French Lessons

by Peter Mayle

  The tent, big enough to cover most of the lawn behind the château and high enough to accommodate a twenty-foot tree, was pulsing with energy—the collective anticipation of six hundred race-trained, physically fit people absolutely bursting to have a good time. Another roar greeted the arrival onstage of the band’s lead guitarist, who, either for athletic or musical reasons, hoisted his instrument high over his head while he tuned up and while we studied the menu.

  As promised, it was rich in carbohydrates, but these were carbs à la bordelaise, starting with a cold pasta salad with ham, followed by noodles and seafood, before moving on to macaronis et daube au vin du Médoc—more pasta, with a thick alcoholic beef stew. There were mountains of bread and four different wines—two white, two red. Not being blessed with an athlete’s cement-mixer metabolism, I found it impossible to believe that anyone would be able to walk the morning after a dinner like this, let alone run.

  And now, with an introduction from the animateur, who gratefully exchanges his microphone for a glass of wine, the stage is left to the band. They are très, très cool, with dark glasses and black fedoras, and as the first course is served, they plunge straight into the sixties, where they will stay for most of the evening. As the first slow chords of “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay” roll through the tent, there is an eruption of whistles and claps and yips from nearby tables, where the runners are showing a marked preference for wine over water. A man in a red Basque beret, glass in hand, stands up to offer vocal encouragement to the band. The tent vibrates.

  Conversation at our table is made difficult by the music. So we contemplate our helicopter ride scheduled for the next morning, during which we will be able to see all eight thousand runners at once. This reminds me that we are sitting with fewer than 10 percent of the competitors, and makes me think of the extraordinary feats of organization required to put on an event of this size. I am struck dumb with admiration and a mouthful of pasta.

  The band switches to a medley of Aretha Franklin classics. “Respect” comes belting out of the loudspeakers. The four girl singers are firmly settled in the groove, fedoras abandoned, hair swirling, hips jerking, arms swooping forward with each clap, wailing their doo-wops and uh-huhs and oohs behind the lead singer. Aretha would be proud of them. One of the waitresses is overcome by an attack of rhythm and boogies toward the table, a large tureen of pasta balanced precariously on each hand. The runners are up and dancing, and it’s anarchy on the grass—the bump, the jump, the grind, the Médoc fox-trot, the marathon shuffle, the cardiovascular quickstep. The tent seems to be swaying. The tree in the middle is shaking. I never knew that the final preparations for an athletic event could be this much fun.

  The preference for Bordeaux over water continues. Wine is delivered to the tables in six-packs: Tourelles de Longueville 1994 and Château Pichon-Longueville 1992. Our man in the red beret takes advantage of a break in the music to get up and give us his version of a traditional Basque song. This sets off a chain reaction of other more or less musical offerings from tables throughout the tent. German drinking anthems compete with old French favorites, Dutch choruses and one or two completely incomprehensible chants. The mixture of wine and carbohydrates is working.

  The band returns, this time for what is announced as un hommage to Stevie Wonder, and a conga line forms, weaving through the tables, around the tree, and past the stage. A woman in a Stetson hat and a maple leaf T-shirt stops in front of our table to catch her breath. “Wow,” she says, “it’s not like this in Toronto.” I wonder what the original inhabitants of the château would have made of it all.

  Toward midnight, the music slows down. The band gives us “Try a Little Tenderness.” Couples cling together as if glued, hot, happy, and exhausted. And tomorrow they’re going to run twenty-six miles.

  Leaving the tent, we took a turn around the château. The crunch of gravel beneath our feet, high stone walls glowing under the floodlights, black turrets silhouetted against the night sky, pinpoints of light scattered along the banks of the Gironde in the distance beyond the vines, stars up above. The air was cool and clean and smelled of autumn. It was a pleasure just to be alive.

  We woke early the next morning, just after six, to the rumble of engines. It was still dark as I looked out of the window and saw a stream of lights trickling slowly along the road, cars by the hundred, bumper-to-bumper on their way to Pauillac, where the race was scheduled to start in three hours’ time. While my wife immersed herself in the delights of our bathroom—a space big enough to hold a party, with steps leading up to a canopied bath—I tried to make sense of the notes I had made the night before. Poor, crumpled, wine-stained scraps they were, as usual. I always find it difficult to make intelligible notes when I’m enjoying myself, possibly because my hand is often holding a glass when it should be holding a pen. The result is a series of manic scribbles that have to be translated in the sober light of morning. If only someone would give me a photographic memory for Christmas.

  Other guests at the château were already having breakfast when we went downstairs to the dining room. Three of them were going to take part in the race. They wore shorts and the slightly subdued manner of people who were going to half-kill themselves before lunch. Two were old marathon hands, and they talked about the times they hoped to achieve, based on their experience in previous races. The third, a senior officer in the French navy, told us that this was his first and last marathon. He was running for the hell of it. At least the weather seemed to be on their side—high clouds, light breeze, no sun. Unfortunately for them, this was not to last.

  At eight o’clock the procession of cars was still nose-to-tail, as it had been for the past two hours. But it seems that if you come out of a château driveway, you’re entitled to the traditional privilege of droit du seigneur, and the traffic parted in a most obliging (and in France, highly unusual) way to let us squeeze into the line. Onward to Pauillac we went, with vines to either side, past Château Fonbadet, Château Cordeillan Bages, Château Lynch-Bages, Château Bellegrave—all in all, what real estate agents would consider a most desirable neighborhood.

  When we reached Pauillac, it looked as though the wardrobe department had been hard at work on a Fellini movie. The town was swarming with freaks—men and women with Day-Glo wigs, taffeta tutus, religious robes, convicts’ stripes, false body parts, horns, chains, tattoos, purple legs, red noses, blue faces. There were even one or two dressed in shorts and running vests.

  We climbed to the top of the stand overlooking the starting line. Below us, the main street was jammed solid with a kaleidoscope of boisterous and weirdly dressed competitors. A man disguised as a strawberry stood on one leg, doing his stretching exercises while he talked to his friend; a man with the physique of a rugby player squeezed into a nurse’s uniform. The animateur working the street was interviewing competitors—“This is the most fun you can have on two legs!”—and reminding runners to inform officials, before setting off, of their preference for vin rouge or vin blanc.

  Glancing behind me, I was treated to a tranquil and picturesque scene. A line of runners, at least a dozen of them, was strung out along the riverbank, their backs to the road. Undeterred by the passing crowds, they had chosen to ignore the discreet and very adequate toilet facilities provided, preferring instead an open-air performance. Marathon or no marathon, a true Frenchman will always find time for the pleasures of the pipi rustique.

  On the dot of 9:30, the runners set off, led by two very serious-looking young men who had shot away from the line like whippets, hotly pursued by a Playboy bunny wearing black stockings, black wig, white ears, and a heavy five o’clock shadow. As these three disappeared into the distance, the other eight thousand began to jostle past, waving, singing, shouting to friends. One or two were actually trying to run, although this was almost impossible in the mass of humanity that choked the street. Watching the moving panorama from our place in the stand, we were struck by the number of men dressed as women, a fondness for
drag we had not normally associated with athletes. Perhaps we had led sheltered lives. The other great favorite among the male runners was the baby outfit, complete with bib and drooping diaper. Women, on the other hand, were mostly dressed as women: princesses, milkmaids, nuns, Viking maidens. An anthropologist would have had a field day.

  It was a good ten minutes before the last luridly dressed transvestite turned the corner and aimed the twin cones of his false bosom in the direction of Château Lynch-Bages. The experts standing next to us, clearly sporting men, judging by their track suits and running shoes, lighted up cigarettes and speculated about the winning time. The champion of France was running—in fact, he had been neck-and-neck with the Playboy bunny at the start—and the informed estimates were that he would be crossing the finish line in well under two and a half hours. It was doubtful whether he’d be stopping for any dégustations en route, but at least he’d pick up the winner’s prize—not a medal, not a silver cup, not a shield, but something useful: his weight in wine.

  The less athletically committed spectators began to drift off to spend the morning exercising their arms in the town’s bars and cafés until the return of the front-runners. We bundled into our car and headed for our first stop, Château Pontet-Canet.

  Grape-growing country starts just outside Pauillac, and the land is clearly too precious to waste on wide roads. These were little more than tracks, narrow, unmarked, and hemmed in by vines that grew almost to the edge of the tarmac on either side. We were driving through green tubes—identical green tubes of identical height and texture. There were occasional aids to navigation: a massive stone crucifix rising above the sea of vines, a distant turret, a boundary stone. Otherwise, we saw only green, flat green, all the way to the horizon. It helps to be born here if you want to find your way.

  Pontet-Canet was, as it has been since the eighteenth century, magnificent. Not a blemish in the curved gravel driveway, not a twig out of place in the gardens. As we came up to the courtyard, we could hear above the applause and cheering of the spectators the unexpected wheeze and wail of bagpipes. “The Runner’s Lament,” it might have been, or maybe “Bordeaux the Brave.” I find it difficult to tell with bagpipes. They were being played by a piper in a red beret who was standing with his fellow musicians on an impromptu stage made from wooden wine crates. From his beret, I thought he was Basque; from his pipes, Scottish. It turned out he was a Frenchman from Pauillac.

  In front of the bandstand was a wine stand, one of the twenty dotted along the course, and the runners had to pass within six feet of it on their way through the courtyard. Many didn’t make it—distracted, possibly, by a man from the château team who had stationed himself by the side of the stand, where he stood like a two-fisted Statue of Liberty, arms upraised, a welcoming glass of Pontet-Canet in each hand. The dedicated runners, clutching their flasks of Vittel, turned their faces away from temptation and continued onward. Others pulled up with gusty sighs of relief, armed themselves with glasses, and gathered round the dégustation table to compare notes with their fellow athletes.

  You might expect them to have discussed times, hamstring cramps, and race tactics, but no; as far as I could make out, it was fashion and beauty all the way. One man was having a problem with his mascara, which had run into smudges over his cheeks so that he resembled a startled raccoon. Another had discovered that his long taffeta skirt had a tendency to stick uncomfortably to his perspiring thighs. A third complained of aching lobes, brought on by the excessive weight of his ornamental earrings. The only cure for these assorted ills was, of course, another glass of Pontet-Canet.

  Watching the runners come up the driveway, I was struck by the total absence of grim-faced competition. They weren’t trying to beat each other, but were encouraging each other, dropping back to keep a straggler company, staying in groups instead of single file. Nowhere could I see any sign of the traditional loneliness of the long-distance runner. It wasn’t that kind of race.

  Knots of spectators were lining the course—clapping, hooting, whistling, cheering, some with personalized banners saying Allez, Jean-Luc! or Vite, Gérard, Vite! “Fatigue is purely mental,” I heard one enthusiast shouting. “You’re not tired. You’re just thirsty.” By now, the sun had come out, and it wasn’t really the weather to be wearing layers of fancy dress. Marie Antoinette came hobbling up the slope to the château, one hand clutching his water bottle, the other holding up the folds of his crinoline. I was beginning to understand why so many men had chosen to run as babies, wearing diapers that left their legs bare.

  Another mystifying voyage through the vines brought us to Château Lafite Rothschild, the home of what has been called the most beautiful and aristocratic drink in the world. It is a suitably beautiful and aristocratic setting—the house on top of a small hill overlooking a lawn like a billiard table, a park, a lake with a central fountain, rows of gigantic weeping willows. And, as befits this most eminent of châteaux, a twenty-piece orchestra to greet the runners with some musical encouragement.

  Adding an exotic touch to this refined sylvan scene were some of the more picturesque competitors: the seven dwarfs scuttled past (minus Snow White, who was probably detained at a previous tasting), followed by a bumblebee, and a bride with a long dress, sunglasses, and luxuriant mustache. And there, pausing by the dégustation table, was a gentleman dressed as—what, exactly?

  On his head was an iridescent emerald green shoulder-length wig. Slung around his neck was a harness in the shape of two monumental corset pink breasts that bounced against his chest. An apron covered the rest of the frontal scenery as far as the knee, but this token gesture of modesty was rather spoiled when he turned around. On his naked back had been painted an arrow that pointed to his equally naked bottom, which had been attractively priced in bold numerals at 400 francs.

  There he stood, in these incomparably distinguished surroundings, enjoying a musical interlude, sipping his glass of Lafite Rothschild, at peace with the world. He had run twenty-five kilometers and looked set for another twenty, providing his apron stayed put.

  A few minutes later, we were getting another view of Château Lafite, this time from five hundred feet up. I have mixed feelings about flying in a helicopter. I’m not sure I like the idea of being an aerial Peeping Tom, poking my nose into what is normally hidden behind walls and hedges. It is undoubtedly an invasion of privacy, and therefore something I tell myself I shouldn’t be doing. On the other hand, it’s fascinating. And the view on this sunny morning was extraordinary.

  It was gardening on the epic scale. Mile after mile of barbered symmetry, the châteaux with their turrets and slate roofs like islands in a perfectly smooth green ocean of vines. Thousands of acres of tamed nature. Is there anywhere else in the world where so much land has been so meticulously and elegantly maintained?

  The sandy roads cutting through the vineyards were teeming with a long, long line of brightly colored insects—the runners, by now stretched over several miles. From our seat in the sky, they seemed barely to be moving. It was as though someone had sprinkled confetti over the landscape.

  With a final swoop across the Gironde, the helicopter set us down behind the stand. It was now 1:30, four hours after the start of the race, and a steady stream of runners was sprinting, jogging, or tottering up the red carpet that led to the finish line, the nirvana of the massage tables, and some restorative carbohydrates provided by a team of caterers called the Joyeux Tartineurs.

  We sat down for lunch in the stand, and for once the distractions of the view took precedence over the food. There was Yassir Arafat puffing up to the finish, closely followed by a man wearing false buttocks and what looked like an orange tea cosy. Cleopatra came next, his wig askew, then a man who miraculously still had enough wind left in him to be talking on a cell phone.

  The clock above the finish line showed that four and a half hours had elapsed since the start of the race, and still they came: Mickey Mouse; a team of devils in black cloaks and wilted red hor
ns waving tridents; five stout babies running hand in hand; a trio of Scotsmen in tam-o’-shanters and vestigial kilts; a gendarme handcuffed to his prisoner; doctors pushing a stretcher with a very lively patient waving to the crowd; and, amid great cheers, a giant bottle of wine with legs. Vive le Médoc!

  Behind the finish line, we picked our way through a morass of bodies in various stages of recovery. Some were flat out on the grass, others slumped on the pavement or draped across trestle tables, expressions of bliss on their faces as their muscles melted under massage. A little farther along the road, the cafés were filled with nuns and cavemen and hirsute cherubs refueling. Pommes frites, beer, baguettes, cheese, sausage—anything to feed the postmarathon famine—were disappearing as fast as the waiters could bring them out. And these were just snacks. Later, there would be another onslaught of pasta for dinner.

  Five hours since the start, and still they came: a sprightly dog towing his owner up to the finish on the end of a leash; a British policeman; Bacchus; a waiter in a top hat; Adam and Eve. We heard that the champion of France had come in first, with a time of two hours and twenty minutes, but this was very clearly not a race of winner and losers. It was a celebration.

  We had dinner that night with two of the runners, Pierre and Gérard. One had come from Lyon, the other from Washington, D.C., and they had competed in many marathons before. This one, they agreed, was special in many ways. The organization had been faultless, from the prerace carbohydrate binge to the postrace massage. The good humor, the tremendous sense of comradeship and enjoyment during the race, the costumes, the weather, the beauty of the course—they had all contributed to a rare and remarkable day.