Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [84]
can scarcely speak a word. Alors, Paris, qu'est-ce que to dis, toi? Paris, dis-moi ce que j'aime. But there is no reply, only the sad echo from crumbling walls, Paris When I arrived I felt in no violent hurry to see Madge. I was for letting the usual spell bind me; life has so few moments which announce themselves as sacred. Later on would be soon enough to start thinking the thoughts, whatever they might be, which my interview with Madge would compel me to think; and as I wandered towards the Seine I felt sure that, wherever the line was to be drawn between appearance and reality, what I now experienced was for me the real. The prospect of Madge paled like a candle. It was that time of the morning when mysterious rivers, guided by bits of old sacking, flow round and round the gutters of Paris. The cloudless light drew a wash of colour along the grey fa�es of the quaffs and made them look as soft and deep as icing sugar. There are details which even the most tender memory will mislay. The shutter-softened houses with their high foreheads. I leaned for a long time, looking into the mirror of the Pont Neuf, whose round arches make with their reflections a perfect 0, in which one cannot tell what is reflected and what is not, so still is the Seine with a glassy stillness which the tidal Thames can never achieve. I leaned there and thought of Anna, who had made this city exist for me in a new proliferation of detail when, after having known it for many years, I first showed it to her. At last I began to want my breakfast. I began walking in the direction of Madge's hotel, and sat down en route at a caf�ot far from the Opera. Here I began to notice the more mundane details of the busy city; and after I had been sitting there for a while a sort of stir upon the pavement just beside the caf�egan to catch my eye. Several men in shirt sleeves were standing about as if they were expecting something. I looked at them with vague interest; and I soon divined that they were emanating from a bookshop which stood next door to the caf�I wondered for a while what it was they were waiting for. They hung about, looking down the street, returned into the bookshop, and then came out again and waited all agog. After a while I turned to study the shop, and there I saw something which explained the scene. The main window was completely empty, and across it in enormous letters were written the words PRIX GONCOURT. When the big literary prizes are awarded each year the publishers of books which are thought to be hopeful candidates stand by, ready to turn out at a moment's notice a huge new edition of the winning book. This work, reprinted in tens of thousands, is then rushed pell-mell to the bookshops, so that before the news has lost its savour the public can gorge its fill of this hallmarked piece of literature. In preparation for this event all bookshops which have any intellectual pretensions clear their best windows and stand ready to welcome in the winner as it arrives with the break-neck speed of a stop-press edition. I sat drinking my coffee and watching this scene and reflecting on the difference between French and English literary maeurs, when there was a screaming of brakes and a lorry drew up sharply at the kerb. The shirt-sleeved men precipitated themselves upon it, and in a moment they had formed a chain along which bundles of books were tossed rapidly from hand to hand. Inside the shop I could see that others were anxiously setting up the cardboard display cases in the empty window which, in a few minutes, was to be crammed from end to end with the monotonous and triumphant repetition of the winner's name. The whole episode had the hasty precision of a police raid. I watched with amusement as the lorry was emptied; while behind me now the window was whitening with books. I turned to inspect it; and there I saw something which stopped my smile abruptly. Across the whole window, with the emotional emphasis of a repeated cry, I saw the name of Jean Pierre Breteuil; and underneath it in parallel repetition, NOUS LES VAINQUEURS NOUS LES