Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [21]
�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 VAINQUEURS NOUS LES VAINQUEURS. I started from my seat. I looked again at the notice which said PRIX GONCOURT. There could be no doubt about it. I paid my bill and went and stood by the window, while under my eyes the message was repeated ten, a hundred, five hundred times. Jean Pierre Breteuil NOUS LES VAINQUEURS. The mountain of books rose slowly in front of me; there was not one dissentient voice. It rose to a peak. The last book was put in place on the very top, and then the shop assistants came crowding out to see how it looked from the front. The name and the title swam before my eyes, and I turned away. It was only then that it struck me as shocking that my predominant emotion was distress. It was a distress, too, which went so deep that I was at first at a loss to understand it. I walked at random trying to sort the matter out. I was of course very surprised to find Jean Pierre in the role of a Goncourt winner. The Goncourt jury, that constellation of glorious names, might sometimes err, but they would never make a crass or fantastic mistake. That their coronation of Jean Pierre represented a moment of sheer insanity was a theory which I could set aside. I had not read the book. The alternative remained open, and the more I reflected the more it appeared to be the only alternative, that Jean Pierre had at last written a good novel. I stood still in the middle of the pavement. Why was this absolutely unbearable? Why should it matter to me so much that Jean Pierre had pulled it off? I went to a caf