Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (28 page)

On our bank Paris, with its waterfront avenues, tall stone buildings, squares and spires, on the other bank ramparts climbing two hundred feet to the cathedral. You must go to the top of the hill, said Fritz. There is a funicular, there are parks for Jim, there is a rose garden.

The funicular would not accept whippets, in fact they were formally interdicted, so we walked up the parks, which were vertical. Not much good for Jim to run, said Monica, too steep. We could throw him off the path, I said, he can fly. He’d need a hang-glider, said Monica.

It was hot and I climbed at survival speed, that is just this side of a heart attack. This includes long periods of static sweating. Monica and Jim were waiting at the basilica. I thought there was a rose garden, I said. That was Fritz, not me, said Monica—I beg your pardon.

I have been nervous about tying Jim outside churches since I hitched him to the gate of Gloucester Cathedral on the way back to Stone from Sharpness. A chap came out—How dare your dog piss on my cathedral, he said. That’s a fine Christian welcome, I said, for a visitor to your city and his little dog. We were about to settle the matter by combat but some more Christians came along and I moved Jim back to unhallowed ground.

The Notre-Dame Basilica was built in the late nineteenth century to thank God for keeping the Prussians out of Lyon, and it did that job until November 1942. Outside it looks like an elephantine Star of Delhi, with two poppadoms and ladies’ fingers, and the interior is a trip inside the skull of a religious madman. It curls, it swerves, it flows, it glows. It bulges, it effulges, it thrusts, it protrudes, it retreats into vaults and domes. It is silvered, rouged, gilded, azure. The heads of drowning Turks, fully turbaned, sweep across the walls in mosaic, or crowds of people with big hats and haloes surround pious popes, their sermons endless.

When we came out we had managed to make Jim disappear. Masters of illusion, we had come out of another entrance. They have stolen him and gilded him and put him in one of the niches, I said. No one will notice.

LYON IS THE SECOND CITY OF FRANCE. PARIS has ten million people, and Lyon fewer than a million and a half, and so Lyon is in some ways nicer. It is built where the Saône flows into the Rhône, making a narrow triangle, and both rivers are wide and there is a lot of light around, as in a seaside town. We walked through the little squares and the big Place Bellecour, past the fountains through the wide pedestrian avenues of same-as-everywhere-else shops and up the side streets with the I’ve-never-seen-one-of-those-before shops.

We walked to the Rhône, which was much wider than the Saône. They never told me it was blue, said Monica, and it’s not running very fast. Fast enough, I said, thinking of drowning in turquoise, like the poor Turks in the basilica.

In Lyon we ate out more than usual. How can they do it, asked Monica, slicing her roast rabbit, with so much brilliance and for less than the cost of a meal in England? I poured another glass of Chiroubles and picked up a lamb chop. To get the taste of Chiroubles say the name twice slowly and roll your eyes and think of blackberries and rain, and if you are a bloke the taste of the mouth of the girl you kissed by the privet hedge when you were sixteen and you hoped her mother wasn’t watching through the window.

It’s a cultural thing, I explained, when I had stopped thinking about the girl. It’s what people have got good at over the centuries. In Lyon it’s food. But there are things we do better in Stone. There are only two footraces in Lyon all summer and I bet that lots of the guys you see on the streets, even the young ones, would have trouble running ten miles in seventy minutes. And very few Lyonnais could sit in Langtry’s and drink eight pints of Pedigree and hardly say a word all night, like any decent fellow from our town.

WE ARE IN VICHY NOW, I SAID, IN PÉTAIN’S FREE France that was not free. We have been in Vichy since we left Chalon-sur-Saône, after the storm. The boundary went across nearly to Tours, and down to the Spanish border. Vichy was most of southern France, with the Germans holding the flanks round Bordeaux and Grenoble. How could Pétain agree to an armistice? How could he sell out his country?

Did you expect them to fight the panzers town by town? asked Monica—would you have fought? I don’t know, I said, but my family fought, and so did yours. Churchill was going to spray the invasion barges with mustard gas. The Queen had a pistol so she could take a German with her when she went. Four French boys, children, paddled across the Channel in a canoe to join De Gaulle—Churchill thanked them himself and so did his wife, Clementine. Jean Moulin, the prefect of Chartres, tried to kill himself rather than sign a document he felt to be dishonourable. But the French National Assembly supported Pétain by five hundred and sixty-nine votes to eighty and signed away half their country to thieves and murderers.

What Pétain did wasn’t so wrong, said Monica. Think of the lives it saved. No, I said, it wasn’t evil, it was absence of virtue—and before long he was signing the edicts against the Jews.

THE GERMANS OCCUPIED VICHY FRANCE ANYWAY in November 1942 and SS First Lieutenant Klaus Barbie was sent to Lyon as a member of the Office of Reich Security, which included the Gestapo. As well as deporting Jews, Barbie’s job was to help destroy the Maquis. Lyon is not far from Switzerland and was the capital of the Resistance. We saw the Gestapo headquarters, where thousands were tortured. It is now the Museum of the Resistance and Deportations.

I will betray tomorrow, not today.

Today, tear out my fingernails,

I will not betray.

You don’t know the end of my courage.

But I do.

You are five hard hands with rings.

You have shoes on your feet

With nails.

I will betray tomorrow, not today,

Tomorrow.

I need the night to make up my mind,

I need at least a night

To reject, to dishonour, to betray.

To deny my friends,

To put aside the bread and the wine,

To betray life,

To die.

I will betray tomorrow, not today.

The file is under the flagstone—

The file that they have missed.

It’s not for the bars or the hangman.

The file is for my wrist.

Today I have nothing to say.

I will betray tomorrow.

Marianne Cohn was arrested on 31 May 1944 while leading twenty-eight Jewish children across the Swiss frontier. She was murdered on 8 July. She was twenty-two. One of the children saved the poem.

Some years ago Monica and I visited the Vercors plateau, a hundred miles south of Lyon. It is thirty miles long and fifteen miles wide, and reaches three thousand feet into the clouds, almost to the height of Snowdon. With the trial and imprisonment of Klaus Barbie and the founding of the Museum of the Resistance the evil that fouled the air in Lyon has been metabolized, municipalized, wept over and added to history. This had not happened in the Vercors when Monica and I were there and I don’t think it will have happened yet. The Vercors Museum of the Resistance that looks out over the snows of the lost plateau is not talking about history. It happened yesterday and it happened here and it happened to us, and we are angry and our hearts are breaking.

After the Normandy landings in June 1944 four thousand Maquis declared a Free France on the Vercors plateau and waited for reinforcement from the Allies. The Germans sent in the Milice, the French traitor police, and then attacked with twenty thousand troops, tanks and mountain guns. The German troops were under the command of General Karl Pflaum. In the Maquis field hospital in the Grotte de la Luire cavern they murdered the wounded on their stretchers and then they murdered the doctors and the chaplain. In the valleys they flattened the houses with the people inside or dragged them out and murdered them in scenes of great horror. Fifty years later in the market square of La Chapelle-en-Vercors Monica and I could still smell the blood and the fear.

In the Vercors and in Lyon the flowers of evil grew rank, but their roots had struck long before. All that evil requires is an absence of virtue, where somebody didn’t make a stand.

Twelve

THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

The Rhône

I
t was your mother, said Monica—why did she appear to me and not to you? It’s because you were in the saloon, I said. She always appears in the saloon. That’s where her photograph is on the wall, and there isn’t enough room for her to appear anywhere else. She wouldn’t be able to stand up in the engine-room or on the end of the bed and you can’t make an appearance in the bath.

Why does she come back? asked Monica. It’s a bit like the Queen, I said—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. So she can’t actually do anything? asked Monica. People say they can chuck things around, I said, but in my experience they just hang about and look sad.

I woke up knowing something was wrong, said Monica. I got up and she appeared at the front door—she had her hat on and her green winter coat. She started walking down the boat towards me, holding out her hand. Then Jim came out of his kennel behind her and ran through her, yelping, up to the engine-room and banged against the door and then he ran back and kept running back and forth shouting Abandon ship and she was gone. Then the heaving started, and the bucking. I was so frightened, and when I woke you up you just sat there.

I was fast asleep, I said, and I didn’t know my mother had turned up and I had finished that bottle of Côtes du Rhône at dinner. I knew I had tied us securely and I thought it was only the wake from a barge. You sat there like a dick, said Monica, saying It’s all right Monnie, it will die down. It did die down, I said. Yes, said Monica, but it was ages and we could have been smashed up and sunk.

I realized we were in trouble, I said, when I looked out of the window and I saw the torrent. It was black, with white foam. It was throwing the boat up and the boat couldn’t move because I had tied the fenders tight to the pontoon. I used those ropes I bought in Dunkirk. They weren’t very thick but they were ocean strength and it was a fixed pontoon. So the boat was going up in the air and it was snatching and going up again and snatching and it was like being in a pepper pot.

The next morning we looked at the ropes and they were frayed. Where they were tied to the steel handrail the rail was bent. Perhaps it was a weir opening, said Monica, or there is a power station upriver and maybe it was that. But it must have been millions of tons of water, I said.

We looked out at the morning Rhône flowing through Vienne: blue, peaceful, harmless—come on, I’ll carry you to the Med, let it be. It’s at night-time, I said, it turns into a raving lunatic. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Rhône.

THE RHÔNE HAD JOINED THE SAÔNE JUST south of Lyon. The blue water merged with the green water and the banks went away left and right and it wasn’t like a river any more, it was like being at sea. You held a bit to the right because that’s what you do but you couldn’t crawl along the banks because of creeks and islands and you were out in the stream and it was like walking a tightrope because there was nothing but air and water on both sides for half a kilometre: the sun heating the steel boat and a hot wind blowing in your face. It said in
Le Monde
that this was the hottest spot in Europe—thirty-five degrees.

What’s that further down? It’s a big barge but too far away for the binoculars. That white dot you thought was a buoy was a motor launch. Better give them a wave, though they pass hundreds of yards away. Here comes the big barge—we can handle the wash, we can handle a Sea Cat. Oh, look, they are taking pictures of us.

Dots and blurred chalky lines ahead. Every fifteen miles the river goes over a weir, and if you choose the right line and don’t go over with it, you carry on down a lock cut. At the end of the cut you can sail into the jaws of a hydroelectric station, which is several hundred yards long and a few storeys high over the stream, or you can sail towards the lock and try and get in. It is easy to make the wrong choices, because the map on top of the boat is the other way round, and there is also carelessness and incompetence and weariness with living because it is early August and so damn hot and you made a fool of yourself last night with a slab of Roquefort and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

Monica points from the bow—Left left. Ahead are signs, none of which I understand. Left, shouts Monica, the lock. We enter the canal leading to the lock and stop at a red and green light. What does that mean? I shouted. I was answered by a great voice from the sky.

Do not go through the red and green lights, you yachts, just stay where you bloody well are.

Then it said something similar in seven languages one after the other.

The light went green and I moved into the canal and I could see the lock tower and a gate far ahead. Behind me a grinding, and a gate arose from the deep. We weren’t in the canal leading to the lock. This was the lock.

We tied to a bollard in the wall and sank twelve metres. As we sank the bollards along each wall sank too, groaning like cows in a slaughterhouse. We were the only car in Oxford Street and the road had descended beneath us, until we could hardly see the sky. Silence. A klaxon sounded
Kraak kraak kraak
—My God, they have lost control like those guys in Paris. We’ll be washed into the sluices and they’ll have to send the divers down.
What’s this red and black collar, Alphonse, and this ear?

The gate at the end of Oxford Street raised itself a crack: a guillotine winding up for the next drop. Then an opening, then a cave mouth and outside France was green and sunlit. As we passed fifty metres under him the
horla
in the centre of the arch looked out and waved.

Whenever I think of the Rhône, whatever happens to us, said Monica, I’ll think of the nice
horla
and the wave.

NEXT MORNING IT WAS COOLER, THIRTY DEGREES, humid, no sun, no wind. No real clouds either, just a dark haze. The lock cut was twice the width of the canals in Belgium and ten kilometres long. It went straight between banks of heaped stones while the river wandered off and would no doubt join us later.

The Rhône had been transformed after the Second World War by the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône from a raving lunatic to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Rhône, with twelve locks between Lyon and the sea. I tried to work out the amount of earth and rock that had been moved to make this lock cut and couldn’t.

Ahead a city of tubes and fractionation towers and a dozen stacks with the smoke rising straight two hundred feet and blossoming and fading. A fire in the sky. It’s only a burn-off, why was it making me afraid? I pressed on, and the fire took a long time to get nearer.

The roof of the boat seemed to buckle and I felt sick. I couldn’t see properly, and I held on to the grab-rail to keep my balance. My God, I said to myself, it’s the poison gas, like the dick said we would get in Belgium—in Charleroi it was windy but today the gas is going straight up and coming straight down.

Monica came out on the bow and shouted OK? Fine, I said. What are you supposed to say—I am being poisoned and I want you to come up here and be poisoned too? I thought If I faint we will run into the bank and Monica and I have our life jackets on and all dogs are supposed to swim. But all dogs are supposed to wag their tails and eat their dinner. Now just breathe normally, try to stay conscious, don’t make a fuss. I held on, the air swimming and stinking of sulphur.

We passed through the smoke and the fire and sailed into clean air, straight into a lock on the green light. We were lock veterans now, we knew about the moaning cows, the voice from the sky, the klaxon, the gates rising like Triton. We had been waved at by the
horla
.

Sixty feet away on the bow Monica was talking into the FM radio. That should have been me, the skipper, with manly repartee—
Péniche de plaisance étroite, bandits at three o’clock, pan pan medico, seelonce feenee, Roger the lodger, over and out
. But to get our certificates Monica had promised the captain with a beard that she would never let me use the FM radio. As we left the lock the keeper came through
Squawk squawk
. That’s nice, said Monica, he said Happy voyage, little ship.

On to Andancette, under the half bald half green hill with tall crosses near the summit. Two girls had thrown themselves off the cliff when their fiancés did not come back from the Crusades. Maybe they came back late from a Saracen gaol—Sorry lads, but see those crosses?

IN ENGLAND WE HAVE PAVEMENTS. IN FRANCE if you have a row of broken stones six inches wide for yourself, your dog, your pushchair and your grandmother you are lucky and if you don’t like it go to the next village which has been there a thousand years and there are no pavements at all.

In Andancette there is a bridge, connecting it to Andance. The Rhône is not wide there so it’s the same place, really. We went to walk over the bridge but little cars were rushing across and there was no pavement so we gave up and said Sod you, Andance.

We walked down the river and picked ripe figs and wondered at the locust trees with their many-fingered leaves and brown pods. We are in a different climate, I said. Of course we are, said Monica, it’s the start of the Midi. Then it rained and rained and thundered and the river was exploding in blue and grey and then it stopped and the trout came up and the perch and the norberts and the chub and cruised along our windows, looking in.

Why go into Andance—stay here and watch us. Later we will do you a bit of synchronized splashing, a few colour changes, some jumps, nothing too grand.

MONICA ON THE TILLER, ANOTHER BLUE DAY. When not driving I stretch out and read, getting up now and then to look back along the boat from the bow and exchange a thumbs-up. Or just look out of the window—the dry hills of the Côtes du Rhône and the scrub and the little rows of vines hanging on. But I was restless and walked around and found things to tidy away and fell over Jim. Was it Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Rhône today?

The
Phyllis May
skidded sideways as if doing wheelies on ice and Jim ran out on to the bow. We were too far from the bank to jump so he ran back into the saloon—We are done for,
sauve qui peut
, every man for himself. The boat surged into the air and again swung sideways and took Jim’s legs from under him and dumped me on to the sofa. Jim lay still, hoping for a merciful death.

It was as if the front of the boat had become detached from the back and none of the movements had any rhythm or sense. I crawled out on to the bow and stood hanging on to the roof over the door. I could see Monica on the tiller, her face white, and passing us from behind and very near a gas barge, a hundred yards of stainless steel and piping, low in the water. Ahead of it a glassy cool translucent wave a metre high and behind it a maelstrom. Accelerate, I shouted, accelerate, but we were pointing into the bank and Monica had throttled back on to tick-over and the
Phyllis May
was twisting like a leaf in the tide. As the barge passed, Monica turned away from the bank and revved up and the boat stabilized and the tumult died and Jim looked at me—Are you quite sure, sir, this is wise?

I knew he was coming up on me, said Monica. I held hard right but the navigation channel is narrow so he was coming across and pushing me into the bank. I was so near the side I had to go into tick-over, then the wake hit me and right on top of it the echo wave from the bank, then everything at once.

Give me a Sea Cat any time, I said, at least you are staring death in the face. The bloody Rhône comes up behind you and hits you over the head.

FOR LOCAL WINES, SAID THE LADY VINTNER IN Tournon, we have the St. Joseph, and then the Hermitage. Those are the Hermitage hills over the river. The rosé does not start until further south, but this is a good one. We bought two bottles of each and I noticed five steel barrels in the room behind the counter, each of them a ton. Yes, that is the wine
en vrac
said the lady, two euros a litre, or one euro twenty. Would you like to taste it
monsieur
?—I have some plastic bottles. The red wine at one euro twenty was good, so we had five litres and a litre of rosé.

I have a theory about wine in France, I said to Monica. There is the wine for drinking, which costs nothing and they drink it like water with their meals, then there is the wine that costs a lot of money and they drink that in a different way and taste it and talk about it. Yes, said Monica, and then of course there is the wine in the middle.

Tournon, like Lagny before Paris, is a river holiday town. There is a wide square by the river, then a row of shops with many restaurants, not expensive. Under the trees thirty camper vans and caravans. By the
Phyllis May
three young men in trunks were washing themselves with a brush on the end of a hose. A gentleman was cleaning his teeth at the water tap. People were eating breakfast at tables under the trees.

By the boat was a Max with a fishing rod. All yesterday afternoon he had been talking. He would say something loudly and people would laugh then there would be a pause for six and a half seconds, and he would say something loudly again and people would laugh again. We thought we would go mad, and shut the front door despite the heat.