laughably despicable leprechaun bristles, he could have counted on me one hundred per cent. I would have twisted the beard’s arms behind his back, I thought to myself, so that Serge could concentrate on smashing his face; he would, after all, have to throw a little more weight into the punches in order to damage anything behind all that hair.
Without exaggerating, you could say that Serge was of two minds when it came to public attention. At those moments and on those occasions when he is the public’s sweetheart, during his speeches in provincial union halls, when he answers questions from an audience of the ‘rank and file’, or in front of the TV cameras or radio microphones, when he stands on the street market in a windbreaker handing out campaign flyers and talking to regular people, or when he stands at the lectern and lets the applause roll over him, no, what am I saying: the continuous standing ovation that lasted for minutes at the last party congress (flowers were thrown onto the podium, spontaneously it was, they said, but in fact carefully stage-directed by his campaign manager), at moments like that, he shines. It’s not just a matter of beaming with pride, or self-importance, or because politicians who want to get ahead simply have to beam, because otherwise the campaign might end tomorrow; no, he really shines: he radiates something.
Every time I’ve seen it, it has surprised me, it is surprising and amazing to behold: how my brother, the oaf, the lumpen boor who ‘has to eat now’ and scarfs down his tournedos joylessly in three bites, the easily bored dullard whose eyes start to wander at every subject that doesn’t have to do with him , how this brother of mine on a podium and in the spotlights and on TV literally begins to shine – how, in other words, he becomes a politician with charisma.
‘It’s his magic,’ said the hostess of a young people’s programme, in an interview with a women’s magazine. ‘When you get close to him, something happens.’
I had happened to see that particular episode of the young people’s programme, and it was clear what Serge did. First of all, he never stops smiling; he’s taught himself to do that, though his eyes don’t smile along, which is how you can tell it’s not for real. But still: he smiles, and people like that. For the rest, throughout most of the interview he stood with his hands in his pockets, not bored or blasé, but casual, as though he were standing in a schoolyard (a schoolyard was not far off the mark, actually, because the interview was done in some noisy and poorly lit youth club, after a speech there). He was too old to pass for a schoolboy, but he was the nicest teacher of them all; the teacher you could confide in, who sometimes says ‘shit’ or ‘cool’, the teacher without a tie who, during the field trip to Paris, gets a little tipsy at the hotel bar along with everyone else. Occasionally, Serge took a hand out of his pocket to illustrate with a gesture some point from the party programme, and then it was as though he was going to run that hand through the hostess’s hair, or say that her hair was nice.
But in private, that all changes. Like everyone with a famous face, he also has the look: whenever he goes into some place in a private capacity, he never looks straight at anyone; his eyes dart around without fixing on any living person, he looks at ceilings, at the lamps hanging from those ceilings, at tables, at chairs, at the framed prints on the wall – what he would really like to do is to look at nothing at all. And the whole time, he grins; it’s the grin of someone who knows that everyone is looking at him – or purposely not looking at him, which boils down to the same thing. Sometimes it’s hard for him to keep those two things – the public property and the private circumstances – separate. Then you see him thinking that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to profit a little from the public interest
Without exaggerating, you could say that Serge was of two minds when it came to public attention. At those moments and on those occasions when he is the public’s sweetheart, during his speeches in provincial union halls, when he answers questions from an audience of the ‘rank and file’, or in front of the TV cameras or radio microphones, when he stands on the street market in a windbreaker handing out campaign flyers and talking to regular people, or when he stands at the lectern and lets the applause roll over him, no, what am I saying: the continuous standing ovation that lasted for minutes at the last party congress (flowers were thrown onto the podium, spontaneously it was, they said, but in fact carefully stage-directed by his campaign manager), at moments like that, he shines. It’s not just a matter of beaming with pride, or self-importance, or because politicians who want to get ahead simply have to beam, because otherwise the campaign might end tomorrow; no, he really shines: he radiates something.
Every time I’ve seen it, it has surprised me, it is surprising and amazing to behold: how my brother, the oaf, the lumpen boor who ‘has to eat now’ and scarfs down his tournedos joylessly in three bites, the easily bored dullard whose eyes start to wander at every subject that doesn’t have to do with him , how this brother of mine on a podium and in the spotlights and on TV literally begins to shine – how, in other words, he becomes a politician with charisma.
‘It’s his magic,’ said the hostess of a young people’s programme, in an interview with a women’s magazine. ‘When you get close to him, something happens.’
I had happened to see that particular episode of the young people’s programme, and it was clear what Serge did. First of all, he never stops smiling; he’s taught himself to do that, though his eyes don’t smile along, which is how you can tell it’s not for real. But still: he smiles, and people like that. For the rest, throughout most of the interview he stood with his hands in his pockets, not bored or blasé, but casual, as though he were standing in a schoolyard (a schoolyard was not far off the mark, actually, because the interview was done in some noisy and poorly lit youth club, after a speech there). He was too old to pass for a schoolboy, but he was the nicest teacher of them all; the teacher you could confide in, who sometimes says ‘shit’ or ‘cool’, the teacher without a tie who, during the field trip to Paris, gets a little tipsy at the hotel bar along with everyone else. Occasionally, Serge took a hand out of his pocket to illustrate with a gesture some point from the party programme, and then it was as though he was going to run that hand through the hostess’s hair, or say that her hair was nice.
But in private, that all changes. Like everyone with a famous face, he also has the look: whenever he goes into some place in a private capacity, he never looks straight at anyone; his eyes dart around without fixing on any living person, he looks at ceilings, at the lamps hanging from those ceilings, at tables, at chairs, at the framed prints on the wall – what he would really like to do is to look at nothing at all. And the whole time, he grins; it’s the grin of someone who knows that everyone is looking at him – or purposely not looking at him, which boils down to the same thing. Sometimes it’s hard for him to keep those two things – the public property and the private circumstances – separate. Then you see him thinking that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to profit a little from the public interest
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