The Merde Factor:

by Stephen Clarke

  And it was just off the rue de Bretagne that I found Jake, smoking one of his droopy roll-ups. He was standing on a pavement so narrow it was more of a kerb than a sidewalk, chatting to a tall, elegant woman with her back to me. Not that I was complaining – it was a very picturesque back. She was dressed in the trendy Parisienne’s eternal uniform of short leather jacket (in this case, blood-red) and tight jeans, with bare ankles tapering into spectacularly high heels.

  ‘Hey, Paul!’ Jake waved his roll-up, scattering flakes of tobacco in the air, and the woman turned towards me. Her front view was even better. She was very slim, and wore no make-up except scarlet lipstick and an alluring dash of Cleopatra eye shadow. Her dark, curving eyebrows made her look as though she was permanently amused by life. A sort of cheerful existentialist – a very rare thing.

  We were introduced with the obligatory kiss on each cheek, and I was glad that, despite my gloomy mood, I’d taken the trouble to put on clean jeans and a hip shirt: a leafy pink Paul Smith number that looked, in a subtle way, as if it was about to burst into blossom.

  We exchanged names – hers was Marsha – and not for the first time I wondered how Jake got to meet these girls. Today, he was relatively well dressed (by his standards), in chinos and a white shirt that looked as though they’d just come through a car wash, but he was puffing on a cigarette that smelled as though it was made out of camel dung. I wondered if it hadn’t been given to him as a joke by his departing Yemeni girlfriend.

  ‘Can you point your stink bomb somewhere else?’ I begged him as he tried to grab me for a Parisian man-kiss.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marsha said, ‘we head to git him out of the shap,’ or something like that. Of course – Jake had said she was from New Zealand.

  ‘Is this your shop?’ I asked her. If so, I was disappointed. The narrow shop window was almost empty, as all the trendiest windows have to be, and featured just three handbags of various sizes, from cigarettes-and-credit-card-only to yes-I-have-to-carry-Evian-with-me, all of them woven in colourful tartan wool. There were handwritten price labels beside each one, and frankly, given the choice, I’d have preferred to use the money as the down payment on a Marais apartment.

  So I was relieved to hear her say no, it wasn’t her shop, and offer to take me indoors and introduce me to Mitzi and Connie, the owners.

  I let Marsha go in first, of course, and took the opportunity to give Jake the thumbs-up.

  ‘How did you meet her?’ I whispered.

  ‘At the cultural centre of Bolivia.’ A typical Jake answer.

  There were no customers inside the shop, which was hardly surprising given the cost of the merchandise, and the long, narrow space was dominated by wall-hangings, blankets and clothes made of multicoloured tartans. The bright fabric contrasted with the deep brown of the gnarled wooden beams running along the ceiling. It all looked very classy, and like everything classy in Paris, there was a whiff of the nineteenth century about it.

  Two thirty-something women were standing over a table, leafing through a book of cloth samples. They looked like twins who’d been born on different continents. Same height, same long black hair, one of them pale and Asian, the other a mellow South American. They were short, wearing jeans with jackets made out of the pink-and-yellow tartan of one of Scotland’s more fashion-conscious clans.

  Mitzi, it turned out, was the Asian – I’d have to ask Jake what nationality exactly. Laotian, knowing him, or from one of those Central Asian republics I can never spell. Connie, short for Concepción, was Bolivian. They gave me mwa-mwa kisses, barely brushing my cheek, and explained that they ran a fabric business called Tissus de Vérité, designing patterns, selling them to fashion houses and making their own garments and handbags.

  ‘What does the name mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s a play on words.’ Mitzi giggled. I’d guessed that already – practically every shop name in Paris is a pun.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Oh come on, Paul,’ Jake groaned. ‘It’s evident, man. Tissue of verities.’

  ‘Right, thanks, Jake, but what does it mean?’

  Neither Mitzi nor Connie spoke good enough English to enlighten me, so Marsha stepped in.

  ‘Tissu de mensonges is a web of lies. And tissu is fabric. So tissus de vérité are like patchworks of truth.’

  ‘Good one,’ I congratulated them, and explained that I too was the part-owner of a pun, the My Tea Is Rich tea room. I added that I was going to have to think up a second tea-related play on words if Jean-Marie and I opened up a new café.

  ‘Do you want to open it here?’ Connie asked. ‘We’re leaving next week.’

  This took me by surprise, but I instantly saw that it might be a great idea. I’d already seen a little eatery further down the street: an oriental-themed sandwich place called Bread and Buddha. Yet another pun, and an English one at that. A bit of competition wouldn’t be a bad thing, either. People often herd together in search of food, and if the street was getting a reputation for eateries, so much the better.

  ‘Hey, no!’ Marsha interrupted my reverie. ‘Girls!’

  The three of them began laughing, and I realised I’d been the victim of a female joke.

  ‘I’m taking over this place,’ Marsha explained. ‘Opening a bookshop.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake butted in. ‘And she will publish books, too. Poems.’

  Suddenly I got the picture. Not only did Marsha have a free apartment, she might also publish him. Double jackpot. Or Jakepot.

  ‘Not just poems,’ Marsha corrected him. ‘Everything. It’s easy with e-books.’

  ‘Is it a good spot for a bookshop?’ I asked. ‘Do people in this neighbourhood read anything except menus and price tags?’

  ‘I’ll need to bring them in,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a drop-in café area down here, and the girls’ workshop upstairs will make a great event space.’

  ‘For readings,’ Jake stressed.

  ‘Yeah, starting with my launch party,’ Marsha said.

  ‘Right, the party de launch,’ Jake repeated, nodding meaningfully at me.

  Now I got it. I was meant to convince Marsha that Jake was the perfect headliner for her inaugural event. It was going to be tough. After all, she’d already seen one of his poems, so she knew they were capable of taking the fizz out of the finest bubbly.

  I asked her why Mitzi and Connie were giving up the premises. ‘Prices too high?’ I pointed to a minute handbag and its three-figure price tag.

  ‘No way,’ she said, almost choking with incredulity. ‘You kidding? They’re opening a much bigger place in the Eighth. Going mainstream, big time. You think that’s a lot for a designer bag?’ She looked at me as though I was the kind of guy who’d take a girl out and then order a single glass of champagne to share.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I hastened to say. ‘I don’t mind spending money. This shirt cost a ridiculous amount for a piece of printed cotton. But it’s a shirt, not a bag. A bag is just a thing for carrying stuff around. I’ve got a four-wheeled suitcase that can perform pirouettes and survive getting beaten up by baggage handlers, but it only cost me half the price of the smallest bag in this shop. I’ve never understood why a handbag, any handbag, can be worth more than, say, fifty quid.’

  When Marsha had recovered from her heart attack, she shook her head sadly at me.

  ‘Sorry, Paul. It’s like God. You either believe or you don’t.’

  ‘What if you’re agnostic?’

  ‘You buy one for your girlfriend who believes.’

  Her eyebrows arched at me, and I knew that this was a cue to jump in with the old ‘well, actually I haven’t got a girlfriend at the moment’ line. But I didn’t want to play that game. Not yet, anyway. Truth be told, I was a bit scared of her. I’ve never had much luck with trendies. In my experience, they always try to doll you up, and then get angry when you revert to sloppy jeans and trainers.

  ‘So you’re planning to hold poetry readings?’ I said.

 
‘Well, I’d have to vet the poets first, of course.’ She grimaced over towards Jake, who was chatting with Connie and Mitzi, but keeping one eye on me.

  ‘Very wise,’ I agreed, and we shared a chuckle.

  ‘Listen, why don’t we meet up for a drink sometime, talk a bit more about poetry?’ she said, doing her raised-eyebrow trick again.

  I surprised myself by hesitating. There was something of the rollercoaster about her. But I could see Jake watching me, as if he sensed what was going on. And I thought she’d be fun to go out with, even if it would mean raiding my already depleted funds to buy a second trendy shirt.

  ‘Great, let’s do the number-exchanging ceremony,’ I said, miming two phones going head-to-head. We went over to the cash desk, where Marsha had left her own tartan handbag, and she was fishing inside for her phone when Jake suddenly grabbed my arm.

  ‘Paul,’ he hissed, dragging me towards the shop door. I signalled to Marsha that I wasn’t leaving willingly and asked Jake what he thought he was doing, but he just kept on tugging until we were both outside on the pavement.

  ‘Look.’ He pointed along the shady street towards the bright sunlight in the rue de Bretagne.

  The receding silhouette was an unmistakable sight, to give her wide hips swaying purposefully, her blonde head held high, gazing out at the world as if she was intrigued by every detail. She was wearing a loose skirt and flip-flops, but somehow looked just as classy as the girls in high heels. Sexy without even trying.

  ‘It’s her, n’est-ce pas?’ Jake asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘What would she be doing here?’

  ‘I saw her passing the shop. She stopped and made a photo.’

  ‘She took a photo? Why?’

  ‘Of you, maybe,’ he said.

  ‘No way. Why would she do that?’

  ‘Who’s the girl?’ Marsha asked, arriving beside me.

  ‘Alexa,’ Jake said. ‘His ex.’

  ‘You’ve got a stalker ex-girlfriend, huh? Maybe we shouldn’t go out for that drink.’

  ‘Drink?’ Jake asked, always ready to let someone buy him one.

  ‘She’s not a stalker,’ I said, hoping this was true. ‘She’s a photographer. I guess she just liked the look of the shop window.’

  ‘Well, if she’s not going to murder us all, why don’t we go and get a coffee, or something stronger?’ Marsha suggested.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll see if Mitzi and Connie can come,’ Jake said, dashing indoors.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly midday.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got some stuff I need to do,’ I told Marsha.

  ‘So you’re going to stalk her?’ Her eyebrows gave me another of their sardonic looks.

  ‘No, I’m headed the other way.’ I pointed along the street away from the rue de Bretagne, even though I ought to have followed Alexa to get to the nearest Métro. ‘I’ll call you about that drink, OK? Soon?’

  I said my goodbyes, leaving a shell-shocked Jake to escort Connie, Mitzi and Marsha along the road towards the café. Refusing a chance to be in female company was as inconceivable to Jake as ballet dancing is to a walrus. There just wasn’t space for the notion in his head.

  In this case, I kind of agreed with him. Was I really saying no to a sexy, witty woman who wanted to go and sit on a sunny café terrace with me? What better way to get in tune with springtime? And yet here I was, walking in the opposite direction, deeper into the shade of a narrow side street.

  Something was seriously wrong with me. Something to do with Alexa. First she’d turned up at the tea room, and now here. Was she really stalking me?

  And if not, did I wish she would?

  III

  The zoo at the Jardin des Plantes is famous for having once been a restaurant. Or rather a butcher’s shop. It was first opened during the Revolution so that ordinary people could admire animals confiscated from private menageries. And this ‘animals for the people’ idea was taken a stage further during the uprising of 1871, when starving Parisians fed themselves on bear ribs and stuffed giraffe necks. Which, I guessed, explained the absence of big game when I went there once with Alexa. Alll I saw in the old animal houses, some of them designed by Napoleon, were small, mainly endangered species.

  Not that I cared. I never enjoyed staring at caged lions and elephants, even as a kid. I always preferred those petting zoos where they let youngsters torture non-violent animals by hugging them, pulling their ears and generally doing things that would make a monkey bite your face off. Lambs would get shampooed with ice cream, rabbits thrown about like bowling balls and koalas almost suffocated with affection.

  When I went to the Jardin des Plantes, though, things were slightly more modern, and the koalas were in a look-but-don’t-touch enclosure. You could get close up and go ‘aaahh’ right in a koala’s furry face, but you weren’t allowed to so much as reach out a hand towards them. And one of the visiting toddlers couldn’t take it. He was stamping his feet and wailing with frustration.

  And the funny thing was that the Parisian koalas seemed to know what was going on. They sat on their wooden perches, gazing placidly out at their audience, apparently knowing full well that their only duty in life was to look cute and munch eucalyptus leaves. They had no predators and free food for life.

  I didn’t see that self-satisfied look again until the first time I came face to face with a French civil servant. It was the woman who dealt with my residence permit. Or rather, didn’t deal with it. The koala-like motionlessness was there, as was the indifference to my wailing that I needed a carte de séjour. In a sense, the eucalyptus leaves had been there too, in that the lady fonctionnaire had seemed wholly occupied with the task of digesting her lunch. But the most remarkable thing of all about French civil servants was their look of sheer untouchability. ‘Do what you want, say what you want,’ their attitude said, ‘you can’t touch me.’ The only thing missing was the cuddliness.

  And now, for the third time in two days, I was about to throw myself on their mercy. First the Préfecture, then the police station, and now the Ministry of Culture. And this time I was due to meet a whole herd of them, or whatever you call a collection of koala bears. A smug, maybe.

  I walked across town from the Marais, past the huge building site where the Les Halles neighbourhood was being torn down for the second time in fifty years: at the end of the 1960s they’d got rid of the beautiful old market halls, and now they were freeing the city of the 1970s eyesore that had been put up in their place. I wondered why they didn’t just rebuild some vintage market halls. Everyone loves to think they’re shopping at a market, even if it’s air-conditioned and full of escalators.

  I stopped in a small corner café for a beer and a cheese baguette. I even killed some time telling the waiter I’d like ‘des cornichons en plus, s’il vous plaît’ – extra gherkins, to liven up the slightly dull Gruyère cheese – but I still arrived much too early for my meeting. It was about half past one, and the appointment wasn’t till two, so I went for a wander around the neighbourhood.

  It was a beautiful place to wander, because the Ministry is right next to the Palais-Royal. Back in Napoleon’s day, the shady arcades running along either side of the gardens were where you came to pick up a prostitute. I knew this because Alexa had told me so, while reminiscing about how she’d once had sneaky sex up against one of the columns. Those were the days, when I had a French girlfriend who loved to tell me all about her horny exes.

  It was also Alexa who first pointed out the Ministry of Culture to me. She had clambered up on one of its golden-spiked entrance gates and pretended to hacksaw through the black iron bars protecting its windows. She said they were there to guard French culture against invasion by foreign influences and to stop it escaping out into the streets where it might get polluted by non-intellectuals. The façade of the Ministry looked, she said, like a miniature Buckingham Palace, with the kind of balcony where royals gather to wave to the crowds. She imagined snooty French artists an
d writers gathering up there to look down on the philistine masses below. But she then ruined her speech by admitting that she’d love to be standing up there one day. Deep down, I realised, it was every French artist’s dream to be misunderstood by the general public.

  I remembered all this as I strolled around the outside of the building, stopping to dab a fingerprint on the brightly polished brass plaque that said ‘Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication’.

  I wandered into the inner courtyard and came face to face with one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen in Paris. I’ve got nothing against mixing the old and the new – the glass pyramid at the Louvre is spectacular, for example, as if the pharaohs in the museum had climbed out of their sarcophagi and built themselves a shiny new palace. But the Ministry of Culture’s inner courtyard was a joke.

  Here was a classical building, decorated with sculpted stone window frames, facing the gushing classical fountain and immaculately pruned trees of the Palais-Royal gardens, but in the centre of it all, dominating the otherwise timeless scene, was a courtyard full of black-and-white-striped columns, looking like fossilised toothpaste or the truncated remains of a cheap Greek temple. Some of the columns were a useful size – picnic-seat level or stand-on-that-and-I’ll-take-your-photo height, but others were little more than pointless obstacles. As a work of art it was (in my humble, non-intellectual opinion) as exciting as a collection of empty tin cans, and spoiled the view just as badly.

  By now it was one forty-five, so I thought I might as well go into the Ministry and see if they had a coffee machine.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I said to the doorman, who was slouching beneath a pair of miniature French flags, ‘I have an appointment with …’ Again I had to fish in my pocket for the visiting card. ‘Marie-Dominique Maintenon-Dechérizy.’ When was I going to learn the bloody name by heart?

  The doorman waved me through a smoothly revolving door into a small reception area dominated by an immense TV screen, which was showing silent footage of some kind of video art. A woman with a rock-solid blonde hairdo and an absurdly tight skirt suit was waving her arms around in front of a map of France. Dark clouds were streaming south across the Channel. Charming, I thought. It was obviously a message about English-speaking culture invading France. But then the credits came up, and I realised my mistake. It was the TV weather forecast with the sound turned down. Of course – the Ministry was also in charge of state television.