The Pillars of Hercules

“What sort of a reception are you getting with your campaign in the Mediterranean?”

“The French are very suspicious of efforts like this. The first question we always get is, ‘Where does your money come from?’ ”

“That’s true of a lot of countries.”

“France is worse. They suspect us of having foreign influence—the French paranoia—money from America or Russia.”

As though if this were true it would cast doubt on the statistics or invalidate the effort to clean up the Mediterranean.

“Does the pollution vary from country to country, according to the part of the Mediterranean?”

“Yes, but the most serious division is the north against the south,” Jean-Luc said. “A lot of the waste and pollution on the European side affects North Africa.”

The next morning Rainbow Warrior sailed for Calvi in Corsica, to carry the environmental message.

Later that afternoon, reading Nice-Matin on a bench on the promenade, I saw there was a symphony concert that night at the Acropolis, Nice’s cultural center. It was a twenty-minute walk from my hotel, but when I got there a man was waving his arms and saying, “No tickets—all sold,” to some disappointed people. I suppose I had a look of consternation on my face, because a woman came up to me and asked me whether I wanted a ticket. Her mink coat, her look of evasion and aloofness, and even her air of innocence made her seem like a tout; and yet she did not scalp me, but asked for the exact price that was printed on the ticket.

She vanished a moment later, and only then—as I was congratulating myself on my luck—did it occur to me that she had sold me a fake ticket.

Soon afterwards, I found my seat, and in the seat beside it was the woman in the mink coat. She smiled at me.

“My husband is sick,” she said. “So you are lucky. This is a popular concert.”

She was not a tout, nor anything near it. She was a good, kind, compassionate and honest person, whom I had wrongly suspected of being a hustler.

“My husband is so sorry to miss it,” she said. “But now you can enjoy it. May I look at your program?”

She was Madame Godefroy, and, for the duration of the concert, I became her husband. We shared the program. We agreed that the playing was wonderful. It was Berlioz (Overture to “Beatrice and Benedict”) and Beethoven Piano Concerto Number Three, and a Dvorak symphony (No. 5). The soloist was French and warmly applauded. The conductor was Chinese, Long Yü, and young (born 1964). We chatted about the weather, what a terrible winter it was! What a wet day! What a lovely concert!

Flushed and breathless with all these exclamations, Mme. Godefroy and I went into the foyer and had a glass of wine.

“We were living in Clermont-Ferrand, where my husband was working,” she said. “After he retired, about eight years ago, we came here.”

“Is it more expensive here in Nice?”

“The apartments cost twice as much, or more, as in Clermont-Ferrand. Property is very expensive in Nice. But everything else is the same—food, clothes, whatever.”

“I liked Marseilles,” I said.

Mme. Godefroy winced but said, “Yes, there are the Le Corbusier buildings. But Marseilles is dangerous. It has all the problems, too—drugs, immigrants, AIDS.”

She was too polite perhaps to mention blacks and Arabs, but I was reminded of how the young blacks in Marseilles imitated American dress code: baseball hats on backward, track suits, baggy pants, expensive running shoes, and the same unusual haircuts. There were no other role models in France, or in Europe, but the Americanized look marked these youths out and must have seemed like a threat.

“So you’re happy here, Madame?”

“Nice is safe,” she said. “The weather is good, except for this year. It is youthful, because of the universities and language schools. There are many retired people—perhaps thirty percent. But Cannes is worse—it doesn’t have universities, so it’s mostly retired people.”

“I always imagined that the French were settled people. I didn’t realize that they retired and moved to the coast the way people do in Britain and the United States.”

“My parents never retired and moved,” she said. “It happened after the war, when children moved away from their parents to find work. Before, in France, everyone lived together, the children looked after their parents, and they lived in the father’s house. But—no more.”

So the breakup of the family home was an economic necessity, dating from the recent past, when the young were uprooted and had to search for jobs. And the nature of jobs changed—the decline of agriculture, and manufacturing, the rise of the service industries; all of this since the war.

“Do you have any relatives living in Nice?”

“No, and I miss them. I miss my children and my grandchildren. All my children are married. Well, my younger son has been living with his girlfriend for so long they are good as married.”

She sipped her wine.

“My father is dead. He was ninety-three when he died. My mother is alive. She is ninety-one—but in good health and very alert.”