The Merde Factor:

by Stephen Clarke

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Oh merde, what do we call them?’ He held up a thumb. ‘You know … poon-aze?’

  While he wrestled with his linguistic problem, I looked at my letters. The first was an electricity bill. It was in Jake’s name, but I was the one using the electricity, so as long as it wasn’t a demand for a year’s arrears, it was only fair for me to pay up.

  The second was from the Ministry. I opened it and got a pleasant surprise. A very friendly note informed me that my free cinema pass was ready and that I could go and collect it any time. I just hoped it didn’t stipulate that it was to be used exclusively for French art movies.

  ‘Maybe I’ll use one of the old poon-azes,’ Jake said. He was standing by the large map of Paris hanging on the back of the door. ‘Each poon-aze’, he told me, pointing at a drawing pin, ‘marks a place where I have had a femme – you know, baisé.’

  I’d looked at the map several times since I moved in, and the obvious Jakesque reason for the pins hadn’t occurred to me. There was one marking the apartment, logically enough. Others were dotted at random across the city, including one in the middle of the river. What, I asked him, was that?

  ‘Bateau mouche, man,’ he said.

  ‘And is that one in Notre-Dame cathedral?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yeah, man, Christmas Day, everyone chanting and shit, and I cached myself in the confessional with this atheist Cuban chick.’

  ‘You’re on the highway to hell, Jake. You’re going to need some heat-resistant drawing pins.’

  ‘Is that what you call them in England?’

  ‘And now you need a new one?’ I prompted.

  ‘Well, no, at least not yet.’

  ‘So you plan these things in advance, like some general with his map of the battlefields?’

  ‘No.’ He looked almost embarrassed, which had to be a first. ‘I’m just …’ He didn’t seem able to think of the right word, but his finger was tapping on the 8th arrondissement. I looked more closely and saw that he was aiming just west of La Concorde, a chic zone as yet empty of conquests for him.

  ‘Hey, that’s the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré,’ I said. ‘Where Mitzi has her new boutique. You’re fantasising about her, aren’t you?’

  His silence was just as telling as a lawyer’s. It counted as much as any words he could say. I laughed and clapped him on the back.

  ‘Welcome to the world of normality, Jake. You’ve met a girl and you haven’t leapt in for the instant shag. And now you’re fantasising about her, you’re imagining what it might be like, hoping it will happen. And you feel unsure of yourself, excited about how things might turn out, nervous that it could all go wrong. It’s fun, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not bezzing, just looking. I feel like a voyeur. And you call that normality?’

  III

  There’s a stock character in every film about the FBI: he or she is permanently at their computer, hooked up to a phone, collecting and redistributing information like some kind of digital chess grandmaster.

  A call comes in from a field operative: ‘All we know about the suspect is that he visited Miami sometime between 2001 and 2009 and hired a grey Ford. Or it might have been a black Honda.’

  The geek gets to work on the keyboard and ten seconds later he or she replies: ‘Subject’s name is Jack Smith, age forty-five years, six months and three days, weight 128 pounds, and he’s now walking along Santa Monica Boulevard wearing a powder-blue shirt and size nine Timberlands. No, hang on, nine and a half. He’s a left-handed Gemini. Need to know his favourite ice-cream flavour?’

  Well, Marie-Dominique’s secretary was exactly unlike that character.

  Her name, I knew, was Monique, and I’d been introduced to her very briefly on my first visit to the Ministry. She’d shaken my hand as though she was afraid I might give her bird flu, her nervousness no doubt the long-term effect of the decibels aimed at her by Marie-Dominique.

  She worked in the cubicle next to Marie-Dominique’s, and had her back to me when I arrived at her workspace. I was just about to cough politely when she turned around. She’d heard me coming. Or rather seen me – she had a small round mirror propped up by the side of her computer. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the coloured pattern I’d seen on her screen just before she turned round was a game of solitaire.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I said, and introduced myself again.

  ‘Bonjour.’ She rattled the large beads of a wooden necklace that was hanging down over a beige T-shirt.

  ‘Marie-Dominique n’est pas ici,’ I said. Stating the obvious seemed like a safe opener.

  ‘Elle est en congé,’ Monique said, pointing at the wall by my head.

  It was the holiday chart, showing everyone in the department’s congés right up till the end of August, with blue days clearly meaning holidays. There were as many blue lines as Napoleon’s army. And the next two days were coloured in for Marie-Dominique.

  Having answered my question, Monique was now looking anxious for me to piss off and leave her to her solitaire.

  ‘I need to make a rendez-vous with her for when she returns. Is that possible?’ I asked in my best French.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you have her diary?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She nodded towards her computer’s blank screen.

  ‘And are there any spaces in the coming days?’

  She turned back to her computer and clicked around for a full minute. Her card game appeared and disappeared. A Word file opened and closed.

  ‘Merde,’ she muttered.

  ‘Is her diary on holiday, too?’ I asked, giving a little laugh to show that I was joking. But she just kept clicking.

  Finally she turned back again. ‘There are possibilities,’ she said, reluctantly.

  ‘So can I make a rendez-vous?’

  She sucked air through her teeth to show that this was as difficult as, say, borrowing France’s presidential palace for a hen night.

  ‘You can see when she’s free, n’est-ce pas?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ She rattled her beads again.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She makes some of her appointments herself, and sends me an email to write them into her diary. We will have a phone call to discuss her upcoming appointments.’

  ‘Ah, when’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She hasn’t sent me an email about it yet.’

  At which point, I experienced the feeling that you often get when dealing with French bureaucracy: an urgent need to slam your head repeatedly against the corner of the nearest desk to stop yourself reaching out to strangle the person opposite you.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘Can you write me down for ten o’clock on the day after tomorrow …’ Monique began to rattle her beads in alarm, but I held up my hand to placate her. ‘And if Marie-Dominique says no, she or you can call me to tell me the new time.’

  Monique stared at me, clearly weighing up the relative advantages of humouring me and arguing her case. In the end, I guessed that it was the desire to get back to her computer game that won the day for me.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘dix heures?’

  I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to detect that she wasn’t typing this into Marie-Dominique’s diary, but I thanked her for her infinite kindness and asked whether she had my cinema pass.

  ‘Dans votre casier,’ she said, pointing at the wall opposite the holiday chart. Hanging here was a square, wooden case of twenty or so pigeon holes.

  ‘Right at the bottom,’ Monique said.

  And there, miraculously spelt with no mistakes, was my name, and nestling above it, a crisp white envelope.

  I turned to go, wishing Monique a bonne journée. But she wasn’t finished with me yet.

  ‘As a contractuel, I’m not sure you should have a cinema pass. Normally, they’re only for full-time staff.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, giving her the Parisian shrug of ignorance about why th
e universe lets some people win the lottery and others fall headfirst in a cowpat.

  ‘Maybe I should ask Marie-Dominique about the pass when I discuss your rendez-vous with her?’ she said.

  So victory was hers. Which was inevitable, really. This was her world.

  ‘If you think that’s necessary,’ I said. ‘It’s your decision.’ I pocketed the pass, gave her another friendly bonne journée and left.

  Or tried to, anyway. Outside the lift, a guy of about fifty with grey hair cut (or rather uncut) like a 1970s pop singer was hovering.

  ‘Monsieur Wess?’ he asked, scrutinising me above half-moon reading glasses.

  ‘Oui.’

  He held out his hand and crushed mine while saying a name that I was in too much pain to hear. I did gather, though, that he was the rep for one of the unions.

  ‘We’re going to have an Asthma meeting,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t suffer, luckily.’

  ‘Uh? I’m not sure you understand. Ass-Ma,’ he repeated more clearly. ‘L’Assemblée sociale des ministères et administrations.’

  ‘Très bien. Formidable. Well, have a good meeting,’ I said. Bonne réunion. You always have to wish French people good something or other if you want them to bugger off, and my phone had begun buzzing with an incoming call from Marsha.

  ‘We know what you’re doing,’ he said, narrowing his eyes at me.

  ‘You do?’ I replied. ‘Perhaps you will explain it to me.’

  This threw the Frenchman for a second, as English deadpan always does.

  ‘Well, I’ve informed you.’ He wished me a good ‘end of the afternoon’ and marched down the corridor towards Monique’s office.

  IV

  Marsha was calling to ask me if I could come to the Marais. It was the night of her first poetry competition, and she wanted me to help get things ready.

  ‘Bien sûr,’ I told her. ‘Tout de suite.’ The ministry was turning me French.

  Some people rave about Parisian buses and the wonders of gazing out at the street life, people-watching from on high. But these ravers are either tourists or insane. On an average day in central Paris, even outside rush hours, it would be quicker to walk backwards on all fours to wherever you’re going than to take a bus. That’s why, when given the choice, I opt for the Métro. Who needs street life when you’re zipping along several metres below the traffic jams, ten times faster than the bus?

  Recently, I’d also noticed something new about the buses. Maybe it was the downturn in the economy, but Parisian bus passengers had lost their inherent ability to be politely rude to each other. In the past, I’d witnessed some surreal arguments:

  ‘Are you going to sit in that seat, monsieur?’

  ‘Are you perhaps accusing me of being impolite, madame?’

  ‘Oh, no, monsieur, just a little lacking in gallantry.’

  But these days, with everyone’s nerves apparently on edge, it was more often a case of:

  ‘Hey, don’t you let old ladies sit down?’

  ‘Shut up, you wrinkly old cow.’

  The economy had a lot to answer for.

  Today, though, I wanted to call Alexa on my way to the shop, and although there is decent phone reception on the Métro, you naturally spend a lot of time saying, ‘I’m about to go into a tunnel.’ So I hopped on a number 29 bound for the Marais. Miraculously someone stood up just as I got on, and, after a look round to check for more worthy tenants, I parked my grateful backside on the furry green seat. However, from my new low viewpoint, I noticed the bulge of a pregnant tummy further down the aisle. Until that moment, it had obviously been covered in some kind of invisibility maternity smock, because the two teenagers in the priority seats hadn’t spotted it, so I got up and offered the almost spherical woman my newly acquired trophy. This meant I had to go and stand in the area near the bus exit doors, which was already pretty full because of two pushchairs.

  At the next stop, I was still trying to manoeuvre myself into a position where I could get my phone out of my pocket without elbowing a harassed young mother in the boobs when yet another pushchair-wielding woman tried to enter through the exit door, provoking a polite but vicious row with the people trying to get off, followed by several attempts to shove me through the bodywork of the bus as everyone shifted about to accommodate the new buggy.

  I gave up, started chanting the essential mantra of pardon, pardon, pardon, and wrestled my way with polite violence towards the exit.

  Fresh air at last, even if I was still a brisk fifteen minutes on foot away from the Marais. No problem, it was a couple of hours before Marsha’s big night got under way.

  Alexa was still on voicemail, so I concentrated on enjoying my walk, and especially on keeping pace with the bus, which overtook me and dropped behind several times en route. I was soon on waving terms with the pregnant lady I’d given my seat to.

  At every stop, I watched the same battle to get on and off, as though one lot of people were convinced there was a deadly flu virus on the bus, and the other lot had heard that in ten seconds every passenger on Parisian public transport would be given a million euros. Meanwhile, I strolled along the pushchair-free pavement, feeling detached and superior, until the bus turned towards the Pompidou Centre and I carried on into the northern Marais.

  Marsha was understandably in a flutter when I got to the shop. Her fluttering was paying off, though, because the main window was a checkerboard of posters. ‘Has Paris Got Literary Talent?’ their loud red lettering demanded, a question likely to get up the locals’ noses and generate a bit of publicity.

  The ground floor had been turned into a cool, cosy place where you’d want to hang out and browse: a multicolour tartan reading room with trendily reupholstered armchairs and a sign promising more of the same upstairs.

  That was where I found Marsha, setting out red wine bottles on a trestle table while simultaneously talking on the phone and miming something to a tall, pale-skinned guy with no shirt on.

  She saw me, kissed me briskly on the mouth and finished her phone call.

  ‘Oui, là, là,’ she shouted over to the shirtless guy, who was moving a loudspeaker into place. ‘Gregory’s the sound man,’ she told me. ‘He does all of Connie and Mitzi’s shows.’

  ‘Does he really need to show off so much chest?’ I asked. The guy was scarily smooth-bodied, like some hybrid between a human and a handbag.

  ‘Ah, poor Paul’s jealous,’ she said. ‘And talking of jealousy, did you call your ex and tell her to piss off?’

  Leaving aside the question of whether Alexa was jealous, which I didn’t think she was, the true answer to the question was no. But sometimes the whole truth just gets in the way.

  ‘I told her not to bother you at the bookshop,’ I said, which had been the gist of my text message.

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Philosophically.’ Which could mean anything, I told myself, including not bothering to reply.

  ‘OK, thanks, Paul.’ Marsha seemed satisfied. ‘Now I need you to do some sound testing.’

  She got me to sit in each of the three chairs on a podium that had been set up on one side of a low stage. We tried out the judges’ microphones, while Gregory, or perhaps Grégorie, taped cables to the floor.

  Marsha stood at the back of the room listening to me talking nonsense into the mics: ‘Testing testing, one two three, has he got smoother legs than me?’, which Gregory didn’t seem to understand, luckily. Then she got me to move to the mic stand at the front of the stage, where the poets would be. Recite some poetry at me, she said, to see if I can hear you.

  ‘The boy stood on the burning deck, spouting a load of rhyming dreck,’ I began. ‘To be or not to be, doesn’t sound very suicidal to me. If Shakespeare had made Hamlet rhyme, actors could learn it in half the time.’

  ‘Very good, Paul,’ she called from the back of the room. ‘If none of our contestants turn up, we’ll see how long you can keep going.’

  ‘No, Jake wil
l be here, never you fear,’ I said, suddenly incapable of saying anything that didn’t rhyme.

  ‘Don’t depress me, please,’ Marsha said quite seriously.

  ‘Come on, Marsha, you’re being too harsh.’

  ‘On Jake? That’s like being too harsh on a pitbull.’

  When we’d finished testing mics, I slipped out into the street to make a quick phone call. This time, I let Alexa finish her voicemail greeting, then left her a simple, to-the-point message.

  ‘Alexa, please don’t come to the bookshop tonight. You’ll only drop me in the merde with my new girlfriend. And I’ve got enough problems without this. Our old friend Jean-Marie is trying to cheat me out of my share of the tea room. I need to work out a defence strategy, so I’d really appreciate a little peace of mind. Anyway, so we’ll talk soon, right? Though not tonight, perhaps. Well, definitely not tonight, OK? Thanks, bye, see you. Though not tonight. Right, bye then.’

  Like I said, simple and to the point, with only a shade of panic when I got close to the sixty-second mark.

  After another half-hour or so of chair-moving, glass-unpacking and duct-taping, various other helpers started to arrive. Connie and Mitzi turned up, clad in tastefully clashing tartan jackets. Mitzi took me aside to whisper that she’d heard Jake’s poem, and hoped it wasn’t autobiographical. I told her that it was definitely a product of his imagination. Reassured, she and Connie began fine-tuning the decor, moving their plaids and chairs about and taking photos.

  A couple of Marsha’s journalist friends also came along and she went off to record an interview, so I was left with Gregory, who’d finished taping things and was enjoying a glass of wine out on the pavement. I joined him, and was about to ask him whether he actually owned any shirts when I saw Amandine marching towards the shop from the rue de Bretagne. She was in silhouette against the bright evening sunlight, but she seemed to be trying to shake off something that was stuck to her hand.

  Then I noticed that there was someone behind her. A guy, also in silhouette, who now reached forward to grab her.

  I set off towards her at a sprint. As I got closer, I realised she was arguing with the guy in French.