The Man Who Risked It All (16 page)

“Please.”

“Good-bye, Alan.”

His tone was final, and he plunged back into his file without looking up again.

I walked out of Fausteri’s office slightly frustrated. Okay, I had put up a good fight. That was something. In fact, my mistake had probably been my enthusiasm. To
embrace his world,
as Dubreuil had said, it wasn’t enough to bring up a subject that interested him; perhaps I should have adopted his style of communication: serious, rational, concise. Better still, if I had enjoyed our interaction. But would that have made him talk more? Not certain. At any rate, I had come close to succeeding all the same.

I had scarcely sat down in my office when Alice came in to talk about negotiations she was carrying out with a client. We had been together about ten minutes when I recognized Fausteri’s footsteps in the corridor. He walked past my office, then took a step back and stuck his head in my door, his face as impassive as ever.

“Marionette!” he said, and then walked on.

Alice turned toward me, outraged that my boss had insulted me like that.

I was radiant.

14

W
OULD MY TASK
be harder with Grégoire Larcher, Fausteri’s boss? I wasn’t sure. If Fausteri didn’t like conversations devoid of intellectual interest, Larcher couldn’t bear any that distracted him from his objectives. Each second of his time must be invested in building his success.

Nonetheless, this left an opening. As a skillful manipulator, he would occasionally agree to exchange twaddle if he felt that it would help his colleague. A fulfilled employee is a productive employee, Larcher figured, and in the end, there was a lot to be gained that way.

So I didn’t have too much difficulty getting him to talk about his children. This brought us to weekends and excursions with the children, and marionettes cropped up in the conversation as naturally as could be.

Manipulating a manipulator was rather pleasurable, actually.

I got five text messages from Dubreuil during the day, each time making me go down to the street to smoke a cigarette. I still didn’t understand the real reason for it.

My day finished in Alice’s office, where she again confided in me her worry about the dysfunction of the company. Thomas came to say good-bye as he left, waving under our noses the latest BlackBerry he had just acquired. An irresistible urge suddenly came over me.

“I met an impressive candidate today,” I said. “A great guy.”

Every time anyone said anything good about someone in front of Thomas, his smile froze, as if his value was suddenly placed in peril by the other person’s achievements.

“He’s an ex-finance director,” I continued. “Very clever and incredibly classy. A real class act!”

Alice looked at me, a little surprised by my choice of words.

I kept on. “He got out a pen to take notes. Guess what it was?”

“A Mont Blanc?” Thomas said, thinking of the pen he was always waving around in front of people.

“Bad luck. Try again.”

“Go on, what was it?” he said with a forced smile.

“A Dupont. With a gold nib! Can you believe it? A
Dupont!
”

I opened my eyes wide to underline my words. Thomas’s smile looked strained. I saw from Alice’s expression that she understood my little game.

“A
real
Dupont?” she asked, pretending to be incredulous.

“Really.”

“Wow! What a guy!” Alice said, continuing to play along.

“One thing’s for sure. You don’t see one of those every day,” I added.

Now Alice was unstoppable. “It really gives off the image of a winner,” she enthused. “In my opinion, he’s not going to have any problems finding a great job.”

I wondered how far we could go before Thomas would start getting suspicious.

“I’m sure all the girls fancy him,” Alice said.

“You bet!” I agreed.

Now we were going too far, I figured. But Thomas just continued to look annoyed. He was so convinced that people valued him because of the objects he displayed that he was unable to see the absurdity of what we were saying. It was too close to his vision of the world.

Finally he wished us good night and left. We waited for him to be out of earshot, then burst out laughing.

It was nearly 8
P.M.
, and I soon left the office myself. When I got to the sidewalk, I couldn’t help glancing around. Nobody seemed to be looking for me. I went down into the Métro but had to turn around and come right out again: Dubreuil was texting me to have another cigarette. The coincidence in the timing was disturbing. I looked carefully around again. There were fewer pedestrians passing by at this late hour, but I spotted nothing out of the ordinary.

Three minutes later, I was again in the Métro. I decided to have a go at gestural synchronization, which I had neglected until now. I had preferred to approach the universe of the other by trying to take on his way of thinking, his worries, and his values.

A train came into the station with a screeching of wheels as shrill as the sound of chalk on a blackboard. A homeless guy slouched on a bench grunted something incomprehensible, spreading a strong smell of alcohol all around him. The train came to an abrupt halt in front of me, and I got on. Dubreuil had promised that his method would allow me to create a relationship with people of very different cultures and attitudes than mine. I glanced at the few passengers in the car, spotting a tall African dressed in a tracksuit and black leather jacket. The jacket was open, revealing a fishnet T-shirt through which I could see his powerful chest muscles. I sat down opposite him, and then slouched down to adopt the same posture as his. I tried to meet his gaze, but he seemed lost in space. I tried to feel what he might be feeling, the better to enter into his world. Not easy. I was, it’s true, feeling a little buttoned-up in my suit. I loosened my tie and imagined I was dressed like him, with the same heavy gold chain around my neck. It was a strange sensation. He soon changed position, and I immediately did the same. I had to keep contact.

I didn’t take my eyes off him. A few seconds later, he crossed his arms. I crossed mine. I wondered how long it usually took to really create a link, so that he would start mirroring my movements. I really wanted to experience that. The man stretched out his legs. I waited a moment then stretched out mine. I wasn’t used to sitting slouched like this in the Métro, though I found it quite fun. Besides, I had never tried to put myself in the shoes of someone very different from myself, to behave like them and see what happened. The man put his hands on his thighs; I imitated him. He was staring straight in front of himself, but I don’t think he was really seeing me. He had a fixed expression on his face, which I tried to replicate. We stayed like that for a few moments, still perfectly in synch. His gaze remained inscrutable, but it seemed to me that something was bringing us closer. I was certain he must be feeling that we were on the same wavelength. He sat up straight in the seat, and I did the same. Then he looked me right in the eye, and I could tell he was going to say something. I was ecstatic. I had managed to create a bond with a stranger and force him to open himself to me. I marveled at the power of gesture over the unconscious, the superiority of the body over the word.

The man leaned forward, his expression serious, and with a heavy African accent said, “Ya finished taking da piss, mon?”

15

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I arrived at the weekly meeting feeling quite carefree, never suspecting that I was going to live through one of the worst moments of my life, a moment that would also be the start of the most beneficial change possible.

That’s life. We seldom realize at the time that the difficult moments have a hidden function: to make us grow. The angels disguise themselves as demons and deliver marvelous presents wrapped up as foul parcels. Whether it’s a failure or an illness or the vicissitudes of daily life, we don’t always want to accept the so-called present, nor do we always have the impulse to unwrap it and discover the hidden message inside.

The meeting room was full when I arrived. There were far more of us than usual. Once a month, the whole recruitment department came together, not just our part of it. There was an unoccupied chair next to Alice, which she was probably saving for me. I threw my
Closer
down on the table and calmly took my place. It was nice to be the last one to arrive; you felt expected.

“Look at Thomas,” Alice whispered in my ear.

I looked around and spotted him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Look again.”

I leaned forward to get a better look and saw nothing but the haughty air he usually had. Then I saw it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A brand-new Dupont lying on the table in front of him. You couldn’t miss it. Next to me, Alice was covering her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing.

“Morning, all.”

The powerful voice made me jump. Marc Dunker, our CEO, had invited himself to the weekly meeting. I hadn’t even noticed him when I came in. Silence fell over the room.

“I’m not going to interfere for long with your agenda,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you about a new type of assessment test that I discovered on a trip to Austria, where we’ve just opened our eighteenth office. I know you already have a good dozen or so tools at your disposal, but this one is different, and I wanted to introduce it to you personally.”

Our curiosity was aroused. What had he gone and found?

“We all know,” he went on, “that it is more difficult to assess someone’s character than their skills. You have all worked in the field for which you are recruiting, so you know how to ask the right questions to discover if the candidate has the necessary know-how to succeed in the given vacancy. On the other hand, it is not always obvious how to distinguish between his real talents and those he professes. I’m not even talking about the so-called shortcomings that ninety percent of your candidates claim. They all seem to be perfectionists with a tendency to work too hard, don’t they? But between imaginary talents and predictable defects, it’s not easy to get a precise reading of their tendencies at work. This test allows you to assess a character trait that is fundamental to many posts with responsibility, especially those that have a management function. I mean self-confidence. It’s extremely difficult to measure it during recruitment. I’ve known people who have had so many recruitment interviews that they are very sure of themselves in that setting, whereas if you put them in a business, they turn to jelly when faced with the first colleague who winds them up a bit. You can flex your muscles at an interview but not be able to stand up when faced with your team.”

“What you say is right, Marc, but most of the time, the person who lacks self-confidence in his life also lacks it in front of the recruiter.”

There was a murmur among those present. The person who had just spoken was a young consultant, freshly arrived at the firm, who had come from a rival company where first names were the norm. Of course, we consultants used first names among ourselves, but our boss had never given in to this fashion for relational pseudo-proximity and expected us to address him as Mr. Dunker. It was hypocritical, but Marc Dunker cared deeply about signs of respect from his staff.

“I didn’t know we were on first-name terms,” Dunker said dryly.

This was his usual putdown in these circumstances. He avoided responding to the consultant and continued: “The test I’m talking about is awkward to use because it requires the presence of at least three people. But they don’t have to be consultants. In practice, you can use just about anyone,” he said with a sneer.

Our curiosity was aroused.

“The test is based on the idea that real self-confidence is independent of other factors. It’s a personal characteristic that corresponds to a person’s unshakeable faith in their own value, in their abilities, so it can’t be harmed by external criticism. Conversely, unwarranted or phony self-confidence can’t stand up to a hostile environment, and the person loses a considerable part of their faculties when attacked. But I’ve said enough. A good demonstration is worth more than a long speech! I need a volunteer.”

He scanned the group, a little smile on his lips. Eyes looked at the ground or into space.

“The ideal thing would be a member of the Accountant Recruitment team, because we need someone good at math!”

Half the people there relaxed, while the other half got even tenser. The vise was tightening around us. He took his time, and I sensed he was deriving a sadistic pleasure from the suspense he was creating.

“Who’s going to volunteer?” he repeated.

It was obvious that no one was going to accept such an invitation without knowing what ordeal lay in wait.

“Right. Then I’ll have to choose the volunteer myself.”

I think the Nazis did the same sort of thing, inveigling prisoners to take responsibility for what their torturers were about to inflict on them.

“Let’s see, let’s see.”

I tried to look as unconcerned as possible, glancing down at the cover of my
Closer
. You could have heard a pin drop. The atmosphere was thick with tension. I felt Dunker’s heavy gaze bearing down on me.

“Mr. Greenmor.”

I was the volunteer. My heart skipped a beat. I had to hang on. Not weaken. He was going to make me do his pathetic test in front of all these people. Could it be revenge? Larcher had no doubt told him about our altercation at the last business meeting. Perhaps Dunker wanted to bring me back into line and remove any desire to do it again.
Stay calm,
I told myself.
Don’t give in. Don’t give him that pleasure.

“Come on, Alan.”

Okay, now he’s calling me by my first name. To soften me up, no doubt. I got up and walked toward him. All eyes were on me. Apprehension, still palpable a few seconds ago, had given way to curiosity. In fact, they might as well have been at the theater. Or more likely the Coliseum. I looked at Dunker.
Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant
. Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you. No, I’m not really the gladiator type.