The soldiers bear rifles, or carefully hand-painted banners. They wage wordless war, some astride stiff rearing horses, others just on foot, their feet cast in small oblong bases, there in the window of a shop selling lead figures. The store next door is called Victoires! Yet Victories!, multiple and exclamatory, has no connection to the battle in the window. Victories! sells bottomless panties and items that can be tied. On the intercom for the second floor it says Numismate. I don’t know the word, but later will learn that a numismatist specializes in coins of older and newer date. War, sex, money. Everything can be had in Number 54. On the opposite side of the street is a baker who sells dry croissants and caramels confected from salted butter. The bakery will give way to a lunch restaurant. Their website will note that the owner is from Laos. Laos looks like chaos, and my appointment is on the third floor.
* * * * *
The interview takes place on a Friday. Warm droplets rain down upon the city. The sandstone façades soak up the sky and take on the gray hue of the constricting clouds. It’s June-sultry, and the water falls intermittently. It’s late afternoon. I’m wearing a pale blue blouse. Pale blue and synthetic, on which dark patches of sweat blossom. My eyes look very blue when I wear this blouse. Beneath a black sports jacket, the patches can’t be seen. Beneath a black sports jacket, my armpits ooze and new patches arise, the invisible circles omens. Steel gray, piling up above the zinc roofs. I try not to give it another thought. I try instead to remember that the jacket was bought at an outlet store on Rue d’Alesia. The cut is attractive and the buttons shiny black. A low collar, over the top of which the collar of my blouse is just able to fold. Blue eyes, blue blouse, black jacket. Which binds in back whenever I reach for something.
* * * * *
Madame D and I are seated on opposite sides of her desk. The desk is next to the window, and the window is ajar. A scooter drives by. The wheezing hum of an engine, zigzagging up among the façades. Madame D lights a scented candle. Madame D lights an unfiltered cigarette. I keep my jacket on. On the desktop between us stand a carafe and two glasses. The carafe sweats coolly. The June air, the candle, the cigarette, and the stains on my blouse. Madame D takes large notes in blue ink as I speak. I stretch out my arms. My jacket binds in back. Madame D stops writing. The pen hovers above the paper. The ash hangs on the tip of the cigarette. The candle flame flickers. Water glugs into my glass, a sound audible up and down the street, now that the scooter’s gone, and Madame D follows my movements. I blink at each glug, that’s how slowly it goes. A glass filling glacially. Water gurgling much too loud. Myself drinking, finally, but much too fast. A great wet obstruction in my throat, painful to swallow. I carefully place the glass back on the corner of the desk. Madame D noisily taps her cigarette. Can we continue? she asks.
* * * * *
The contract’s sitting in the mailbox. The salary is 11,500 francs. Per month. I can start next week, and it’s as if everything’s fizzing. The next day a new contract’s in the mailbox. From another firm. I’ve also been to an interview there, in the blue blouse. And the black jacket. They had air conditioning and long gray corridors and windows that could never open and a cafeteria scheme and a discount on tickets to Disneyland. There I was offered water and coffee and sugar. Now my future is debated. Take the small firm, say the people I trust. Disneyland? Take the small firm, they insist. I call up Madame D. I’ve had another offer, I say. How much? she asks. Twelve and a half thousand a month, I reply. Then you’ll get the same from us, she says, and whispers, Now I own you. But I don’t hear her whispering. I’m much too busy saying thank you.
* * * * *
I’ve gotten Claudie’s job. I don’t know that, and Claudie doesn’t know it either. She greets me pleasantly on my first day. She has a tight shiny ponytail and friendly horse-eyes. Claudie fishes six cans of Coke Light from her purse and places them on her desk. We have computers but no internet, and six colas are what Claudie drinks in a normal day. Claudie, asks Madame D, will you show her what you do? Claudie nods, and I slide a chair on casters over to Claudie’s desk. I push the cans to the side to make room for my notebook. Claudie says that she mostly works in Excel and opens the first can with a pfsst. I write Excel on the top of the page. Also the date, a Wednesday in late June 1999. Claudie clicks open a spreadsheet and tells me she’s on a low-salt diet, she just got married, and they want to have a baby boy. It’s easier to conceive boys if you avoid salt in your food. I nod. I take notes on Claudie’s explanations. Not about reproductive strategies, but on everything else, and on how she answers the phone. She seems to me to be very good at her job. Claudie’s desk is positioned perpendicular to Madam D’s, separated by a small Japanese screen. My desk is right across from Madam D’s. There’s no screen between us.
* * * * *
Claudie shows me the conference room. Venez, she says, for everyone in the office uses the formal form of address. We have to go up to the sixth floor. We take the stairs, with its dark red runner; the other option is to take the rattling elevator and step straight into the conference room. Claudie thinks maybe there used to be musketeers living here. Really, I say, though I can’t picture d’Artagnan in a penthouse. I’m twenty-six and don’t really care. Not about him, and not about Molière, who once lived on this street, back in the day when they built No. 54. The tie beams are slanted and stained dark brown, so they match the built-in shelves, which cry out for more books. The stair up to the loft has carved balusters. There’s a marble fireplace down here on the right, no ashes. On the mantlepiece, a large touch-tone phone waits before a big mirror. The tall doors of the balcony open on the opposite of a view. I bump my knees against a U-shaped arrangement of sofas, upholstered in shabby fabric. Here’s where she works, Claudie whispers. Here. In the middle of the room stands a square glass table. Focus group discussions about new products. Hair care, dog food, yogurt. Air travel, insurance policies, sunscreen. Nothing goes on the shelves till Madame D’s explained the concept to group after group of selected end users. Till she’s explored reactions and triggered associations and observed disparities. Then Madame D dissects their discourse. Summarizes her conclusions on paper slips in blue ink and hands them to us mortals, to be printed out on overheads all the way down on the third floor.
* * * * *
Madame D doesn’t return after lunch. Rodolphe? Claudie asks Val, and Val nods, and Claudie makes a sound that reminds me of the pfsst her cola cans make every time she opens one. I hunch over the pile of cassette tapes, taking each one from its case and smoothing out the label with my fingernail. The telephone on my desk rings. I stare at it. Claudie and Val stare at me. I lift the handset, staring back at Claudie and Val. I say, Allô? But the phone won’t stop ringing, its shrill sound bouncing hard off the ceiling. At last Val strides over, yanks the receiver from my hand, and presses a black button. Qualipôle, Val says, go ahead. And Val listens, and says ah ah, and looks around my desk. Val snaps her fingers and points at a spiral notepad. Val clicks her pen and makes notes on the pad. … and twenty-seven, she says, thank you very much. I’ll make sure your message is passed along. She replaces the receiver and sits on the edge of my desk. Val wears worn jeans and no bra, a queen who moves like a ballerina. My jacket binds across my back. Val shows me how every single call is to be noted down. Date, time, who’s calling and from what number, also the topic of the conversation. We’re supposed to let Madame D know about every single call that comes in. Madam D checks our notepads each evening and compares the contents with the number of call messages we’ve given her. You need to call Rodolphe right away, Val says, and say that they’ve called from Big O. I don’t know who Rodolphe is. Claudie helps me out: You’ll find him in the phonebook under Hairdressers, she says. Rodolphe’s not a hairdresser, Val says. He’s a coloriste, and his number’s up over the fax machine. Claudie shrugs her shoulders and crumples up her can.
* * * * *
About No. 54
No. 54 consists of 90 vignettes, each a page or so in length; the selection above comes from the novel’s opening sequence. No. 54 is the address of a building on an unnamed street in Paris, a building that houses Qualipôle, a somewhat mad female user-experience firm. It is here that the young Danish narrator takes her first job in the strange city, and the novel follows her efforts to find her footing and voice in a chaotic workplace presided over by the larger-than-life figure of Madame D.
No. 54 was published in 2018 by Byens Forlag, the small Danish press that has published Jakobsen’s other three novels.