The ground was squelchy, leading the mind to wonder what sort of organic matter was decomposing underfoot. A topsoil of potato-chip bags and soda cans disturbed the silence that Invader and his accomplice, Mr. Blue, were trying to preserve. It was 1:03 A.M. on a Wednesday in midJuly. They had parked their van nearby, and were picking their way down an overgrown service path that led to a sliver of land alongside the A4 highway, just past the eastern limit of Paris.
“Flatten yourself against the wall if a car comes,” Invader told me.
He wriggled past a phantasmagorical fern.
“You always get some crazy plants, with all the carbon dioxide from the cars,” he said.
Our destination was a forty-foot-high concrete pillar that supported a smaller road passing over the A4. Traf fic raced by at eighty miles an hour. Invader rummaged in the underbrush, trying to find a pair of polypropylene supermarket totes, filled with supplies, that Mr. Blue had tossed out of the van on an earlier run past the site. Mr. Blue, meanwhile, was wrestling with a telescopic ladder. He extended it and propped it against the pillar while Invader, kneeling, laid out a series of panels made from fifteen-centimetre-square tiles. They were labelled A1, A2, A3, A4, Bi, B2, B3, and B4.
“Tt’s like a bank robbery,” he had said a few minutes before. I know exactly how everything needs to go.”
This story is from the December 18, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the December 18, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
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Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"