Life: A User's Manual (10 page)

MASONRY KIT
. Contains 1 metal spirit level, with 3 chambers × 50mm; 10” round-end trowel; 9” square-end trowel; 8” diamond trowel; masonry chisel; bricklayer’s peg; stiff metal brush. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

HOME ELECTRICIAN’S KIT
. Set comprises wire cutter and stripper, insulated radio pliers, various fuses and fuse wire, mains tester, screwdriver and 3 rolls of insulating tape. Contained in PVC wallet. Continuity tester requires 1 × R65 battery. Fully guaranteed (except battery) 1 yr.

TWENTY-TWO PIECE WOODWORKING KIT
. Comprises handsaw; tenon saw; carpenter’s hammer; pliers; tweezers; 3 wood chisels, 8, 10 and 15mm; rabbet; 2 screwdrivers. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

PLUMBER’S KIT
. A metal tool box 16″ × 9″ × 5″ containing: blowlamp set with automatic ignition (requires cartridge) with plumber’s extra-fine flame burner, 5 all-metal solder sticks, 1 × 250mm chrome-vanadium wrench, 1 pipe-cutter for apertures from 0 to 30mm, 1 pipe-grip 0/25mm, 1 plumbing-in tap set. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

MOTOR MECHANIC’S TOOL KIT
. Comprises: folding crossbar spanner; windscreen scraper; set of 9 socket spanners 4/4; set of 6 flat spanners from 6 × 7 to 16 × 17mm; eight-blade feeler gauge; pocket lamp with battery; oilcan; insulated combination pliers; all-purpose pliers; chrome Allen key; spark plug brushes; set of 4 screwdrivers; chrome-plated hammer; spark plug spanner with cranking handle; file for contact points; set of magneto spanners; zinc-coated pin-drift; soft duster; grease gun; foot pump; hazard warning triangle; fire extinguisher; hydraulic jack; pressure gauge 0/3 bars; battery acid tester; antifreeze gauge; revolving handlamp with white lens and detachable red lens. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

FIRST AID KIT
. Contains peroxide flask with 10 calibrations; surgical spirit flask; 2 large adhesive plasters; 4 small adhesive plasters; 1 splinter tweezers; a pair of scissors; bottle of tincture of iodine; 6 absorbent lint dressings, 2 rolls of lint, 2 rolls of crepe; tourniquet; tape measure; chrome metal torch with battery and bulb; marking chalk; five packs of disinfectant swabs; one pack of face fresheners; a tube of safety pins; an empty tube for pills; five absorbent cotton swabs; 3 pairs of plastic disposable gloves;
A RUBBER MOUTH-TO-MOUTH RESUSCITATION TUBE
with instruction leaflet. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

24 PIECE “GREEN IVY” PICNIC SET
. Luxury model for six place settings, comprising one polyethylene bucket with dish lid, 1 salad bowl with clip-on lid, 6 flat plates; 6 soup plates; hermetic foodbox; jug; egg-box; 6 goblets, 6 cups, 6 cutlery settings (knife, fork, soup spoon). With
FREE
salt and pepper shakers. Dimensions 42 × 31 × 24cm. Total weight 10lbs. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

CLIMBING FRAME
. 11′, 8 bars with fittings. Tubular steel, stove-enamelled gloss finish in green. Main beam dia. 80mm, internal verticals dia. 40mm, external verticals dia. 35mm. Lgth. 12′, wdth. 8′, max. displacement 19′. Fixtures attached by patent bolt device. Attachments: 2 swings, 1 trapeze with polypropylene ropes, dia. 12mm; hemp climbing rope dia. 22mm; polypropylene rope ladder dia. 12mm. Other accessories by special order: knotted rope, set of rings, single/double balancelle. Supplied with full assembly instructions and fixing pins. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

BUSINESS FOLDER
. “Leather-look” vinyl with metal corners. Comprising two document pockets, A4 pad and pen. Size 12½″ × 9¾″. Fully guaranteed 1 yr.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

In the Boiler Room, 1

A MAN IS lying flat on his stomach on the top of the boiler which provides heat to the whole building. He is about forty; he doesn’t look like a workman, but more like an engineer or gas-board inspector; he’s not wearing working clothes, but a lounge suit, a spotted tie, and a sky-blue tergal shirt. He has protected his head by knotting over it a red handkerchief, looking vaguely like a cardinal’s zucchetto. With a small piece of chamois leather he wipes a little cylindrical part having a ribbed tube to one side and a spring-loaded flap to the other. Beside him, on a piece of newspaper on which some of the headlines, insets, and excerpts can be read

Who destroyed my people’s peace and the country’s government which is why

THE BAND of the 2nd N. African Regiment will perform this afternoon at the Garden

lie other parts: bolts, screws, washers and clamps, rivets, spindles, and some tools. On the front of the boiler there is a round nameplate bearing the inscription RICHARDT & SECHER above a stylised diamond.

The central heating is a relatively recent installation. Whilst the Gratiolets remained majority owners in the co-ownership they were forcefully opposed to what they considered to be an unnecessary expense, since they heated their flat, like almost all Parisians at that time, by wood- or coal-burning stoves or open fireplaces. It was only in the early sixties, when Olivier Gratiolet sold Rorschach virtually all his remaining shares, that the works were approved and carried out, at the same time, as it happened, as a complete renewal of the roof and a costly stone-cleaning exercise required by a recent law (for which André Malraux would be remembered), all of which – and on top of it there was the wholesale interior conversion of Rorschach’s duplex, and of Madame Moreau’s apartment – transformed the entire building for nearly a year into a dirty, noisy building site.

The Gratiolets’ story begins more or less like the tale of Puss-in-Boots but ends much less happily: neither the one who had almost everything nor those who got almost nothing ended up with much. Juste Gratiolet had grown rich in the wood supply and sales business – he invented, in particular, a grooving machine still used in many floorboard factories – and when he died, in 1917, his four surviving children shared his fortune in the manner stipulated in their father’s will. The estate consisted of a block of flats – the one we have been dealing with from the start – farmland in Berry given over one part to cereal crops, one part to cattle, and one part to forestry, a hefty slice of shares in the Upper Boubandjida Mining Co. (Cameroon), and four large canvases by the Breton landscape and animal painter Le Meriadech’, who was very highly rated at that time. As a result, the eldest, Emile, got the building, Gérard inherited the farm, Ferdinand got the shares, and Hélène, the only daughter, had the paintings.

Straightaway, Hélène, who some years earlier had married her dancing teacher – a man by the name of Antoine Brodin – tried to dispute the legacy, but counsel’s opinion was not favourable. It was pointed out to her, in the first place, that by leaving her with works of art her father had acted first and foremost with a view to relieving her of the burdens and responsibilities which the management of a block of flats, an agricultural estate, or a portfolio of African shares would have put upon her, and moreover, in the second place, that it would be difficult if not impossible to demonstrate that the division had been inequitable, since four canvases by a painter at the height of his fame were worth at least as much as a parcel of shares in a mine that had not even begun to produce and maybe never would.

Hélène sold the paintings for 60,000 francs, an exorbitant sum for the period if you think of the discredit Le Meriadech’ fell into a few years later (and from which he is nowadays coming back into notice). With this little nest egg she and her husband emigrated to the United States. They became professional gamblers, organised clandestine dice games sometimes lasting a whole week or more on night trains and in village bars. On 11 September 1935, at dawn, Antoine Brodin was murdered; three rowdies he’d refused to let into his gaming hall two days before took him off to a deserted quarry at Jemima Creek, thirty miles from Pensacola (Fla), and beat him to death with sticks. Hélène returned to France a few weeks later. Her nephew François, who had inherited the building on the death of Emile one year before, allowed her to use a two-roomed flat on the sixth floor, next to Dr Dinteville’s. There she lived, a sobered, fearful, retiring woman, until her death in nineteen forty-seven.

For the seventeen years of his ownership, Emile managed the building carefully and competently, and undertook various pieces of modernisation, in particular putting in a lift in 1925. But the feeling which he had of being sole beneficiary of the inheritance, and of having done wrong by his brothers and sister by his insistence on respecting his father’s last wishes, led him to feel responsible for them, so much so that he wanted to run their affairs for them. Such scruples sowed the seed of the eldest’s undoing.

Gérard, the second son, managed his farm business more or less adequately. But Ferdinand, the third, ran into serious trouble. The Upper Boubandjida Mining Co. (Cameroon), of which he’d become a relatively major shareholder, had been set up some ten years before with the aim of prospecting for and then extracting the rich deposits of tin discovered by three Dutch geologists attached to the Zwindeyn Mission. There had been several preliminary expeditions in succession, reporting back with discouraging results: some confirmed the presence of substantial veins of cassiterite but expressed concern about mining conditions and especially transport; others claimed that the ore was too poor to warrant extraction, since the cost price would necessarily be too high; yet others maintained that the samples that had been taken contained no trace of tin, but on the other hand actually held abundant quantities of bauxite, iron, manganese, copper, gold, diamonds, and phosphates.

Though mostly pessimistic, these contradictory surveys in no way deterred the Company from trading its shares actively on the Stock Exchange and increasing its capital annually by a new issue. In 1920, the Upper Boubandjida Mining Co. (Cameroon) had amassed nearly twenty million francs subscribed by seven thousand five hundred shareholders, and on its Board of Directors sat three former ministers of state, eight bankers, and eleven industrialists. That year, at an initially riotous but in the end enthusiastic shareholders’ meeting, the decision was reached unanimously to call a halt to these useless preliminaries and to go ahead immediately with mining the ore, whatever it was.

Ferdinand was a trained civil engineer and managed to get appointed site controller. On 8 May 1923, he reached Garoua and undertook the ascent of the upper reaches of the Boubandjida as far as the high plateaux of Adamawa with five hundred locally recruited hands, eleven and a half tons of equipment, and twenty-seven management staff of European origin.

Building the foundations and cutting the drifts turned out to be difficult; work was delayed by rain, which fell every day, causing the river to burst its banks in an irregular and unpredictable way, but on average with sufficient force on each occasion to wash out everything that had been cut or embanked so far.

After two years Ferdinand Gratiolet caught the fevers and had to be repatriated. He was inwardly convinced that mining the tin of the Upper Boubandjida would never be economically viable. On the other hand, he’d seen in the lands he’d crossed great quantities of animals of all species and varieties, and that gave him the idea of going into the skin and fur trade. Scarcely out of convalescence, he sold his shares and set up a company for the import of animal skins, furs, horns, and exotic carapaces, which quickly specialised in furnishings: at that time the fashion was for fur bedside rugs, for cane furniture upholstered in zorille, antelope, giraffe, leopard, or zebra hide: a small deal dresser with buffalo-hide decorations sold easily for 1,200 francs, and a Tortosi vanity set in a trionix shell had been auctioned up to 38,295 francs at the Drouot Sales Room!