Read The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner Online
Authors: Bill Rees
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner (13 page)
Anne has quit art school and moved to Montpellier where I want to try my luck with the recent spoils from Alès. I take up residence in the city’s youth hostel at the bottom of rue de l’Université. We have been told about a book market held on Saturday mornings under Les Arceaux, the city’s ancient
aquaduct.
The project is to sell books there, out of the back of a van.
I’ve come down from Mount Lozère, passing near to where Robert Louis Stevenson had slept the night under the stars. Drinking a cool can of Coke on the humpbacked bridge (
Pont-de-Montvert
) that spans the swift-flowing Tarn, I feel an acute sense of well being. I’ve been following in the footsteps of the writer’s 120-mile solo hiking journey through the sparsely populated areas of the Cévennes Mountains. Travelling without a donkey (just as well given that Stevenson’s Modestine was a
stubborn beast he could never quite get the better of), I’m now confident about completing the walk despite sore, blistered feet. It’s my own fault, choosing to wear a black pair of Dr Martens that never properly fitted me. It’s been cold in the tent at night and yet hot, very hot on some days after what was a distinctly inauspicious start, landing up at the wrong Le Monastier, some 150 km off course from Le
Monastier-sur-Gazeille
, where Stevenson actually began his walk.
At one end of the bridge is the tourist office, which has for sale a bilingual (English/French) edition of
Travels with a Donkey
with an unusually detailed map of Stevenson’s route. I resist a strong impulse to buy it. My funds, after all, are running low.
On the bridge, I skim through my travel notes.
‘Wrong bloody Le Monastier. Fool. Put right by an amused lady in the village’s boulangerie, I venture, weeping with frustration, into a nearby church. Above its altar is a sign that has an implacable logic to it: ‘
La Route est Longue
’! Must now spend an unscheduled night in the train station in Le Mende, a town whose Cathedral is adorned with Gothic devil dogs carved in a permanent retch. I feel (and look) a bit like them after too much wine. – Return to La Bastide, couple of lifts, arrive in Le Monastier in heavy rain. Spot a commemorative plaque dedicated to Stevenson and his donkey. ‘LE 22 SEPTEMBER 1878, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON POUR SON VOYAGE A TRAVERS LES CEVENNES AVEC UN ANE.’ (I’ve left my Anne in Montpellier) –
Leave at noon. Punishing early ascent; ripped by thorns and a sad proliferation of barbed wire. 2.30 arrive in St
Martin de Frugeres. Exhilarating descent at 3.45. Arrive in Goudet. Blistered feet. The river, described by Stevenson as ‘an amiable stripling of a river’, is today at least 60 feet wide, teeming with dirty black trout. Icy cold to the touch. Fly fisherman tries his luck as the sun goes down behind the chateau Beaufort –
Very cold at night in the tent. Ussel 11.45 a.m. WWI memorial. Sweat stinging the eyes. Feet burning, try wearing espadrilles. Begin to revel in the surroundings but there remains, as Stevenson says, a lingering desire for a companion in travel. –
Le Bruchet 4p.m. stone walls dividing fields in which tractors and farm machinery lie abandoned. Directed to campsite, only me camping. Feels like I’m walking on hot coals – hope they cool sufficiently to allow me to continue to Pradelles. Next day, more drizzle. To the east green gently rolling hills. My water bottle swings to and thro’, metronome like and making me aware of a fairly constant stride pattern. Pass Mount Fouey – phoeey 3600 feet, scarcely aware of the height – Limp into Pradelle at 5.45 p.m. Ensconced in sleeping bag for 12 hours, recovering from tiredness brought on my climb into town. It’s damp & miserable so make it a rest day. Get out my books. Finish reading
The Bell Jar
and
Death of An Expert Witness
. In Langogne, deduce Allier to be much swollen by recent rainfall given the description of it by Stevenson. Beautiful descent into Le Cheylad L’Eveque. Plod on but climb Lozère with surprising ease.’
I look up from the notebook. Pont-de-Montvert has retained the stony granite-built traditional aspect of traditional villages in
this part of the Cévennes. Stevenson writes that it is here that the repressive Abbé de Chayla lived – the ‘Archpriest of the Cevennes’ who sparked the rebellion of the Camisards. His house in Pont-de-Montvert served as a prison for Protestants who were tortured. As Stevenson recounts, Chayla ‘closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal, and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they were deceived in their [religious beliefs].’
I look for signs of where the house might have stood before it was burnt down in July 1702 and the Abbé killed.
‘One by one, Séguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. “This,” they said, “is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.” Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away towards Frugèresmap, farther up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chayla’s
prison-house
in ruins, and his body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place.’
The subsequent Protestant rebellion was severely repressed by Louis XIV. I have a good feeling about this place that I can’t explain. It’s got nothing to do with its Protestant heritage for I have no affinity to any religion. It’s pleasant also to be close to so much water in the heat of the day. The village was built at the confluence of the Tarn, Rieumalet and Martinet rivers, beside which is situated the municipal campsite. As is usual, the facilities are good. After showering I get into conversation with a German couple who are desperate for reading material. I give them the Sylvia Plath and the P. D. James but they insist on handing me 50 francs after I decline a beer from their
camping van fridge. What is going on? This was a trip to take stock of my life but I’ve unintentionally become involved in a book deal of sorts.
I use the money to buy the bilingual edition of
Travels with a Donkey
.
(From
Clear Waters Rising
by N. Crane ‘It wasn’t until I read his journal that I realised he’d lopped off the end of this passage when he rewrote the text for TWAD. After “I travel for travel’s sake,” he added in the original: “And to write about it afterwards…”’
The book in my hand connects me to royalty, albeit tenuously. Laurie Lee’s
The Firstborn
is illustrated with black and white photographs taken by the author. He wrote it while contemplating the future of his newborn child.
A few days following my birth in October 1964, my aunt gave my mother a copy of this book.
‘This moment of meeting seemed to be a birthtime for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing I knew would be the same again. She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her.’
Recently, I removed the book from the ‘family, not for sale, I’ll murder you if you do’ shelf. It was given a description of its
condition and edition (second impression) and put on sale through Amazon.
A member of the Royal Family has just purchased the book online.
According to my database, the book is in the box labelled ‘Strawberry Hill 22’, which in another life contained Sainsbury bananas. I’ve been through boxes 21 and 23 and am now looking through box 22 for the third time. In my mind’s eye the book resembles an Everyman’s Library (Dent) small format hardback. I recheck my database. I recheck my invoices. No record of a sale. The book must be there. I make myself read out the title of every book and it is only then that I spot it. It’s a bloody paperback.
Book blindness is a condition that afflicts all sellers at one time or other.
Phil, friend and sub-editor, has presented me with a guidebook as a leaving present in which he has inscribed the following lines from a poem by Auden:
‘Look, stranger, at this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.’
Having quit my job, I am now officially destined for France. A change of clothes fills my rucksack and I have a suitcase of books either written in French or that have a connection to France. They’ve been acquired, in the main, from charity shops and, after some investigation, I’m optimistic about selling at least two of them.
Tout l’inconnu de la Casbah
by Lucienne Favre was published in 1933 by the Baconnier Frères. Recounting life in Algier’s Casbah, it is delicately illustrated by Charles Brouty, who also worked on other popular books concerning Algeria. The other banker is Norman Cameron’s 1940s translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s
A Season in Hell
, published by John Lehmann. Rimbaud himself published
Une Saison en Enfer
, an extended poem that later influenced the Surrealists.
The crossing is late at night on a ferry populated by as many staff as passengers. The crew, fresh and alert, crack jokes while the passengers, unused to the late hour, eat and drink in the canteen with an air of mournfulness. In between mouthfuls, I look out of the portholes. They aren’t actually portholes as such, but I feel that the apertures, which are just big windows really, should carry more of a nautical connotation. It is dark outside and only with difficulty can I make out the movement of water. I think of school trips to France. Flick knives bought in Boulogne. Firecrackers too, and more interest shown in mopeds than boulangeries. On the ferry’s return to Dover, a
rumour spread fast that custom officials are as punitive as they are vigilant. In the ensuing panic, thirty contraband weapons were lost to the sea. Only Eddy had kept his nerve.
I drink an insipid cup of coffee (the last for some time, I imagine, since a quick return to England is not an option) before descending two decks to use up my English change on the fruit machines. Several passengers wanting French currency discover that the bureau de change is closed. Returning to the canteen, I feel strangely serene until approached by two sickly pale kids who brandish plastic toy guns. They make the inevitable sound effects before being ineffectually admonished by parents who look barely out of their teens. The only other person within range to be irritated is a fat man in smart business attire. He, however, seems to have set himself the task of exhausting the ship’s entire supply of lager. Alcohol makes him oblivious to the noise or anyone else’s company. I order a lager myself while it is still possible. Surveying the rest of the canteen, I wonder idly if there are any lone passengers of the opposite sex.
In French waters we reassemble with surprising efficiency and the coach leaves the ferry at Calais without a hitch. Shifting restlessly on hard seats, I try to trick myself into believing I am at ease. Some people evidently succeed, sleep carrying them away from the discomfort of the coach.
At 6.30 a.m. on an cold overcast morning in early October the coach reaches its Paris destination, a grotty bus station in the city’s northern suburbs. In the bleakness that envelops the place and the moment, I experience a pang of self-pity. No family or friends clamour to meet me. The driver, a red faced man with beefy arms, opens up the belly of the coach and gets annoyed with the passengers impatient to reclaim their
luggage. The removal of rucksacks and cases from the undercarriage is exclusively his preserve, even if it does involve a great deal of huffing and puffing.
The RER line quickly comes to my attention since it is situated on the other side of the car park. The vehicles are neatly aligned beneath a corrugated iron hangar. Little thought for environmental aesthetics, however, had gone into its construction. It quickly rids me of the naive notion that somehow everything in the City of Light is going to be of dazzling wonder.
If I’d managed to convince anyone to think of me as a
non-tourist,
my pointless act of deception abruptly ends at the ticket office. I ferret in a panicked mind for vaguely appropriate words to explain an undignified search for some change. Putting on my best apologetic face, I pull out a 100 franc note.
Misreading the metro map results in an ungainly stagger down the Champs Elysée. I regret my decision to stock up on some weighty classics of English literature in addition to the French books. Sweat burns at the edges of my eyes and I have an hour’s wait before the tourist office opens. I sit down on the cold pavement and watch others gather outside the same building before we are all herded like cattle (the analogy embarrassingly apposite) into the building. Accommodation is everyone’s natural priority. We queue to be told by blasé looking staff where a bed is to be found. A service is offered whereby hotels are telephoned to assess the likelihood of their having vacancies. The staff do not appreciate independent suggestions gleaned from Fodor’s ‘cost conscious’ guide to Europe. The cheapest nightly rate that they come up with is 180 francs, which I agree to pay. The deal is fixed up and a map thrust into
my hand with the hotel’s location nonchalantly ringed in red ink. The hotel is close to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre. I want to declare: ‘Hey I’m no tourist, this is a business trip.’ I say nothing but leave with a spring in my step, seeing romance and adventure on the horizon.
Reality soon asserts itself. A soggy shower curtain is draped over the rim of a small bath. On the green linoleum floor there is a pool of water containing all the germs of the last occupant, whom I imagine suffers from unspeakably horrible diseases. The bathroom is windowless and the smell of dampness permeates into the bedroom. This consists of a creaky bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. My belongings, transported in a navy blue rucksack, could fit into a single drawer but I leave them in the rucksack. I leave the suitcase unopened. The room looks out onto more insalubriousness. Clothes dangle from washing lines that criss-cross the gap between buildings. Brown rusted sheeting slopes down, from various levels, to meet in the square’s middle. There are three soot-blackened stairways, clinging to the buildings’ exterior, that seem to lead to nowhere.
