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Finally, one Thursday afternoon, he invited me to go with him. He was going to sell a ‘very rare’ stamp, and the prospect made him agitated. We walked along the Avenue de la Grande-Armée. Then down the Champs-Élysées. Several times he showed me the stamp (which he kept wrapped in cellophane). It was, according to him, a ‘unique’ example from Kuwait, depicting ‘the Emir Rachid and divers views’. We arrived at the Carré Marigny, The stamp market was held in the space between the théâtre de Marigny and the Avenue Gabriel. (Does it still exist today?) People huddled in little groups, speaking in low voices, opening cases, poring over their contents, leafing through catalogues, brandishing magnifying glasses and tweezers. This furtive flurry of activity, these men who looked like surgeons or conspirators made me feel anxious. My father quickly found himself surrounded by a dense crowd. A dozen men were haranguing him. Arguing over whether the stamp was authentic. My father, taken aback by the questions fired from all sides, could not get a word in edgeways. How was it that his ‘Emir Rachid’ was olive-coloured and not carmine? Was it really thirteen and one quarter perforation? Did it have an ‘overprint’? Fragments of silk thread? Did it not belong to a series known as ‘assorted views’? Had he checked for a ‘thin’? Their tone grew acrimonious. My father was called a ‘swindler’ and ‘crook’. He was accused of trying to ‘flog some piece of rubbish that wasn’t even documented in the Champion catalogue’. One of the lunatics grabbed him by the collar and slapped him hard across the face. Another punched him. They seemed about to lynch him for the sake of a stamp (which speaks volumes about the human soul), and so, unable to bear it any longer, I stepped in. Luckily, I had an umbrella. I distributed several blows at random, and making the most of the element of surprise, dragged father from this baying mob of philatelists. We ran as far as the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

In the days which followed, my father, believing I had saved his life, explained in detail the kind of work he did, and suggested that I help him. His clients were twenty or so oddballs scattered over the whole of France whom he had contacted through various specialist magazines. They were fanatical collectors, obsessed by the most varied objects: old telephone directories, corsets, hookahs, postcards, chastity belts, phonographs, oxy-acetylene torches, Iowa Indian moccasins, ballroom slippers. . He scoured Paris in search of such things, packed them up and sent them off to his contacts having extorted vast sums from them in advance that bore no relation to the actual value of the goods. One of his clients would pay 100,000 francs apiece for pre-war Chaix railway timetables. Another had given him 300,000 francs on account, on condition that he had FIRST REFUSAL on all busts and effigies of Waldeck-Rousseau he might find. . My father, eager to amass an even greater clientele among these lunatics, planned to persuade them to join a society — the ‘League of French Collectors’ — of which he would be appointed president and treasurer and would charge exorbitant subscription fees. The philatelists had bitterly disappointed him. He realized he couldn’t use them. As collectors, they were cold-blooded, cunning, cynical, ruthless (it is hard to imagine the Machiavellianism, the viciousness of these apparently fastidious creatures). What crimes have been committed for a ‘Sierra Leone, yellow-brown with overprint’ or a ‘Japan, horizontal perforations’. He was not about to repeat his unfortunate expedition to the Carré Marigny, an episode that had left his pride deeply wounded. At first he used me as a messenger. I tried to show some initiative by suggesting a market which he hadn’t yet considered: bibliophiles. He liked the idea and gave me a free hand. Though I knew nothing about life yet, I had memorized Lanson’s French Literature at school in Bordeaux. I knew every French writer, from the most trivial to the most obscure. What was the point of such recondite erudition if not to launch me into the book trade? I quickly discovered that it was very difficult to buy rare editions cheaply. What bargains I found were of poor quality: ‘original editions’ of Vautel, Fernand Gregh and Eugene Demolder. . On a trip to the Passage Jouffroy, I bought a copy of Matière et mémoire for 3,50 francs. On the flyleaf, was a curious dedication from Bergson to Jean Jaurès: ‘When will you stop calling me Miss?’ Two experts formally identified the master’s handwriting, and I sold on this curio to a collector for 100,000 francs.

Heartened by my initial success, I decided to pen a few spurious dedications myself, each highlighting some unexpected facet of the author. Those whose handwriting I could most easily copy, Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès. I sold a Maurras for 500,000 francs, courtesy of this little sentence: ‘For Léon Blum, as a token of my admiration. Why don’t we have lunch? Life is so short. . Maurras.’ A copy of Barres’s Déracinés fetched 700,000 francs. It was dedicated to Captain Dreyfus: ‘Be brave, Alfred. Affectionately, Maurice.’ But I soon discovered that what really fascinated my customers was the private lives of writers. So my dedications became more salacious and prices rose accordingly. I favoured contemporary authors. As some of them are still alive, I will say no more for fear of litigation. All I can say is that they made me a lot of money.

Such was the nature of our shady deals. Business flourished because we were exploiting people who were not entirely sane. When I think back over our little schemes, I feel very bitter. I would have preferred to start my life in a less dubious fashion. But what else could you expect of a teenager left to his own devices in Paris? What else could the poor bastard do?

Though my father spent some of our capital buying shirts and ties of questionable taste, he also tried to increase it by dabbling on the stock market. I frequently saw him slump into an armchair with armfuls of share certificates. . He would stack them in the halls of our successive apartments, check them, sort them, make an inventory. I eventually realized that the certificates had been issued by companies that were either bankrupt or had long since ceased to trade. He was convinced he could still use them, put them back on the market. . ‘When we’re quoted on the Stock Exchange. .’ he would say with a mischievous look.

And I remember we bought a second-hand car, an old Talbot, in which we took night-time jaunts through Paris. Before setting out, we had a ritual of drawing lots. Twenty slips of paper were scattered over the rickety drawing-room table. We would choose one at random, and this would be our itinerary for the evening. Batignolles-Grenelle. Auteuil-Picpus. Passy-La Villette. Otherwise, we would cast off and set sail for one of those quartiers with mysterious names: Les Épinettes, la Maison-Blanche, Bel-Air, l’Amérique, la Glacière, Plaisance, la Petite-Pologne. . I have only to set foot in certain secret parts of Paris for memories to erupt like sparks from a fire. The Place d’Italie, for example, was a favourite port of call on our trips. . There was a café there, the Claire de Lune. Towards 1 a.m., all the flotsam from the music-hall would gather there: pre-war accordionists, white-haired tango dancers trying to recapture the languorous agility of their youth on that tiny stage, haggard old crones with too much make-up singing songs by Fréhel or Suzy Solidor. Desolate street entertainers entertained during the ‘intermissions’. The orchestra consisted of Brylcreemed men in dinner jackets. It was one of my father’s favourite places; he took great pleasure in watching these ghostly figures. I never understood why.