The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner (11 page)

The air is cold but invigorating. I’m staying with my brother and his Czech girlfriend who live here. I knew that Czechs were big on beer but their penchant for ice cream has come as a surprise.

Tom and Katka give me a potted tour of the city before taking me to the Globe Bookstore. It exudes a welcoming atmosphere (all the buildings in this city seem to have a surplus of heat) and they serve hot food as well as cakes. I note the international newspapers and permit myself a quick scan of the books whose prices are higher than I expected. A friend tells me of someone who buys second-hand books in bulk from charity book depots to sell to shops throughout Europe. As you head east the prices increase.

Drinking strong coffee, we overhear a good-natured argument over Czechoslovakian literature. A group of Americans debate whether either Franz Kafka or Milan Kundera can be considered as Czech writers. Neither author wrote in Czech, they contend, before an irritated Czech pipes up to question their hegemony of opinion.

We leave the Globe and head out for more traditional tourist destinations. I have a fleeting impression that all in Prague is bars and bookshops. The atmosphere is suitably bohemian.

Agde is a town on the Herault river about a mile inland from the Mediterranean, to the south-west of the Etang de Thau. It is sometimes known as ‘The Black Pearl of the Mediterranean’ because of the dark colour of the volcanic rock used in many of its buildings. In one of the town’s winding, narrow streets is a garage full of English books. They are all for sale, belonging to a former diplomat, or so I am told by Gerald, a member of Agde’s ex-pat community, who has tipped me off. Gerald has also hinted at the man’s mysterious past.

After I rendezvous with Gerald in Agde, he takes me to a small house where I am introduced to an elegant man in his eighties called John. Before talking business, I am invited to sit in the kitchen where Gerald is instructed to serve us all a glass of chilled red wine. It is a good antidote to the heat of an Agde summer. John is proud of, and keen to share, his recent discovery of keeping red wine in the fridge. He seems on friendly terms with Gerald who is enjoying his drink. They both enjoy each other’s company.

Too frail to accompany me to the garage, John leaves me alone to gauge his library, which consists, in the main, of the crime, thriller and spy genres. At a rough count, there are more than a thousand.

I return to the kitchen where he is more than happy to accept an offer of 3000 francs. ‘Is that too much?’ he asks. I find myself shaking my head. ‘No. No. It’s fair.’ What’s happening to my negotiating skills? Am I being hypnotised by a diplomat’s charm?

Gerald kindly helps me load this massive library of paperbacks into the Renault 5. It takes an age. John is amazed
when we fit all the books in. Some spill over the gear stick and into the drivers’ footwell. Among the books is a sprinkling of classics, some being novels by Dickens whom, I am informed by John, the Russians revered. While based in Moscow, John learned that the Russians considered Charles Dickens to be a chronicler of the evils of capitalism. John is ready to reminisce further but I need to be making tracks.

Driving back to Montpellier I’m feeling good. Surrounded by so many books, it reminds me of the Ales’ haul; a sea of Deightons and Le Carres rising up from the seats to obscure the view out of the back window. I find it difficult to focus. Poetry can be a dangerous thing too, it’s distracting me from the business of driving. Out of the corner of my eye, I can make out early editions of Auden and T. S. Eliot’s
The Four Quartets
in pamphlet form. At the traffic lights, a quick rummage turns up
The Poetics of Rilke
, an early translation. I catch the bemused expressions on the faces of nearby motorists.

Fighting the urge to look further, I arrive home safely. After an hour of heavy labour, the books form a jumbled pile on the sitting room floor. I love the business of rooting through them; looking out for good reads (a subjective choice, obviously) and the rarities to be sold for a handsome profit.

Catching the eye is The Fantastiks, W. S. Scott’s selection of writers (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan) of metaphysical verse. Highlighted is the poem: ‘To his Mistris going to bed’.

It is a guilt-tinged pleasure to go through someone’s collection of books; a kind of invasion of privacy. There are dedications to, and from, wives and lovers and friends. School prizes for promising compositions. Going by the books’ contents and inscriptions within, a person’s life and their interests can be loosely pieced together.

John’s copy of
The Scottish Songbook
was presented to him at Harrow. There are references in other books to time spent in Cambridge as a student. His profile wouldn’t be out of place in the milieu of Kim Philby et al. Is this why Gerald had talked of spooks?

We are on the outskirts of a park at dusk on the eastern side of Montpellier. Pink Floyd will be taking to the stage in about an hour. The crowd is making its way to the entrance of an open-air leisure centre.

Mum has come along to give moral support. Mixing with the ticket touts, we are attempting to shift ten copies of a book on Pink Floyd. A Penguin rep. has palmed off them on me as sure sellers, exploiting my enthusiasm for the band.

The books, published to coincide with the group’s The Division Bell Tour, have failed to sell in my shop; and the
concert-goers are showing a singular lack of interest in them despite of my best efforts at impersonating a cockney wide boy. We slash our prices as my desperation shows but this seems to repel any potential buyers. The English touts aren’t having any more luck. The consensus among them is that the French find their activities an alien concept, that of fly by night transactions.

It’s a relief to give up upon hearing the strains of ‘Astronomy Domine’ that signal the concert’s start. ‘Lime and limpid green, a second scene. A fight between the blue you once knew. Floating down, the sound resounds…’

Going to our car, I make out the tune ‘Money’ from
The Dark Side of the Moon
, which was one the first albums I bought. The irony is not lost on me.

It writhes in agony and I let it take the line out towards the pillar in the middle of the river. It disappears from sight. Nobody would have known that beneath that placid surface a creature is swimming in great pain. We have been unable to extricate the hook from its throat.

Eddy calls for its execution. I agree, reeling in the eel. I have Eddy’s French flick knife at the ready. The sun is shining, but the blade doesn’t glisten. Eddy wedges the eel tight against a rock with his trainer. Then I take the knife and without hesitation shove the blade into the eel’s gill opening. The flesh is soft and cuts easily. But then the knife meets more resistance. By vigorously sawing, the eel’s throat is sliced apart. My hand slips off the knife’s handle, which remains projecting out from the eel. The rock turns crimson. Eddy
watches on in morbid curiosity as I pull the knife free. The eel is still now. The wind has dropped. ‘Bloody hell,’ says Eddy. We take it to show Mike.

Out it flops with a heavy thud. The head of an eel bearing prominent blood orange eyes with coal black pupils. Rigor mortis has set in, jamming shut the beak-like mouth. The body of the eel is slow to emerge but its hugeness is quickly apparent. The stratification of colour became more distinct towards its tail; a greenish brown top which contrasts with an anaemic yellow underbelly.

We think the creature alien; an atavistic vision sliding out from a bag before our very eyes. Impeding a smooth exit are the eel’s pectoral fins which catch around the edges of the bag. Then it is fully exposed, more than three feet in length. The thickest part of its girth is the size of a man’s clenched fist.

Eddy is irritated to see me with a book in hand. It’s the
Observer’s Book of Coarse Fishing
. I soon find the eel in question. The common eel (
Anguilla anguilla
), but ours is uncommonly large.

Years later, I will buy other editions in considerably better condition. My edition as a boy would have tempted few buyers:
Wheat, Peter. Illustrated by East, Baz. Frederick Warne. 1977. Observer book no. 59. 8 colour plates, 18 b/w photos. Damp marks to bottom edge of boards and badly torn wrapper missing pieces. Muddy fingerprints on most pages.

* The
Observer
books are collectible, especially those with high numbers. I recently sold the
Observer’s Book on Paris (1st Edition 1982, Book is in v. good con., no inscriptions, marks or tears. Front and rear boards are bright and white and corners are sharp and square, spine is unfaded)
for £70.

From the top deck of the bus, I see people, with beer-induced hunger, congregating outside gaudily lit take-aways. Head against glass, I catch sight of my features coarsened somehow by the sombre reflection of them. I had wanted to discuss cosmetic surgery with my doctor but I chickened out when I saw that his nose was bigger than mine. But is my mug more ugly/interesting than ugly/plain? A passage in the
The Catcher in the Rye
draws a distinction between boys who are classically good looking and boys who are attractive in an interesting way. The book’s protagonist Holden Caulfield gets me thinking. Could I be ugly in an interesting way? I am almost the same age as Holden. My enthusiasm for the book rubs off on Eddy. We go into a bookshop to locate a copy. It’s equivalent to six Double Decker chocolate bars (complete with the accompanying Willie Rushton impressions) but Eddy buys it nonetheless. I recall the awe felt by my teenage self for how certain writers render experience into believable worlds.

Living off the proceeds from some good sales (including the Virginia Woolf), I am killing time with Marmite. We meet in the bar at the Youth Hostel. Being English and six foot five, Marmite stands out. A student at l’Ecole Supérieure des
Beaux-Arts
de Nîmes, Marmite is in between lodgings. And I am, in a sense, in between books.

We drink on average two bottles of rosé a day when we’re
not high on dope. Marmite feels this is good preparation for his work as an artist. Attendance at the art school is not compulsory so we are both able to while away our afternoons amid the marble sculptures in the Jardin de la Fontaine. Marmite has an appetite for Byron and reflecting on matters of a philosophical nature, while I have a natural tendency to daydream. Marmite is also heavily into Sartre. (I doubt you could ever say that the other way round. Once, being overtaken on the M42 by a van in the shape of giant Marmite jar, the existential gloom of being stuck on a motorway lifts suddenly.) Lounging with lizards, we observe the tourists making their way up the hill on a stone stairway to the Tour Magne. Built by Augustus in 15 BC, the Tour Magne was originally part of the ramparts encircling the city. Bathed in light at night, this ancient block of stone takes on a magical appearance. It overlooks Nîmes where there is a remarkably intact amphitheatre. These days it is the bulls of the Camargue, rather than gladiators, who face slaughter inside it. Behind a large ornate gate, the tranquil confines of the gardens are, of course, closeted from the real world. Elderly locals sit and play cards. We admire such lethargy and take our cue from them. Marmite and I rarely reach the Tour Magne; our half-hearted ascents taking us no further than a small pond fed by a tiny waterfall. At the pool’s edge is a covering of lightly splashed grass upon which we sit, and peer in.

‘I always thought of you as being into pond life,’ Marmite says. Red worms wriggle below surface-skating insects. And there are tadpoles, those black fleshy commas, that make me remember meat string dangled into the class aquarium at primary school for them to feast upon. Mason Lilly used to delight us by fishing them out to eat. He’d trained on worms
picked from the school’s sports field.

A small girl in a red dress distracts me from my reverie. In approaching the pool, she spots an inert tadpole stranded on the grassy verge. ‘
Il est mort
,’ she declares. But after dropping the tadpole in the water, she excitedly announces its resurrection. ‘
Il est vivant
.’ Her father smiles.

On most days in the gardens, we rarely make it as far as the pond. For we are becoming pétanque aficionados. Nicely stoned, we sit and watch the games that are played out in place Pablo Picasso. Pétanque is a form of boules where the aim (no pun intended) is, while standing with the feet together in a small circle, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball, red in colour, called a
cochonnet
(jack). Other objects, for more impromptu games, are also used such as car keys.

They play every day after lunch upon a triangular patch of chalky ground which is Nîmes’ designated boulodrome. Sturdy sweet chestnut branches provide shade, increasingly so, as the weeks pass, with the development of the trees’ leaves and
glove-like
fruits. Place Picasso’s elite band of players comprise the bellyman and three others, all of whom we label as potential Mr Men characters for yet more books by Roger Hargreaves.

Scarcely visible below a black beret are telltale strands of whitening hair. His mouth, in contrast, is tenderly defined, resembling a child’s, but it isn’t really his face that captures our attention. To us, he is the ‘bellyman’. For he has a fine big belly which means that his back is straighter that the others when he crouches to throw. The cockiness of his spirit is familiar and pleasing to the spectators who habitually line both sides of his corridor of play. Visiting the Jardin de la Fontaine 
for the first time, even we, as novice spectators, cannot fail to see that the bellyman is the most accomplished of players. His prize possession is that of an easy swinging left arm that delivers a boule with enviable consistency.