Life Embitters (29 page)

In Calais, so they say, there is nothing much to see. Even so, I managed to spend my time tolerably well. Opposite the Museum, on the Place d’Armes, was a restaurant run by Belgian Georges, where one ate well. Georges was over fifty, full of gout, small and round, pale, with a lovely, shiny baldpate, two small, round eyes, and a white, curly mustache. He always dressed in black, in rather an old-fashioned formal way and he made a strong impression from the very first. Once you’d made his acquaintance and seen him in action, he turned out to be a really strong character. He was
the greatest, most inscrutable lazybones who had found a way to appear to be always hard at work. He snorted snuff and whenever he indulged this anachronistic, ecclesiastical vice, as he took out his box, he seemed to be taking the most decisive step in his life. He ran the restaurant with his eyes. He ate, drank, and played cards as if he couldn’t care less and was sublimely unaffected. When he talked, he never went beyond the vaguest, most porous generalizations, but knew how to contort his lips in pain as heroes do and as artists have immortalized. Like a man of great stature, he ignored praise or censure. His temperament meant that he enjoyed a reputation in Calais as an excellent citizen and an exemplary paterfamilias.

In that period my idleness allowed me to ruminate at length on the virtues of men and other enigmas of social life. As I reflected on the enviable situation of the restaurant owner I discovered that his establishment has a second mysterious and secret door – one of those doors in a provincial capital through which passes a whole underground life of romance. In France habits are peaceful and organized, and Georges, a guaranteed accomplice and indispensable companion to the community’s emancipated, hedonistic elements, was always regarded by the more inhibited, crusty folk with considerable envy. I’ve heard it said that pleasure is a matter of vitality and that’s why everyone wants what he doesn’t have. Austere people dream of delightfully voluptuous pleasures. Conversely, rakes hanker after pinkish lilies, fleeting melodies, and deeds of stern contrition. Georges was the passive, orderly, rather blank sort. In his restaurant he seemed, on the surface, to have only one task: to look the other way, to let others labor. He was thus held to be a virtuous man. His virtues were weighed on those curious scales I referred to. His lethargy and indifference, in a way, certified him as an easy-going fellow. I’m not a man for prophecies or guesses. However, my heart tells me that Georges’ virtues have increased over the years and
that his reputation has thus strengthened and been extended. Virtue has a tendency to accumulate, like capital, though some childish minds deem that to be a provocation.

The restaurant’s small terrace – or its windows if it rained – had lovely views. Calais’ Place d’Armes, like many old squares in northern cities, is a delight. The tall, thin houses topped by the pointed gables of black-lined slate roofs, their façades dotted by small, irregular, impish windows, begrimed by dripping rain or snow, are cheeky, lively, and unpretentious. Not one house is straight or perfect; they lean on one another and the lightest, most delicate shades of blue, red, and green adorn their walls. An unhinged commercial hoarding hangs down over the façades. Shops, cafés, and taverns surround the square, and in the misty light, the zinc-topped tables glow vaguely. It is all very airy, quirky, and a little out-of-kilter, and that only served to emphasize the ancient, somber, and severe Town Hall, an unmistakable eighteenth-century palace, a sooty chamois-colored stone edifice, its heavy lines ornate with spirals and fleurs-de-lys, with splendid attics and a flourishing gray tower. Overhanging the building, like a sticker, was the tower of the old lighthouse, a slapdash building covered in poorly fixed tiles, topped by a glass dome like a murky dead eye, crowned by a green tin lid.

As a customer at the restaurant I became aware of something that gave me much food for thought. My God, it was really strange! I became aware of the hatred the citizens of Calais felt towards the famous group sculpture by Rodin that recalls the heroic feats of the six burghers of the town who the English martyred and thus immortalized. “The Burghers of Calais” are on the Place d’Armes in Calais, opposite the ancient Town Hall. I witnessed various outspoken expressions of this aesthetic rage and can say that I have seen that historic group of burghers under a pile of rubbish and excrement.
I could also verify that such uncontrolled defiling wasn’t met by angry protests from the community. On the contrary. Most people enjoyed that light, delicious flush that comes when revenge is wrought. Rodin’s sculpture – considered a sublime work of art in Paris and London – is in Calais the popular butt of implacable, relentless criticism. If they could, in the name of principles they feel completely justified, the local citizenry would smash the bronze statues that, there’s no harm in mentioning, are being given a thin layer of green by the weather conditions.

However, my sense of truth compels me to reveal that not everyone shared these general feelings towards Rodin’s bronzes. A very peculiar Englishman, by the name of Mr Thomson, came to the restaurant; he was reputed to be very fond of playing roulette and introduced himself as a reporter on holiday from London’s
Matrimonial Post
. The unruly opposition to the work of art floating over the town made Mr Thomson’s heart flutter and pound. Between one roulette session and the next he would drop into the restaurant and from behind a thick, scented Amer Picon would talk about what he called the general lack of civility with M Quatrecases, a provincial artist of some stamp and the author of various monuments to the war dead and some “Fishy Flowers” that created a perfectly justified furor in the salon.

Their conversation was laced with a series of adjectives destined to capture the inferior nature of the instincts of the populace. On days when his luck betrayed him at roulette, Mr Thomson was particularly outspoken on that issue. M Quatrecases followed him down that path of rabid devastation. A ravenous local journalist who wore lilac socks, though he was destined to have a brilliant career, in a text that was difficult to read and lexically copious and published by the town newspaper, that never sold, compared their conversations to the most enlightening dialogues ever recorded in history.
Nonetheless, apart from these characters, I heard nobody else come to the defense of the outraged artist and work. A very few listened in for a moment and then went their way with a smile on their lips. I learned more in Calais about the position of art in this world than from my long and onerous university and independent studies.

The most popular figure in the restaurant was a Greek gentleman with a sizable nose, an agent for a trucking firm. It was obvious from his lurid, showy style of dress that he was a gentleman with vulgar, raw instincts. He was, moreover, an enthusiastic eater of frogs. These monstrous amphibians were probably the most important thing in his world, at least as far as appearances went.

The Greek was rich and educated. He spoke excellent English and was a Mr Panaiotis. Mr Thomson was a great friend of his even though the Greek had repeatedly stated that Rodin’s sculpture couldn’t stand comparison with any fourth-rate antique sculpture from his country: the Venus de Milo, for example, he would add. Mr Thomson would have tolerated this opinion from nobody else but he treated it with the utmost respect from the lips of the Hellene.

Mr Thomson respected him for something else too: the frogs that he ate. In my scale of values I can perfectly understand that the French and the Germans devour this kind of frog. I’d never been able to credit that the English and the Greeks could eat them. I reckon that frogs can slip down the gullets of certain races while being absolutely incompatible with others. That gentleman not only swallowed them, but used every weapon from the armory of his dialectics and apologetics to defend this inclination of his. Averse to speaking seriously about serious things – he constantly tried to speak frivolously about everything under the sun – when this subject cropped up, he underwent a radical transformation. When he wanted to
proselytize, as he was learned, had the gift of the gab, and dressed in a vulgar, showy fashion, people would listen to him. I don’t mean to infer that his descriptions lacked vigor and warmth and that he wasn’t a master of culinary realism, but I personally felt my previously rigid objections to these little beasts harden even more the greater succulence he lent to his praise. However, most people listened with watering mouths, with eyes brimming with life like Teniers’ characters when sitting at the table. Understanding these radical contradictions is no easy matter. Yes, when one is young, it is difficult to grasp that the things of this world are relative and unstable. Nevertheless, it is a fact that everything is always up in the air and what’s true in Figueres is almost always a fib in Perpignan. I did try them one day, and was left speechless with a sour taste in my mouth. And today I still like the way the voices of young people make my eyes sting. However, in these situations, when I think of the Greek’s culinary rhapsodies, I feel their unpleasant repercussions churning in my stomach and watch in horror as the descendent of Socrates eats frogs that are still stirring, surrounded by a circle of lips being licked.

The restaurant had a number of customers of the other sex and it was in that context that I made the acquaintance of Mlle Marta Dubois, a charming, rather limp individual, of whom I have fond memories. She was eighteen, had a broad forehead, still blue eyes, and was very tall, with long, supple limbs that moved graciously. I have always liked young ladies who were a touch ethereal, and Marta’s adolescent body was maybe a little too long. As a southerner, I thought she seemed rather dull on the surface. She sometimes seemed to view things with an absent, couldn’t-care-less air, as if she were weary of the world. The flight of a swallow could make her blink. An unexpected noise made her hold her breath. The most hackneyed tune broke her legs and her heart. She said little, and in a distant, mute tone. She acted
like an innocent country girl, worn down by the city’s turmoil. She was a pious soul who found herself in the whirlpool of life because the designs of Providence are obscure and inscrutable.

“Mademoiselle,” I told her one day, “you look as if you have rather tired of human passion …”

She looked at me enigmatically, with a slightly ironic, bitter expression.

“You too …?” she whispered.

“You too, what?”

“Are you too in the business of redeeming young ladies?”

“Not at all! I have no experience in that quarter. I wouldn’t know where to start. In any case, it must be a very pleasant activity given the large number of people who try their hand, no doubt driven by heartfelt impulses …”

She made no comment. That was her natural state: no comment was required. It gave her an elegiac, twilight air. Her long body seemed charmingly sinuous behind a haze of sad vagueness – it blended wonderfully, it has to be said, with the drowsiness that takes over many small French cafés in the mid-afternoon.

Another curious trait that girl displayed was that she always seemed at a loss. She seemed to be floating in the air. She was permanently and systematically passive. Wherever I used to meet her, whether in the Café du Nord opposite the station, or the Café du Commerce, the spot favored by the city’s rowdy, sporting youth, she always seemed to be in a totally passive state. She listened to people – perhaps with a yawn; if anyone spoke to her, she’d respond in monosyllables, she never expressed emphatically one reaction or another. Perhaps she became slightly more spirited when it was time for evening aperitifs in M Georges’ small restaurant. Panaiotis or Thomson the Englishman usually invited her. Marta visibly showed her respect for the Greek whose frivolity and sense of humor were rather tiresome. That
wasn’t the case with Mr Thomson. Marta tended to take almost no notice of him: conversely, the Englishman always seemed to hold her in high regard.

After five or six trips to Calais – it was summertime and my courses had tailed off, and London, now invaded by old ladies in mauve and lilac dresses, seemed like a cage full of strange birds – I noticed that Marta was always accompanied by complete strangers with whom she tried passively to strike up a conversation. They were usually peculiar people – some were frankly eccentric – who seemed to have just landed in town and to be unable to get their bearings. When I bumped into her in such circumstances, she’d greet me with an imperceptible nod, making it clear that frankly she didn’t want me to go near her. One evening at dusk I saw her on a bench in the sickly, brine-ravaged gardens that surround the Calais lighthouse seated between two quite elderly gentlemen who looked English (Marta had an excellent grasp of English). She sat there, as always, not saying a word, listening, passively attentive. The two men spoke most volubly. Evidently, the place – a favorite for loving couples – is very isolated. When twilight faded, the lighthouse lit up at the top of its white cylindrical tower and the gardens were bathed in a milky light.

Her comings and goings notwithstanding, one day I did manage to invite her to dinner. I found that young lady’s company most agreeable, precisely because it was so light and imperceptible – because she never got on your nerves. It’s a demonstrable fact that people are apt to get on one another’s nerves. It is most likely that this tendency to poke our noses where they’re not wanted is why people find it hard to get on. I have never taken it too far. And neither have I allowed people to probe my affairs too closely. I like to be with people who can remain silent for a quarter of an hour, looking at the clouds or simply smoking. These quiet pauses can bring people together much more than the usual endless – and often poisonous – discussions.
Marta was a passive, silent type – like some wondrous vegetable matter. She was as blank and still as a bunch of roses in a vase by your side.

Marta knew a bistro that served unpretentious country cooking on the Rue des Maréchaux – a very long, straight street that’s the main arterial road through the modern part of town. We went there for dinner. They gave us a
boeuf bourguignon
that was quite spectacular. The beef displayed a generous grandeur from times of yore on an imperceptible bed of aromatic herbs. The gravy was thick and deep with divinely subtle eddies. The binding, made by a master’s hand, was just right and welcoming on the palate. We washed that richness down with a Beaujolais that was anonymous, like all sublime things. We then ate a cheese that had the same effect on me as if my legs had been reinvigorated. Cheese, Roquefort, if at all possible, enlightened by red wine, is a crucial element that triggers the greatest curiosity, and that evening I’d have gladly reveled in the most high-flown dialogue. I felt nostalgia for my beloved friends in Montparnasse. An excellent filter coffee, accompanied by several glasses of Calvados, rounded off the meal. In France, that seems so cold and monotone on the outside, the fine, exquisite things of life are all provincial, if not local.