The Merde Factor:

by Stephen Clarke

  I was already on my way to the window.

  IV

  I had received several emails from the Ministry, most of them circulars about photocopier use, not sending out unnecessary emails, and similar subjects that were just a waste of electricity. One, though, looked relevant.

  The heading was ‘Zéro pour Bretagne 1 et 2’, an obvious attempt at some kind of numerical wordplay.

  The email itself was less punchy, but I managed to wade through the dense French officialese, and translated the core of the message as something like ‘how can the Ministry be planning to spend so much money on a concert hall and an artists’ residence when the government is cutting civil-service jobs and raising the pension age?’ It was what I’d been wondering myself while knocking back the free wine at the One Two Two’s state-subsidised pornography exhibition and spending hours in pointless meetings with Marie-Dominique’s numerous colleagues.

  The worrying thing was that the writers of the email were the unions, who were calling for an out-and-out boycott of both Bretagne projects: the concert hall and my residence. They were demanding ‘an instant and definitive annulation of these elitist outrages’. Any attempt to push the projects forward would be seen as ‘the worst political provocation’. To discourage this, the Ministry was, as Jake said, on a one-day strike, with more action threatened if the Minister didn’t back down.

  I called Marie-Dominique, and wished her a hearty bonjour so that I could adjust the volume on my phone according to the decibels in her reply.

  ‘Ah, Paul,’ she foghorned. ‘Thank you again for a most entertaining soirée. Such a shame it ended in anarchy.’

  ‘Anarchy, yes,’ I said. ‘Like at the Ministry today?’

  ‘It’s true, it’s true,’ she replied in what other people would have called a bark but for her was a whisper. ‘There is a protest picket outside the Ministry. You know, the fonctionnaires are very tense at the moment. This kind of high spending on culture – even if justified – is very sensitive.’

  ‘But my report …’

  ‘Don’t worry, soon they will pass their attention on to something else like education or health, and forget us. Then we can start again.’

  ‘Start again? But I would like to be paid for my work maintenant, tout de suite,’ I said, constructing my French as carefully as I could.

  ‘Sorry, but the project is frozen.’ All our solidarity about poetry and SM leatherwear seemed to have disappeared.

  ‘That doesn’t stop me sending my report and being paid for my work,’ I said.

  ‘Non, non!’ Her voice was back at blast force. ‘Please, on no account send in your report. Any progress with the project now would be disastrous. We’ve promised the unions.’

  ‘You are working, though, n’est-ce pas? And officially it’s a strike day.’

  There was a silence and I knew I’d gone too far. I’d turned it into a case of us and them, and I was most definitely one of them.

  ‘I am working on other projects,’ she said, as if declaiming it to the crowd of protesters outside her window. ‘And in a moment I will be going out to join the strikers. I must order you not to submit your report or engage in any work towards Bretagne Deux. One sign that we are ignoring the unions’ demands, and there will be an open-ended strike at the Ministry. It could escalate into a national strike of fonctionnaires. You could bring the whole of France to a standstill. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?’

  V

  ‘The French love strikes,’ Jake told me. ‘You’ll be doing them a favour. Hey, that’s the right English word, isn’t it?’ He had agreed to come to the Ministry with me, or rather announced that he was coming, and he was in upbeat mood. ‘Cause a strike, Paul, you’ll be a hero. If you get beaten up by the police, you can call Alexa and she’ll take some photos of your, how do we say? Wounds?’

  ‘Well, as usual, thanks for your advice, Jake,’ I told him. And I meant it. It was bollocks of the most bollock-like kind, but at least it was getting me in the right mood for the scene that I was about to cause. So there was a demo right outside the Ministry, was there? The perfect place for a showdown. Instead of a placard, I was carrying a crisp white A4 envelope addressed to Marie-Dominique.

  We walked past a Métro entrance apparently made of coloured beads, along the side of the Comédie Française theatre, which had large ‘En Grève’ stickers pasted over the posters for its latest production of Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and into the square decorated with a petrified forest of toothpaste. Just beyond the modern art, I could see a large crowd of people filling most of the Palais-Royal gardens, several of them holding banners on which the commonest word seemed to be ‘Non!’

  By the Ministry entrance itself there were a dozen or so picketers facing out as though they were expecting Wellington’s army to arrive and declare war on French culture. Little did they know that one of the Iron Duke’s countrymen was on his way. Standing to one side, trying to look inconspicuous, was a small group of riot police in their black gladiator gear, long batons by their sides in case anyone decided to start damaging state property.

  I gripped my envelope and marched forwards, not quite sure yet what I was going to say.

  But before I reached the picket line I was hit by a broadside in the shape of Marie-Dominique.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she demanded, her voice louder than any cannon. She was with her tall, thin friend Mathieu. Both of them were in everyday working clothes, and looking much tenser than they had when they were trussed up in their leathers. Mathieu gestured at someone to come and join us – a small, thickset guy with a long haircut that officially became extinct in 1972. I recognised him as the union rep who had had a go at me in the corridor of the Ministry, telling me he ‘knew what I was doing’.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ the rep demanded.

  No one seemed to know the answer.

  ‘And who is this?’ the union guy asked, pointing at Jake.

  ‘My lawyer,’ I said.

  ‘Ah.’ To anyone except a union man with a seventies haircut, the idea that Jake, in his un-matching trainers and a pair of small pink sunglasses that he had borrowed from Mitzi, could be a member of the French legal profession was totally insane. But French union activists are open-minded people.

  ‘I’ve brought this for you,’ I told Marie-Dominique, and held up the envelope.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

  Before I could answer, several other strikers arrived, and were told who I was – ‘le consultant anglais’ who was working on ‘la résidence d’artistes de merde’, the Minister’s elitist project that was causing all this friction. There was a general rumble of discontent. In the background, I could see the cops staring, on the lookout for trouble.

  ‘I’ve come about my reports,’ I announced, ‘and my bill.’

  ‘If he delivers them …’ one of the pickets said, looking nervously at the envelope.

  ‘If he tries to deliver them …’ the union rep said.

  A woman with a video camera came over, followed by a guy with a microphone and another pointing his phone at me. Journalists, I guessed. The union rep turned to stand between me and the nearest camera lens.

  ‘Deliver what?’ the camerawoman asked, and the rep explained, more or less accurately, what I was doing there.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the guy holding up the phone asked me.

  I told him.

  ‘Pol Wess?’ he said, as they always did.

  ‘And what are you doing here?’ the camerawoman said, focusing on my face.

  ‘I told you,’ the rep said, ‘he’s come to provoke a national strike.’

  ‘Really?’ the camerawoman said, and pulled her face away from the eyepiece to get a good look at the bloke who was about to make her job a lot more eventful for the next few weeks.

  ‘He’s an emmerdeur,’ the rep said, meaning a person who covers everything in shit.

  Suddenly I noticed how bright the sun was, and how h
igh in the sky. Perfect lynching weather.

  VI

  ‘I have come to the Ministry because I have rights,’ I told the protesters, Marie-Dominique and the cameras.

  ‘Yes, the right to go and fuck yourself,’ the union man heckled. Of course, he didn’t actually want to go on a prolonged strike. That’s not what French workers want when they take industrial action – they’d prefer the government to give in to their demands so that life can go back to being cosy and koala-like again.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know that you fonctionnaires are suffering because of la crise économique. I know that it’s not really true any more that you are koalas in France’s eucalyptus tree.’ Here I lost my audience a bit, perhaps because koala (‘kwa-LA’) and eucalyptus (‘erkalip-TOOSS’) are hard to pronounce properly in French. ‘I am not a fonctionnaire,’ I went on quickly. ‘I’m only a contractuel, I don’t have the same rights as you. If I present my report, you will go on strike and I won’t get paid for months. You will probably get money from the union. I will get nothing. But if I don’t present my report, and the project is annulled, I don’t get paid at all, ever. So I have decided that there is only one thing I can do. I have come to present this envelope to the Minister, or his representative if he himself is busy.’ I looked down at Marie-Dominique, who was glowering as though she wished she had one of her whips handy.

  ‘I won’t accept it,’ she said, trying to back off, but unable to because of the crowd hemming her in.

  ‘If he offers it to you, you have to accept it,’ the camerawoman said. She was obviously hoping for a big story on the evening news.

  I held the envelope out towards Marie-Dominique.

  ‘Open it,’ I told her.

  She clutched her hands to her chest, not wanting to give her fingers the chance to touch the envelope.

  ‘Trust me, Marie-Dominique. Have you forgotten last night?’ I tried to whisper this, but several people picked it up, and eyebrows were raised.

  Marie-Dominique reached out slowly and took the envelope from my fingers. The union rep said a loud ‘hoh!’

  ‘But if I open it, the whole country will be on strike,’ Marie-Dominique said.

  ‘Open, it please,’ I told her.

  She did so, and pulled out the contents.

  ‘Voilà, c’est la grève,’ the rep said, and started to comb his hair with his fingers in readiness for his national TV interview.

  Marie-Dominique read the first page quickly, and then handed it to the rep, who frowned.

  ‘Tu es tenace,’ she told me.

  ‘Tenace, that’s the French word for a slug, isn’t it?’ I whispered to Jake, who was standing by my shoulder, grinning into the camera.

  ‘No, that’s limace,’ he replied. ‘Tenace is, you know, tenace.’ A great help. Then I worked out that it probably meant tenacious. Much more appropriate in this case.

  The union guy was knitting his brows at me.

  ‘You must explain,’ the camerawoman said. True, suddenly the whole scene had turned into a silent movie.

  ‘I have read the rules,’ I said. ‘I know my rights. In French employment law, anyone can go on strike for reasons of conscience. If they think their employer is asking something wrong, they can go on strike. The Ministry has asked me to write a report for a project that is unjust to French workers, so I am now on strike.’

  Marie-Dominique shook her head. ‘You can’t do that. You’re a contractuel, you’re self-employed.’

  ‘But in French law, the self-employed can go on strike,’ I said. ‘I am on strike against myself. And in this envelope is the announcement of this, and my application form to join the union and ask for strike pay. Until the conflict about the project is ended,’ I added, just in case anyone thought I was asking for only one day’s money.

  It was all true. As a newly qualified expert in reading officialese French, I’d managed to battle my way through the relevant section on the government website and, unbelievably, it was totally legal. I, the consultant, could refuse for reasons of conscience to work for myself, the consultancy. And if the union supported me, I was entitled to strike pay.

  ‘So, will you support him?’ the camerawoman asked, swinging round to face the union rep.

  ‘Well …’ he said.

  ‘We need an answer,’ she told him. ‘It’s for the eight o’clock news.’

  He finger-combed his hair frenetically, gazing into the lens. ‘We must, I think, respect the accords governing such cases.’

  ‘Does that mean oui or non?’ the woman asked him, telescoping her lens for a close-up.

  ‘Well, in the light of …’ He looked at the faces around him, and then back at the camera. And, taking a deep breath, said, ‘Oui.’

  I reached out and shook his hand before he could change his mind.

  ‘Le chèque est dans l’enveloppe,’ I told him. A year’s union sub worked out at less than the daily rate of strike pay. And it was hardly my fault if the cheque was drawn on an account that Jean-Marie had frozen.

  Onze

  ‘Les femmes ont une place d’honneur dans notre société. Elle est juste en-dessous de celles des hommes.’

  Women have a place of honour in our society. It is just below that of men.

  Napoleon Bonaparte, apparently annoyed that Josephine was taller than he was

  I

  THAT EVENING, JAKE announced that his mission was ‘to stop me fermenting in my merde’.

  He was Mitzi-less – she was at a fashion event – and he took me to a bar in the 20th, a sort of industrial-era cave with silver air-conditioning tubes snaking across the black-painted walls and ceiling.

  It was, Jake shouted in my ear, one of Paris’s fashion weeks. It seemed to me that these came around almost weekly, and always decorated the city with ten-foot-tall girls whose biggest curves were their cheekbones. It was a sad irony: here they were in the capital of the creamy pâtisserie and yet they were forced to go on a starvation diet. Poor girls, I thought. One of Jean-Marie’s burgers would give them indigestion for a week. If they still had a digestion, that is.

  ‘This is why Mitzi has her meeting ce soir,’ Jake told me. ‘They prepare the collection hiver,’ meaning winter. We were now on the cusp of summer and enjoying Mediterranean heat, so I guessed it was logical. Winter in summer, skeletal bodies in an age of obesity: it was an industry that did everything backwards.

  ‘So why didn’t you make them all go en grève?’ Jake asked me as we sipped beer from squashy plastic glasses.

  ‘My problems are with Jean-Marie, not with France,’ I told him. ‘And I agree that the Minister of Culture is insane to build arty-farty palaces when the country has no money. So I didn’t want to cause merde for nothing.’

  Jake nodded. ‘There would have been no space for poets at the residence anyway. It’s all about painters. No one respects poets.’

  And for good reason in some cases, I thought, but it would have been unkind to say it.

  ‘So what will you do now?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Oh, the union guy says I should get some money before the end of the month. And by the looks of it, I’ll get Jean-Marie’s payoff sooner than that. So I’ll probably take the money and run.’

  ‘Run where?’

  ‘Somewhere sunny.’

  Jake was only half listening. He was watching a pair of particularly stork-like models stalk past on their stilt legs.

  ‘You know, it is a liberation,’ he said. ‘Because of Mitzi, for the first time ever, I don’t give a merde where all these girls come from.’

  It was true. At any other time, he would have left me to cope by myself while he worked the room looking for obscure nationalities, especially amongst the models, many of whom had been plucked from their country’s gene pool to feed the fashionistas’ appetites for new faces.

  ‘Too bad you are without a woman,’ he said, making it sound like a medical condition.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, and two faces flashed before my eyes: Amandine and
Alexa. But before I could work out what this meant, a voice began yelling into the PA system, blasting any thoughts out of my brain.

  ‘Bonsoir, bonsoir!’ Up on stage, a tattoo-plastered guy in combat shorts, combat boots and a T-shirt printed with metallic muscles was grinning into a microphone.

  Jake had brought me along to watch the French air guitar championships, and the guy with the mic went on to explain the concept of air guitar, which, given that the only thinking behind it is that you pretend to play guitar while listening to someone else doing so, didn’t take very long. After that, a series of French people got up on stage and mimed to backing tracks of soaring guitar solos, most of them morphing into wild animals for the duration of the song, hacking and biting at their imaginary instrument like crazed termites. But there were a couple who were overcome by shyness, and one who tried to play a joke – ‘I’ve snapped a string’ – and ended up getting booed off by the crowd. The booing was all part of the fun, though, a long way from the spoiler tactics we’d had to put up with at our poetry contest. The only downside was the judges themselves, who seemed to think that their job was to show how much cooler they were than the people on stage. For the most part they poured scorn on the poor, guitarless heroes. I felt a flush of guilt. Once or twice I must have been like that with the poets.

  At the end of it all, the judges chose a guy who had dressed up as Jimi Hendrix – Afro wig, psychedelic jacket, skin-hugging silk trousers – and practically shagged his invisible guitar to death. He came on to receive his award, and then performed his act again, with even more mimed string-licking.

  ‘You know, Paul, I think that I have took, er, toked, a grand decision,’ Jake shouted in my ear over the sound system. ‘I will e-pooz Mitzi.’

  ‘You’ll do what?’

  ‘You know, épouser, marier.’

  ‘Marry? You?’

  ‘Yes. When you find something you want, you must keep it.’

  It was not the most romantic of declarations, but coming from Jake it was as earth-shattering as ‘I have a dream’.