A Year in the Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  "Hang on," I said.

  I pulled the duvet down a few inches.

  My memories of the previous night were hazy, but I could have sworn that the last time I saw Alexa, her arm was quite definitely not black.

  "Paul? Are you there? Where are you?" the phone asked.

  Oh merde.

  NOVEMBRE

  Make yourself chez moi

  Wasn't it Edith Piaf who sang "Je ne regrette rien"? Well, speak for yourself, you silly cow.

  Here was someone I'd been able to communicate with, who was funny and intelligent, and on top of all that had really cute knees. And I'd screwed it up. Je regretted beaucoup.

  I didn't want to stay around until the Black girl woke up. From what I could see of her as she lay crashed out, she looked much stronger than me. Real swimmer's shoulders.

  Men's shoulders?

  I had a quick peek under the duvet from the other end of the bed to make sure. He/she/it was face down, but I couldn't see any dangly bits.

  Phew.

  I was also immensely relieved to discover that I'd played it safe. The long, pink, shrivelled appendage hanging off my willy was not a grotesquely stretched foreskin - it was a used condom clinging on where one of us had rolled it a few hours before.

  When I got outside two minutes later, I had to screw up my eyes against the unusually bright light. It took me a few moments to realize that summer hadn't barged in ahead of winter and spring. The street was lit up by the reflection off the damp, gleaming pavements.

  The mounds of paper had gone. The skyscrapers of stinking boxes had been cleared away. An armoured division of green clean-up machines had raged through the streets as I slept and swept all resistance before them. The strike was over.

  I wanted to share my joy with Alexa, but it was too late. I left at least ten of my most abject apologies ever on her answerphone, and they were all unanswered.

  Finally, in a bid to save her phone from overloading, she deigned to send me an au-revoir email saying she thought I was a "sad" person, and she didn't want the responsibility for my "fragile happiness". Yes, the old joie-tristesse crap had come home to roost.

  To console myself, I decided to devote November to finding an apartment. Jean-Marie had offered to pay for a hotel for three months, so I needed to start thinking about making a break for freedom. And now that the strike was over, the time was right. Christine told me that the cleaners had given up their demands for mechanical brooms and had accepted a pay rise plus the promise that, once a week, they could all have a go at driving one of the green machines. In short, I'd be able to visit places without messing up my future landlord's carpets.

  On the first Saturday of the month, I sat down at a café terrace (I now seemed to do all my thinking at cafe terraces) and consulted my guidebook about places to live.

  "In Paris," it said, "it's best to live near a big metro junction."

  It's the same in London. Though saying you want to live near the most reliable Tube line in London is a bit like saying you want to marry the camel with the sweetest breath.

  The guide went on: "The metro is not brilliant everywhere, but in general it's a dream compared to London. For a start, it's cheap - a 'Carte Orange' gives you a full month's unlimited travel on all Parisian buses and underground lines for approximately the cost of a one-hour pass on the London Tube. And - get this - if you work in Paris, your employer pays half of it."

  What the guide should also have mentioned is that the metro stations are usually full of semi-naked women. Take the station near my hotel, for example.

  First time I went down there, a girl with three-foot-wide breasts was advertising a bra. A girl in a torn t-shirt was advertising a film. Several girls wearing nothing but skimpy thongs were advertising - I don't know what. A drink? Perfume? Vacuum cleaners? Whatever. They had great breasts. The platform walls were covered with nudie posters. How to keep commuters happy when trains are late. Male and lesbian commuters, anyway.

  Commuting, I found, was much less stressful than in London. For a start, at rush hours there was a train about every minute. And yes, French minutes have sixty seconds. If you missed one train, you just waited a few seconds for the next one. No sweat. And talking of sweat, contrary to popular belief, the French didn't smell as though they'd been rubbing their armpits with raw garlic. I detected only perfume and after-shave. People were a bit more blank-faced than London commuters, and almost none of them were reading newspapers, but apart from that, the only major difference from London was that, if you had to stand, you could actually stand instead of being bent double like you are on the Tube. Why did those London engineers build such tiddly tunnels? Did they think that only hobbits would ride the Tube?

  In short, Paris has public transport that actually transports the public rather than trying to make them give up and travel by car.

  * * *

  "Whichever metro junction you choose to live near," the guide said, "you should know that Paris apartments are small and packed very densely together. This means that you'll have a lot of neighbours. They'll be all around you, above, below and on each side, in your own building and the ones opposite. You might have ten or more sets of people who can see, broadcast noise or send smells into your apartment."

  Smells? Were they all going to be cooking pig's rectums and using unpasteurized cheese as wallpaper glue?

  "The safest thing to do," the guide went on, "is visit an apartment at different times of the day. See what the area's nightlife is like (it can be lively or deadly). Try to get a look at the people upstairs in case it's a family of overweight flamenco-dancing basketballers. Look across the street to the windows opposite (called the 'vis-a-vis') and try to spot telltale binoculars or flashing genitalia.

  "But then again, all these precautions are pretty pointless, because if you actually get to the stage where someone is willing to rent you their apartment you'll weep in gratitude. To get ahead of the dozens of people applying for anywhere decent you'll have to go to viewings armed with copies of your family's page in Who's Who and a guarantee from a Swiss bank that you're sitting on a hoard of Nazi gold. As few people can come up with these documents, you should prepare to start out living in a hovel."

  "Pessimist," I said. "Merci."

  This last word was said not to my guidebook but to the waiter who'd brought me a coffee. Well, not so much a coffee as a punch bowl of off-white stew. My "merci" turned sour as I said it.

  I'd asked for a cafe au lait and been served the combined annual production of Colombia's coffee fields and the dairy herds of Normandy. I looked at the bill - wow, the price included first-class rail fare for the cows.

  It was one of the last aftershocks of shitlexia. To celebrate the fact that I could walk about without getting pooped up, I'd strolled away from my hotel and was now about half a mile closer to the Arc de Triomphe, sitting outside a brasserie with a posh green-and-gold awning and a waiter in a ruthlessly starched apron. Rip-off territory. Should have seen it coming. Too late now.

  I picked up my two sources of accommodation ads. The hotel receptionist had recommended the Figaro newspaper - a daily with lots of for sale and to rent ads - and the Particulier a Particulier, a thick weekly magazine full of housing ads for all over France.

  Both were spilling over with attractive-looking offers.

  If only I could understand them.

  "11E Oberkampf," one ad in the Figaro said. OK so far - Eleventh arrondissement, Oberkampf district. "2/3P 2è ét, séj av mezz, 1 ch, SdE, parquet." Help.

  I got out my dictionary and looked up the one complete word. "Parquet" meant "floorboards". Great, so it had a floor. What the hell did the rest mean?

  Another ad offered "11E proche Marais." The dictionary seemed to suggest that this place was situated near a bog. Judging by the rent, it was a very desirable bog. I read on: "3P RdC s/cour, SdB/WC, dressing."

  "Cour" was courtyard, "WC" was presumably WC, but "dressing"? This one came with vinaigrette on tap? Very gourmet.
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  No, the dictionary corrected me, a "dressing" was a walk-in closet.

  Here was one at Bastille, which was presumably a safe area now that they'd stopped guillotining people. It was a "beau 2 pièces" - beautiful two-roomed apartment. It was "5e étage" (aha, fifth floor, I thought, the "ét" is explained), "ascenseur" (a lift, thank God), "gde chambre" (big bedroom), "balcon" (a balcon of one's own, brilliant) and a "SàM avec cuis amér" (oh shit).

  My dictionary told me that this probably meant it was suitable for sado-masochists with bitter (amer) thighs (cuisses). However, I suspected that this might not be an accurate translation. I was right – in fact it meant dining room (salle à manger) with open-plan kitchen (cuisine américaine).

  It was only natural to find it hard going, I told myself. After all, flatshare ads in the UK must be just as impossible to understand for foreigners. All those demands for "N/S only" - foreigners would think there was something very attractive about Nova Scotian room-mates.

  I picked up my coffee - almost spraining both wrists under the weight - and watched the waiter arrive with another order. It was for a guy a couple of tables along, and it looked like - yes, it was - a normal-sized cafe au lait.

  "Merci," the customer said in what even I could tell was a strong American accent. And, to add insult to wrist strain, he was reading the Herald Tribune.

  "Excuse me," I said, leaning closer. The American looked up from his paper. "How did you do that?"

  "Do what?" He frowned. He was 30-something, with longish Kurt Cobain hair, and was wearing a worn black suit on top of a faded University of New York sweatshirt. A ripe target for rip-offs, surely?

  I managed to raise my lake-sized coffee a little higher. "Get a normal-sized coffee?"

  The American laughed loudly, a raucous smoker's laugh. He picked up his coffee, bill and paper and moved to my table.

  "I'm Jake," he said, holding out his hand.

  "Paul." We shook.

  "You on a visit in Paris?" Jake asked, looking down in wonder at the sheer enormity of my coffee cup.

  "No, I've been living here for two months. You?"

  "Oh yeah, I live here." Jake laughed as if this was a huge joke.

  "What, here?" I asked, waving my hand at the neighbourhood around us, hoping that this was Jake's regular cafe - it would make getting ripped off just that little less painful.

  "No, I just work round here sometimes. In that bank over there." Jake pointed his newspaper towards the noble-looking building that rounded off the street corner opposite with a sort of ship's prow of columns and curved windows. It didn't look like the kind of place that would employ unshaven grunge guitarists, except maybe in some nocturnal hoover-pushing role.

  "You work there?" I failed to keep the scepticism out of my voice.

  "Well. I'm sent by my language school one time a week to give English courses."

  "On a Saturday?"

  "Yeah. Some French banks open on a Saturday."

  "They don't make you dress a bit more, you know . . ."

  "Nah. You work in a bank?" He jerked his newspaper accusingly at me.

  "No, a food company."

  Jake nodded meaningfully at my chic shirt and designer jeans.

  "You like putting on your 31s even on weekends," Jake said.

  "Doing what?"

  "You know, dressing up chic. Don't we say that in English? Putting on your 31s? Damn." He snorted in annoyance and asked me what I was doing in Paris. When I told him, his only comment was, "As if Paris needed another cafe." Charmant, I thought.

  "You looking for a new apartment?" He flicked at my open Figaro. "Where you wanna live?"

  "Uh, don't know. Where do you suggest?"

  "I live in the Fifteenth."

  "What's that like?" I tried to picture it on the snail's shell. Bottom left, I thought.

  "Bourgeois as hell," Jake snarled. "You can't advance along the sidewalk without kicking over a baby buggy. It's full of rich White Catholics with 3.6 children."

  "Ah."

  "The Nineteenth is more abordable."

  "More what?"

  "Cheap, you know? Affordable." He tapped the table top as if to rememorize the word.

  "Near the butt place?" Alexa had said the Nineteenth was becoming the new "in" place to live. There was a big urban park with an artificial mountain in the middle and a name that began with "butt".

  "Butte de Chaumont? You can't live there. Miles from the metro. And it's a real balade de dimanche spot, too."

  I looked suitably confused.

  "You know, Sunday strollers," he explained. "The hordes queuing up to watch their kids have a go on some measly carousel."

  "Ah. Not good?"

  "Nah." Jake thought for a moment. "For good transport connections, there's Montparnasse, but since you're not a lord, you won't be able to pay yourself the best quartiers. And it's a bit rang-gar."

  "It's what?" Jake spoke a very weird kind of English. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn't Cajun or something, his American English mixed with swamp-alligator French.

  "Ringard, you know, tacky. Touristy."

  "Oh. What about Châtelet?" That was a huge metro junction slap bang in the centre of the city.

  "Châtelet?" Jake nearly choked on the word. "Forget it, man. Too near Les Halles, which could have been the Greenwich Village of Paris but some so-called architects turned it into a 70s vintage drug-dealers' toilet."

  Wow, this bloke was depressing.

  "You don't seem to like Paris much, Jake. Why do you stay here?"

  "I got stuff to do." He swivelled his cup thoughtfully on its saucer and did a Parisian middle-distance stare. "Damn." He focussed back on me again. "Coffee break over. Got to go to my next lesson." He stuffed his folded newspaper into a jacket pocket. "See you around? I come here same time every week."

  "Yeah. Sure." Next time I feel like getting suicidal.

  Jake was about to leave when he had a thought.

  "You know the best way to find an apartment?"

  "What?"

  "Get yourself a Parisian girlfriend and move in."

  "Right."

  "I'm serious. Most guys do it."

  "Yeah, yeah. I've already tried it. I found the right girl but moved into the wrong apartment."

  Still, if I couldn't live with Alexa, maybe I could live next door?

  I shied away from the certain humiliation of trying to answer one of the small ads by phone, and got the metro as far as Oberkampf station. I took the escalator up to street level and did a 360-degree turn in search of an estate agent. It was about midday, and a crush of cars was edging its way up and down the wide boulevard.

  I headed towards the rue Oberkampf itself and soon came across a bright yellow shopfront marked "Immoland". In the main window there were photos advertising apartments for sale, with the usual incomprehensible jargon - "triplex rdc s/cour", "SdB + SdE". And in a small section of window by the door, a list marked "locations". These were not, I knew, suggestions for outdoor filmmakers, but the agency's apartments to rent.

  "Bonjour," I said to the guy sitting behind a computer.

  "Yes, can I elp yew?" he asked in English. What gave me away, I wondered, the accent or the helpless look?

  I explained what I wanted - an apartment to rent, at least till the end of the following August.

  "Plizz. Seat down," the guy said, smiling. He was about 30, with slicked-back blond hair, a perma-tan and a tight brown suit. He looked as if he should have been selling handbags rather than apartments, I thought. In an entirely non-homophobic way, of course.

  He asked me what "surface" I was looking for, which, after a few misunderstandings, turned out not to mean whether I wanted wallpaper or paint on my walls, but how many square metres I wanted.

  Unfortunately, understanding the question didn't really help, because I wouldn't have known a square metre if it had slapped me in the face. I mean I knew what a metre was, but how big was a 30 or 40 square mètre apartment?

  "O
ne bedroom?" I hazarded.

  "Separate living?" the agent asked.

  "Yes, I'm living alone at the moment." Though I didn't see what business it was of his.

  I could tell from the way the agent closed one eye and jabbed his pen in his ear that we were in noncommunication mode again.

  "Er, separate salon?" the guy asked.

  Now he thinks I'm one of a couple of gay hairdressers, I thought. This wasn't going well at all.

  "You want one bedroom and one separate uzzer room," the agent tried again. "Salon is living, you know? Living room?"

  "Ah! Yes. Right. A bedroom and a living room." I nodded encouragingly.

  "OK. I av."

  The agent picked up a folder and flicked through its plastic pages. He flopped it open to show me the plan of an apartment with a "chambre", "séjour", "cuisine" and "SdB", which turned out to be salle de bains - bathroom. "SdE", he explained, was "salle d'eau" - shower room.

  "Where is it?" I asked.

  "Rue O'bare komf," the agent said.

  "Perfect."

  "You know zis street?"

  "Oh yes." I mimed drinking beer and falling off a table.

  "OK. You want veezit now?"

  "I want."

  "You ave letters of garron tee?"

  "No."

  "Uh." (A look of pain.) "Ah." (Thinking hard.) "Oh." (Resignation.) "Ease no problem."

  * * *

  Six hours later, I was still trying to erase the humiliation from my mind.

  First, there was the romantic garret with what the agent described as a "super view of roof". It was true - I could see lots of roof. And lots of holes in the roof.

  "Is repair very quickly," the agent said.

  Was it my imagination, or did the headline on the tattered newspaper blocking one of the holes read: "Napoléon est mort"?

  I conceded that the apartment was very conveniently situated for the bars - it was in the same building as a bar that was sending techno beats bouncing up the water pipes.