Life Embitters (48 page)

The first time I went to Saint-Tropez I did think it was a faraway place. A walled town with ancient dark stone that took on a coppery hue at dusk. Mounted in an old mansion with huge rooms, my hotel looked over the mirror of the small port. An anachronistic hotel: a
table d’hôte
with petulant, fussy commercial travelers as in Stendhal’s times. From the balcony I could see a small ketch anchored by the breakwater and the flickering reddish glow of its harbor light, I imagined it was Guy de Maupassant’s
Bel Ami
. In the pearly light of dawn, the town’s old houses and blackened walls were reflected in the pale pink, celluloid waters. Two or three small coastal packets, with light, airy rigging, bobbed like toys. On the other side of the gulf, beyond the glistening green pine groves, the white walls of Saint-Maxime floated and shimmered above a white sea.

Life was quiet and tranquil, with no nasty surprises. The port was reasonably active. The harbor master caulked boats and boiled a pot of tar that perfumed the air. A labyrinth of bare narrow streets hustled and bustled within the walls and it seemed Italian from our latitudes, rather than French.
On these hot, sticky streets you sometimes caught a glimpse of a girl with a complexion the color of potato purée and dark, dilated eyes. The quay was overlooked by the statue of Admiral Suffren, the famous mariner from Provence (a local), from the era of Louis XV. It is a remarkable bronze work, with a veneer of verdigris, grandiose, emphatic but empty, as if styled by a swanky hairdresser. Statues seem to create zones of silence. That statue, which was so demonstrative, deepened the silence in Saint-Tropez. A sparrow sometimes perched on its stentorian hat and left a derisory dropping. The small church bell chimed. The train whistled shrilly. The crickets’ frenzied cries from the cork-oak groves to the south drifted faintly on the summer air. Everything was silent and remote: oblivion.

The small Saint-Tropez local train comes to an end in Saint-Raphaël where you rejoin the general transport network. You reach Antibes in a numbered seat on a grand express.

The origins of tourism on the Côte d’Azur are to be found in Hyères and Cannes. Their urban splendor is the creation of doctors. At a given moment, the medical powers-that-be decided that the most suitable climate for tuberculosis patients was a maritime one. They in fact prescribed Cannes, Hyères … There wasn’t a wealthy tuberculosis patient on the continent (Russia still included) who didn’t heed that prescription throughout the second half of the last century and the first years of this. People thought eucalyptus trees killed microbes, so large numbers were planted. If one day you feel curious and visit the cemeteries in these towns, etched on marble pantheons, amid a splendid array of symbolic bronze and stone the passage of time has dimmed, you will see the most prestigious names of the European nobility and bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century. And so many tombs of young people! That was how the first stone came to be laid on the Côte d’Azur.

Then doctors changed their criteria. The most suitable climate for tuberculosis patients was no longer by the seaside. They now prescribed high mountains: Davos, Saint-Moritz, and Zermatt, which made much more sense, as far as you could make out. This discovery was a setback for this area, but by the time the re-routing took place, the Côte d’Azur was by and large constructed.

Antibes, a town neighboring on Cannes, benefited from this initial kernel of tourism. In Antibes tourism soon begins to be gray-bearded below its already longstanding wrinkles, everything is rather decrepit. The small port of Antibes is perhaps unique in the world. It is a perfectly circular saucepan surrounded by walls so high I don’t think any other port can rival them. Almost all ports have a similar system of defenses. The port of Antibes is enclosed by a screen that creates strange effects. Well, that brings all kinds of advantages: the waters are still, yachts can relax, there are no sudden gusts, and people relish a pulse of life in the fresh air as if they were in their own homes. The port of Antibes is immensely hospitable.

The population of Nice is descended from Italians. One the other hand, can one say Nice is an Italian city? I think not. The traces of Italy in Nice comprise the finest elements in the old town; they are so subterranean, however, they seem almost surreptitious and never loom large; they are buried under the Negresco-style paraphernalia of grand hotel architecture, fashioned by professional architects. The town has been the preserve of young architects for over half a century, the youngest, most dynamic, most handsome and best-connected architects in France. It is the Mecca of bourgeois architects. The results have been sensational everywhere, but in Nice the city proliferated like mushrooms, and is incomparably visual: it’s as if the real architects were the bourgeois and the bourgeois were the architects. In an era when
sensitivity was prized, the city might have shown the way to the future. In the event, they have made it the capital of a permanent universal exhibition.

The spirit of its external detail belongs to that kind of festive spectacle. Nice’s internationalism cannot simply be explained by its benign climate. One senses that the city has mounted a universal exhibition that never closes and attracts people from all around. The most popular stands are the casinos. The grand hotels seem to have been purpose-built to this end. The leisured, well-dressed, Sunday-morning-style people favor exactly matches that of individuals going to or from an exhibition. That’s particularly visible on the Promenade des Anglais, because the international exhibition has clearly been mounted at the end of this magnificent avenue. Whatever the music, and whatever its quality, music in Nice becomes music for an exhibition. The theater performed there is for exhibition audiences. Churches seem built to be part of the exhibition. One sees this in the tendency things in Nice have to emphasize tinsel, a kind of glittery, shiny foil people think more genuine than reality itself. Everything tends to take on a second nature that replaces their true one.

Nice is a city of rentiers and tourists. The former rake in the dividends, while the latter admire such prestigious industry and doff their hats before their brilliant operations. In brief, a city built on such foundations has to embody the rarefied spirit of the bourgeoisie and must adopt a universal exhibition outlook, because that class’s masterpiece was naturally the universal exhibition. It was a stroke of genius to mount the astounding, dazzling enterprise here on a strip of coast that also happens to be blue. It is hardly surprising if the combination of all these wonderful features arouses waves of universal curiosity and permanent marveling.

Nice is the European city where the phenomenon of the glorification of the dividend is enacted on the vastest scale. The glorification of the dividend
produces admiration for rentiers, and love for rentiers. Admiration for the man who lives on his own private income, the prestige of the finance capitalist – to speak the language of the economists – sustains the ever spiraling vitality of Nice and the Côte d’Azur. Tourists go to Nice to wallow in the contemplation of rentiers, and proclaim that nothing can beat its way of life.

I have carried out some research into the social mechanics of this admirable city. It is most unusual to find the name of a captain of industry or important entrepreneur in the local telephone book. Conversely, you will find the retired businessman, the leading renowned rentier, the widow who has managed a good sell-off, the heirs to many such glories. You will find names from everywhere. And, now that the Russian aristocracy has withdrawn from circulation and lost the aura it enjoyed on the Côte d’Azur, the place has been even more severely cut back to its strict role, namely, as we have noted, the provision of a backdrop for the glorification of the dividend.

The life of a rentier is a leisurely affair. They rise at an hour when town-hall workers are combing and polishing the palm trees in the parks. If they aren’t prey to any particular personal mania, after reading the newspaper – generally the chauvinist paper of their respective country – they sit with their backs to the sun. If they are fans of the canine species, they will walk their dogs, previously trained to defy municipal regulations and the denunciations of rentiers hostile to the canine breed. If admiration for ducks or birds warms their hearts, they go out equipped with a small bag of crumbs they scatter over the grass on the flowerbeds generally to the Olympian indifference of those august animals. Birds and ducks in Nice generally eat in the afternoon and that explains their indifference. They eat a single meal. Fond of a simpler life, other rentiers spend the morning sitting on a bench or a chair, looking at the sea or talking to friends. These conversations tend to be so deeply pessimistic they verge on the morose. Every day that
passes possesses, to a greater or lesser degree, elements that enable rentiers to experience the pleasantest of pessimistic sensations. In this sense, Nice affords a wealth of magnificent raw material. Perhaps the gentleman who lives in the hotel room next to mine, whom I hear arguing with his wife, is worried because in Santiago de Chile they want to get rid of tollhouses. My neighbor on the other side is perhaps complaining about the drop in income suffered by trams in Belgrade. One never knows, and rentier pessimism, however mysterious, never ceases to be tangibly real.

In the afternoon, after taking note of the barometer’s advice, they lead the same leisurely lives as in the morning. There are concerts, family gatherings, obligatory calls to be made, sporting activities, that all help foster that necessary, indispensible lethargic atmosphere for one to be able to say the people there live on their private income. It is hardly surprising if lives so full of noble grandeur should provoke waves of universal envy. The rentier’s voluptuous languor, his morose pessimism, his life’s attractive round enthrall people. And that’s not counting the rentiers with personal manias who are the most admired. People believe manic rentiers are the aristocracy of that estate. Behind a rentier there often lurks an unknown genius, an eccentric inventor or a man exploring the oddest initiatives. That’s the burden in the rentier’s belt, the apple to bite, the apple you don’t eat because you don’t have the hunger. The pillows of these blessed aristocrats hide innumerable projects that, if carried out, would send shockwaves through the planet. However, the rentier keeps them in a putative state, and thus broadcasts his moderation and admirable spirit of self-restraint. The rentier scorns selfishness, and that is precisely what locals admire most, and tourists, even more so. Everybody suspects a genius may lurk behind the figure of the rentier. Indeed, a moderate mania becomes the most feasible manifestation of talent.

And the true rentier has no vices, apart from concealed charity. The more
concealed his charity, the greater the praise in the obituary. So then, how does one explain the profusion of roulette tables in this country? I think it can only be explained in terms of a pact reached by rentiers on behalf of tourists. They reckon that admiration should be expressed through acts. The tourist has to bear the brunt so rentiers can have a clean, tidy town, a perfect police force, a good public image, and hot and cold water at a reasonable price. It’s a fine idea. The rentier declares energetically, “If they admire us, let them pay!”

And the tourist responds wistfully, after leaving his life savings on the roulette table, with a conviction that sounds deep because it is so strained, “How intelligent you are!”

This strange double game explains the glories of this city and the envy it arouses. It’s hard to think of a country with locals who are so law-abiding, so low-key in their habits and so righteous in their ideas. Dividends insist on morality because it is the backbone of the social order. Everybody knows this, day after day it is voiced in official statements; doubt is out of the question. In parallel an opposite reality asserts itself: the roulette wheel on every street corner that tests the resistance of the family institution to which the wretched tourists belong. And everybody plays his role wonderfully. Rentiers understate their positive situation and the enthusiasm aroused by their incurable pessimism. Bankrupted tourists loudly sing the praises of the excesses of a pleasant, hospitable country that enables them to enjoy nature and social life.

And such is life,
á niçoise
.

Gamblers can’t be fobbed off. The spectacle of the sea’s gleaming white horses, the majestic palm trees, the warm sun exuding blissful joy, the well-dressed ladies, are all first-rate. But nothing really compares with the
climate for baccarat, the atmosphere around the roulette wheel or the vista of a green beige table. To visit Nice and not wonder at these marvels is like going to Rome and not seeing the Pope. I have often settled down in a corner of the Municipal Casino and observed how people, eyes bulging and hearts thudding, come and go in that cage of fortune. The gargoyles of the gaming tables! A spectacular show.

It’s strange: anyone standing in front of a gaming table automatically ages ten years. If the person is small, he becomes a doll; if he is tall, he turns into a giant. If his nose is largish, it grows into a big schnozzle; if it’s snub, it turns into a chickpea. Your vision of people ineluctably becomes a complete caricature. How horrible we all are – really! The green beige seems to appeal to the least lovely part of our nature. The blemish expands uncontrollably and our whole body is transformed. Gambling infects our weak point. No doubt about it: we men and women are much more despicable than we seem. Roulette is proof, without a ball ever swerving from its true role, namely, to provide the bank with its five and half percent. A lateral argument provides additional evidence.

Given this progressive disfiguring of humankind, it is hardly odd if the first-order races have made sport compulsory and that this measure finds vociferous, intelligent supporters everywhere.

However, has it made any difference? It would be risky to say it had. In olden times sport, like poetry, was the preserve of the nobility. Nowadays the bulk of the bourgeoisie devotes hours each week to sport. Some sporting activities have even reached the more undernourished layers of our society. A new kind of citizen has been spawned who can fly through the air, leap from one mountain to another, and scrutinize the mysteries at the bottom of the sea. The offspring of this new kind of life, even as children, act like people who’ve retired from sport. Standing by the long, luminous sweep of
the Baie des Anges – the name of Nice’s bay – their parents present a profile of undoubted sporting beauty. To my mind a sporting man, in his cyclist’s pants, knitted t-shirt, and spiked shoes could be a fully fledged Apollo; I likewise believe that this sporting gentleman, dressed like an ordinary mortal, opposite a roulette wheel, is as much a caricature as a poet at a poetry festival. And, indeed, wasn’t Apollo plotting to kill off such romantic, blood-tingling activities?