Living underground sounds like an experience reserved for a privileged few: adventurers in wartime, perhaps, who lose themselves in the twists and turns of secret organizations, terrorism, espionage, counterespionage, fifth columns, and promises of a bright tomorrow…
In practical terms, that ought to belong entirely to the past. Irregular immigration might still offer one small possibility, but if you were born on the wrong side of the Schengen Agreement, there would be little point in dreaming.
Well, no! I can assure you that none of this is true, because I experienced it myself, right here at home.
I was therefore preparing to become a mattress maker and bedding maker. My on-the-job training was well advanced, and I had met all my obligations, registrations, and assorted formalities. Everything was due to take effect on January 1, 2000. The financing was also settled: I was borrowing a sum equal to the purchase price of the business, and covering the rest from my own savings.
Jacques had always kept both his business and personal accounts at the neighborhood branch of Crédit Lyonnais. Naturally, I approached them, opened an account for the future company, and submitted my loan application. Their offer suited me, everything was going smoothly, and signing the final agreement seemed a mere formality.
Then time passed. By the end of November, there was still no news whatsoever. Jacques had made his position perfectly clear from the first day: whatever happened, he would cease working as a mattress and bedding maker on December 31.
Throughout November, I grew increasingly nervous. No matter how much I hounded the bank, nothing happened. The application was making its way through the system, they could do nothing more, and I would simply have to wait.
At the beginning of December, Jacques, with the pragmatism of an old-school craftsman, reassured me that it was not really so serious after all. There might be a delay of a few days, but he would still remove his name from the trades register. Once I had the money, and after a lawyer had formally recorded everything and the legal notices had been published, I could always bring my administrative status into order. So be it!
The holiday season arrived. The workshop closed annually between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and my loan had still not been approved. That is how, on the first Monday of January 2000, I found myself at the head of an unauthorized workshop.
Although it had no real legal existence, the business quietly carried on as it always had, only without the paperwork. I did not own it, and Jacques was no longer in charge. If a serious problem had occurred—a fire or major injury, for example—sorting out the insurance and determining liability would have been an almighty mess.
Looking back today, and if I may put it so bluntly, the difference was not what one might expect. There is something remarkably comfortable about operating outside the law.
Without papers, you fear only the police. So you watch out for them and stay on your guard. When everything is perfectly aboveboard, however, you become more vulnerable in certain respects. You trust in your own good faith, while trouble can be lurking anywhere. Customers and suppliers can always plot something unpleasant against you, but licensed or not, everyone faces the same risk there.
Official paperwork, on the other hand, leaves you at the mercy of the social security agencies, the labor inspector, the accountant, and the tax authorities. They are waiting around the corner, and you never know who will launch the next attack, or when it will come—perhaps the one that finally brings you down.
In any event, I had to wait until early March before matters were more or less put right. In mid-January, the good news finally came: all I had to do was visit the branch and sign. My wife had to come too; that had been agreed, as she was to guarantee the loan. But when my adviser on the phone continued down the list—my father, then my mother—that came as quite a surprise.
The idea had indeed been mentioned at the very beginning, but I had immediately objected. I was borrowing for convenience, and at my age there was no question of asking my parents to guarantee what was ultimately a fairly modest sum in relation to the company’s accounts.
In theory, the matter was closed. I rushed straight to the branch to find out what was going on. There I discovered something even worse. The other point in the negotiation on which I had particularly insisted—following sound advice from the Chamber of Trades instructor during the business start-up course—had also been quietly forgotten: avoid joint and several guarantees at all costs. Now every guarantee was to be joint and several!
Although everything had been agreed, some whim at some lofty level of the bank had produced a reversal as unexpected as it was dishonest. They had me over a barrel.
Kind as he was, Jacques had already waited patiently for long enough. I could not reasonably ask any more of him, which left me unable to start again from scratch within any acceptable time frame. The inevitable consequence seemed to be that I would have to accept the bank’s new conditions.
They had not reckoned with my anger! I did without them. In little more than twenty-four hours, I had rallied the whole clan and raised the money. All that remained was to make an appointment with the lawyer. The funny thing is that I am sure this final setback—certainly no small one—may actually have put me three or four days ahead. With the bank, even after signing the agreement, it would still have gone up another level, and another, and another… before the money finally reached my account.