“Halo” is the first of a two-part short story for Persona non grata, a bilingual column by Jason Barker exclusively for Communis.
In memory of Rolando Prats Cervantes (1932-2025)
I might as well come clean. It was me who killed Benjamin Netanyahu. There, I’ve admitted it now. Guilty. It was all my fault.
When I say it was all my fault I don’t mean pushing him off the top of the Eiffel Tower. That bit wasn’t my fault, so you can forget about even trying to pin it on me. I’m only human. Anyone in my shoes would have done the same. I take no responsibility for it whatsoever. By “guilty” what I mean is the fallout (pun intended). In other words, everything subsequent to me heaving his fat arse up and over the security fence of that monstrous eyeful and his body falling victim to the laws of gravity. I can hardly be blamed for gravity.
Maybe I should have known. It’s easy to be wise in retrospect. In the split second after it had happened the whole city gasped. The traffic stopped, birds froze in flight and everybody looked up. Of course, I admit that things have “normalized” since then. But for that split second it was like 1794 all over again. It was like Paris had been blessed with a new religion, courtesy of a sacrifice from on high.
Why I let Bono’s daughter talk me into spending the afternoon up the Eiffel Tower I have no clue. The whys and hows are all mulch in my memory banks. I think she said she wanted to wave to her dad as his private jet came in to land at Orly. Either that or she wanted to board his helicopter without having to go to the airport, and had hit upon the bright idea of getting the pilot to drop a ladder onto a tall building. I think she was discussing the technicalities of the operation with the head of security when I clocked Bibi eating an ice cream.
I went over to him straight away, didn’t introduce myself or anything, just grabbed him and started heaving. Naturally he panicked, no doubt instantly ruing his decision to dispense with his team of bodyguards. Apparently they only made him more conspicuous, and having entered the country incognito for a spot of shopping on the Champs-Elysées, he feared the long arm of the law bearing down. Anyway, true to form, he tried to bribe me. “I’ll give you my ice cream,” he whimpered. “You’ll have to do better than that,” I said. Ice cream, indeed. French ice cream is rubbish anyway.
He put up a good fight, mind. He must have been secretly preparing for this moment his entire life. His strength and agility were quite surprising. He was a tricky opponent, exhibiting a sort of dancing mania that was difficult to subdue. Unfortunately for Bibi his Mossad training was no match for yours truly, who’d been schooled in the subtle East End art of incapacitating one’s opponent by booting them in the nuts (I’d had a brief stint in Millwall’s youth team). It was at that point that I managed, with the aid of a waiter, to dispatch his condemned person to ground zero.
Right away I knew I’d overegged it. “What the fuck?” said Bono’s daughter. I was in total shock, couldn’t remember a thing at first, and given the urgency of the situation we immediately decided to order a bottle of Moët & Chandon Imperial Rosé in the Champagne Bar. It was expensive, especially as Eve insisted on buying another bottle for some U2 fans, but then what the hell, it was a moment worth celebrating, and she was paying anyway. “Santé!”
It was a bit windy up there, so afterwards we went down to Le Jules Verne on the second floor: screw my vegan diet, I needed langoustine. You can imagine my reaction when the waiter announced they’d sold out. I think it was then that my righteous indignation kicked in.
“Don’t you fret,” said Eve, putting on a Dublin accent, a place she no longer visited for tax reasons. “You’re going to get an amazing book deal out of this.”
“Ha!” I laughed mockingly as I tried to decide between the lobster and the turbot. “You’re only saying that because you want the movie rights,” which Eve later admitted to me was true (apparently her dad had “jokingly” threatened to cut her inheritance if she didn’t win an Oscar by the time she was forty). In the elevator on the way down we drunkenly tried to imagine who might play the best Bibi.
“What about Timothy Spall?” said Eve.
“He’d need to put on some weight,” I surmised.
However, on seeing the real Bibi splattered across the promenade all thought of movie adaptations evaporated from my mind. In a vulgar spectacle that bespeaks the callousness of our times some Japanese tourists had propped up the corpse of the Israeli Prime Minister on the remains of his elbows and were posing with it for selfies.
“Have some respect!” I barked, snatching away their smartphones. A small crowd was circling, mumbling a mixture of stunned disbelief and incomprehension at the fate of the world’s most notorious war criminal. I decided to say a few words. Not being a Bible man, I cleared my throat and started reciting the lyrics to Depeche Mode’s “Halo.” Don’t ask why, it was a purely gut reaction, and I was sure any passing significance it had would collapse after a line or two. But to my surprise the more I read, the more my impromptu dedication seemed to fit the occasion perfectly:
You wear guilt
Like shackles on your feet
Like a halo in reverse
I can feel
The discomfort in your seat
And in your head it’s worse
By the time I got to the chorus I had to stop as I could feel myself welling up. Most of the congregation was in tears. I had briefly considered Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” (the video had been shot up the Eiffel Tower back in 1985) and although the James Bond theme would have suited the deceased’s reputation for extrajudicial killing to a tee, what better way to send off the Godfather of worlds falling apart and walls tumbling in than Martin Gore’s torch ballad.
As the sirens wailed the first wave of panic spread, prompting Eve and I to go our separate ways. “I’ll call you,” she mimed jumping into a limo, but I figured we might not be seeing each other for a while. This movie was way out of her league.
***
That night’s news bulletins led with outlandish conspiracy theories. “This hideous crime will not go unpunished,” vowed the Mayor of Paris from a TV studio hastily erected on the Place de Varsovie. “Tonight we are a country in mourning,” he declared, straining to be heard above the city-wide crescendo of fireworks and popping wine corks. Paris hadn’t sounded this jubilant since France’s World Cup win in 1998.
The next day, or maybe it was the day after, the phone rang. It was Eve. She sounded breathless and inebriated.
“Do you know what time it is?” I demanded.
“Yeah,” Eve said. “Time to wake up and smell the coffee.”
I yawned and let out a volley of farts as she proceeded to explain that an El Al passenger jet had exploded at Charles de Gaulle Airport, killing all but three of its 256 passengers and crew. That was revolting. What on earth had I been eating? It sure as hell wasn’t langoustine. Being single had its advantages.
“I can get you a seven-figure advance,” she said.
“Have you been drinking?” I inquired as my eyes widened at the prospect of becoming a Korean billionaire.
“What do you mean? It’s 6.30 in the morning!” she protested, which merely confirmed my suspicions.
I reflected for a moment. “When you say seven figures, would that be one million? Or nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine? The thing is there’s this lovely castle for sale in the Scottish Highlands, but it needs major renovation work. And if I buy it I can hardly not buy my parents one too.”
The line went dead, but still I could detect her frantic breathing. “Yes,” she said. “Think Venice. Think Cannes. Think the Oscars.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Eve,” I said, finally losing my temper, “you think anyone gives a hoot about your Hollywood screenplay? I only did it on a whim. In a few weeks’ time who’s going to remember any of this?”
I hung up, proud of the fact that even at my time of life I could still derive pleasure from self-abnegation. She’d call back, I convinced myself, no sooner than another El Al jet got blown up. Give it a week or so.
***
In the Marais the CRS were decorating the walls and pavements with human detritus. I ventured out of my crummy little attic and followed their blood-stained tapestry as far as Place de la République. The work bore a striking resemblance to a Jackson Pollock. I fiddled with my gas mask and tried not to look like a man pretending not to be the wanted assassin of a head of state. Having been ingesting nothing but home delivery food for ages, I needed to find a decent boulangerie, some cheese, eggs and fresh coffee. Whenever it crossed my mind to turn myself in—as it had in my more sombre hours of solitary confinement—it was always the prospect of prison food that made me ditch the idea.
In his (second) autobiography Boy George said that the food in Pentonville smelt like feet. If I ever did go down for this so-called crime, I’d need some sort of Michelin arrangement; just the one star would do, I wasn’t greedy. They could even warm up the food in a microwave. Maybe Eve’s old man could pull some strings with Raymond Blanc.
Beside the little bistro on the corner of Rue Meslay where Eve and I used to scoff langoustine and quaff Chardonnay, an elderly couple were being divested of their belongings and most of their clothes by gun-toting vigilantes. On reflection life wasn’t all bad. Although clearly experiencing PTSD, and with a high chance of being kidnapped and whisked away to a foreign dungeon at any moment, my transition to the lowlands of abject criminality had been a relatively smooth ride thus far. There was no denying that my involvement in the death of the Israeli Prime Minister had eaten into my self-esteem and made me considerably more cynical. But on the plus side I’d taken up yoga again, was getting back into Buddhist mantras and—my paranoia aside—the whole experience had definitely made me more philosophical. It was early days, I was learning on the job, but once I’d got a few Om mani padme hums under my belt I could definitely see myself turning things around. Perhaps one day I might even find the strength of character to forgive the man who forced me to kill him.
But would I ever be able to lay his ghost to rest?
To say nothing of my impending book deal, of course. My talent with the pen might have been untested, but ultimately Eve was right: a story like this writes itself. In short, I was sitting on a goldmine. The parlous state of the modern publishing industry gave me leverage: passing on the deal of the century was simply not an option for them.
The eight o’clock curfew siren jolted me out of my daydream. I’d walked further than intended and only had a few minutes left to make it home before the tanks and armoured cars began rolling along the Rue de Rivoli. I could just about make out the military checkpoint at Place de la Concorde, unusually deserted of military personnel. Sensing an opportunity I decided to press on, energised by the crowds parading in unison, their faces bathed in the ebb of sunset. Where were these people all going? An unseen current was pulling in the direction of the river, and by the time I’d crossed the Pont de la Concorde it was clear that the eight o’clock curfew siren was no longer what it seemed. This was no evacuation order; it was a city-wide call to prayer.
It took me another two hours to walk the short way along the right bank to the Eiffel Tower, where the tide of bodies converged. Nothing official had been organised, no crowd control measures put in place. It all seemed fairly spontaneous despite being utterly impossible to take in. The tower itself was still closed to the public and cloaked in darkness. Even the floodlights that were meant to enhance its glamorous facade were switched off. This only seemed to intensify its magnetic appeal. From every angle the pilgrims were inclining toward some cryptic source of power and revelation. If this was a religious ceremony then it was passing off in the dark, among thousands of human silhouettes, all watched over by the metaphysical absence of this gigantic, ironclad hole in the sky.
The crowds parted before me as I made a beeline for the landing pad of the atrocity exhibit, the fascination-scene of this hideous crime. I could say that returning to this place had been emotional, traumatic, uncanny, but I’d be lying. I felt like an adult on a children’s fairground ride; it felt trivial and pathetic. On the fringe of the Jardin du Champs de Mars, at the base of the tower where the Prince of Darkness had fallen to earth, people turned in circles, hypnotised, as if dancing to the Music of the Spheres or miming the elliptical orbits of the planets. Among those dark yet equally incandescent satellites was Eve, whose orbit was on a collision course with mine.
“Hello, Eve,” I said, catching her by the arm and pulling her out of her fever dream. “I love what you’ve done with the place. One minor observation, though: who switched off the lights?”
I gave her quite a start. She came to for a moment before falling back into her trance, like a drunken teenager at a discotheque. Then in a double take it must have registered with her who I was. “There is an inner light,” she said, radiating dark energy, “and way deeper than you know.” But this wasn’t the question I asked, or Eve answering it.
Where I went from here was anyone’s guess. I’d come to negotiate my book deal, but somewhere along the way a major chapter had fallen out. The problem was the story no longer belonged to me; either that or I’d strayed into a completely different one. What about the deceased? Where did he figure in this rapidly descending mise en abyme? Were the police even trying to track down his killer? Or had the investigation moved on to a higher plane? Half the Gendarmerie were probably lurking in the shadows. And what about the paratroopers holding babies aloft, their assault rifles casually discarded on the quayside? What was that all about?
I seized Eve by both arms, gritted my teeth and tried to shake some sense into the woman. “What’s your job here, Eve?” I said. “Why are you doing this?”
It was the question she’d been waiting for, and relished answering. “All I ever did was serve people. My whole life. Mum, Dad—you. I was a servant. Their slave. No more. I’ve found my true vocation in life: my true Master.”
I let go of this limp rag doll—this puppet—who felt unusually skinny, even for a model, and—like me—urgently in need of a decent meal. Presumably she was no longer relying on langoustine and Chardonnay to sustain body and mind. Like the rest of the audience at this idiot’s convention she was making do with holy water.
I might have been philosophical about it. After all, Eve was right. Rich kids go through hell. She was perfectly entitled to ditch the restaurants, private jets and photoshoots for some meaning. Had she found it? Here? Who was I to judge? I wanted to lie through my teeth and say I was happy for her. Until, that is, my gaze fell upon the object of her and everyone else’s veneration, the cubicle-shaped fluorescent structure that I’d mistaken for a public urinal. No one was pissing on it—although gladly I would have done, had there been fewer people about.
It was a statue of Benjamin Netanyahu. It seemed to be made out of polystyrene. It glowed bluish-green in the dark, and was the only light source within two hundred metres of the hallowed spot where his notorious person had hit paydirt. It smelt of money and freshly minted bills, the whiff of antiseptic you get walking into a bank. The sculptors must have been working on a permanent installation, because neither the statue nor the plinth were made from durable materials.
Having been up close and personal with the living organism, I couldn’t quite reconcile the real with this copy. They’d got the face right—sort of. The terrifying paedophile grin, the horrifying “Daddy loves you” expression (and woe betide any children who didn’t love him back). Not forgetting his awful combover, the universal signifier of a growing-old-disgracefully sweaty rapist: the wife beater who earns his dough from strip joints, human trafficking and dodgy coke deals. But the sculptors had muffed the physique. The grotesque was way too thin. If ever they revived Jimmy Savile’s reputation then what better adornment for the latter’s tomb. But a surfeit of artistic licence had been applied to this Netanyahu, which only made him look more hideous than the Thing in the flesh.
“What bugs me,” I said, as Eve attempted a number from Riverdance, “is what he said when he went over the top.” She wasn’t listening, didn’t care. No matter. I just had to get this off my chest while it lingered. “He said—and I’m dead certain about this: ‘Hail Mary.’ Why?”
Blasphemy should have given a Catholic pause. But Eve just nodded; smiling, affirming, dancing to the rhythm of her own inner logic.
“I mean why would a Jew’s final words be ‘Hail Mary’? Unless he was having a last-minute conversion to Christianity—”
(Read Part 2 here.)
Jason Barker is water
Featured image: View of the Eiffel Tower from the ground. Stock photo.
