The Man Who Risked It All (12 page)

“No, we don’t follow anything up here, either. We’re not policemen on a case.”

I started again, choosing my words carefully: “Then I will have boeuf bourguignon with boiled potatoes.”

“Oh no,” he said very firmly. “That’s not you at all. You can’t go slumming with a boeuf bourguignon. No, I’ll bring you, let’s see, turkey forestière cooked in yellow wine from the Jura region, with oyster mushrooms from Sologne.”

I was a little lost. “Am I allowed to choose my dessert?”

“You have every right, my prince.”

“Then I’ll have the tarte Tatin.”

“Fine! So that’s”—he was concentrating on what he was writing down—“a chocolate mousse. Thank you and
bon appétit!
Arthus is delighted to be able to serve you.”

He disappeared into the kitchen.

I burst out laughing. “What’s all that nonsense?”

“The menu is a load of bull. In fact, there is only one menu, the same for everyone. But it’s very good. All the produce is fresh. Léon cooks all the dishes,” she said, pointing to a tall man I could see through the round glass window in the door to the kitchen.

“I’m dying of hunger.”

“The service is fast. It’s the advantage of having only one menu. Their customers are all regulars. Except, once, there was a German tourist. He reacted very badly to Arthus’s little game. He kicked up a fuss and left in an uproar.”

Arthus came back out almost right away, twirling the two appetizers in the air.

“And here’s your chicory with Roquefort!”

I was preparing to throw myself on my starter when I looked down and saw something disgusting. “Alice,” I murmured, “my cheese is rotten. It’s moldy. It’s disgusting!”

She looked at me for a couple of seconds in silence and then burst out laughing.

“That’s how it’s supposed to be!”

“My cheese is supposed to be moldy?”

“That’s how it’s eaten, it’s …”

“You expect me to eat rotten cheese?”

It felt like another task imposed by Dubreuil.

“It’s not rotten, it’s just moldy and …”

“Rotten, moldy, it’s all the same.”

“No! This is
healthy
mold,” she insisted. “I swear you can eat it without risk. Besides, without the mold, the cheese would be of no interest.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I assure you! Watch.”

She skewered several pieces of cheese with her fork and popped them in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed with a smile.

“It’s foul!” I protested.

“Try it, at least!”

“Certainly not!”

I made do with the chicory leaves, carefully choosing the few that hadn’t been in contact with the cheese.

Arthus looked distraught when he came to remove our plates.

“I’m going to have to hide this from Léon. He’d shed tears if he saw you hadn’t honored his appetizer. I know him; he’d be inconsolable.”

He disappeared into the kitchen with our plates. Alice rested her forearms on the table and leaned toward me.

“You know, you really surprised me at the meeting. I never would have imagined that you’d stand up to Larcher. You were taking a risk.”

“I don’t know about that. At any rate, I was sincere. I’m convinced it’s not in the firm’s interests to neglect candidates who don’t immediately fit a vacancy.”

She looked straight at me for a few moments. I had never noticed before how pretty she was. Her light chestnut hair was tied back, revealing a slender, very feminine neck. Her blue eyes were both gentle and assertive, shining with intelligence. There was something very graceful about her.

“I’m more and more convinced,” I went on, “that Larcher, Dunker, and the other members of the management team are deliberately making decisions that aren’t in the interests of the firm.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked.

“The decisions are dictated above all by the financial markets. By the stock exchange, in fact.”

“You mean by our shareholders,” Alice said.

“So to speak.”

“I don’t see what difference that makes. It’s in the shareholders’ interest, too, for the company to prosper.”

“No, it depends …” I hesitated.

“Depends on what?”

“On their motives for being shareholders. You know, we have all sorts of shareholders: small investors, banks, investment funds. Do you think that the majority of them are interested in the healthy, harmonious development of our company? There’s only one thing that counts, or rather there are two: that the share price keeps going up and that we cough up dividends every year.”

“That’s not so shocking,” Alice said. “The principle of capitalism is that those who take a financial risk by investing in a company are the ones who earn the most if it succeeds. It’s the remuneration for their risk-taking, thanks to which the company is able to develop. The value of the shares goes up, you know, if the company develops successfully, because then the risk seems weaker and the number of people wanting to invest increases. As for the dividend, it’s just the distribution of profits to the shareholders. For there to be dividends, the company has to be in good health.”

“Yes, in theory,” I agreed. “But in practice the system is completely distorted. Now the shareholders who are really concerned about investing in the long-term development of the company are few and far between. Most of the shareholders either want to make a killing fast by selling their shares as soon as the value has gone up enough, or they hold enough shares to influence the company’s decisions. And believe me, even the large shareholders aren’t really interested in the company’s development but only in making sure it can pay fat dividends, even if that jeopardizes future growth.”

“And you think that’s the ga me Dunker and his henchmen are playing—serving the shareholders’ interests at the expense of the company’s?”

“Yes.”

“Even so,” Alice argued, “it’s Dunker’s firm; he was the founder. I find it hard to imagine he’d favor a course of action that would slowly destroy it.”

“It’s not really his firm anymore. Since he took it public, he only holds eight percent of the shares. It’s as if he had sold it.”

Alice pulled a face. “Yes, but he’s remained at the head of the company. So he must love it all the same.”

“He’s not a sentimental person,” I reminded her. “No, I think his staying at the helm is part of an agreement between him and the two major shareholders, who bought stock at the initial public offering.”

Arthus set down our turkey and left us to greet another regular customer.

“Countess, at your service!” we heard him say.

Alice shook her head. “Poor Arthus. However far back my family tree may go, there are only peasants, yokels, servants. And, you know, the nobility was abolished in 1790.”

“Yes, but Arthus seems to have reestablished it!”

The turkey in yellow wine was delicious. This type of dish was enough to keep even the most cornflakes- and Big-Mac-fed American on French soil.

“Did you know Tonero?” asked Alice between two mouthfuls.

“The man who resigned shortly after my arrival?”

“Yes. He was the best consultant. A very clever guy. And a salesman without equal. He knew his worth and tried to negotiate a raise.”

“They refused, if my memory serves me right.”

“Yes, but he didn’t back down. He prepared a dossier to prove that if they refused, his resignation would cost them more than his raise. He calculated the cost of recruiting and training his replacement, how long the replacement would be paid before he was really operational, and so on. In fact, it was a no-brainer. It would cost them less to give Tonero a raise than to let him go. And yet, that’s what they did. Do you know why?”

“A question of pride? Not to back down on their decision?”

“Not even,” Alice said. “They coldly explained that, if they started to let wage costs go up, it would show up right away in the projected budget, and the share price would be affected. On the other hand, most of the cost of recruiting his successor would appear under
Fees
and
Training,
and the stock exchange is far less sensitive to those cost centers.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“In the Training division, it’s not much better. Before, the courses used to finish at 6
P.M.
Now they’re over by 5.”

“Why?” I asked her.

“You want the reason given to the client or the one dictated by business?”

“Go on …”

“On a pedagogical level, it’s fundamental, ‘Mister Client, sir. Our research shows that a slight reduction in hours improves the training by optimizing its absorption by the course participant.’”

“And the reality?”

“The trainer has to be on the phone by 5:05
P.M.
, canvassing new clients. Understand, by 6
P.M.
nobody is available anymore.”

I took a sip of wine. “Talking about unfair practices, quite by chance I discovered that one of our colleagues ratted on a candidate, telling his company he was leaving before he had resigned.”

“Oh, haven’t you been informed?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the day you were absent. Dunker came along to the weekly business meeting. He hinted that there was good business to be done that way.”

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all.”

“Mark Dunker, our CEO, is inviting his consultants to indulge in that sort of practice? It’s revolting!”

“He didn’t explicitly tell us to do it. But he made it understood.”

I looked at the gray sky through the window. The rain was beginning to fall.

“You know, even if it does us good to get it off our chest,” I said, “it still depresses me. I need to believe in what I’m doing. To get out of bed in the morning, I have to feel that my work serves a purpose, even if it’s not directly connected to some noble cause. At the very least, I want to be able to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. But if we’re supposed to do any old thing, at top speed, just to enrich shareholders, who aren’t even interested in the company, then it doesn’t make sense anymore. I need my work to have meaning.”

“You’re an idealist, Alan.”

“Yes, probably.”

“That’s all well and good, but you’re living in the wrong times. We’re surrounded by cynics, and you have to be a cynic yourself to survive.”

“I … I don’t agree. Or rather, I refuse to give in to that view. Otherwise, there’s no point to anything. I can’t accept the idea that my life amounts to working just to buy food, put a roof over my head, and go out every now and then. It would be absolutely meaningless.”

“How are my little turkeys?” asked Arthus, looking at our plates, confident of the success of his dish.

“Don’t be so familiar,” Alice told him, pretending to be offended.

He walked away laughing.

“I need a job,” I continued, “that brings something to others, even if it doesn’t change the face of the universe. I want to go to bed at night telling myself that my day has been useful, that I’ve made a contribution.”

“You’ll have to face facts, Alan. You can’t change the world.”

I put my fork down. Even my turkey with yellow wine didn’t tempt me anymore.

I saw Arthus kissing a woman’s hand. He lived in a world he had created himself.

“Yes, we
can
change the world,” I said emphatically. “I’m convinced each one of us can. As long as we don’t throw in the towel, don’t give up on what we think is right, don’t allow our values to be trampled on. Otherwise, we’re party to what happens.”

“Fine words,” agreed Alice. “But in practice, they’re not much use. It’s not because you decide to maintain your integrity that you’ll stop others from behaving badly.”

I looked at Alice. It’s strange; I had the feeling that even if she was trying to prove that my efforts were futile, deep down, she wanted me to be right. Perhaps she no longer had hope, but all she wanted was to hope again.

I started to daydream, letting my eyes wander over the restaurant walls. They came to rest on one of the maxims that Arthus had put up. It was a quotation attributed to Gandhi: “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

11

“W
HAT’S CERTAIN IS
that change won’t come from others!”

Yves Dubreuil leaned back in his armchair and put his feet up on his desk.

I like the smell of leather and old books, smells I associated with this place where, for a whole day, I had confided in him when we first met. The soft evening light filtering through the trees of his garden accentuated the English atmosphere of the room. Dubreuil was swirling the ice cubes around in his bourbon, as was his habit.

“It’s my conviction,” he went on, “that all change must come from inside oneself, not from outside. Neither an organization nor a government nor a new boss nor a trade union nor a new partner will change your life. Besides, look at politics: Every time people have counted on someone to change their life, did it work? Think of Mitterrand in 1981, Chirac in 1995, Obama in 2008. Every time, people were disappointed. Afterward, they thought they’d been mistaken about the man, that they’d made a bad choice. In fact, that’s not the problem. The reality is that nobody but you will change your life. That’s why you’ve got to take control yourself.

“Mind you,” he continued, “I think Gandhi’s thought went beyond individual considerations, personal expectations of change. I think he was referring to the changes that everyone would like to see in society generally, and he probably meant that it is much more powerful to embody the path oneself and be a model for others than simply to denounce and criticize.”

“Yes, I understand,” I said. “The idea is interesting, but my becoming a model of equilibrium won’t change anything at all with regard to what my company demands of me, nor will it make my boss start to respect me.”

“Yes it will, in a way,” Dubreuil countered. “If the fact that your boss doesn’t respect you makes you suffer, then don’t wait for him to change of his own accord. You’ve got to learn how to make him respect you. See what you can change about yourself that will make you more respected: your relative positioning, perhaps; the way you talk; the way you communicate your results. Perhaps by not letting inappropriate remarks go unchallenged. Managers who go in for moral bullying don’t attack all their employees, and their choice of victim isn’t random.”