famille, no? As often as possible. Every day if we wanted.
That was all very well and we weren’t shy about taking him up on the invitation to dine at his café. We had some memorable gatherings there although Berthe saw to it that no one carried a water pistol. Meantime, however, I had to look for alternative accommodation. I wasn’t prepared to return to one of those ghoul-haunted furnished rooms and I knew I would never find a hotel as easygoing as Louis’s Florida. The brief marriage had come to an end so that I didn’t need an unduly extensive establishment. Not that I could have afforded it even if I had wanted to. I was writing a book which fortunately for the reading public was never finished. Nobody had shown any interest in giving me an advance on it. For the rest, I picked up a bit of money doing odd jobs. The owner of my chosen café hired me for a while to wash dishes in his minuscule kitchen and occasionally I had a night’s work at the great central markets. My wages from these activities were enough, barely enough, to pay for something very modest indeed if I could find it.
In the end, I did. My new residence was modest all right. It was a sort of plywood cabin above a coal-shed in the courtyard of a big house in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs off the Boulevard Raspail. It was not merely modest, it was as austere as a monastic cell. My consolation was the concierge of the big house. She was of incredible antiquity and austere mien but I had got on the right side of her by offering to do her marketing one day when she was laid up with a cold in the head. From then on I was treated with extreme cordiality. I think I stood as high in her favour as the next-door concierge, her particular crony. Every so often she would invite me into her den to drink a glass of wine and would recount astonishing and frequently improper stories about different individuals who had lived in my shack or had had rooms in the big house. Chatting with her on one occasion, she asked me what I did. She was barely literate but she was French and I knew my stocks would go up if I claimed to be a poet. A poet, was I? Ah, that explained why we got on so well together. She esteemed poets—they were a cut above the ordinary run of people. Years ago, another poet had lived there—not in my cabin but in a set of rooms in the house. Monsieur Poonde was his name. Perhaps I knew him?
Poonde? Poonde? No, I had never had the good fortune to meet the illustrious Poonde. Then it dawned on me. Pound, Ezra Pound! It was quite true that he had lived there. Not long ago in a book about the great man I saw a photograph of the courtyard—my courtyard—in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Nothing had changed. It was exactly as I was to know it twenty-five years later. The same plaster casts, left behind by some forgotten sculptor, were leaning against the wall.
‘What sort of man was Monsieur Pound?’
‘A very noisy gentleman ...’
You ascended to my cabin by means of a stepladder. Inside, there was just enough space for the bed. Any visitors who might clamber up the ladder and open the door ran a risk of finding themselves tumbling into bed with me. It was too bad that no attractive young women ever came to call.
In the event, the only visitor I ever had was Pierre. Pierre was a taxidriver and I met him because he had entered a contest organised by some airline or other. The aim was to select the most typical representatives of various forms of transport—a London bus conductor, a Venetian gondolier, a Paris taxidriver. Pierre entered in the last of these categories.
One by one, candidates were brought before a jury and the same questions put to each. One question in particular was considered fundamental: ‘You are driving around in your cab and you are simultaneously hailed by a ravishing young woman and a poor old lady with two heavy suitcases. Which of the two would you take?’
The contestants felt confident that they knew the answer to that one. The poor old lady, of course, with the two heavy suitcases. And why would that be their choice? Why, because it was only right to be kind to the elderly—one has a heart, quoi—what sort of a world would it be if one didn’t spare a thought for the aged and infirm?
Pierre was ushered in. The same question was put to him and he gave the same answer as the other candidates. ‘Pas d’hesitation, the old biddy with the two heavy suitcases.’
‘And why?’
‘Mon Dieu, because there’s an additional charge for suitcases, voyons.’ He won.
The first prize was a free trip to Australia and someone from the Australian Embassy gave a cocktail party for Pierre on the eve of his departure. I don’t know why I was invited. I know why I accepted. There would be things to eat. I found something better than cheese straws or canapes. Pierre. A tall fellow of about my own age he bore a striking facial resemblance to certain depictions of Richard III. He was dressed in irreproachable taste—perfectly pressed grey trousers, beautifully shined shoes, a blue blazer with brass buttons. He could have passed for one of the diplomats present. His manners were conspicuously good, his French was of unusual elegance. Such worldliness was almost intimidating but I thought I detected a sardonic glint in his eye.
When the party broke up Pierre for some reason asked whether he could drop me anywhere. ‘If he was going towards Montparnasse ...’ He was. He made elaborate farewells and we went sedately downstairs together. I was still a little ill at ease in the presence of so much social aplomb.
Once in his taxi, Pierre was abruptly transformed. The refined upper-class diction made way for the characteristic drawl of the titi, the Parisian street boy. Dropping the ceremonious speech which was all I had heard so far from him, he addressed me in the familiar second person singular ‘Eh, bien, mon vieux, that was heavy going. I could see you weren’t loving it, either. Let’s go and drink some Calvados to get the taste of champagne out of our mouths.’
Before long, I came to understand that Pierre was a dual or rather a multiple personality. Depending on the circumstances, he could switch in an instant from the proletarian taxidriver to the urbane patrician I had met at the Embassy party and then as quickly back again with, moreover, innumerable variations in between. This ability to metamorphose himself enabled him to establish relationships with an extraordinary range of people. He had friends and acquaintances in every milieu imaginable. I was present when he discussed Celine with a well-known author, when he argued with another taxidriver about the innards of different engines, when he expounded the significance of an artist’s paintings to the painter himself, when he gave some valuable advice on sexual peculiarities to a couple of tarts in a bar.
Whether or not the others learnt anything new, the two tarts undoubtedly picked up some useful hints. Sex was Pierre’s speciality. He recounted uproarious stories of his amatory prowess which would have startled Kraft-Ebbing. Women, we were given to understand, staggered back unbelievingly on first sighting his sexual organ. ‘Thirty-three centimetres!’ Pierre would proclaim in reverent tones as though he himself was awed by such a phenomenon.
Once, as we sat on a café terrace, Pierre was moved to boast of his dimensions yet again. ‘Thirty-three centimetres, Alister—can you imagine?’ The waiter, an old friend, overheard the revelation. So did practically everyone else on the terrace: Pierre was not coy on the subject.
‘Allons, Monsieur Pierre—thirty-three centimetres! It’s not possible.’
‘Mon ami,’ said Pierre with deep gravity, ‘I would be only too happy to provide ocular proof but I dare not. An inadvertent movement on my part and I might well put out one of your eyes.’
The trip to Australia which he had won left Pierre with only a hazy impression of my native land. I gathered that he and the bus conductor and the gondolier celebrated their triumph all the way there, throughout their stay and all the way back. I was touched to discover, however, that he had not forgotten me during his absence. He turned up one morning at the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and contemplated my cabin with commiseration.
