After the Crash Read Free Page A

could possibly have guessed the
truth, back in 1980, or during the years that followed.
    The solution was so obvious: it jumped out at you . . . but on
one condition.
The newspaper had to be looked at eighteen years later.

2
2 October, 1998, 8.27 a.m. Were they lovers, or brother and sister?
    The question had been nagging at Mariam for almost a month.
She ran the Lenin Bar, at the crossroads of Avenue de Stalingrad
and Rue de la Liberté, a few yards from the forecourt of the University of Paris VIII in Saint-Denis. At this hour of the morning, the
bar was still mostly empty, and Mariam took advantage of the quiet
to clean tabletops and arrange chairs.
    The couple in question were sitting at the back of the café, as
they usually did, near the window, at a tiny table for two, holding
hands and looking deep into each other’s blue eyes.
    Lovers?
Friends?
Siblings?
Mariam sighed. The lack of certainty bothered her. She generally
    had a keen instinct when it came to her students’ love lives. She
snapped out of it: she still had to wipe down the tables and sweep
the floor; in a few minutes, thousands of stressed students would
rush from the metro station Saint-Denis – Université, the terminus
of Line 13. The station had only been open for four months, but
already it had transformed the local area.
    Mariam had seen the University of Paris VIII slowly change
from its rebellious beginnings as the great university of humanities, society and culture into a banal, well-behaved suburban
learning centre. Nowadays, most professors sulked when they were
assigned to Paris VIII. They would rather be at the Sorbonne, or
even Jussieu. Before the metro station opened, the professors had
had to cross through Saint-Denis, to see a little of the surrounding
area, but now, with the metro, that too was over. The professors
boarded the metro on Line 13 and were whisked off towards the
libraries, laboratories, ministries and grand institutions of Parisian
culture.
    Mariam turned towards the counter to fetch a sponge, casting
a furtive glance at the intriguing young couple: the pretty blonde
girl and the strapping, spellbound boy. She felt almost haunted by
them.
    Who were they?
Mariam had never understood the workings of higher education,
with its modules and examinations and strikes, but no one knew
better than her what the students did during their break time. She
had never read Robert Castel, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault,
or Jacques Lacan, the star professors of Paris VIII – at most, she
might have seen them once or twice, in her bar or in the campus
forecourt – but nevertheless she considered herself an expert in
the analysis, sociology and philosophy of student love affairs. She
was like a mother hen to some of her regulars, an agony aunt to
others, helping them through their heartaches with professional
skill.
But despite her experience, her famous intuition, she could not
fathom the relationship between the couple at the window.
Emilie and Marc.
Shy lovers or affectionate relatives?
The uncertainty was maddening. Something about them didn’t
fit. They looked so alike, yet they were so different. Mariam knew
their first names: she knew the first names of all her regulars.
Marc, the boy, had been studying at Paris VIII for two years
now, and he came to the Lenin almost every day. A tall boy,
good-looking, but a little too nice, like a dishevelled ‘Little Prince’.
Daydreamy, and somewhat gauche: the kind of provincial student
who still didn’t know how things worked in Paris, and who lacked
the money to look cool. As for his studies, he wasn’t a fanatic. As far
as she understood, he was studying European Law, but for the past
two years, he had seemed very calm and thoughtful. Now, Mariam
understood why.
He had been waiting for her. His Emilie.
She had arrived this year, in September, so she must be two or
three years younger than him.
They shared certain traits. That slightly common