French Revolutions

chanting fiend in a ram’s mask could nail me to a
candle-bordered altar.
    Only when I’d been wandering about in
the windy sun for an hour did I realise that even by French standards there
were a lot of closed shops, and that this — combined with the fact that it was
a Monday — suggested ‘Pentecote’ might be Whitsun, and that today might
therefore be a bank holiday. This meant another night in an expensive hotel and
a farther excruciating conversation with the Masson-murderer to arrange a
massage appointment for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, but that was OK. The festival was
still on and an extra day’s rest would prepare me well.
    Belfort was hungover. I’d heard the music banging on
until dawn, and now there was vomit in the streets and a lot of traffic cones
sticking out of a river so shallow that the ducks weren’t so much swimming
across it as wading. A Grace Brothers-style department store, a horse butcher
with the bust of a donkey nailed proudly over the door, a grubby
Fascist-looking station ringed with grubbier kebab shops — Belfort was hard to
love, but at the same time you couldn’t hate it. The sky was blue and already
there were intimations of a holiday atmosphere.
    As the crowds began to gather in the
two brasserie-ringed squares that were the festival’s focus, I gazed up at that
dominating sandstone fortress. It was this mighty edifice, I had been severally
informed by the tourist leaflets, that had allowed Belfort to hold off the advancing
Germans during the 1870 war in which the rest of Alsace was annexed. I knew the
commanding officer, Denfert-Rochereau, from the names of any number of squares
and streets and metro stations throughout France, and contemplating the huge
red lion that growled out from the fortress-supporting cliff in commemoration
of his siege-resisting exploits I understood something about the
hero-worshipping culture that begat the Tour. It was perhaps no coincidence
that those cycling nations with the noblest Tour traditions also shared a
romantic attachment to their sons and daughters who had defied the odds with
acts of extraordinary valour in other fields, an enduring and powerful national
affection for those rare few who achieved the apparently unachievable. Whoever
just said ‘Belgium?’ is in detention for a week.
    The wind dropped and the heat was
soon stultifying. Very glad that I hadn’t tried to cycle 254 kilometres in
these conditions, I ambled drowsily about the old town, watching lizards flash
up walls, skirting round the bovine groups of riot police who set off up the
street in a clomping rush every time someone dropped a bottle in the distance.
Away from the squares the Moldovan ululations and death metal and jazz melted
together like a badly tuned radio, but everywhere the atmosphere was
wonderfully civic, partly no doubt because of the complete absence of entrance
fees. All the public buildings were opened up as venues, and in the crowds
outside pram-pushers mingled with pot-smokers, couples in their Sunday best
joining crusties in their Wednesday worst at the kebab queues. I enjoyed it,
and would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn’t been compelled by nascent
blisters to wear socks inside my espadrilles.
    England were playing Portugal in that
night’s Euro 2000 game, and as the sun dropped below tomorrow’s hills I walked
into a bar manned by two crones, one quite old and one very. From the pink
ceiling dangled the vast screen that had lured me in, and being the only
customer, by the time I’d finished my first beer I had learned a great deal
about this item and its life to date.
    Good, isn’t it, said the barmaid.
Yes, I said. Mother paid 49,000 francs for it, said the barmaid. In Spain, said the mother. Because of the longer guarantee, said the daughter. But during the
last World Cup the extra business paid for it twice over, said the mother. Are
you interested in the Tower of France, I said. We cleared almost 20,000 francs
on the night our boys beat Brazil, said the daughter. The tuning is difficult,
said the mother, but it brings the customers in. Bicycles, I said. And it was
tax-deductible, said the daughter. Look, England are winning 2-0, I said. It’s
all go in Belfort these days, said the mother. First these student musicians,
said the daughter, and next month the Tour de France. Yes, I said. Christophe
Moreau, said the mother, that’s him in the photo up on the wall. That little
beard didn’t do him any favours, said the daughter, but