Читать книгу Village to Village - Alister Kershaw - Страница 8

I settled into the rabbit hutch on the rue Notre-Dame-desChamps at the beginning of a murderously hard winter. An ill-favoured oil stove provided no comfort since I could not afford to buy oil for it. This may have been just as well. The hutch had no window nor any other ventilation and I would most probably have been asphyxiated. Most of the time I stayed in bed, fully clothed and with an overcoat and a tattered tablecloth to supplement the thin blankets.

But I had no regrets. Twinges of hunger were sometimes accompanied by twinges of self-pity but I was in Paris, my Paris, the great love of my life. That was all that mattered. Being poor in London, as I had been before coming to Paris, was no joke—Orwell would have got no argument from me on that point. You not only felt that passers-by would think it unseemly to notice if you fainted in the street but in addition you were also conscious of a pervasive moral disapproval. Lack of an adequate income in London was regarded as a sure indication of some fundamental flaw in one’s character—not perhaps actually flagitious but nonetheless reprehensible.

You never had to feel guilty about your poverty in Paris. Nor did I. At the worst moments, I could walk confidently along the street with no thought that I should be ringing a bell and wailing, ‘Unclean, unclean’. It was wealth—bourgeois wealth, in particular—which was regarded as unclean. Decent Parisians assumed—and were usually right—that only scoundrels became rich, politicians and people of that kind. Far from being considered suspicious, to be poor in Paris was a mark of respectability. It was nice to feel you were looked on with approval, even if you hadn’t had a square meal for three days.

The vast Coupole brasserie was only a block away from the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Despite its imposing size and although it must have had a couple of thousand customers each day, it had something of the character of a neighbourhood café. There was nothing impersonal about it. Rather than one huge establishment, it was more like fifty or so small establishments housed in the same space. Every regular customer had his own few square yards. He wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting at a table outside his chosen radius. The atmosphere was one of continual bustle but there was nothing hectic about it. You never felt that the waiters were waiting irritably to see you go. It had been a hang-out for artists and writers since its foundation in the early 1920s. The old bohemian atmosphere could still be inhaled there. Habitués were expected to dawdle. Nobody dawdled more consistently than I did.

Whenever I had managed to earn a few francs I would go to the Coupole as soon as it opened at six in the morning. I hadn’t forgotten my personal café, the café I had adopted and that had adopted me, but it was on the other side of the city. In any case, it didn’t have the same facilities. At the Coupole I could wash and shave in deliciously hot water—the only taps available to me in the rue Notre-Dame-desChamps were in the courtyard and in winter frozen solid. For the price of a cup of coffee, I could sit in the Coupole for hours. The day’s newspapers, rolled around wooden rods like Roman scrolls, were set out for the use of customers. I could read these or talk to the waiters (who themselves possessed a bohemian mentality) or scribble away at my impossible book—in those days, every café supplied paper and pen and ink on request.

The scribbling made me a figure of consequence. Nobody knew what I was writing or, for that matter, whether I could write at all (I had doubts myself periodically). But I wrote. That was enough. It made me the equal of Jean-Paul Sartre who used to squat toadlike in a corner where he received his admirers. It made me the equal of Samuel Beckett and Lawrence Durrell who also patronised the Coupole. It made me the equal of Genet, hardly more prepossessing than Sartre, and Jacques Laurent and the ex-convict Papillon. I was in distinguished company.

My great friend among the staff was one of the headwaiters, Monsieur Victor, who had held this position ever since the Coupole first opened. In his behaviour towards me, he mingled the esteem automatically extended in France to anyone claiming to be some sort of artist with a paternal benevolence. Sometimes he would slip me a surreptitious sandwich.

When I had made a bit more money than usual I would treat myself to a full-scale meal at the Coupole. Monsieur Victor would then take complete control. On these occasions he referred to himself, magisterially, in the third person.

‘Voilà ce que vous allez manger,’ he would say. ‘A few oysters to begin with, I think. Yes, that would be best—half-a-dozen claires. Not belons. It doesn’t matter whether you prefer belons or not. They have no character.’

‘Well, I was actually thinking of some pâté, Monsieur Victor, or a slice or two of garlic sausage, perhaps.’

‘Not another word! It is Victor who gives the orders, n’estce pas? And Victor tells you to eat a few oysters. Then a morsel of beef—Victor himself will select it. And a bottle of Chinon. Ecoutez Victor.’

In the end I always did.

Victor’s successor was Monsieur Robert. ·He had saturnine, not to say satanic, features but he was as benign as Victor. By the time I came to know him I had found a job and was reasonably solvent but I usually managed to run out of money before pay day.

‘Robert, I don’t know if you’ve noticed it but we are getting towards the end of the month.’

‘En effet , cher ami, en effet’ and Robert would place his wallet on the table and go about his business. I would help myself and ten minutes later Robert would return, pick up his wallet and pocket it. He never looked to see what I had taken and he never asked me. Australian and English acquaintances brought up on the myth of the miserly French would gape unbelievingly at these transactions. They would ask whether the operation was a comedy put on for their benefit. It was not. It was Paris, my Paris.

The Coupole’s clientele was a bizarre conglomeration of types. First thing in the morning, most of the customers were as down at heel as I was and like me came along for the hot water and the newspapers. Towards lunchtime, you got a better class of people—writers and artists but prosperous ones, young businessmen talking with restrained excitement about advertising and manpower charts, politicians (nobody much cared for them), film producers and bank managers. These drifted away in the course of the afternoon and at about five o’clock were replaced by elderly ladies (‘Nos monuments historiques’, as Robert sardonically called them) wearing portentous hats and drinking tea.

None of the newspaper offices was situated in the vicinity but journalists crossed the city at all hours of the day or night to drink at the Coupole. I formed a lasting friendship with one of them. There was every reason why it shouldn’t have lasted because Alain’s brand of humour could frequently make one want to scramble for the nearest place of concealment.

Once when we were having what I had thought would be a quiet drink together he suddenly, without warning, began to upbraid me in shrill and disconcertingly audible tones.

‘I’ve given you the best years of my life,’ he screeched, ‘I’ve given you tenderness, devotion—yes, and money, too, only you know how much! And now that you’ve taken everything from me, my heart, my youth, my little income, you desert me for that horrible, hateful Maurice! Oh, it’s so cruel! How could you do it to me, how, how, how?’

By this time, he had an attentive audience of some five hundred people.

‘I’ll never forgive you, you hateful boy! Never, do you hear me?’

Like any other cocky twenty-five-year-old, I’d always imagined that I was indifferent to what the multitude might think of me. Alain rapidly convinced me that I was mistaken.

‘Beast, beast, beast!’ he screamed. Everybody in the place, including the waiters, was following the scene with fascination.

‘Listen, Alain, you son of a bitch. If you don’t stop this bullshit I swear I’ll walk out right now and leave you with the bill.’

‘Maurice of all people! He’s nothing but a little tart. Don’t you realise that he’s only after your money?’

‘All right—I warned you.’ Wincing under the concentrated gaze of the other customers, I got up and prepared to leave.

I had underestimated Alain. Grabbing my hand so that I was unable to pull away, he raised his voice several decibels and threw himself into his role with still more intensity. ‘No, no, don’t leave me, don’t leave me! I’ll kill myself if you desert me. I tell you I’ll kill myself and I’ll kill Maurice first. Have you no pity? Dear God, must it end like this?’

The suicide threat was attracting even more attention than the preceding performance. There was only one way to stop it. I sat down again. Alain at once resumed his wailing. ‘Maurice! I wouldn’t have believed it. If only it had been some other boy I wouldn’t have minded so much. But Maurice!’

It was some time before I had the nerve to return to a place which I’d come to regard as my second, indeed my only, home. The Coupole really became itself at night. I might have only enough for my usual cup of coffee but its long brightly lit glass façade was marvellously cheering. It loomed in the dark like a gigantic funfair. I felt no rancour at the sight of customers gobbling up their meals. Quite the reverse. Somehow I had the sensation that I was eating just as well as they were. And once inside, there were invigorating smells from the kitchen and a convivial clinking of glasses, an irresistible animation.

You might not have a franc in your pocket but it was impossible to be downcast in the Coupole.

It was at night that all the different categories of customer were jumbled together—the riff-raff to which I belonged, the businessmen, the film producers and the historical monuments and, like a parade of harlequins, the various crackpots and fantasts in which Paris then abounded.

At infrequent intervals these would include Raymond Duncan, Isadora’s fatuous brother. Piously ‘Greek’, he wore his hair down to his shoulder blades and was at all times clad in a robe woven for him by a group of dopey handmaidens who incomprehensibly allowed themselves to be exploited by him. He was a grotesque figure but his masquerade had been going on for so long that he had ceased to amuse anyone. We disdained him as an intruder. He had no recognised corner of his own. Indeed, he never sat down at all. When he paid one of his occasional visits, he would simply stalk around among the tables visibly and vainly craving attention and possibly hoping that someone would buy him a drink. I never saw anyone do so.

Monsieur de Beauharnais (nobody ever disputed his entitlement to this name) was a vastly different personage. He gave the impression of being permanently out of humour. Perhaps he was. He certainly did all he could to indicate that he would have been infinitely happier living under the First Empire. It might almost be said that he was living under the First Empire. His costume—top boots, frockcoat, fancy waistcoat and tall hat—was precisely what the well-dressed man was wearing in 1810. Cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ greeted his arrival in the Coupole. Monsieur de Beauharnais took these manifestations of imperial fervour as a perfectly normal civility which he acknowledged with a graceful nod to left and right. He would then sit down and extracting from his pocket a copy of Le Moniteur or some other paper of his preferred period would catch up on the latest news from the Austerlitz or Wagram front. You could tell how the Emperor’s campaigns were progressing from the expression on Monsieur de Beauharnais’s face as he read his paper. It was pitiful to see him during the retreat from Moscow.

I counted myself among Monsieur de Beauharnais’s followers but I had a slight prejudice in favour of Ferdinand Lop, another of the mad wags to be seen most evenings at the Coupole. He was renowned as an indefatigable candidate for the presidency of the Republic. The only time I regretted that I was ineligible to vote in France was when I listened to Ferdinand Lop expounding his program at the Coupole. If elected, he proclaimed, he would at once initiate two major reforms: the suppression of all poverty after 10.00 pm (although, situated as I was, I would rather he had fixed the hour somewhat earlier) and the extension of the Boulevard St Michel to the coast.

Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter were about equally divided between intransigent followers of Lop—Lopistes, as they were known—and no less resolute opponents, the Antilopes. I was a thoroughgoing Lopiste. How could one fail to support the only man pledged to extend the Boulevard St Michel to the coast?

When more than ordinarily moved by Lop’s discourses at the Coupole, we Lopistes spontaneously burst into the Lopiste hymn. It was sung to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’ and the words left no doubt whatever as to our sentiments:

‘Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop...’

The Antilopes held that the Master (as he was always addressed) was not merely on the wrong track but that his motives were wholly evil. As he discoursed to his disciples in the Coupole, the Antilopes would interrupt with vociferous charges that he was a hireling of the Communist Party, that he was in the pay of the banking interests, that he was planning to take over the Latin Quarter by armed force, that if elected he would introduce Triple and perhaps Quadruple Summer Time. Everyone knew, they would clamour, while the Lopistes shook outraged fists at them, that poverty should not be suppressed until 11.00 pm at the earliest and that it was the Boulevard St Germain rather than the Boulevard St Michel which should be extended to the coast. ‘A bas Lop! Down with the Boulevard St Michel!’

At the meetings periodically convened by Lop to clarify his theories (as if they needed any clarification), Lopistes and Antilopes bawled impassioned insults at each other. I was present at one especially violent gathering. Lop concluded his speech (‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, to the coast, I say!’) and invited the audience, university students most of them, to put any questions they might wish. A young man rose to his feet and spoke with undisguised emotion. ‘For years,’ he said, ‘I have been a Lopiste, unswerving in my loyalty to the Master. Recently, however, I was shown a photograph of undeniable authenticity which has caused me to revise my position radically. This photograph, my friends, taken during the war, showed the interior of a German submarine. And those present in that submarine consisted of Hitler, Goring, Goebbels—and Ferdinand Lop! I accuse Ferdinand Lop of having masterminded the U-boat campaign!’

‘A vile falsehood, a calumny!’ bellowed Lop. ‘At no time did I respond to the approaches made to me by Hitler and his associates. The photograph in question can only be a montage concocted by my enemies. De Gaulle? Churchill? A certain waiter at the Coupole known to all of you for his anti-Lop sentiments? It is for you to discover the ruffian responsible.’

The meeting, as they say, broke up in disorder. To cries of ‘Lop, the war criminal!’ from the Antilopes, the Lopistes responded with a sacramental rendition of the Lopiste hymn:

'Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop,

Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop, Lop...’

With half humanity cringing in case some nitwitted sophomore should accuse them of a breach of political correctness, it seems almost incredible that there was a time when students were able to take life light-heartedly. They could, though, and they did. There must be a large number of lawyers and notaries and surgeons who remember Ferdinand Lop with gratitude as an unfailing begetter of laughter.

What I found peculiarly appealing about all the nonsense of Monsieur de Beauharnais and Ferdinand Lop was that nobody ever jeered at them. Both were treated with respect—mock respect, of course, but with no mockery apparent. But was Lop, in particular, as barmy as he appeared? Or was he diverting himself by seeing how far he could carry absurdity without cracking our courteous deference?

The possibility first crossed my mind one evening when Pierre and I were drinking at the Coupole. The Master joined us at our table. ‘This is in the strictest confidence,’ he told us with deep solemnity, ‘but I know I can count on your discretion.’ He looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. ‘My engagement to Princess Margaret has definitely been broken off.’

Pierre, always equal to any occasion, adopted an expression in which incredulity and perturbation were impeccably blended. ‘But, Maître, surely this can be no more than a regrettable lovers’ tiff. With so much depending on the marriage ...’

‘No, mon cher,’ Lop replied. ‘Our Government has informed me that in no circumstances can it countenance the match.’

‘Incredible, Maître! What inconceivable short-sightedness! These politicians! Can they not see what such a union would do to cement relations between England and France?’

Lop smiled wearily. ‘Of course, of course, mon cher. But you overlook a fundamental difficulty. Were I to enter into marriage with Her Royal Highness I would be compelled to take up residence at Buckingham Palace. The Government cannot agree to my leaving France at this critical time.’

In the intervals between saluting Monsieur de Beauharnais and listening to Ferdinand Lop’s closely reasoned arguments in favour of extending the Boulevard St Michel, we could always cluster round the Coupole’s resident scholar. We never knew his name. To reveal it, he explained, would place him in mortal danger. As the repository of certain vital secrets, he was being sought by the intelligence services of half-a-dozen powers. The fiends would stop at nothing to prevent him from telling all he knew. We could call him Monsieur X.

If he didn’t tell us all he knew, he told us enough to demonstrate that he was a man of prodigious erudition. Science, literature, history—he was at home in every field of human knowledge and we learnt things we had never suspected. Constantinople, for instance—none of us had realised until Monsieur X threw out the information that Constantinople was a mediaeval poet, unduly neglected but whose compositions were on a par with those of Vercingetorix. We hadn’t known that Newton’s Fourth Law was embodied in British jurisprudence and that it stipulated the penalties for housebreaking and counterfeiting. Hieroglyphs, Monsieur X explained to one of his listeners, were only dangerous in the mating season and were at all times notably less aggressive than cosines.

We were so awed by Monsieur X’s scholarship that it came as no surprise to us when he obtained an appointment as a high-school teacher. A newspaper report which appeared not long afterwards shattered us all. Monsieur X, it stated, had been arrested and sentenced to a prison term for having used forged papers to get the post. At least that was the official story. Our own view was that one of the intelligence services must have caught up with him at last.

For me, there was no other place quite like the Coupole. The Dôme was never so welcoming. However hard you tried (supposing you wanted to try) there was no hope of summoning up the ghosts of Hemingway and his friends. The Select, across the road, was brisk, too brisk to make a suitable setting for Monsieur de Beauharnais and Ferdinand Lop. A few hundred metres away was the Closerie des Lilas. Little brass plates were fixed to certain tables bearing the names of celebrated clients who had sat there. Lenin was one of them. It was unlikely that he would have chosen to infest the Closerie in its present guise. The decor was refined. The clientele was well dressed, well behaved and well heeled. Lenin would no longer have felt at home there and the prices would be well out of his reach. They were certainly out of mine.

If you went outside Montparnasse (but habitués like myself didn’t often do anything so bizarre) you could choose between the St Germain cafés. I was quite happy to leave the choosing to other people. The Deux Magots (or was it the Flore?) was full of tourists, when these started coming back to Paris, all looking for some existentialists to make an appearance. Lipp specialised in serving politicians. Unless you had spent some years making a public pest of yourself as a minister or deputy (and collecting a fortune in the process) you were made to feel an intruder.

But there was never a moment when your heart wasn’t lightened by the prospect of dropping in at the Coupole to shake hands with the waiters, all of them old friends, to listen to Robert’s ironic reflections on life and the vagaries of customers, to eat a couple of sausages with fried potatoes (the cheapest dish on the menu and no less delicious for that) and to drink a sérieux of beer. (If someone else was paying, you ordered a formidable instead.) The Coupole was more precious to us than the Louvre. And we didn’t have to look at Sartre in his corner.