"To write is always to address someone, it is to seek to be heard."
— Eugène Ionesco, Notes et contre-notes, 1962
April, D-10, ten days before the election
Gabriel sat on the low wall, palms flat against the rock, eyes fixed on the dark line of the hills. The light was fading. The crickets had begun their chorus.
He had done nothing all day. No speeches. No meetings. He had stayed there, sitting, watching the clouds drift across the ridgelines. The others had worked: Étienne repairing an antenna, Solène consulting maps, Marianne packing bags while the baby cried, fell asleep, cried again. Time had passed.
Gabriel had not moved.
The first stars appeared. One. Then another. He didn't know their names. His father had known them, pointed them out, told stories of constellations and navigators. Gabriel had never retained any of it. He just watched their light travel light-years to reach his eyes.
Footsteps behind him. Gravel shifting.
Zara sat down beside him. She was holding a blanket, which she laid over his shoulders without a word, then she sat, knees drawn up against her chest.
The stars kept turning. Neither of them tried to break the silence.
A night bird called somewhere in the woods. Another answered.
— What did you do? Gabriel asked.
— Before what?
— Before the Archipel.
Zara exhaled slowly. She turned her gaze toward the horizon.
— I told you the other night. Capgemini. Recommendation algorithms.
— You didn't tell me what you really did there.
— I made people repeat their choices.
She picked up a pebble. Turned it between her fingers.
— People don't know what they want. They know what they wanted last time. They repeat their choices. They think that's their personality. It's just inertia. Algorithms detect inertia. They feed it. And people call that "having tastes."
Gabriel thought about his own habits. The same cafés. The same routes. The same search terms. The same articles.
— I was very good at it, said Zara.
The wind picked up. The trees rustled.
— Do you want to eat? she asked. Marianne made soup.
— I'm staying a little longer.
She hesitated.
— You should sleep, she said. Tomorrow will be long.
— I know.
She went inside. Her footsteps faded. The farmhouse door creaked, closed behind her.
Gabriel was left alone with the stars.
He counted the seconds between the question and the answer.
Do you think we can win?
He hadn't asked it aloud. But it had been there, in his throat, since the start of the evening. Since Zara had spoken about the algorithms. Since he had grasped the scale of the machine.
He let the question rise, shape itself in his mouth.
When Zara came back with two cups of tea, he took one.
— Do you think we can win?
She settled in. Not right away. She set the cups on the stone ledge.
Time stretched.
— I think we can make things harder for them, she said at last.
— That's not an answer.
— It's the only one I have.
Gabriel waited.
— I think we can raise the cost of the machine, Zara continued. Make it higher than the benefits. With every attack, every leak, every speech — we make them pay something. Time. Money. Credibility.
She took another sip.
— I don't think we can break the machine. But we can make it bleed.
The word hung in the air. Bleed.
Gabriel turned it over in his mind. The image of a wounded beast, still moving forward, leaving a red trail behind it. Not dead. Not stopped. But weakened.
— Is that enough for you? he asked.
— No, said Zara. But it's what we have.
She studied him.
— And you? What do you want?
Gabriel drank his tea. It was warm, slightly bitter, with a taste of herbs he didn't recognize.
— I want it to mean something, he said. Everything we're doing. Everything that's happened. My father's sacrifice. My life going off the rails. I want it to count for something.
— And if it counts for nothing?
— Then I want to have tried, at least.
Zara nodded.
— That's why you're here, she said. Not because you believe you can win. But because not trying would be worse.
Gabriel looked at his hands around the cup.
— Yes, he said. I think so.
They drank in silence. The stars turned slowly overhead.
Later, when Zara had gone inside, Gabriel stayed alone.
Again, the image of his grandfather imposed itself.
The workshop on rue des Fontaines, in Nice. The lead type sorted into wooden trays, each letter in its place, each space counted.
His grandfather had spent forty years there. Forty years composing texts letter by letter, line by line, page by page. Newspapers. Posters. Pamphlets. Books.
The press is the weapon of the people, he used to say.
He saw his hands again: hands that had touched every word before it became public.
He had shown Gabriel how it was done. How to hold the composing stick. How to justify a line. How to distribute the space between words so the text sat balanced.
Gabriel had never been good at it. His fingers were too young, too impatient. He knocked over the trays. He mixed up the type. His grandfather would sigh, gather the letters, start again.
But he never shouted.
It's like politics, he would say, sorting through the lead. You put the words in the right order, and people understand. You put them in the wrong order, and people go astray. That's why it's dangerous.
Those words came back to him now. The cold stone beneath him, the soup gone cold beside him.
The lead type was in museums. But the words were still there. And their order still mattered.
He stood up. His legs were numb. He walked to the farmhouse door. Light filtered through the gaps in the shutters.
He went inside.
The kitchen was empty. The candle was nearly spent, a small stub of wick sputtering in a pool of melted wax.
On the table, there was paper. A pen.
Gabriel pulled out a chair.
He picked up the pen. He held it above the paper.
His mother came to mind.
She was in Nice. In the apartment. Alone. He hadn't called in three days. Since he'd left the campaign. Since Malik's death. Since everything.
She must know. The news. The rumors. The lies, perhaps.
He set the pen to the paper.
Maman,
He stopped.
Maman, I'm fine.
No. That was false. He wasn't fine. She would know when she read the letter. She would know he was lying.
Maman, I'm alive.
That was true. That was all he could give her.
He wrote slowly, in joined-up letters, the way his grandfather had taught him.
Maman, I'm alive. I can't tell you where I am or what I'm doing. But I'm alive. And I'm thinking of you.
I know you're worried. I know you're watching the news. I know you're hearing things.
Don't believe everything they say.
He lifted the pen. The words rang false. Like a postcard from holiday. Like a polite lie.
He started again.
You always told me I had to choose a side. That staying in the middle was already choosing the side of the strongest.
I remember the first time you said that to me. I was twelve. There was a fight in the school yard. I hadn't moved. You asked me why. I said I didn't want to take sides. You said: "Not taking sides means taking the side of the one who's throwing punches."
I never forgot.
So. I've chosen my side.
I don't know if it's the right one. I don't know if we're going to win. But I know I can't stay in the middle anymore.
I love you.
I'll write when I can.
Gabriel
He read the letter back. The words were simple. Perhaps too simple. But it was all he had.
He folded the letter in three. He put it in his pocket.
He blew out the candle.
In the darkness, he listened.
The breathing of the sleepers, the wind in the trees, the creaking of the beams: the sounds of the old farmhouse living its old-farmhouse life.
The day ahead was waiting for him.
Zara had said: We keep going.
It was an instruction. Not a promise.
But Gabriel felt something shifting inside him. Not a revelation. Not an illumination. Something slower, more subterranean. Like a river carving its bed.
He was no longer afraid.
No. That wasn't true. He was still afraid. The fear was there, in his chest, right where the folded letter pressed against his torso. It wouldn't leave. He knew that.
But something else had come to join it.
A certainty.
Not the certainty of winning. Not the certainty of being right. But the certainty that remaining seated and doing nothing was impossible.
He got to his feet. He crossed the room by touch. His fingers found the wall, the door, the handle.
He went outside.
The air was cold. The stars were bright. The moon had not yet risen.
He let himself drop, one last time.
He took the letter from his pocket. He held it in his hands.
He imagined his mother reading these words. In the kitchen of the apartment. The morning light. Her fingers on the paper.
He traced in his mind the journey this letter would make. From his pocket to a postbox, somewhere on a country road. From a La Poste van to a sorting center. From a postman to the building's letterbox.
Unknown hands would touch this letter. Machines might scan it. Algorithms might analyze it.
But the words were true. And that, no algorithm could change.
Gabriel put the letter back in his pocket.
He sat until the sky grew pale in the east.