A rope was strung across the place, about eight feet above the ground. Large balloons, numbered from one to ten, were filled with water and tied at regular intervals along the length of the rope. Our neighbor with the paunch explained the rules: Each of the drivers was to be issued a sharp stick, which had two functions. The first was to provide a measure of encouragement for any goats reluctant to run; the second was to burst their balloons at the end of the race to qualify as finishers. Evidemment, he said, the drivers would get soaked, which would be droll.
The drivers had now emerged from the café, and were swaggering through the crowd to collect their goats. Our favorite driver, No. 6, had his pocket knife out, and was putting a fine point on each end of his stick, which I took to be a good sign. One of the other drivers immediately lodged a complaint with the organizers, but the dispute was cut short by the arrival of a car which had somehow managed to creep down through one of the narrow streets. A young woman got out. She was holding a map. She looked extremely puzzled. She asked the way to the auto-route.
The way to the autoroute, unfortunately, was blocked by ten goats, two hundred spectators, and a musical van. Nevertheless, said the young woman, that is where I am going. She got back in the car and started inching forward.
Consternation and uproar. The organizers and some of the drivers surrounded the car, banging on the roof, brandishing sticks, rescuing goats and children from certain death beneath the barely moving wheels. Spectators surged forward to see what was going on. The car, embedded in humanity, was forced to stop, and the young woman sat looking straight ahead, tight-lipped with exasperation. Reculez! shouted the organizers, pointing back in the direction the car had come from, and waving at the crowd to make way. With a vicious crunch of gears, the car reversed, whining angrily up the street to the sound of applause.
The contestants were called to the starting line, and drivers checked the fastening of the cords around the goats' necks. The goats themselves were unaffected by the drama of the occasion. No. 6 was trying to eat the waistcoat worn by No. 7. No. 9, our outsider, Nénette, insisted on facing backwards. The driver picked her up by her horns and turned her around, jamming her between his knees to keep her pointing in the right direction. Her jockey cap had been knocked over one eye, giving her a rakish and demented air, and we wondered about the wisdom of our bet. We were counting on her to take third place, but with impaired vision and no sense of geography this seemed unlikely.
They were under starter's orders. Weeks, maybe months, of training had prepared them for this moment. Horn to horn, waistcoat to waistcoat, they waited for the starting signal. One of the drivers belched loudly, and they were off.
Within fifty yards, it became apparent that these goats were not instinctive athletes, or else they had misunderstood the purpose of the event. Two of them applied their brakes firmly after a few yards, and had to be dragged along. Another remembered what it should have done half an hour before, and paused at the first bend to answer a call of nature. Nénette, possibly because she was half-blinkered by her cap, overshot the turn and pulled her driver into the crowd. The other runners straggled up the hill, stimulated by various methods of persuasion.
"Kick them up the arse!" shouted our friend with the paunch. The Parisienne, who was hemmed in next to us, winced. This encouraged him to give her the benefit of his local knowledge. "Did you know," he said, "that the last one to finish gets eaten? Roasted on a spit. C'est vrai." The Parisienne pulled her sunglasses from their nest in her hair and put them on. She didn't look well.
The course followed a circuit around the high part of the village, looping back down to the old fountain which had been transformed into a water obstacle with a plastic sheet stretched between some hay bales. This had to be waded or swum just before the final sprint to the line of balloons outside the café-a brutal test of coordination and stamina.
Progress reports were being shouted down by spectators at the halfway mark, and news reached us that No. 1 and No. 6 were fighting it out in the lead. Only nine goats had been counted going past; the tenth had disparu. "Probably having its throat cut," said the man with the paunch to the Parisienne. She made a determined effort, and pushed through the crowd to find less offensive company near the finishing line.
There was a splash from the fountain, and the sound of a woman's voice raised to scold. The water obstacle had claimed its first victim-a little girl who had miscalculated the depth, and who stood waist-deep in the water, bedraggled and bawling with surprise.
"Elles viennent, les chèvres!"
The girl's mother, in desperation at the thought of her child being trampled to a pulp by the contestants, hitched up her skirt and plunged into the water. "What thighs!" said the man with the paunch, kissing the tips of his fingers.
With a clatter of hoofs, the leading runners approached the fountain and skidded into the hay bales, showing very little enthusiasm for getting wet. Their drivers grunted and cursed and tugged and finally manhandled their goats into the water and out the other side to the finishing straight, their sodden espadrilles squelching on the tarmac, their sticks poised like lances. The positions at the halfway mark had been maintained, and it was still No. 1 and No. 6, Titine and Totoche, skittering up to the line of balloons.
No. 1, with an enormous backhand swipe, exploded his balloon first, showering the Parisienne, who stepped smartly backwards into a pile of droppings. No. 6, for all his stick sharpening before the race, had more difficulty, just managing to burst his balloon before the next runners reached the line. One by one, or in dripping groups, they staggered in until all that remained was a single swollen balloon hanging from the line. No. 9, the wayward Nénette, had not completed the course. "The butcher's got her," said the man with the paunch.
We saw her as we walked back to the car. She had broken her cord and escaped from her driver, and was perched high above the street in a tiny walled garden, her cap hanging from one horn, eating geraniums.
"BONJOUR, maçon."
"Bonjour, plombier."
The team had arrived for another loud, hot day, and were exchanging greetings and handshakes with the formality of people who had never met before, addressing each other by métier rather than by name. Christian, the architect, who had worked with them for years, never referred to them by their first names, but always by a rather grand and complicated hyphenation which combined surname with profession; thus Francis, Didier, and Bruno became Menicucci-Plombier, Andreis-Maçon, and Trufelli-Carreleur. This occasionally achieved the length and solemnity of an obscure aristocratic title, as with Jean-Pierre the carpet layer, who was officially known as Gaillard-Poseur de Moquette.
They were gathered around one of many holes that Menicucci had made to accommodate his central-heating pipes, and were discussing dates and schedules in the serious manner of men whose lives were governed by punctuality. There was a strict sequence to be followed: Menicucci had to complete laying his pipes; the masons were then to move in and repair the damage, followed by the electrician, the plasterer, the tile layer, the carpenter, and the painter. Since they were all good Provençaux, there was no chance at all that dates would be observed, but it provided the opportunity for some entertaining speculation.