Читать книгу What it Means to be Human - Robert Rowland Smith - Страница 29

Fortunately, Simone had a steady income from her job as lectrice at Perpignan’s university, which eased the immediate pressure on me to earn money. Perpignan sits in south-west France near the Spanish border. One had only to make the short drive through the slopes of the eastern Pyrenees to see in silhouette against the hills the effigies of bulls that were so talismanic of Spain. The border country also maps onto Catalonia. On Perpignan’s labyrinthine streets one would hear Catalan spoken both by old ladies wearing black and old men in flat caps.

A true melting pot of cultures, Perpignan was north African too. Simone had rented digs on the Rue Dugommier in the city’s shabby Arab quarter. Our downstairs neighbours were Moroccans. On the one day that it snowed, they congregated in woollen beanies, looking out from the hallway in bemusement. The apartment was on the first floor, above a horse butcher’s straightforwardly called A Cheval, with sawdust on the floor to soak up the blood. A few doors down was a bistro, Chez Nicole et Marcel, where they served mussels in piles as high as a wedding cake.

Having a place of our own at that age was wonderful. We had terracotta tiles and red shutters. Not that it was perfect. One day we came back to find that several of the stairs between the first and second floors had crumbled away, leaving a ravine spanned only by the iron of the banister. Whenever the people on the two storeys above us wanted to get into their flat, they had to approach the ascent like mountaineers.

I was to give English lessons. Without a work visa or leave to remain in the country for more than ninety days, however, I’d have to do so on the sly and for cash only. That meant I was nervous of getting caught. It wasn’t just paranoia. One night, towards dawn, we were woken by a commotion in the hallway. Doors were banging, people were shouting. ‘Ouvrez! Ouvrez! Police des étrangers! Ouvrez!’ The immigration police were conducting a raid. Our Moroccan neighbours in the ground-floor flat were wrenched from their beds. More of them than we ever imagined could live in it were bundled out of the door in their nightwear.

Being on the first floor, Simone and I were next. She was legit, but my number was up. I saw myself thrust into a police cell, questioned and roundly deported. ‘Vos papiers!’ barked the gendarme at our door. I fetched my passport from the drawer and proffered it to him as if I were a lamb to the slaughter. No sooner did the officer see the British insignia than he bowed, apologised and moved on. I was as illegal as any of the Moroccans, but the good old racism of the French South had come to my rescue.

In addition to the grande dame who hired me to occupy her daughter with English verbs while she had adulterous sex with her lover, one student stood out. For our first lesson, he insisted that we meet at a public venue. I arrived at the Café de la Paix at the appointed hour to be greeted by a Sicilian man called Andrea. He was in his late thirties, stocky, with a broken nose, yellow-tinted sunglasses, a gold chain and greased-back black hair. He said that he was looking for an English-speaking partner in his shoe business. Why he thought a student dropout would fit the bill wasn’t clear, but the Oxford connection seemed endorsement enough. I explained that he’d got the wrong end of the stick. I wasn’t looking for a business venture, just to earn some francs teaching English.

Andrea and I compromised on a meal at his house, to which he also invited Simone. In a marble dining room, we feasted on lobster and other fruits de mer, accompanied by champagne. The meal was served by his wife, who was coiffed to perfection, dressed to the nines and sparkling with jewellery. Andrea pointed at her as if she were a poodle at Crufts, giving an inventory of each jewel she wore and how much he had laid out for it. Simone and I felt obliged to return the favour, so we had them round to our bijou flatlet. They walked up in their finery, through the hallway that smelled of cat pee. We served trout followed by apple tart. They looked down their noses.