The Man Who Risked It All Read online

  “What do I have to do exactly? What’s my mission?”

  “You’re going to ask to be shown watches. You must try on a good dozen or so, ask lots of questions, and then leave without buying anything.”

  My stress went up a notch.

  “And there’s something else.”

  He took his cell phone, dialed a number, and a discrete ringing went off in his inside pocket. He got out a small, flesh-colored device, pressed it, and the ringing stopped.

  “Put this in your ear. That way, I can listen to your amazing feats, and you can hear me if I have things to say to you.”

  I was dumbstruck.

  “What’s all this about!”

  “One last thing …”

  “What?”

  “Have fun. It’s the best piece of advice I can give you. If you manage to do that, it’s in the bag. Stop taking everything seriously. Step back and see this test as a game. That’s what it is, isn’t it? A game. There’s nothing to lose, just things to find out.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You know, one can see life as a series of pitfalls to be avoided, or as a vast playground that offers enriching experiments at every street corner.”

  I didn’t answer but opened the car door and got out. The traffic noise hit me, and a warm wind woke up my dulled brain.

  I took a few steps, lit a cigarette and smoked it, taking my time. With a bit of luck, the police would come and tell the Mercedes to move on.

  Dubreuil had spoken of a test. He wanted, he said, to test my progress. That probably meant he would set other unpleasant tasks for the weeks ahead. To free myself, I absolutely had to pluck up my courage and manage a satisfactory performance. I had no choice, in any case. He wouldn’t let go; I was sure of that.

  I tossed my cigarette on the sidewalk and vigorously ground it out, turning my foot from side to side longer than necessary. As I looked up at the glass window of this temple of luxury, a shiver ran down my spine. Come on, chin up, I told myself.

  6

  SWALLOWING HARD, I pushed the revolving door. An image of my mother exhausting herself in the laundry flashed across my mind. Three young men in dark suits were standing in the spacious entrance hall, their arms by their sides. One of them opened the second door into the shop. I tried to assume a confident air, even though I was being dropped into a universe that was totally alien to me.

  The door opened into a vast space with a high ceiling, dominated by a monumental staircase. The room was furnished with display counters in precious woods, sparkling like mirrors. A great, glittering chandelier hung overhead. Walls hung with velvet absorbed the light. I detected a subtle perfume, barely a scent, calming and captivating at the same time. A thick dark red carpet muffled the noise of my footsteps. Then a pair of woman’s shoes, very beautiful, extremely feminine with stiletto heels, was coming toward me, one after the other, delicately. I looked up at slim legs that went on forever, then a short black skirt, tight, topped by a narrow-waisted jacket. Very narrow-waisted. When I finally lifted my head, I was looking into the ice blue eyes of a glacial beauty with blonde hair, perfectly smooth, done up in a chignon.

  She looked straight at me and spoke in a very professional voice: “Good evening, sir, what can I do for you?”

  She didn’t smile in the slightest, and I wondered, paralyzed, whether she was behaving as usual or she had already marked me as an intruder, someone who would never be a customer. I felt unmasked, stripped bare by her confident gaze.

  “I’d like to see your men’s watches,” I managed to say.

  “Our gold collection or our steel one?”

  “Steel,” I replied, pleased to be able to choose a range less distant from what I was used to.

  “Gold! Gold!” Dubreuil screamed in my earpiece.

  I was afraid the sales assistant would hear his voice, but she didn’t seem to notice. I remained silent.

  “Follow me, please,” she said in a tone of voice that immediately made me regret saying steel, a tone that meant I knew it. Hateful.

  I followed her, looking down at her shoes. You can tell everything about a person by watching the way they walk. Her walk was definite, studied, nothing spontaneous. She led me to the first room and headed for one of the wooden vitrines. A tiny golden key moved between her fingers, with their perfectly manicured red nails, and the glass top rose up. She took out a tray lined in velvet, on which the watches were enthroned.

  “Here we have the Pasha, the Roadster, the Santos, and the famous Tank Française. Each has a self-winding mechanical movement.”

  I wasn’t listening to what she said. Her words resounded in my head without me trying to give them a meaning. My attention was caught by the precise gestures accompanying her words. She pointed to each watch with her long fingers, not quite touching them. Her gestures alone seemed to increase the prestige of these inert assemblies of metal parts.

  I was supposed to ask to try the watches on, but her words and her gestures revealed such perfection that I feared sounding like an idiot. Then I remembered that Dubreuil was listening. I had to take the plunge.

  “I’d like to try this one on,” I said, pointing to a watch with a steel-and-rubber band.

  She put on a white glove, as if her fingerprints might spoil its beauty, then grasped the watch with her fingertips and held it out to me. I was almost embarrassed to take it in my bare hand.

  “It’s one of our latest creations. A quartz movement in a steel case, with chronograph function and three counters.”

  A quartz watch. Not even a real clock mechanism. You could find thousands of quartz watches on the market for less than ten euros.

  I was about to slip it on when I suddenly realized that I was wearing my own watch on my wrist. A wave of shame washed over me. I couldn’t show her the novelty plastic watch that was hidden under my jacket sleeve. So I took it off with a gesture that was no doubt grotesque, shielding it with the palm of my hand as I stuffed it in my pocket.

  “You can put it on the tray,” she said.

  I was convinced that she had seen my unease and wanted to increase it. I declined her offer. My face was burning. Rattled, I said the first thing that came to mind: “How long does the battery last?”

  Instantly, my embarrassment increased tenfold. I must be the first customer in the history of Cartier to have asked such a question. Who among their clientele would be bothered about the life of a battery?

  The sales assistant gave herself several seconds to reply, as if to give me time to realize how out of place my question was and to allow my shame to work its way deep down. Sheer torture.

  “A year.”

  I barely heard her. I had to calm down, refocus. I tried to relax, examining the watch with false interest. I quickly slipped it on my wrist, anxious to show how much I was used to handling this sort of luxury item. I tried to fasten the watchband just as quickly but was brought to a dead halt when the folding deployant clasp jammed. I must have tried to close the wrong part first. I began again, but still couldn’t close it properly.

  “The clasp opens the other way,” she said. “May I?”

  I was overcome with shame; my face was crimson. I was afraid the beads of sweat on my forehead would drop on the tray. To avoid this supreme humiliation, I stepped back from the counter a few inches.

  Now I was holding out my wrist like a fugitive surrendering to a policeman to be handcuffed. The ease with which she closed the clasp only increased my feeling of clumsiness.

  I pretended to evaluate the aesthetics of the costly watch, waving my arm around in the air to look at it from different angles.

  “How much is it?” I asked, as casually as possible, as if it was merely a routine question.

  “Thirty-two hundred and seventy euros.”

  I thought I caught a hint of satisfaction in her voice, the sort certain instructors evince when they tell you you’ve failed your driving test or scored at the bottom of the curve on your SATs.

  Was she serious—
3,270 euros for a quartz watch with a steel-and-rubber band? I would have liked to ask her the difference between that and a 40-euro Swatch. Dubreuil would no doubt have appreciated the question, but it was beyond me. As yet. On the other hand, bizarrely, the price, which struck me as outrageous, helped me loosen up a bit. It freed me from the pressure I was inflicting on myself, as the magic of the luxury universe—and the awe it had elicited in me—vanished.

  “I’d like to try that one on,” I said, pointing to another watch and taking off the Chronoscaph.

  “The Tank Française, designed in 1917,” she said. “Mechanical movement, automatically self-winding.”

  I put it on, this time without fumbling with the clasp, and turned my wrist this way and that.

  “It’s not bad, but … “ I said, pretending to hesitate.

  That made two watches. How many was I supposed to try on? Didn’t he say fifteen? I was beginning to relax a bit, just a bit, when I heard Dubreuil’s voice, more discreetly this time.

  “Tell her you think they’re ugly and you want to see the gold watches!”

  “I’d like to see that one,” I said, pretending not to hear.

  “Tell her they’re …”

  I coughed to cover the sound of his voice. What would she think if she heard? The idea crossed my mind that I might look like a thief connected to an accomplice outside. For all I knew, the security cameras had already detected my earpiece. I started to sweat. I had to hurry up and accomplish my mission, so I could get it over with and get out.

  “I’m not sure. Actually, perhaps I’ll have a look at your gold models,” I said reluctantly, afraid of not being credible.

  She skillfully slipped the tray into the display case.

  “Please follow me.”

  I had the unpleasant impression she was making no effort to serve me, just the bare minimum demanded by her professionalism. She must be feeling she was wasting her time with me. I followed her, furtively looking around. My eyes met those of one of the men in dark suits. No doubt a security guard. I had the impression he was looking at me strangely.

  We went into another, bigger room. The few customers here were not at all like the tourists and office workers passing by outside on the Champs Elysées. Sales assistants glided around the room like silent phantoms, preserving the calm of the store.

  Instinctively, I located the little cameras placed at strategic points. I felt as if they were all pointing at me, slowly turning to follow each of my movements. I wiped my forehead with the back of my sleeve and tried to breathe deeply to ease the tension. I had to contain my mounting stage fright, as each step brought me closer to a collection of watches for the super rich that I would have to pretend to be interested in and pretend to be in a position to buy.

  We took our places on either side of an elegant counter.

  The gold collection was more extensive, and the assistant showed me the models through the glass top.

  “I like this one,” I said, pointing to a rather large watch in yellow gold.

  “It’s the Ballon Bleu model, with an eighteen-carat yellow gold case and fluted crown in yellow gold, with a sapphire cabochon winding stem, for twenty-three thousand, five hundred euros.”

  I had the distinct feeling that she had announced the price with the intention of informing me that this model was beyond my means. She was toying with me, gently humiliating me.

  I felt cut to the quick, and that pushed me to react, to come out of my lethargic state.

  She was far from suspecting that she was doing me a service by annoying me.

  “I’ll try it on,” I said in a curt voice that surprised me.

  Watching her obey my command and remove the watch from the case, I felt for an instant a very new emotion for me, a tiny pleasure that had been quite foreign to me until now. Was this what a taste for power was?

  I slipped the watch on, looked at it for a few seconds without saying a word, and then delivered a final verdict.

  “Too heavy.”

  I took it off and casually held it out to her, already looking at the other models.

  “This one!” I said, pointing to a second watch without giving her time to put away the first one.

  She sped up the movement of her nimble fingers, the red varnish on her nails reflecting the light from the spotlights subtly angled toward the counter to accentuate the natural brilliance of the watches.

  I was carried along by an unsuspected force. Affirming myself was suddenly becoming intoxicating.

  “And I’ll also try on that one!” I said, pointing to another, forcing her to follow the rhythm I was imposing.

  I didn’t recognize myself. My timidity had completely vanished, and I was becoming more and more dominant in the relationship. Something unheard of was taking place in me. I felt an indefinable sense of jubilation.

  “Here you are, monsieur.”

  I had the sad feeling that she had started to respect me since I had become demanding. I was displaying an authority that was totally new to me, and she stopped looking down at me with her haughty gaze. She kept her eyes down on the watches, as she carried out the tasks I dictated. I stood straighter than ever, as her expert fingers briskly manipulated the objects.

  I don’t know how long the scene lasted. No longer quite myself, I slightly lost contact with reality. I was in unknown territory, discovering a singular pleasure, inconceivable an hour before. A strange feeling of omnipotence came over me, as if a heavy lid had fallen off all at once.

  “Come back, now.”

  Dubreuil’s deep voice suddenly brought me back to earth.

  I took my time in leaving, and she insisted on showing me out, following me as I walked back across the shop with a confident step, my eyes sweeping the place like a general surveying conquered land. The rooms seemed smaller now, the atmosphere more pedestrian. The men in black opened the doors for me, thanking me for my visit. Everyone wished me a good evening.

  I came out on the street, and my senses were at once attacked by the noise of the traffic and the luminosity of a sky that had gone white. Coming to my senses, I fully grasped the meaning of what I had just experienced: Other people’s attitude toward me was conditioned by my own behavior. I was the one who caused their reactions. I couldn’t help questioning myself about a number of past relationships.

  I had also discovered unsuspected resources somewhere inside myself, resources that allowed me to behave differently. I certainly didn’t wish to repeat what I had just experienced. I was not a power person and didn’t wish to become one; I was too fond of cordial relations between equals. But I had discovered that I wasn’t doomed to play the role of follower. Above all, I had found I was capable of doing things I wasn’t used to doing, and that alone was what counted in my eyes.

  The narrow tunnel of my life was beginning to widen a little.

  7

  “WHAT MOTIVATES YOU about a job in accounting?”

  My candidate’s eyes moved rapidly in every direction as he searched for the best possible answer.

  “Hmm … I like figures.”

  I could feel he was disappointed with himself. He would like to have said something catchier, but nothing had come to mind.

  “What do you like about figures?”

  I had the impression I’d slipped another coin in the slot: The lottery balls began to turn around, as his cheeks became more flushed. He had obviously made an effort with his clothes for the interview. He clearly wasn’t used to wearing the gray suit and very sober striped tie he had on, and this was adding to his unease. His white socks contrasted so strikingly with the correctness of his outfit that they looked almost fluorescent.

  “Well, I like it when it comes out right. I mean, when the columns balance, and I’m sure I’m going to land on my feet. It’s very satisfying, you know. As a matter of fact, I like it when things are straightforward. What’s more, when there’s an error, I can spend hours looking for it, until everything’s straightened out. Well … not hours. I
mean, I don’t waste time. I know how to get to the heart of something. But I mean I’m very precise.”

  Poor young man. He was struggling to try and prove that he was the perfect candidate.

  “Do you consider yourself to be an independent person?”

  I had to concentrate on his face to stop my eyes from being drawn to his socks.

  “Yes, I do. I’m very independent. No problem. I know how to sort things out by myself without troubling anyone.”

  “Can you give me an example of when you’ve shown independence?”

  It was a technique well known to countless recruiters. When someone states they have a quality, they must be able to give examples of occasions when they’ve shown it. More precisely, they must be able to provide a context, a behavior, and an outcome. If one of the three is missing, then they are bound to be lying. It’s logical: If they’ve really got that quality, they must be able to give an example of a situation in which they applied it, specifically what they did, and the results.

  “Hmm … yes, of course.”

  “What was the context?”

  The lottery balls were spinning furiously as he tried to remember—or imagine—such an event. The slight redness of his complexion intensified, and I thought I could make out a bead of sweat on his brow. I hated making the candidates uncomfortable, and it really wasn’t what I intended. But I had to evaluate whether they did or didn’t match the post on offer.

  “Well, look, I regularly show independence, there’s no doubt about it. You can take my word for it.”

  He uncrossed his legs, twisted a little in his chair, and then recrossed them. His socks really could have been in an ad for Tide.

  “I’m just asking you to give me an example of the last time it happened. Where was it? What were the circumstances? What was the occasion? Take your time to remember. Relax, there’s no hurry.”

  He began to fidget in his chair, wiping his hands, which were probably damp, on his trousers. Long seconds went by, seeming like hours, but still he could find nothing to say. I felt mounting embarrassment submerge him. He must hate me.