The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner (12 page)

For a man in his forties the ‘wigman’ is slim and agile, but the wig dupes few; its jet-blackness clashing with its wearer’s anaemic complexion. The wigman specialises in knocking his adversary’s boules to a safe non-point scoring distance from the jack. He also has a penchant for directing the jack towards the trunks of trees and their surrounding roots, thereby diluting the game’s skill factor. Above the trees’ knobbly bases, the bark has patches coloured white by the esplanade’s dust and earth. We derive a simple pleasure from watching the dust lift into the limpid air as a result of a boule’s emphatic descent. The bellyman copes with any sort of terrain; little troubling the lucid swing of his muscular arm. It has an air of roughness about it, a naturalness that is raw and unpretentious. There is also his laugh, a deep-throated explosion of goodwill. And accompanying cries of
merde
and
putain
, expletives rarely prompted by
self-error
. More likely a partner has strayed with a boule.

Rue Dorée is one of Nîmes’ quieter streets that seems permanently in shadow. Halfway along it is a small English centre where a middle-aged American woman sells teaching materials and some fiction. I buy a Penguin copy of
The Red and the Black
by Stendhal and become unhealthily obsessed by its central character, Julien Sorel, who has a young man’s ambition to become successful in the aristocratic society of 1830s France. Julien’s change of appearance, alternating between the uniform of the army and the church, between the red and the black, is symbolic of the conflict in his personality
between truthfulness and pretence. It’s probably due to a diet of cannabis, wine and almond croissants, but reading the book gives rise to some pretty deluded ideas. A recurring one is to join the Foreign Legion. I don’t even need to run off to do it because there is an Infantry Regiment based in Nîmes. Marmite is sceptical and says he can’t see me in the uniform. He is soon sharing a studio flat with another ‘artist’ at the school. I decline an offer to flat share since I like the sense of impermanence that the hostel gives me; an illusion of unplanned adventure. It also provides a good cheap meal in the evening. We still meet regularly in the gardens. Marmite starts to talk of art instead of philosophy. His fellow students’ work is too abstract for my taste but I keep a diplomatic silence. There is endless talk about Pierre’s tank sculptures that are exciting the lecturers. I am invited to parties where Marmite and I are something of a novelty. Marmite’s promiscuous nature (both social and sexual) is given free reign. I don’t share his success with the girls, although Sandrine and her friends are tolerant of my tentative efforts to communicate in French. When my timidity isn’t taken for rudeness, I enjoy the evenings spent at the Salon Vert. The students soon allow me to park the Princess in the grounds of the art school; the caretaker doesn’t seem to mind. Marmite and I go for occasional trips to the sea, taking water with us for when the car inevitably overheats. These trips are meant to be hangover cures. I blame Marmite for his fixation with Byron.

I walk alongside the canals populated by swans and ducks. Swimming to avoid blooms of algae, these balls of living thread give purpose to the birds’ movements. They make me think about my current lack of direction. It is weeks since I have been book hunting. Marmite has an idea. To put up an ad – ‘We buy English books/On achete livres en anglais’ – in the Le Sémaphore cinema where English films are regularly shown
en version originale
. There is no immediate response but the initiative serves to assuage the guilt arising from a Protestant work ethic that lingers despite attempts to kill it off.

Minutes before arriving at the boulodrome, I hear the collective hum of conversations punctuated by the clink of pastis-filled glasses. Marmite is already in position, spliff in hand, doing a convincing impression of Withnail. He points out the ‘young pretender’. Too young as yet to convincingly pretend, his skills might one day mount a credible challenge to the bellyman. He already has the measure of the wigman who resorts to his chief spoiling tactic by putting the jack in the vicinity of the trees. This does not unsettle the young pretender now he has hit form. But the young pretender lacks consistency and Marmite questions his temperament. A silver ring in his left ear glints in the sun, catching the eye as does the young man’s easiness of carriage and gesture. Endowed with charisma, he has a cigarette perpetually on the go. It releases into the fresh but warming days of April, plumes of pungent Gitane smoke.

On most days the ‘flashman’ is the fourth member. On late Tuesdays and even later Thursdays, however, a thin man, with
a gentle arm action, participates by default, stepping into the bellyman’s illustrious corridor of play. There is a price to pay for his flashiness, namely a job, one requiring his attendance elsewhere. It enables him to arrive at place Picasso in a Porsche, out from which he swaggers, clad in Armani. When present at the boulodrome, he lacks nothing in dedication. His costly garb captures the dirt and dust when he curls himself up into a human ball. A rapid upright movement then brings about the release of the boule. His skills, though considerable, are not given sufficient time to be honed. Before departing for work the ‘flashman’ gives the boules a thorough clean before attending to his own appearance. He keeps a tin of brown shoe polish in the boot of the Porsche.

It is a most civilised way of whiling away an afternoon; an indulgence really, like the mixing of Pernod and water. We are utterly seduced by this ambience of lazy talk and cigarettes. This state of torpor, it lasts until the jack bounces unexpectedly close to the bank of spectators. A melodramatic rush of activity then ensues; people shuffling back, others having to extricate themselves from chairs. The boules also, on occasion, whizz through the air like cannons. Missing their target (a boule needing to be dislodged), they then scatter spectators in all directions.

The Mairie and everyone at the art school are getting worked up about the imminent arrival of Julian Schnabel. New York’s high priest of abstract art will be making an appearance at the Musee des Beaux-Arts for the
vernisage
. Marmite explains that this is like a private preview-cum-party to mark the start of an art exhibition. He gives me an invitation.

What first strikes me about the paintings are their huge
size (twenty-two-foot-square paintings) and all the crucifixes on show. I don’t really get it. Marmite is more analytical and says Schnabel’s success is a natural evolution of the art scene, as predicted by Tom Wolfe’s
The Painted Word
, a book Marmite finds in the English centre. It concludes that modern art has become as academic and as cliquey as the salon painting against which it first rebelled. Marmite isn’t wholeheartedly in agreement. He, after all, has to make his way in this world.

I fail to decipher the Schnabel art on show, finding it painful, almost, to behold. There is adequate compensation though: delicious canapés and champagne, courtesy of the Mairie’s largesse. I don’t hang around long enough to catch a glimpse of Schnabel but I do get to meet an art student called Anne.

The exhibition ends three weeks later but three of Schnabel’s works are left to grace the walls of the Maison Carrée, a well preserved temple built in the first century bc and dedicated to Lucius and Caius Caesar, grandsons of the Emperor. This is an irritant to us because every time we walk back to Marmite’s flat after a pétanque session, we pass the temple and are reminded of the Emperor’s new clothes inside.

Marmite has begun sketching the boules players. We keenly observe their idiosyncracies. The bellyman displays fewer than the others, preferring to spend as little time as possible in sizing up his throw. When presented with a throw requiring a fine judgement, he plucks from his back pocket a handkerchief into which he noiselessly blows his fat nose. Slow in settling down to throw, the wigman tends to pace up and down the corridor of play before remarking the throwing circle by scraping his shoes hard and repeatedly into the ground. After badly misjudging a throw he is inclined to go through the
motions with an imaginary boule, rectifying the error in his mind if not in reality. In spite of his tender years, the young pretender has already acquired several habits; energetically hitching up his jeans in a general air of self-exhortation to perform well, then banging the ground with the boules before knocking them against each other as though putting them through a test of loyalty. The flashman, we joyfully note, likes to juggle with his.

The largest crowd gathers for the bellyman. But other pétanque players, despite carrying less esteem, also have their followers. The standard of play is variable, especially when it is friendship, as opposed to ability or generation that binds the participants together in competition. Age has modified the stance of some competitors. For those with stiffened arthritic backs, magnets, discreetly carried in pockets, are lowered on elastic to retrieve the boules. Marmite wonders if a good toke on his joint might further alleviate their discomfort.

With the afternoon’s games finally on the wane, I part company with Marmite to see how the tadpoles are faring. Eminently watchable, their food attacks are carnivorous and candid. Impatient children, seeking for proof of the promised transmogrification, don’t have long to wait. Limbs appear, tails shrink and a new creature is formed.

It happens while Anne and I are making plans to leave Nîmes. Marmite witnesses it before me. Everyone finds it hard to believe. The bellyman losing his touch? Concentration knots his facial features into an expression of unwavering determination. But his adversaries, in sensing unprecedented fallibility, gang up. The wigman scores victories without placing the jack in the bumpier regions. The young pretender is less inhibited. The flashman postpones his time of departure for
work. They become aware of the bellyman’s struggle to hold his own when the jack is thrown out far from their feet, a tactic to put uncertainty into his mind.

I can’t help but feel bad for the bellyman but Marmite is largely indifferent to his declining talent. The chirpy
self-assurance
is going. Ripples of both empathy and discontentment run among supporters who have basked in his parochial glory. Some have even won money by betting on him. He experiments with his action, not crouching so low to the ground. But then his belly becomes a hindrance rather than a help – no longer helping to achieve an equilibrium of body. This new posture doesn’t lend itself to boules-throwing exactitude. In releasing the boule it is obvious that he is off balance, at risk even of toppling over to complete the humiliation. In cursing the boules, he tosses them higher into the air but altering their trajectory fails to work. Confusion and resentment widen the furrows upon his brow, along which run large beads of sweat. He employs acts of superstition that have previously ended barren spells. He rubs a yellow rag frenziedly against his hip. His nose is blown hard while he prolongs the time spent in terrain assessment, marking and remarking the grit in the throwing circle. He even appears to reduce his pastis intake. His mistakes cause increasing embarrassment. His rare victories are now due more to opponent error.

A man purporting to clear houses has phoned regarding the advertisement in the Le Sémaphore cinema. Marmite has taken the message, which is, broadly, that the man has a large number of English books that he wants rid of at a price to be established. I phone the man from Anne’s flat and it turns out that the books are in Alès, a town lying lies 25 miles north-west
of Nîmes, on the left bank of the Gardon River. At the risk of appearing too keen, I fix up a meeting for the following day. He gives me directions to a car park near to the town’s centre.

I spot a white Renault Trafic van and pull up alongside. A man in his fifties jumps out at the sight of the Princess with its English plates. He wastes no time in yanking open the back doors to his van. The sight of hundreds of books greets me. It is often the case, upon being called out to inspect a library for sale, that the books will be all good or all bad. Within seconds I know that it hasn’t been a wasted trip. Now I need to enter negotiating mode. I make a show of counting the books as my mind does the calculations. I see promising titles. How now to convey an impression of insouciance? You tend to do your best negotiating when you genuinely are prepared to walk away from the deal. But it’s difficult to feign that frame of mind. Neither of us is keen to suggest a figure. I say, rather dishonestly, that as a general lot they’re okay while adding, honestly, that I can’t see any really rare items. ‘
Allez cinq cent francs
,’ suggests the man. I nod, trying to keep a serious face.

The Austin Princess isn’t the most stylish of vehicles but it has good cabin space that I put to full use. I love the smell and the jumbled piles of all these books; vast quantities of American Penguins and Vintage paperbacks, many of which have the name and address of their former owner stamped on the inside cover. Going by past experience, it won’t hinder the selling of them.

The Princess is overheating again but it gets me and the books back to Nîmes. Lacking confidence to approach a garage, I can’t continue to patch up its radiator. So the Princess ends its days in the grounds of the art school where the students make a sculpture out of it. Marmite keeps me informed but
after completing his ‘academic’ year, we lose touch. We both stop the drinking; Marmite no longer convinced of alcohol’s incantatory powers to produce good art.

Before leaving Nîmes, I visit the Jardin de la Fontaine one last time with Anne. I show her the pond where the tadpoles are moving with less hectic abandon; their tails having all but disappeared. May is warming the days. We pass by the boulodrome. I haven’t witnessed the tadpoles’s complete metamorphosis but in place Picasso there is a definite indicator of time passing. Still venting joy or frustration in his inimitable fashion, a rotund and familiar figure is engaged in a game of boules with a set of players I don’t recognise.