The President's Hat Read Free Page B

and his heart thumped in his chest. What if someone came back to claim the hat now, he thought, in a brief moment of panic. A bodyguard? The President himself? What would he do? What could he possibly say? How could he explain the sudden transfer of the hat to his lap?
    He had just committed an act of theft. The last time he had stolen something was in early adolescence, in a shopping centre in Courbevoie, egged on by a friend after school. They had stolen a record: ‘Aline’, a hit single by the pop star Christophe. Since that afternoon back in 1965, he had never done such a thing again.
    What he had just done was far worse than sneaking a record into his schoolbag in a supermarket. Daniel sat motionless, his eyes darting around the room at the other diners. No, no one had seen him, he was sure of that. Nothing to fear on that score. But now he had to leave before anything untoward happened, before the President asked someone to call the restaurant, looking for his hat; before the waiters came scurrying to the table under the furious gaze of the maître d’.
    Daniel asked for the bill, saying he would pay by card. The waiter returned with the credit card machine. Daniel hardly noticed the amount. Nothing mattered any more. He signed the slip and took his receipt. He rummaged in his pockets for a tip and put it in the chrome dish. The waiter bowed slightly in a gesture of thanks and walked away.
    Now, said Daniel to himself. His mouth was dry so hepoured himself a glass of water and gulped it down, then delicately extracted the presidential hat from under the tablecloth and put it on his head. Yes, it fitted perfectly. He put on his coat and headed for the door, feeling as if his legs were about to give way. The maître d’ would stop him:
‘Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur! S’il vous plaît!
The hat, Monsieur …?’
    But nothing of the kind happened. Daniel had left a fifteen-franc tip, and the waiters all nodded respectfully as he passed; even the mâitre d’ attempted a smile which lifted the tips of his narrow moustache. The door was held open for him, and he stepped out into the cold, turning up the collar of his coat and heading for his car. Mitterrand’s hat is on my head, he told himself.
    Once in the driver’s seat, with the hat still on his head, Daniel angled the rear-view mirror and gazed at his reflection in silence for several minutes. He felt as if his brain was bathed in a refreshing dose of sparkling aspirin. Bubbles of oxygen were fizzing through zones that had slumbered for too long. He turned the key in the ignition and drove off slowly into the night.
    Â 
    Daniel drove through the streets for a long while, circling his neighbourhood several times before leaving the car on level five of his building’s underground car park. He could have driven like that for hours, his mind a complete blank. He felt buoyed up with a confidence that was as comforting as a warm bath.
    In the deserted living room, he sat down on the sofa and looked at his reflection in the blank television screen. Hesaw a man sitting with a hat on his head, nodding slowly. He stayed like that for a good hour, contemplating his own image, his entire being suffused with an almost mystical feeling of serene calm. It was two in the morning before he listened to his wife’s message on the answering machine. Everything was fine in Normandy, Véronique and Jérôme would be back next day, arriving at Gare Saint-Lazare at 9.45 p.m. Daniel undressed. The last item he removed was the hat. He gazed in wonder at two letters embossed in gold on the band of leather running round the inside:
    F.M.

 
    In his account of the evening, Daniel allowed himself just one slight alteration – the seafood platter now featured no more than twenty-four oysters, half a crab and a few winkles. He knew that if he gave the full details of his sumptuous dinner, there was a danger Véronique would concentrate