by John Dummer
Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette
On the Road in the Real Rural France
John Dummer
SERGE BASTARDE ATE MY BAGUETTE
Copyright © John Dummer 2009
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CONTENTS
Preface
1. Pigs and Pegs
2. Police and Prisoners
3. The Honeymoon is Over
4. The Little Wooden Devil
5. Gizzards and Bronze Figurines
6. Snobs
7. Hercules
8. Teddy Bears
9. Bullfights and Monkey Business
10. Tiny Tears
11. Dubious Arts
12. Parasols and Harmonicas
13. Corsets and Coquettes
14. Jive Music and Owls
15. Hauntings, Homesickness and Holy Water
16. The Miracle
17. Camping
18. Pirates and Violins
19. Rings and Romance
20. Handbags and Warriors
21. Into the Wild Blue Yonder
PREFACE
I was beginning to wish I hadn't accepted Serge's kind offer to show me 'the true life of a French brocanteur'.
Serge's surname was Bastarde (I'm not making this up). He had 'SERGE BASTARDE – BROCANTEUR' printed in big letters on the side of his van. He was a short, tough, balding bloke with wiry grey hair and a ready wit. When he found out I was English and that I wanted to start up in the antiques trade he had gone out of his way to be helpful and had taken it upon himself to show me the ropes. A brocanteur is the French equivalent of a bric-a-brac or antiques dealer in England, and they have a long tradition of buying and selling in the colourful open-air markets all over France. I found Serge's advice mostly useful and it would have been churlish to have refused his invitation to accompany him on a trip out in the country to 'forage for hidden treasures'. If the truth be known I secretly couldn't resist the novelty of passing time with a bloke called Serge Bastarde…
1
PIGS AND PEGS
'Ooooh, look! They're washing their pig!' It was a touching sight, the epitome of simple country folk togetherness. The whole family – mum, dad, grandma, grandpa and all the kids – around a big stone trough in the yard with their sleeves rolled up. We had come bombing down a quiet country back lane in Serge's old Renault van to arrive at a typical farm mas – a house and several large stone barns grouped round a cobbled courtyard with a surrounding wall and big wooden gates. And there they all were, having the time of their lives.
I could see the old sow's head and her back over the side of the trough. Pigs must get really dirty plunging about in all that mud and need a good washing now and again. Serge tooted his horn and they turned as one to wave at us, happy smiling faces enjoying their carefree country living. But now, with all their hands in the air, I realised just how mistaken I was. Blood and gore was running down their arms. These people weren't washing their pig at all. The miserable animal had just been slaughtered and they were in the process of disembowelling it.
As we drove through the gates and bumped over the cobblestones I could see a couple of legs and trotters sticking up and a long, livid slit in the carcass.
This was exactly the sort of confrontation with the realities of animal husbandry that had turned me and my wife Helen into vegetarians since moving to France. In fact, as a reformed alcoholic ex-smoker vegetarian who disliked sunbathing, I sometimes wondered what the hell I was doing living in France at all.
The farmer stood up and came towards us with a quizzical smile, followed closely by two of the youngest kids, a little boy of about four and a girl who might have been his twin sister. Their faces were spattered crimson. The farmer lifted his elbow to be shaken to avoid smearing our hands with congealed blood and waited to see what we wanted. Over in a corner by the barn a vicious dog that looked like a cross between a German shepherd and the Tasmanian Devil fought to break free of its chain and devour us.
Serge and I had been touring around all morning, 'cold calling' on the most far-flung farms and cottages. Serge would strike up a conversation with the inhabitants to ask if they had any old furniture or junk they wanted to get rid of. If his question elicited a lukewarm response he would pull out a thick wad of euro notes and wave them temptingly under the householder's nose. So far this technique had yielded a few old chairs, a broken-down kitchen table and a rusty standard lamp. But Serge remained undaunted. Maybe our luck was about to change.
He reached down, ruffled the little girl's hair and beamed his sincerest smile at the farmer. 'Bonjour, m'sieu. We are carrying out some important work for the commune,' he lied. 'They have asked us to visit all the farms in this vicinity and perform a much-needed service, to pick up any old unwanted furniture and stuff that needs to be got rid of. We have already helped out some of your neighbours.' He waved vaguely towards the van. 'Might you have any old bits and pieces you don't want? Things that are hanging around the house gathering dust that we can take off your hands?' The farmer wiped his hands on his shirt and appeared to be considering the question. The dog had decided we were no threat and stopped barking. The rest of the family carried on with their grisly work. 'We're not here to waste your time – we're honest, professional people. We'll pay you for anything of value.'
The farmer's attention was beginning to wander. He glanced back at his pig in the trough. He didn't want to appear rude. The French habit of la politesse is a deeply engrained one. He rubbed his hand across a bristly chin. 'No, nothing like that,' he said. 'I'm sorry, I wish I could help you, but…' Serge flashed me an ironical smile. When he reached in his pocket and pulled out the wad of notes, the effect on the farmer was quite remarkable. All thoughts of sausages, bacon and smoked ham were instantly wiped from his mind. His eyes opened wide, hypnotised by the money. 'Of course, we'll pay you for anything we take… in cash,' said Serge. He fanned the notes in the air.
'What sort of things are you looking for?' asked the farmer. 'I suppose we might have some stuff we don't want.'
'I know,' said Serge. 'Why don't we take a walk round the house? I can point out the sort of thing we'd be interested in and what it's worth. Then you can see if you'd prefer to keep it or take the money.'
The farmer liked this idea. We followed him across the courtyard past the rest of the family, who carried on cheerfully hacking away at the dead pig, piling up a mess of intestines and vital organs on a stone slab.
The farmhouse was cool and shady after the hot sun and it took a moment for my eyes t
o adjust. We were standing in a typical French farm kitchen running into a sparsely furnished living room. The floor was tiled and, apart from a kitchen table, a few worn easy chairs and a television, there was no clutter to speak of and very few decorations of note: a cheap kitchen clock and the local fireman's calendar pinned to the wall; a palm cross; a small plaster figurine of St Bernadette of Lourdes in an alcove. These were honest, hard-working farming folk. They were out in the fields most of the day. The chances of finding any of the valuable antiques Serge was expecting were slim.
I was beginning to feel like an evil money-grabbing bastard. Serge was acting like his surname and this was the first and last time I intended coming out with him on such a cheapskate mission. Helen and I would stick to buying our brocante in the auction rooms in future, even if you did have to pay through the nose for it. At least it left you with a clear conscience. Serge was looking around, unimpressed. 'Sure you haven't got any old furniture or clocks you don't want? We pay quite good money for old bronzes, things like that.'
The old boy shook his head and racked his brains.
'What about upstairs? Any uncomfy old oak beds you don't need?'
I couldn't believe Serge was wasting the bloke's time like this. He'd seen the kids in the yard. This family needed all the spare sleeping accommodation they could muster. I wanted to get out of here and leave these good people to carry on preparing their porky comestibles for the coming winter. They didn't deserve to be bothered by creeps like us. I was about to let Serge know how I felt when the old boy's face lit up. 'We have got some old furniture which we dumped out in the barn a few years back,' he said. 'We needed the room and it was a bit gloomy.'
Serge threw me a meaningful look. 'That's the sort of stuff we're after; gloomy old furniture. You've got it right there, all right. Horrible stuff! That's exactly what the commune told us to pick up and get rid of. Clean up all the old junk, the mayor said.'
'I suppose it could be worth something to someone,' said the farmer as we followed him through the back door to some broken-down outbuildings. 'It's good sturdy stuff… been in my family for as long as I can remember, maybe even before the Revolution, it's that old.'
Serge winked at me behind the farmer's back and rubbed his hands together in glee. There were pigeons roosting in the eaves and the door was hanging off its hinges. When the old boy shouldered it open with a bang, there was an explosion of feathers and a couple of squawking chickens tore through our legs. Inside, the air was thick with floating feathers and powdered chicken excreta. Brilliant shafts of sunlight shone down through the murky fog of dust onto strange, bulky shapes piled up high against one wall. When I drew in a breath I could feel a film of chicken shit forming at the back of my throat.
The farmer made a sweeping gesture. 'Well, there it all is. If you think you might be able to do something with it…'
As the dust began to settle, it was patently obvious that these bulky shapes were not the pieces of priceless furniture we had imagined, but huge piles of sidepieces, backs, cornices, legs, doors and other assorted parts. Some well-meaning individual had reduced this load of 'gloomy old furniture' to easily transportable antique flat packs. Serge stood with a look of horror and disbelief on his face. It was the first time I'd seen him speechless.
'There's a whole houseful of old-fashioned stuff there,' said the farmer, carrying on oblivious. 'Buffets, cupboards, beds, dressers, armoires – you name it.'
'Who did this?' Serge was trying to control himself, but his voice had a hysterical edge to it. 'Tell me, my good man, why exactly is this furniture in pieces?'
'They were so big we couldn't get most of them through the doors,' said the farmer, unfazed. 'Me and my son knocked out all the little wooden pegs and dismantled them. Don't worry, every bit is still there. We've even got all the little pegs in a bag somewhere; I'm sure I can find them for you.'
Serge was trying to come to terms with the shock he was experiencing, gazing up at the piles in disbelief. He pulled the edge of a door that was sticking out and it wobbled precariously, threatening to topple down on him. Stepping back, he eyed it apprehensively. 'I suppose if all the bits are there we can put them back together again.'
He was reassessing the situation. He began to examine sections in a smaller pile, one by one, turning them over to see if he could work out what they were exactly, throwing up clouds of dust as he pulled them about. 'I'll just go and clean myself up a bit,' said the old boy, examining his bloodied hands. 'You can think about what you want to do.'
He went back out into the yard and there was the sound of a tap running and water sluicing about. Serge wiped sweat and dust from out of his eyes. 'OK, when I first saw this pile of junk I was disappointed. But look here…' he pulled at a heavy walnut door. 'This is the front of a Louis XV armoire. If the rest of it's here, like the old boy says, then we can reassemble it, oil it up and give it a few coats of wax. No one will ever know. Some of this stuff is eighteenth-century. There are loads of doors, cornices and legs. There could be as many as five or six armoires here. I could sell each one for about fifteen thousand francs [roughly £1,500 – Serge still did all his calculations in francs despite the introduction of the euro]. So you don't need to be much of a mathematician to calculate that there's a small fortune's worth here.'
The reality of what he had stumbled on was beginning to get through. 'This can't be it, can it, Johnny, the moment I've dreamed of, the day God smiles on me and makes me a rich man?'
I didn't have a chance to answer him. The farmer had returned and was standing in the doorway waiting for our verdict with an expectant look on his face. 'Well, yes, this could be of some use, I suppose,' said Serge, instantly changing his deportment to one of pessimistic disinterest. 'But it's all a bit far gone, to be truthful. I'm not sure what we could do with it. We might end up burning most of it.'
The farmer held out a small cloth bag. 'Here are the pegs,' he said. 'I knew I had them somewhere.'
'Me and my colleague here, we'll shift all this junk ourselves,' said Serge. 'Load it up and get it off your property today for no charge whatsoever. How does that sound?'
The farmer looked disappointed. 'OK. Look.' Serge pulled out the wad of notes and peeled off some twenties. 'Take this… one hundred euros. That should about cover it.'
The farmer didn't move. 'A lot of this furniture has got sentimental value to me and my family. I grew up with it. It's like old friends in a way.'
'All right then, to save any argument…' Serge peeled off four fifties. 'Here, take this – two hundred euros, and that's my final offer. It's not worth us bothering for any more than that.'
The farmer's face went blank. He shuffled his feet and looked back outside to where his pig was waiting. I picked up from him a strong impression that we had outstayed our welcome.
Serge looked irritated. 'All right, I'm not an unreasonable man. So how much do you want for it, bearing in mind that it's all in bits?'
The farmer turned back to us, deadpan. 'I couldn't take less than one thousand euros.'
Serge looked like he'd been slapped in the face. 'One thousand euros!' He attempted a mocking laugh but it stuck in his throat and came out more like a cry of pain. He turned to me with a theatrical expression of disbelief, as if asking me to verify how ludicrous it was. His face was white, drained of all blood. I could sense a mixture of battling emotions, as his habitual tightness fought against his greed to possess this potential goldmine of highly desirable furniture. Finally the greed won. He began to peel off a string of fifties. 'OK, let's not quibble about this. Call it five hundred and you've got yourself a deal.'
The farmer put his hands behind his back. 'A thousand or nothing. My ancestors scrimped and saved to buy all this. I'd be betraying the traditions of my family if I took less.'
Serge was flabbergasted: he clearly had not expected this sort of resistance. Teetering on the edge, he was unwilling to concede but tempted by the huge profit he hoped to make. The end was inevitable. He c
aved in.
'All right, but against my better judgement.' He looked sick. 'Here you go then, one thousand.' He grimaced as he slapped the last few notes into the farmer's hand. The old boy carefully recounted the money and then folded it up into a wad and placed it in his shirt top pocket.
'You'll have to excuse me, but…'
'You need to get back to your pig, I know,' said Serge.
The farmer smiled and tapped his top pocket. He gave me a wink and went out, leaving us to it. Serge was in a state of shock.
'Did I just hand over a wad of money to that old peasant?' He shook his head as if trying to clear his brain. 'For God's sake don't tell anyone about this. I must be losing my touch.'
'But you reckoned this stuff is worth a fortune,' I reminded him. 'Surely your conscience will be clearer now you've paid a fairer price.'
'Conscience? What's that got to do with it? Conscience? This is business. And besides, I don't think I've got a conscience, or not that I ever noticed.'
