Extraordinary stories and men of style: the elegant (EPISODE 6)

I

In the morning, I needed time to adorn my ordinary body with all the artifices which, well orchestrated, allowed me to resemble myself.

I always proceeded slowly and thoughtfully too. It was the skin over which the straight razor slid, it was the hand which dusted the fabric, the finger on the silk of the tie which formed the drop.

Time was absolutely necessary to build myself from scratch as a social animal. The shoes, black in the city, gave a dignified tempo to my arrhythmic gait, the rollino shoulders corrected the drooping shoulders, the high waist of the pants gave harmony to the silhouette to make me look remarkably anonymous.

I saw myself as a rare bird, perfectly anachronistic, the wing movements similar to other birds, but whose wake we follow with our eyes because it flies better and its song is more beautiful.

*****

As I pushed through the crowd at brutal azimuth, imagining myself as Moses in a three-piece tennis-striped suit, the smog enveloped the city like a tsunami of fine particles. Unmoved, the townspeople went to the windows and, armed with spears, set about poking the obese cloud so that it would not soil their new furniture with its long wandering tentacles.

I had been sent to town by my ex-new wife who thought that our newly made love was worth redecorating the house I had lived in with my first wife. She did not work but had a real eye for the decorative arts. Our interior had to “look like us”, as she said. She was kind enough to make me a list of furniture that needed to be changed and rooms that needed to be redecorated. I then realized that it was the entire house. That is to say everything that my first wife had touched, sniffed, grabbed, tasted, touched for a moment, smeared one day for a laugh, nibbled, scratched, polished, tickled, looked at...

- Honey, I said to her on the phone. How about we move instead?

She said straight away:

- Oh, if you think that's better then okay, my love! I've already spotted a few ads about this, isn't that great? And she hastened to add: Come on, come home quickly, Karen and Anne, the twin clairvoyants I told you about, you know, they want to analyze the palms of your hands! You better hurry because at the price they cost, anyway!

With these exquisite and common-sense words, my beloved's finger accidentally slipped over the “off” button on the telephone and the line was cut. So I put my cell phone in the specially designed pocket of my navy blue herringbone coat and looked up at the sky: it wasn't going to rain.

Smog, upset by the hostile reaction of the inhabitants, had fled further north where the people are much more welcoming, it seems. Since I wanted to go home about as much as I wanted to ingest a thimble's worth of cyanide, I began wandering aimlessly through the inelegant streets. A tourist whose forehead dotted with drops reminded me of the complexity of the universe stopped me:

- Mister Please. How should we get to the garden chair museum?, he asked me.

- So, the best thing from here is to go straight ahead. Oh no, I said, what a fool I say! I was showing you the way to the chaise longue museum! No, the garden chair museum is...

I stopped because I was taken aback by the fact that the man, visibly unrelated to the values ​​of living together, was wearing both a belt and suspenders. My nose began to bleed like a sangria fountain and I immediately left this enemy of good taste, praying that he would never find the fascinating museum of the lawn chair. Once at a reasonable distance from the scoundrel, the blood stopped flowing and I was able to resume my wandering.

I thought that he must have been wearing such hideous underwear that he hated the slightest chance of his pants falling suddenly to the floor. The somatic mechanisms responsible for thinking are sometimes surprising because this simple chance encounter made me think that I had a tweed suit to pick up from Burke and Burke, my tailor.

I took off my hat to hail a taxi and, in the second, an enthusiastic driver of the sartorial thing made a sensational swerve because he had seen the gray beaver felt moving, prettily circled with a midnight blue silk ribbon.

- Let me guess, you're going to Burke's? he asked me playfully.

- And Burke! I replied in the same tone.

The Earth's rotation was faster than usual, so the taxi drove faster. Passers-by had difficulty moving on the sidewalk and some waited quietly on the side for it to pass.

We arrived at Burke and Burke in a sidereal unit of Earth time. Well, I didn't know anything about it, it was the taxi driver who told me. A nice guy who is a fan of Sciences Magazine , of sartorial stuff as I already said and of string theory.

Burke was a short guy with parabolic ears. It was easy to imagine him as a toddler as his face was round and red. It must be said that the absence of hair on his skull dotted with brown spots helped to project oneself. He wore a double breasted shirt whose lapels were proportional to his ears. As soon as a ray of light or sun hit the hard toe of his icy shoe, it bounced and hit the ceiling which crumbled visibly, if one is not short-sighted or simply in bad faith .

The tailor's wife was magnificent if you could hide her sour smell of withered lemon. As well as his uncanny resemblance to Joe Pesci, in Goodfellas . Which didn't bother Burke, who had always loved gangster films. She brought an iced cognac with a little sparkling water and I made her a lemon-flavored anti-wrinkle cream hand kiss.

I put on the costume and was soon on the podium where Burke examined me like a homicide detective over a corpse.

- Exquisite, he said.

The tweed pants hugged the natural waist like a hand around a glass: not too tight so as not to get tired and not too little so as not to let go. The loose, heavy material, with its houndstooth pattern, didn't touch the leg and I had room to move. A four-centimeter cuff as usual and the pants broke just once, with all the power of classic style. The Shetland Islands tweed, orange, brown, beige and yellow, was from Gorina, a Spanish draper. The rest: double-piped pockets, the “V” comfort, the pleats, the adjustable belt, the button placket. Great art.

The jacket, for its part, had rollino shoulders, ten-centimeter lapels of which the delicate roll could be seen, the Milanese buttonhole, the barchetta chest pocket, the patch pockets, two slits in the back and a fully canvas fabric. .

        Burke revolved around me like a satellite around a beautiful star. And his shoes flashed more and more viciously. A few plaster residues sprinkled my noble shoulders. And soon I heard an ominous creaking sound like the upset stomach of a volcano, coming from the ceiling. Mr. Burke walked around me quickly, checking every detail and heard nothing. Suddenly, alerted by a sixth sense, I looked up to see a gigantic sheet of plaster and rubble tumbling onto my person.

I simply remember the hoarse cry of Mrs. Burke, an androgynous cerberus who announced my arrival in the Underworld.

II

I woke up with my body as heavy as a marble coffin. I was lying in a bed, in the belly of some sort of high-tech spaceship, with dematerialized screens everywhere that made me feel like a Wall Street trader.

I then heard whistling in the hallway. It was the ride of the Valkyries. And soon we entered.

- Ah but I see that he is awake!

- What year is it, doctor?

- Ah, I can't tell you that right now. Too early. Can you imagine the shock? We decryogenized a patient yesterday and I was a little rough. Mea culpa . It's Latin. He couldn't stand it. That's saying something. Yes, how would you react if I told you that we have already suffered two extra-terrestrial attacks, that Trump managed to remain president for life, or rather “Supreme Savior of Humanity”, and that we finally discovered that cats were in fact minions of Satan, even if we suspected it. Ah… but I talk too much. My wife tells me this constantly. It may well be made of nanotechnology and a nuclear heart, but it really is one of the finest psychology... Oh, but... I started again. I say too much. Really sorry. I go. Rest, dear visitor from the past. Since the resurrection of Michael Jackson, I have lost control a little.

But I was only very vaguely interested in the content of his doctoral palaver as much as in the strangeness of his professional attire. He was dressed in a diving suit without fins and white like I had never seen, the hood of which concealed everything except his eyes which he had reshaped into almonds with a scalpel. I couldn't help but say:

- What is this outfit, doctor?

- Ah, that constantly tells me my sugar level, my heart rate as well as...

- It's terrifying. And then excessively ugly, I declared.

- Very clearly, you are in post-traumatic shock, that is understandable. This combination is the most sophisticated thing in the world. You no longer know very well what you are saying, my poor sir, it is very clear.

- And it's very tight, I continue. We can clearly see the outline of your…

He exploded:

- I don't spend so much time lifting dumbbells so that my Greek God body rots under a blouse, no!

He paused before tilting his head to the left to reach with his mouth a tube that seemed sewn into the fabric of his suit and sucked in an emerald green liquid that made him shiver.

- It's 2152 ducon and we did your nose for free because cosmetic surgery students had to get their hands dirty. You could show a little gratitude. Put on your musty suit and get the hell out. We will send you the invoice.

And he moonwalked, clapping his hands twice to close the door. I put on my tweed suit, my ironed shirt and tied my tie in a simple knot because I wasn't in the mood to perform even half a windsor, and left the room with only one idea in mind. head: go to Burke and Burke to ask them for damages.

When I was outside the hospital, I realized that I was in an underground gallery, a huge maze with escalators, elevators, carpets and even individual flying shuttles that transport you lying down to take up less space.

I saw a city employee who had kept their fluorescent vests from yesteryear and asked him in a tone that I wanted to be detached, velvet and cane sugar:

- What the hell?

Lost. He looked at me like he would look at a cold beer and I tried to calm down. Thanks to a considerable effort to calm myself down, made possible by twenty years of a disastrous love life, I managed to articulate:

- Would it be possible for you to show me the way to Burke and Burke?

And I gave him the address telepathically, because now it was a possible thing and the doctor, during my sleep, had carried out all kinds of postmodern scientific experiments.

The city employee looked at me at first, making fun of my outfit, but as I was not going to be mocked by a young man whose ancestor I could easily have been, I made his free will bend just with the thought and, soon, he preceded me on the way to my old tailor.

Once on the surface of the Earth, I realized, seeing the buildings whose tops could not be seen and knowing the underground life where I came from, that we had exploited all possible verticality to distribute a surplus population. . I quickly realized that the surface of the Earth was now populated by the marginalized, the destitute, skillfully pushed back to the doors of buildings and underground spaces by electromagnetic doors that only good people could open. The city was a gigantic nightclub. As I followed the municipal worker, a trapdoor opened above us, because there was a platform, and a guy fell out nicely.

- It's not me ! he yelled at the trapdoor as it hit the ground. I didn't do anything, I swear! Get me back up or I'll die here!

A tramp who was awakened by the screams of the one who had just fallen from the sky got up from his makeshift bed and came towards him. Only, he did not stop at his height and continued his way until he stood in front of me:

- Are you also a guy from the future like me?

- Why do you say that ?

- Well it's simple, we recognize guys from the future by the fact that they wear clothes from the past. Take a look at my style!

And he began to dance so that people could admire him. The man wore a stunning light gray flannel suit, the color of which matched the fabulous psoriasis scabs on his face. The material was bright and went very well with his sky blue shirt and his poorly tied purple paisley tie. He had put in the breast pocket of his jacket a banana peel that stuck out three times and whose brown echoed the bronze color of his bare feet.

- And so that's how I know that you too are a guy from the future. So what are you doing here, Your Highness?

And as if to celebrate the end of his sentence, he drank a small stream's worth of a double-bottom bottle of alcohol.

- Well, actually, I come from a very distant planet to exterminate the human race, I said to stun him with all the repartee I was capable of.

- Yeah, he says, not moved, well start with all these guys walking around with clothes that talk, I can't stand these progressive assholes. The last time my futal spoke to me, it wasn't really to compliment me.

We continued on our way and I half expected to see some extraordinary animal or even my tax inspector appear before my eyes. Meanwhile, my dashing new friend, who had decided to follow us, was doing ballet jumps around us.

At one point the clerk, still under the control of my imperious mind, turned right around a grimy street corner and had us stop in front of a tiny new plaque that read Burke and Burke. The employee passed his wrist in front of the plate which emitted a small sharp detonation and we went up into an elevator cage, that is to say that in addition to rising physically to the upper floors, we were also rising sensorially.

- Oh, an elevator cage, said the tramp to me. It allows you to control your body in all circumstances. It's really useful for softening up a cop who wants to arrest you, by starting to cry on command for example. Don't believe it, I admit that some cops are not so bad, the proof is that they hit less hard with their batons.

Arriving at Burke and Burke, I noticed that the employee was no longer there.

Immediately, I heard a voice:

- Oh but what do I see! Wouldn't this be a vintage piece from Burke and Burke? I would say it dates from around the beginning of the 21st century. Can you confirm this to me? That will save me from switching to carbon 14!

I slowly nodded yes.

- Wonderful ! Except that it's no longer worth anything... Sentimental value is a delicious thing, but it doesn't make you eat. What's more, it's in a, let's say... outmoded taste. What atmosphere would you like, Sir?

- Huh?, I said.

And, before my eyes I saw the room which consisted simply of a white rectangle, empty as a page before writing, change into a hanging garden whose beaten earth crunched under my feet and whose cotton trees were heavy with fruit. ripe. Then the room transformed again into a 1950s living room with jazz, Wegner furniture and Louis XIII cognac in Baccarat crystal decanters. And then, it was a striptease bar which quickly disappeared.

- Oops. Really sorry. We have diversified our activity somewhat. But you're here for a new costume, I suppose!

I was incredibly stunned and almost prayed that the ceiling would fall on my head again.

- Do you know technological fabrics?

I looked at him in the way I usually reserved for strange beings in wildlife documentaries. I tell him :

- Do you know the pangolin?

- Man has been the only survivor of the animal kingdom for a long time, my dear Sir.

I thought about the kind of snarling stuffed animal that served as my ex-wife's pet dog and I couldn't help but smile.

- I repeat, therefore: do you know technological fabrics?

For the second time since coming back to life, I shook my head.

- Technological fabrics, my dear sir, they are quite simply the future!

At that precise moment, three jackets on top of headless busts appeared while zooming out.

The voice says:

- Have you ever dreamed that your suit constantly smelled of sweet vanilla spices? Or our most famous ginger musk and artichoke fumet? Otherwise, we have tarte tatin fresh from the oven, tuna-mayo, walk in the forest, incense, myrrh and fleur-de-lys, guava-béarnaise…

The voice was interrupted because we were bursting into laughter, the tramp and I. And I saw that we lived on the same planet, despite his modest education and his obvious alcoholism. The voice continued:

- Very good, I don't think you're convinced. Why not fall for our fabulous hydrophobic fabrics? No stain can touch it. The fabric is repellent. Here, you in a gray suit, throw this bowl of ultra-stainy vinaigrette on this polywool twill.

The tramp obeyed because he was the curious type and wanted to see what would happen. He stood at a respective distance and threw the sauce right on the chest. Just before it hit the fabric, it was thrown towards the tramp who took a surprising dodge step to avoid it.

- Ah, ah, ah, the voice roared. Isn't that wonderful!

- I still find that we lose a certain charm, Burke, I say. With all the costumes I've worn in my life, just being careful has always saved me from staining my clothes. I don't really see where you're going with this.

- Alright. I will go over the electrically powered suit capable of recharging your cell phone while it is in your pocket, I will also go over the fabric which vibrates when mortal danger threatens you, and the one which dries automatically in the event of heavy rain. And I won't tell you, either, about our favorite costume from these gentlemen from the bank whose massaging fabric works miracles for those who suffer from painful lower back! But perhaps this one will find favor in your eyes, I named the chameleon costume! Every morning, choose the color of this costume, you can draw the pattern if you like, or change the navy blue for gray or red during the day depending on your mood! Isn't that absolutely incredible?

- I am a supporter of classic elegance, I said, I don't want to be disguised. Your fabrics have no soul, no scale, no charm. It's like you're speaking Chinese to me.

- I speak Chinese!, said the tramp.

- Where is the crafts? Where are the real tailors? Do you know what interfacing is? Do you know American facings? Do you know what a backhand putt is? Cigarette ? Do you know what a man of taste is? And these short-cut jackets are an abomination for the figure. I leave you to your failed stylistic experiments. Farewell, Burke!

- You will not escape the textile revolution, unfaithful!

Suddenly we were in complete darkness. And I saw the moon shining in the right corner of the room. Wolves howled but because I knew it was a soundtrack, I only felt a slight tingling in my left arm. The tramp, on the other hand, who was holding a thick pot, screamed in terror. And suddenly, I collapsed on the ground, hit by a heavy object. There, I was struck by the smell of French toast which mingled with the scent of the apples in which I had fallen.

III

As I awoke, I smelled a cocktail of odors emanating from all directions, starting at my back as I was attached to my fellow tramp.

We were sitting in two back-to-back chairs, on the old Burke and Burke podium where the accident had happened. The hole in the ceiling had been filled. All around us there were around fifty guys in bad suits staring at us with murderous eyes, listening to a guy in a close-fitting suit and floor-length pants who reeked of gingerbread.

My head was full of hearing nonsense about masculine elegance then, instead of listening to the boss Burke of the technological fabric lobby talking about expansion, about any new anti-con costume (what is 'what happens when an idiot manages to put it on?) and to, I quote, exterminate all the retrogrades in natural costumes (which explained why we were both sequestered like this), I put together an escape plan spectacular.

- We'll try something, I say to the tramp. Notice how all the costumes around us are stained except those, precisely, which are repellent.

The tramp said “um, yes, so what?”.

- And so, we benefited from the powers of the elevator cage, right? And, if we look at the way the repellent fabrics are placed in the room, I say that with good aim, we can reach absolutely everyone.

- Hum, said the tramp again, but with what liquid can we liquidate them?

- With all the alcohol you've drunk, you must have a very full stomach, I said.

- Oh that yes!, he said. It's not because we're on the street that we have to deprive ourselves! Oh… but I see where you’re going with this, you disgusting old man!

While the Big Man of Technological Fabrics Burke was levitating six inches above the ground, galvanized by his own prophetic speech, I oriented my friend to find the perfect angle, when I said to him:

- NOW !

It was abominable. It was everywhere. The jet of spray had hit a first costume which, by repelling the liquid, had hit another and, thanks to the centrifugal force, everyone was soon on the ground moaning. Some were panicked because the filthy wreath now masked the smell of flowers in their fabric, others, whose fabric was conductive, were paralyzed by the electric shock that had just passed through their body. In short, we were able to break our hastily made bonds and run at full speed for a good half day, controlling our breathing and our feeling of fatigue thanks to the effect of the elevator cage.

This unacademic scene reminded me nostalgically of my business school years.

*****

I bid farewell to this celestial and most elegant tramp I had ever seen. And as I headed to the hospital, I thought about my wife, the interior decoration of my house and what she might have done with my wardrobe. I absolutely had to gather this invaluable collection that had been scattered for a long time. I then heard the voice of my companion in misfortune who asked me:

- What are you going to do now?

- Have me re-cryogenized. If fashion is cyclical, then perhaps the future of that future will be classic!

And he nodded, before taking off his tie and tying a new one which was signed Charvet.