French Lessons (17 page)

The tent, big enough to cover most of the lawn behind
the château and high enough to accommodate a twenty-foot tree, was
pulsing with energy—the collective anticipation of six hundred
race-trained, physically fit people absolutely bursting to have a good time.
Another roar greeted the arrival onstage of the band’s lead guitarist,
who, either for athletic or musical reasons, hoisted his instrument high over
his head while he tuned up and while we studied the menu.

As promised,
it was rich in carbohydrates, but these were carbs
à la
bordelaise,
starting with a cold pasta salad with ham, followed by noodles
and seafood, before moving on to
macaronis et daube au vin du
Médo
c—
more pasta, with a thick alcoholic beef stew.
There were mountains of bread and four different wines—two white, two
red. Not being blessed with an athlete’s cement-mixer metabolism, I found
it impossible to believe that anyone would be able to walk the morning after a
dinner like this, let alone run.

And now, with an introduction from the
animateur,
who gratefully exchanges his microphone for a glass of
wine, the stage is left to the band. They are
très, très
cool,
with dark glasses and black fedoras, and as the first course is
served, they plunge straight into the sixties, where they will stay for most of
the evening. As the first slow chords of “Sittin’ On the Dock of
the Bay” roll through the tent, there is an eruption of whistles and
claps and yips from nearby tables, where the runners are showing a marked
preference for wine over water. A man in a red Basque beret, glass in hand,
stands up to offer vocal encouragement to the band. The tent vibrates.

Conversation at our table is made difficult by the music. So we contemplate
our helicopter ride scheduled for the next morning, during which we will be
able to see all eight thousand runners at once. This reminds me that we are
sitting with fewer than 10 percent of the competitors, and makes me think of
the extraordinary feats of organization required to put on an event of this
size. I am struck dumb with admiration and a mouthful of pasta.

The
band switches to a medley of Aretha Franklin classics. “Respect”
comes belting out of the loudspeakers. The four girl singers are firmly settled
in the groove, fedoras abandoned, hair swirling, hips jerking, arms swooping
forward with each clap, wailing their
doo-wop
s and
uh-huh
s
and
ooh
s behind the lead singer. Aretha would be proud of them. One of
the waitresses is overcome by an attack of rhythm and boogies toward the table,
a large tureen of pasta balanced precariously on each hand. The runners are up
and dancing, and it’s anarchy on the grass—the bump, the jump, the
grind, the Médoc fox-trot, the marathon shuffle, the cardiovascular
quickstep. The tent seems to be swaying. The tree in the middle is shaking. I
never knew that the final preparations for an athletic event could be this much
fun.

The preference for Bordeaux over water continues. Wine is
delivered to the tables in six-packs: Tourelles de Longueville 1994 and
Château Pichon-Longueville 1992. Our man in the red beret takes advantage
of a break in the music to get up and give us his version of a traditional
Basque song. This sets off a chain reaction of other more or less musical
offerings from tables throughout the tent. German drinking anthems compete with
old French favorites, Dutch choruses and one or two completely incomprehensible
chants. The mixture of wine and carbohydrates is working.

The band
returns, this time for what is announced as
un hommage
to Stevie
Wonder, and a conga line forms, weaving through the tables, around the tree,
and past the stage. A woman in a Stetson hat and a maple leaf T-shirt stops in
front of our table to catch her breath. “Wow,” she says,
“it’s not like this in Toronto.” I wonder what the original
inhabitants of the château would have made of it all.

Toward
midnight, the music slows down. The band gives us “Try a Little
Tenderness.” Couples cling together as if glued, hot, happy, and
exhausted. And tomorrow they’re going to run twenty-six miles.

Leaving the tent, we took a turn around the château. The crunch of
gravel beneath our feet, high stone walls glowing under the floodlights, black
turrets silhouetted against the night sky, pinpoints of light scattered along
the banks of the Gironde in the distance beyond the vines, stars up above. The
air was cool and clean and smelled of autumn. It was a pleasure just to be
alive.

We woke early the next morning, just after
six, to the rumble of engines. It was still dark as I looked out of the window
and saw a stream of lights trickling slowly along the road, cars by the
hundred, bumper-to-bumper on their way to Pauillac, where the race was
scheduled to start in three hours’ time. While my wife immersed herself
in the delights of our bathroom—a space big enough to hold a party, with
steps leading up to a canopied bath—I tried to make sense of the notes I
had made the night before. Poor, crumpled, wine-stained scraps they were, as
usual. I always find it difficult to make intelligible notes when I’m
enjoying myself, possibly because my hand is often holding a glass when it
should be holding a pen. The result is a series of manic scribbles that have to
be translated in the sober light of morning. If only someone would give me a
photographic memory for Christmas.

Other guests at the château
were already having breakfast when we went downstairs to the dining room. Three
of them were going to take part in the race. They wore shorts and the slightly
subdued manner of people who were going to half-kill themselves before lunch.
Two were old marathon hands, and they talked about the times they hoped to
achieve, based on their experience in previous races. The third, a senior
officer in the French navy, told us that this was his first and last marathon.
He was running for the hell of it. At least the weather seemed to be on their
side—high clouds, light breeze, no sun. Unfortunately for them, this was
not to last.

At eight o’clock the procession of cars was still
nose-to-tail, as it had been for the past two hours. But it seems that if you
come out of a château driveway, you’re entitled to the traditional
privilege of droit du seigneur, and the traffic parted in a most obliging (and
in France, highly unusual) way to let us squeeze into the line. Onward to
Pauillac we went, with vines to either side, past Château Fonbadet,
Château Cordeillan Bages, Château Lynch-Bages, Château
Bellegrave—all in all, what real estate agents would consider a most
desirable neighborhood.

When we reached Pauillac, it looked as though
the wardrobe department had been hard at work on a Fellini movie. The town was
swarming with freaks—men and women with Day-Glo wigs, taffeta tutus,
religious robes, convicts’ stripes, false body parts, horns, chains,
tattoos, purple legs, red noses, blue faces. There were even one or two dressed
in shorts and running vests.

We climbed to the top of the stand
overlooking the starting line. Below us, the main street was jammed solid with
a kaleidoscope of boisterous and weirdly dressed competitors. A man disguised
as a strawberry stood on one leg, doing his stretching exercises while he
talked to his friend; a man with the physique of a rugby player squeezed into a
nurse’s uniform. The
animateur
working the street was
interviewing competitors—“This is the most fun you can have on two
legs!”—and reminding runners to inform officials, before setting
off, of their preference for
vin rouge
or
vin blanc.

Glancing behind me, I was treated to a tranquil and picturesque scene. A
line of runners, at least a dozen of them, was strung out along the riverbank,
their backs to the road. Undeterred by the passing crowds, they had chosen to
ignore the discreet and very adequate toilet facilities provided, preferring
instead an open-air performance. Marathon or no marathon, a true Frenchman will
always find time for the pleasures of the
pipi rustique.

On
the dot of 9:30, the runners set off, led by two very serious-looking young men
who had shot away from the line like whippets, hotly pursued by a Playboy bunny
wearing black stockings, black wig, white ears, and a heavy five o’clock
shadow. As these three disappeared into the distance, the other eight thousand
began to jostle past, waving, singing, shouting to friends. One or two were
actually trying to run, although this was almost impossible in the mass of
humanity that choked the street. Watching the moving panorama from our place in
the stand, we were struck by the number of men dressed as women, a fondness for
drag we had not normally associated with athletes. Perhaps we had led sheltered
lives. The other great favorite among the male runners was the baby outfit,
complete with bib and drooping diaper. Women, on the other hand, were mostly
dressed as women: princesses, milkmaids, nuns, Viking maidens. An
anthropologist would have had a field day.

It was a good ten minutes
before the last luridly dressed transvestite turned the corner and aimed the
twin cones of his false bosom in the direction of Château Lynch-Bages.
The experts standing next to us, clearly sporting men, judging by their track
suits and running shoes, lighted up cigarettes and speculated about the winning
time. The champion of France was running—in fact, he had been
neck-and-neck with the Playboy bunny at the start—and the informed
estimates were that he would be crossing the finish line in well under two and
a half hours. It was doubtful whether he’d be stopping for any
dégustations
en route, but at least he’d pick up the
winner’s prize—not a medal, not a silver cup, not a shield, but
something useful: his weight in wine.

The less athletically committed
spectators began to drift off to spend the morning exercising their arms in the
town’s bars and cafés until the return of the front-runners. We
bundled into our car and headed for our first stop, Château
Pontet-Canet.

Grape-growing country starts just outside Pauillac, and
the land is clearly too precious to waste on wide roads. These were little more
than tracks, narrow, unmarked, and hemmed in by vines that grew almost to the
edge of the tarmac on either side. We were driving through green
tubes—identical green tubes of identical height and texture. There were
occasional aids to navigation: a massive stone crucifix rising above the sea of
vines, a distant turret, a boundary stone. Otherwise, we saw only green, flat
green, all the way to the horizon. It helps to be born here if you want to find
your way.

Pontet-Canet was, as it has been since the eighteenth
century, magnificent. Not a blemish in the curved gravel driveway, not a twig
out of place in the gardens. As we came up to the courtyard, we could hear
above the applause and cheering of the spectators the unexpected wheeze and
wail of bagpipes. “The Runner’s Lament,” it might have been,
or maybe “Bordeaux the Brave.” I find it difficult to tell with
bagpipes. They were being played by a piper in a red beret who was standing
with his fellow musicians on an impromptu stage made from wooden wine crates.
From his beret, I thought he was Basque; from his pipes, Scottish. It turned
out he was a Frenchman from Pauillac.

In front of the bandstand was a
wine stand, one of the twenty dotted along the course, and the runners had to
pass within six feet of it on their way through the courtyard. Many
didn’t make it—distracted, possibly, by a man from the
château team who had stationed himself by the side of the stand, where he
stood like a two-fisted Statue of Liberty, arms upraised, a welcoming glass of
Pontet-Canet in each hand. The dedicated runners, clutching their flasks of
Vittel, turned their faces away from temptation and continued onward. Others
pulled up with gusty sighs of relief, armed themselves with glasses, and
gathered round the
dégustation
table to compare notes with
their fellow athletes.

You might expect them to have discussed times,
hamstring cramps, and race tactics, but no; as far as I could make out, it was
fashion and beauty all the way. One man was having a problem with his mascara,
which had run into smudges over his cheeks so that he resembled a startled
raccoon. Another had discovered that his long taffeta skirt had a tendency to
stick uncomfortably to his perspiring thighs. A third complained of aching
lobes, brought on by the excessive weight of his ornamental earrings. The only
cure for these assorted ills was, of course, another glass of
Pontet-Canet.

Watching the runners come up the driveway, I was struck
by the total absence of grim-faced competition. They weren’t trying to
beat each other, but were encouraging each other, dropping back to keep a
straggler company, staying in groups instead of single file. Nowhere could I
see any sign of the traditional loneliness of the long-distance runner. It
wasn’t that kind of race.

Knots of spectators were lining the
course—clapping, hooting, whistling, cheering, some with personalized
banners saying
Allez, Jean-Luc!
or
Vite, Gérard, Vite!
“Fatigue is purely mental,” I heard one enthusiast shouting.
“You’re not tired. You’re just thirsty.” By now, the
sun had come out, and it wasn’t really the weather to be wearing layers
of fancy dress. Marie Antoinette came hobbling up the slope to the
château, one hand clutching his water bottle, the other holding up the
folds of his crinoline. I was beginning to understand why so many men had
chosen to run as babies, wearing diapers that left their legs bare.

Another mystifying voyage through the vines brought us to Château
Lafite Rothschild, the home of what has been called the most beautiful and
aristocratic drink in the world. It is a suitably beautiful and aristocratic
setting—the house on top of a small hill overlooking a lawn like a
billiard table, a park, a lake with a central fountain, rows of gigantic
weeping willows. And, as befits this most eminent of châteaux, a
twenty-piece orchestra to greet the runners with some musical
encouragement.