The Merde Factor:

by Stephen Clarke

  ‘If you want to make yourself useful,’ I told him, ‘why don’t you check that all the pens work?’

  One of Mitzi’s businesswomen, the boss of a company called Prévisions Funéraires, had sent us a boxload. I wasn’t sure how many of our audience would be interested in prepaying their funeral, but we needed the pens because I’d decided to scrap the judges. There are enough dictators in the world, I thought, without setting up a panel of them here. So this competition was to be run as a democracy: a pen, a voting slip, and you wrote down the name of your favourite candidate. And if anyone got five hundred votes and there were only a hundred people in the tea room, we’d know that there had been foul play.

  Jake had suggested I set up a phone line to charge people a euro a time to vote ‘like à la télé’, but I’d decided it might ruin the suspense on the night if I had to spend an hour reading text messages.

  So I left Jake doodling with a pile of black ballpoints and went out into the street to put in a call to Amandine.

  ‘Happy pre-anniversaire. I hope you’re coming along,’ I told her. Or her voicemail. It was six o’clock, so I figured she was either finishing up her birthday cake with Grand-mère or sitting on a train. No way to find out which.

  I went back in to help Jake, and he showed me the engagement ring he was planning to give to Mitzi – if he won the contest, of course. It was a remarkably sober gold band with three white stones. I congratulated him on his good taste.

  ‘Oh, I got it bon marché,’ he said, meaning cheap. ‘From an ex. She’s a hostess of the air, and she always buys her bijous in the Gulf. She says you know they’re real because otherwise the jeweller gets his hand cut off.’

  ‘I don’t think Mitzi needs to hear that story, Jake. But well done on getting an ex to sell you an engagement ring.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well, she wasn’t too content that I asked. We didn’t have a great separation.’

  I could imagine – Jake’s separations were often uncannily like having a hand cut off. But it was a cute ring, and the way he wanted to give it to Mitzi was even cuter. He outlined his plan, and it was impossible to believe it was the old wham-bam-merci-madame Jake talking.

  ‘That’s incredibly romantic,’ I told him. ‘You should do it even if you don’t get first prize.’

  ‘No. It’s tout ou rien. All or anything.’

  ‘Hey, you’re not going to tell the audience what’s at stake?’ I had to ask. ‘You can’t tell them you’ll propose if you win.’

  Jake banged his fist on the counter, snapping the point off the pen he’d been testing.

  ‘You insult me, Paul. I’m going to win this thing and get my posy published because people love it. If it ain’t sincere, it don’t count.’

  Coming from a man who’d spent half his adult life getting women into bed just for the sake of crossing their nationality off his world map, this declaration of sincerity was quite a statement, but I apologised and assured him I’d be ready to play my part if – no, when – he won.

  ‘OK, and just so we’re clear, Paul, I know you’re not a judge any more, so you only get one vote, but I want you to promise that you won’t vote for me.’

  Sadly for him, it was one of the easiest promises I’ve ever had to make.

  IV

  We were expecting a small, personal-invitation-only crowd, so I put up a ‘Soirée privée’ sign, and went outdoors to play bouncer. I figured that potential hecklers would be easy to spot – the berets and tricolour T-shirts would give them away.

  To my surprise, bouncing turned out to be fun. I imagined that people would be swinging bottles at my head or trying to knife me. But this wasn’t England, it was Paris, at a venue that hadn’t been plastered all over the social networks, so things at the door went as smoothly as a kiddies’ tea party without the hysterical parents.

  One of the arrivals was less welcome, though: Marsha.

  ‘Hi, Paul,’ she said, with the grin of a gatecrasher who doesn’t give a damn whether they were invited or not.

  ‘This is a surprise,’ I said, meaning, ‘How did you even know about this evening?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m …’ and she held out an arm towards the advancing figure of Brick or Stick or whatever his name was, the hunky rapper with the dreadlocks and a bass guitar slung over one bare shoulder. ‘I’m his other,’ she said, and gave him the sort of kiss that proved beyond all doubt that there were no lingering emotional scars from her break-up with me.

  ‘Hey, man,’ Rock or Stack said, and gripped me in one of those man-hugs where they clasp your right hand and pull you in for a touch of chests with their left. I had to admit it was a very rocklike chest.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Marsha asked me.

  ‘No, but just be nice to Alexa, OK?’ I told her. ‘It’s half her tea room now.’

  ‘Yes, so I hear. Ex marks the spot, eh?’

  A few minutes later, Jean-Marie arrived in a taxi. The flashy cars were staying in the garage tonight. He went to open the other rear door of the taxi and held out a hand to the lady who was accompanying him.

  And out popped Marie-Dominique, in full leather regalia: bulging bodice, lace-up skirt, vicious stilettos, this time with her own hair gelled to her head like a black helmet. Holy shit, I thought, Jean-Marie’s gone from macho predator to total submissive. I was just grateful he was dressed as himself, in a chic suit, rather than coming trussed up with one of those zipped SM masks.

  I greeted them both as though they were royal guests of honour, and Jean-Marie hung back to let Marie-Dominique make her entrance first.

  ‘Merci,’ he whispered.

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Your speeches to me about sexism in the workplace. They have changed my life.’

  ‘But I thought it was Amandine’s speech that really made the change?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He patted my arm as if to console me for my excess modesty. ‘But I am the one who is glad. You know, it is so much more efficient to be anti-sexist. You touch a girl’s leg, and half of them will detest you. You give them a big talk about sexism, they all love you. Merci, Paul. I had no idea you were so intelligent.’ He slapped me on the shoulder and went inside.

  Typical Jean-Marie. His gender equality in the workplace scheme had smelled like bullshit, but I’d only just realised exactly how much merde de taureau was involved. Though if it kept his hands off Amandine and her colleagues, why not? They didn’t necessarily want sincerity, just to be left in peace.

  Neither Amandine nor Alexa had arrived when Benoît came out to tell me it was time to start my second job as MC, but I still held out hopes for later on. Now it was time to get things rolling.

  The rows of chairs were packed tightly facing the far end of the tea room, and there was barely space to squirm along the counter and get to the microphone stand. The place was crammed – about a hundred people, with Benoît on the door to stop any undesirables adding to the crush. He had instructions, of course, to let Amandine and Alexa in even if everyone else inside was passing out for lack of oxygen.

  ‘Bonsoir!’ I yelled into the mic, and got a loud reply. Parisians, even expats, are so polite. I explained the rules and why we were there, and expressed my hope that tonight, we’d actually be able to listen to the poems instead of the protesters’ chanting. If anyone wanted to protest, I said, I knew some people on picket lines who would be glad of their support. This got a major cheer, even though I suspected that I was the only one in the room who was actually part of the French civil servants’ campaign for a fairer France.

  ‘Let the games begin,’ I announced, and introduced our first poet of the night: the annoying American ‘bling of the past’ guy.

  He left his row of friends and squeezed his tubby frame towards the front.

  ‘Thanks, I’m Laurie, vote for me,’ he shouted, prompting someone to remind him he hadn’t actually recited his poem yet.

  ‘The playwright Oliver Goldsmith once wrote, “What
shall we do if Comedy forsake us”,’ Laurie said.

  ‘Is this part of your poem?’ a girl called out. It was obviously going to be a tough night, even without French-language lobbyists.

  ‘No, it’s just a thought that I want you to keep in mind as I perform.’ He nodded to Gregory, who hit a button. A booming rap rhythm started bouncing off the walls. Laurie swayed to the music for a few beats, then began to recite his poem. Or rather, a series of non-rhyming one-liners, like his earlier ‘bling’ effort.

  ‘I told my mum and dad, When I grow up, I want to be a memory man,

  They said, Forget it.

  I said, In that case I’m going to be a maths teacher,

  They said, Don’t count on it.

  I told them, I want to be a singer in a soccer stadium,

  They said, You’ve got no chants.

  I failed the exam to be a roadroller driver,

  I was crushed.’

  He went on in the same punning mode for a minute or so, and then ended with the worst of them all:

  ‘And so I became a poet,

  Is that such a heinous rhyme?’

  Despite its almost physically painful ending, it went down well with the crowd. With the Anglos, that is – the French were completely baffled, and from what I could see, their English-speaking friends were making little attempt to translate or explain. Jean-Marie was staring at me as if to say: ‘I bring a dominatrix from the Ministry of Culture to your soirée and this is all you can manage?’

  But this time I wasn’t judging, so I simply thanked Laurie, who was on his way back to his table, and seemed to have made lots of new friends.

  And he wasn’t the only one, apparently. Because I looked towards the door to see Alexa smiling at me, and shaking her head in apology for being late. She was looking wonderful in a tight button-up T-shirt and battered jeans, which were being admired from the rear by a bloke. A handsome nerd – unkempt hair, glasses, a week’s beard – was following her into the tea room, and sat next to her at the back of the room.

  Logical, really, I thought. She’s a beautiful woman, living in Paris. Of course she has a bloke. Though they’re not holding hands or kissing or anything. Does that mean there are no fireworks between them?

  But it was time to introduce the next poet, a French guy called Samuel, who had given me a printout of his poem. And if I understood it correctly, it was a self-loathing little ditty about being a rent boy. Not that Samuel had anything to self-loathe – he was cute-looking, about nineteen, with an adorable head of curls, golden fleece on his chin and cheeks, and clothes straight out of Fashion Week.

  He came up to the mic and almost whispered, in a heavy French accent, ‘Zis is ma pwem. I was calling it at first “Je suis une pute” – “I Am a Whore”. But now I call it “I Am Not a Playboy, I Am a Payboy”.’

  This got a big cheer from everyone except one guy, about halfway back, just behind Marsha and Rock/Stack/Brick, who stood up and shouted, ‘Non!’

  Oh shit, here we go again, I thought.

  ‘Tu es français, parle français!’ he barked at poor Samuel, who was looking as though he’d been slapped. The heckler hadn’t been at Marsha’s shop, I was sure of that. He was in his late twenties to early thirties, dressed in a trendy sweatshirt and wearing thick black designer glasses. He’d come with a group of friends who weren’t joining in with his protest.

  ‘Je vais parler français,’ Samuel objected. ‘If you let me speak,’ he added in English, earning a round of applause from the crowd.

  ‘Voilà!’ the heckler replied. ‘English pollutes everything. You want an English poem, I have one.’ He pointed at me. ‘Paul West, you are a pest, so leave France and give us a rest,’ he recited in a surprisingly good English accent. I was flattered. It was the first time anyone had written a poem for me since I was at school and a girl called Jackie had penned a few words to tell me we were splitting up: ‘Let’s call it a wrap, because you’re crap.’

  I was just wondering whether to ask Marsha’s Hunk/Block/Rock to throw the guy out when help came from an unexpected quarter.

  ‘T’es nul!’ This shout, meaning more or less ‘You are crap’, had come from Jean-Marie, who was on his feet and pointing at the heckler. ‘What world are you living in?’ he demanded. ‘I am a French businessman. For my business, I speak French, English, Italian sometimes.’ He treated the whole room to a blinding display of his expensive dentistry. ‘And I am about to acquire an American diner, where I will—’

  He was interrupted by a loud creak of leather as Marie-Dominique stood and told him to shut up. He sat down meekly and she turned towards the heckler, who guffawed at her. Oh no, I thought, she’s going to get a faceful of French insults again.

  ‘Is not Paris a cultural capital precisely because it has always welcomed art and artists from all over the world?’ she began, but this time her elegant French rhetoric was met by an intrigued silence. ‘Is the city not at the forefront of artistic activity because it has always embraced innovations like abstract art, jazz, rap and fetishism?’ Still the French guy didn’t reply, probably because she was declaiming at a volume that brooked no interruption. ‘Can we not express ourselves freely here? Do you think we are in 1940 again?’ She pointed her armoured boobs at the heckler, and if I’d been him, I’d have run for it there and then. ‘If you don’t like our world, the real world, then you can just’ – she inflated her frightening bodice – ‘fuck off. Va te faire foutre,’ she told the guy, and the shock of it provoked a howl of laughter. ‘Go on,’ she said, easily drowning out all noise from the crowd, ‘go and get yourself fucked, if you can find anyone to do it, and leave us to enjoy our evening of intelligent, cosmopolitan entertainment.’

  All eyes turned to the heckler, who clearly didn’t know what to do in the face of this menacing ball of leather. In the end, he decided to cut his losses and stalk towards the door, which Benoît opened for him.

  ‘And I bet your grandfather was a collaborator,’ Marie-Dominique called out at the guy’s back. If she had managed to say a few words in rhyme right then, she would have won the competition, but she simply bowed to acknowledge the applause, and then poor Samuel coughed into the microphone to remind us who’d caused all the rumpus.

  ‘I am not a playboy, I am a payboy,’ he said, and began to recite. Personally, I kind of wished he hadn’t. It was all based on the fact that paix means peace and paie is pay, and that pédé (pronounced ‘pay-day’) is the French equivalent of queer – a word that’s an insult unless gays themselves use it.

  By the end, Alexa was clapping loudly, shouting her approval into the nearest ear of her bloke, who came back with what looked like a funny riposte. Must be French, I thought.

  Meanwhile, Marie-Dominique was on her feet, shouting, ‘Bravo!’, Samuel was giving us all his cute smile, and I began to think that Jake was looking less and less like ending the evening as a fiancé.

  Next up was Rake or Rod or whatever, doing his rapping, slapping thing that drove everyone orgasmic despite the fact that they couldn’t understand, or even hear, what he was saying. As he came off stage, Marsha leapt on him to show people where his heart, or at least parts of his body, lay. Then came the punky girl who’d given us her poignant poem about kids with not enough chairs to read Baudelaire. She did a new one from the point of view of a French policeman who secretly dreams of grafitti-ing walls and smoking weed, and who crashes his car into the scooter of a banlieue kid he’s chasing because the kid had been spotted grafitti-ing walls and smoking weed. Tough urban realism, in English peppered with French, and everyone loved it.

  As she was returning to her seat, I saw Benoît step outside. Not to confront the heckler, I hoped, returning with his hunting rifle.

  The door opened again, and in came Amandine, whose first sight as she walked in the room was me grinning stupidly at her, a microphone held to my mouth and no words emerging. She was looking flushed, as though she’d dashed from the railway station. I waved hello and pointed her t
owards the front where I’d saved a seat, and where Jake was fidgeting for me to call him up on stage. Mitzi was whispering in his ear like a trainer sending her boxer into the ring. I knew, though, that as far as she was concerned, tonight was just about poetry. She had no idea that if Jake won, she was going to be offered the chance of becoming Madame Baudelaire, the official muse.

  If he won, which had to be one of the biggest ifs pronounced in Paris since February 1912, when an Austrian tailor called Franz Reichelt said, ‘What if I were to leap off the first level of the Eiffel Tower wearing my homemade parachute suit?’ After which the poor bloke plummeted to his death.

  Jake threaded his way towards me and the microphone. Shit, I thought, I hope it’s not all about to go horribly wrong.

  ‘Bonsoir, I’m Jake, and this is called “To Beurk or Not to Beurk”.’

  Beurk is the French word for yuk. So ‘horribly wrong’ was going to be about right, even if his title did get a titter from one or two generous members of the audience.

  ‘It’s a bilingual poem,’ Jake went on, ‘about the French and English noises that women can provoke.’ He began to recite, and it was even worse than I’d feared. Au revoir to wedded bliss and poetic immortality.

  ‘Paf in French, in English is pow,

  As I learnt when being punched by a girl from Cracow.

  Ouch, I yelped, et j’ai crié aie,

  When I was slapped by a furious Thai.

  Huh was what I got, and a scornful pah,

  For a lame excuse to a Mexicana.

  Bim in français – in anglais that’s bang,

  Was the door being slammed by a girl from Penang.

  And when I read a poem to an uptight Turk,

  All I heard was yuk, and a long French beurk.’

  Jake paused for dramatic effect and turned to point at Mitzi – rather undiplomatically, I thought, considering what he’d just said. I braced myself as he carried on.