was on the programme to promote it. Daniel found the concept appealing. This gourmet interlude would allow him to get back in touch with his true self, to throw off the stress of the day, and to forget about accounts and figures and the recent tensions caused by the reorganisation of the finance department.

      Jean Maltard had taken over as director, and Daniel, who was deputy director, couldn’t see anything good about the appointment. Nothing good at all, not for the department as a whole, nor for him personally. Crossing the boulevard, he was determined to put his worries right out of his mind. As soon as I open the brasserie door, he told himself, there will be no more Jean Maltard, no more SOGETEC, no more expenses slips, no more VAT. Just me and a seafood platter royale.

      The white-aproned waiter had walked ahead of him down the line of tables where couples, families and tourists sat chatting, smiling or nodding their heads, their mouths full. Along the way, he spotted seafood platters, entrecôte steaks with pommes vapeur, faux-filets with Béarnaise sauce.

      When he had first entered, the head waiter, a rotund man with a slender moustache, had enquired whether he had booked. For a moment, Daniel thought his evening was over.

      ‘I didn’t have time,’ he answered tonelessly.

      The head waiter had raised an eyebrow and peered closely at the evening’s list of reservations.

      A young blonde woman came over. ‘Twelve called to cancel half an hour ago,’ she said, pointing to a name on the list.

      ‘And no one thought to tell me?’ The head waiter was visibly annoyed.

      ‘I thought Françoise had told you,’ the girl said offhandedly, wandering off.

      The maître d’ had closed his eyes for a moment, his pained expression suggesting the full extent of the self-control required not to explode with fury at the waitress’s blunder.

      ‘Allow us to show you to your table, Monsieur,’ he said to Daniel, nodding to a waiter, who immediately hurried over.

      All brasseries have brilliant white tablecloths that hurt the eyes, like snow on the ski slopes. The glasses and the silverware really do sparkle. For Daniel, the characteristic glitter of tableware in the best brasseries was the embodiment of luxury. The waiter returned with the menu and the wine list. Daniel opened the red leatherette folder and began to read. The prices were much higher than he had imagined, but he decided not to worry about that. The plateau royal de fruits de mer was framed in the middle of the page, in elegant calligraphy: fines de claire creuses et plates de Bretagne, half a crab, three different kinds of clam, prawns, langoustines, whelks, shrimps, cockles and winkles.

      Daniel took the wine list and looked for a Pouilly-Fuissé or -Fumé. This, too, was more expensive than he had anticipated. Daniel ordered his platter, adding a half-bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé.

      ‘I’m afraid we only have bottles,’ said the waiter.

      Daniel didn’t want to appear miserly. ‘A bottle will be fine,’ he said, closing the wine list.

      Couples, on the whole. Tables of men in ties and grey suits like his own, except that theirs were clearly the best designer labels. They might even have been made to measure. The four fifty-somethings seated a little further down must be celebrating the end of a tough day and the signature of a decent contract. The quartet sipped at glasses of no doubt excellent wine. They each wore the calm, confident smile of a man who has succeeded in life. At another table beneath the large mirrors, an elegant brunette in a red dress was listening to a grey-haired man who Daniel could see only from the back. She was half listening, in fact; from time to time her gaze wandered around the room, before returning to the speaker opposite her. She looked bored.

      The wine waiter brought a silver ice bucket on a stand, the bottle of Pouilly bobbing amongst the ice cubes. The waiter took hold of the corkscrew and performed the ritual opening, passing the cork under his nose. Daniel tasted the wine, which seemed good to him. He was not one of those wine buffs who can distinguish every last nuance of flavour in a fine cru and discourse on it at length, in sophisticated terms. The wine waiter, in time-honoured fashion, awaited his customer’s opinion with an air of vague condescension. Daniel gave an approving nod designed to indicate great erudition on the subject of white Burgundy. The wine waiter gave a small smile, filled his glass and departed.

      A few moments later, a waiter placed a round stand in the middle of the table, a sign that the seafood platter was about to arrive. Next came a basket of pumpernickel bread, a ramekin of shallot vinegar, and the butter dish. Daniel buttered a piece of bread and dipped it discreetly in the mixture – a ritual he performed every time he ate a seafood platter in a restaurant. The taste of the vinegar was chased away by a mouthful of chilled wine. He gave a satisfied sigh. Yes, he had found himself.

      The platter arrived, the seafood arranged by species on a bed of crushed ice. Daniel took an oyster, held a quarter of lemon immediately above it, and squeezed gently. A drop of lemon juice fell onto the delicate membrane, which squirmed immediately. Absorbed by the oyster’s iridescent gleam, he nevertheless noticed the next-door table being moved to one side. Looking up, he saw the moustachioed head waiter smiling at a new customer. A man who removed his red scarf, then his coat and hat and slipped onto the banquette beside Daniel.

      ‘May I hang those up for you?’ asked the maître d’ immediately.

      ‘No, no. I’ll just leave them here on the banquette. If they’re not bothering you, Monsieur?’

      ‘No,’ said Daniel in a barely audible voice. ‘Not at all,’ he added in a whisper.

      François Mitterrand had just sat down next to him.

      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