This enigmatic Spaniard is sub-letting only the bedroom of a council flat on the seventh floor of a tower block near Belleville. The flat has little going for it except for a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower. The sitting room is Delgado’s living quarters. Not that he lives here much. He’s out all day, returning only late at night to the flat before rising early to beat me out in the mornings. Despite making rare appearances, Delgado is obsessed by the flat’s appearance and isn’t impressed when Eddy stays over. Empty beer cans and uncleaned ashtrays leave him foul tempered for days and I’m very much in his bad books after last Saturday night. The lock jammed in the toilet door with me on the wrong side. Luckily, Eddy was in the flat and the fire brigade could be called to rescue me. An axe produced a gaping hole in the door where the lock had once been and I was able to emerge with profuse gratitude. ‘Merci millefois. Voulez vous une tasse du thé.’ The firemen decline politely and wonder what the hell are two English lads doing in an HLM flat in the eastern suburbs of Paris. The captain made a cursory request for our IDs before leaving. Delgado still will not accept an apology or my explanation of what happened. He is, for once, spending Saturday morning in his room. So I take to the streets even though I’m not meeting up with Eddy and his girlfriend for several hours.
I wander along the Seine’s embankments, checking out the bouquinists. Anatole France knew of ‘no sweeter, gentler pleasure than to go a book hunting’ here. I have two travellers’ cheques left but these are for real emergencies. The overdraft does register on my conscience though, and so effectively prevents me from serious perusal. And I don’t need anything else to read. Phil has lent me a book written by Joris-Karl Huysmans called A Rebours which is translated into English as Against Nature.
A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel, Against Nature follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, an aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. The book exhibits anxiety about preserving a sense of self in the face of cultural change. To combat this anxiety, the decadent hero of the novel embraces a melancholic identity. I have developed a sneaking regard for Des Esseintes who is very much a book obsessive. ‘Des Esseintes was morbid devotee of the unique, and he was rich enough to print his favourite books in editions of one copy. He had Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym thus specially printed for him on pure linen-laid paper, hand picked, bearing a sea-gull for water mark, and bound in sea-green morocco; his copy of the Diaboliques of Barbeyd’Aurvilly was specially printed for him on an authentic vellum blessed by the Church.’
I go in search of his creator and find rue Suger where he lived, and a confirmatory plaque: Ici est né, le 5 février 1848, J.-K. HUYSMANS, Ecrivain français.
Later, he had a road in the sixth arrondissement in Paris named after him. My legs feel tired and I become aware of the time. From starting out hours in advance, I now risk turning up late. Eddy won’t mind but Sylvia might.
Eddy met Sylvia at the language school where they both now work. Sylvia started to teach English as a foreign language after an aborted career in marine biology. In Thailand, she’d worked on prawn farms but, overnight, the bottom fell out of that market when the Japanese Emperor Hirohito died; his people forsaking the crustaceans as a mark of respect.
Today I’m introducing them to an oasis of peace in this busy city, intending to drag them around the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Statues, tombstones and crypts dominate the landscape but also lend a romantic atmosphere to the cobbled avenues that run amid trees on the uneven ground. Ostentatiousness abounds but there remains something affecting in these funeral monuments, many of which are in an advanced state of dilapidation. Eddy and Sylvia, upon arriving, both agree. Below is what Flaubert thought:
‘The tombs stood among the trees: broken columns, pyramids, temples, dolmens, obelisks, and Etruscan vaults with doors of bronze. In some of them might be seen funereal boudoirs, so to speak, with rustic arm-chairs and folding-stools. Spiders’ webs hung like rags from the little chains of the urns; and the bouquets of satin ribbons and the crucifixes were covered with dust. Everywhere, between the balusters on the tombstones, were crowns of immortals and chandeliers, vases, flowers, black discs set off with gold letters, and plaster statuettes of little boys or little girls or angels suspended in the air by brass wires; several of them having even a roof of zinc overhead.’
Famous people are buried here including Musset, Chopin, Molière, Modigliani, Balzac, Colette, Oscar Wilde, Delacroix, Balzac and Jim Morrison in whom Sylvia, being a Doors fan, has expressed interest. A local florist sells us a leaflet that is unashamedly a map of the famous dead with co-ordinates of where to find their tombs, e.g. Edith Piaf Chanteuse 97 e Div n-4.
Some visitors to the cemetery are ticking off the names like seasoned gravestone hunters. Simone Signoret’s grave is conspicuously festooned with flowers. We seek out Oscar Wilde’s tomb; a sphinx-inspired angel sculpted by Jacob Epstein. On one side of the memorial are tributes to Wilde’s art and achievements. Cited is Oxford’s esteemed Classics prize and his epitaph is a quote from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:
The monument is covered with lipstick kisses. Would Wildean gifts of lyricism be imparted to the kisser like the legend of the Blarney Stone? Kiss the stone of eloquence and you’ll never again be lost for words.
Sylvia is impatient to get going. Arrows chalked on gravestones point the way to the Morrison mourners. A German youth is drinking beer while listening to The River on his cassette player. A stout Australian woman is translating the lyrics of the same song for the benefit of a French schoolboy. A group of hippie girls with long, unkempt hair sit around a Primus stove boiling water to make tea. There are a few punks and the denim jacket brigade is also represented. A man sporting a hat of green feathers obscures Morrison’s actual grave, it being of modest proportions. He moves and we can then read: JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON 1943–1977 KATA 
(Greek with a multitude of interpretations (To the divine spirit within himself, He caused his own demons, True to his own spirit).
In front of the grave are three joints; cannabis deemed more appropriate than a bouquet of flowers. We loiter, not knowing quite what is expected of us. Some people stoop to partake in a ceremonial toke before quickly extinguishing the joint or passing it on with an embarrassed air. Death has failed to grant Jim Morrison the anonymity he was said to have craved; an escape from idolatry. Eddy is disconcerted to see that most tombstones within a ten metre radius of Jim Morrison’s are covered in graffiti, much of it being The Doors’ lyrics. Sylvia and I also question this spray can adulation. In making their shrine to Jim Morrison, the mourners have desecrated the tombs of others.
After several weeks of unemployment, I became maniacally jealous of other people engaged in ordinary and seemingly mundane activities. Couriers, roadside labourers, just about anyone having a job upon which to focus. I look forward with exaggerated relish to dish-washing in Montparnasse. The night before I’m due to start, I cash a travellers’ cheque in spite of Eddy’s protestations.