Our show was the most popular talk show in France. Toujours Plus came on every evening at seven and ended at nine and during the festival, covered the madness of Cannes. They covered its night life, had their own nightclub to house some of that night life (of which we would be an entirely non-existent part of course), and also covered the famous red carpet with its incomprehensible diurnal hysteria. I of course had never seen any of this. I had only been in France some two odd years, and during that time, had been too deeply absorbed in turning myself into a respectable professional from a penniless, unfashionable blubbery pauper to watch television.

But everyone else in France knew about the show. Oh yes. When I mentioned my Toujours Plus Cannes news to my threadbare collection of friends slash acquaintances they all knew what I was talking about. And their envy helped. I found my feelings of icy self-hatred, self-loathing and generalized disgust warm, thaw and soften under the heat of their vivifying jealousy.

Ah oui, Paris Plus, they all said, oui oui, they always go down to Cannes and do their live show there. It’s pretty wild…

And then they paused while I beamed proudly.

So you’re going for that? they said. You’re going to be with them throughout the festival? Wow, you’re so lucky!

Oh yes, it was music to my ears. The sentence you’re so lucky felt like a delicious hot shower I had once taken after several nights spent out camping and shitting in the desert. Then my colleagues heard about it. And they too paused with a delicious green shining out of their eyes and some utterly predictable (but clearly fake) indifference.

Cannes, they said first. Cannes, sure.

And then they paused.

But you’re going? I mean, you?

Yep, I wanted to say. Me, suckers! Me, Harcourt and Hoffmanstahl.

Those were my colleagues. Harcourt and Hoffmanstahl. Both men and seniawrs in the profession. Harcourt and Hoffmanstahl lent weight and credibility to the recruitment. Claudie was hiring them instead of the usual ruck she hired because they were top dogs in the profession. Harcourt was emperor of Interpreterland. Hoffmanstahl was like a senior court noble.

Harcourt was the Presidents’ man. Whispering, speechifying and dining with a long series of Présidents de la République had turned him into a sort of wax relic of carnivorous snobbery and careerist cannibalism. And he still did it as regularly as I took laxatives. Work for presidents, that is. And crush his enemies. The Elysée palace was where Harcourt belonged. And everyone knew it. Hobnobbing, note-taking and speech-rendering with sphinx-like perfection for cash-soaked, gun-buying, oil-spilling, resource-plundering dignitaries from France and around the world was what Harcourt did best. In fact he did it superbly. And for this, for his murderous efficiency, he was feared and respected by every ditherer in our profession.

I too had met him in distant times. Ah yes. In less than auspicious circumstances. Early in my career, I had met him and been ejected from his office with cool munificent cruelty. He had thrown me out of his Foreign Ministry office like a butcher cleans out his work table. For what exactly? Well for doing the unthinkable. For believing a mangy cur like me could work in Paris. Yes sir. Needless to say therefore, I did not look forward to working with Harcourt. Not in Cannes, not in Hades, not anywhere else.

Philibert Hoffmanstahl though, was nice, if nervous. He was soft-spoken, tall, hunched and bore an uncanny resemblance to Charles de Gaulle. Philibert and I had often worked together. And he too was unhappy about working with Harcourt. Everyone was unhappy around Harcourt. Harcourt was like a feline you let into the monkey cage at a zoo. Not the best recipe for universal harmony, if you know what I mean.

And yet, for my colleagues who were a generally uncharitable breed of toffs, this news was the clincher. To say Harcourt and I were going to Cannes was like telling the King of Denmark you knew what he had done and you had video footage. For this reason most of all, I felt the most ardent and avid enthusiasm. I was over the moon and several planets to be able to stick it to them at last. Oh yes, I told myself. For once I can boast of something. And not just something, but a professional something. And not just a professional something, but Cannes.

You see, it was no secret that I was something of a pariah, a stray, a bum in my profession. That while my colleagues zoomed around the world in business class, I only ever got to distant Paris suburbs whose star attractions tended to be sewage treatment plants and state-of-the-art labs for analyzing sheep catarrh. So it was most riling to hear my colleagues speak casually of shawls they’d bought in Djakarta, or free Mont Blancs they’d acquired while working for the Ministry of so-and-so in Marrakesh. Oh yes, I noticed how casually they pretended to mention those first-class tickets and prestigious hotel rooms on the beach. It was galling.

So I wasn’t about to let them off easily now. No sir. I too spoke casually of Cannes. I too pretended not to care as I laid it on thick. It wasn’t far away. It wasn’t exotic. But it was Cannes. And I wasn’t working for politicians, but I was working for superstars. And I wasn't going it alone. No sir. I was working with über-royalty. Harcourt.