A Year in Provence(46)

He arrived with a valise full of catalogues, and unloaded them onto the table in the courtyard as he made some mystifying remarks about vertical or horizontal evacuation. As he had said, there was a wide choice, but they were all aggressively modern in design and color—squat, sculptural objects in deep burgundy or burnt apricot. We were looking for something simple and white.

“C’est pas facile,” he said. People nowadays wanted new forms and colors. It was all part of the French sanitary revolution. The traditional white was not favored by the designers. There was, however, one model he had seen recently which might be exactly what we wanted. He rummaged through his catalogues and—yes, he was sure of it—this was the one for us.

“Voilàt Le W.C. haute couture!” He pushed the catalogue over to us and there, lit and photographed like an Etruscan vase, was the Pierre Cardin lavatory.

“You see?” said Menicucci. “It is even signed by Cardin.” And so it was, up on the top and well out of harm’s way. Apart from the signature it was perfect, a handsome design that looked like a lavatory and not like a giant goldfish bowl. We ordered two.

It was a saddened Menicucci who telephoned a week later to tell us that the House of Cardin no longer made our lavatories. Une catastrophe but he would continue his researches.

A further ten days passed before he reappeared, now in triumph, coming up the steps to the house waving another catalogue above his head.

“Toujours couture!” he said. “Toujours couture!”

Cardin may have left the bathroom, but his place had been taken by the gallant Courrèges, whose design was very similar and who had exercised remarkable restraint in the matter of the signature, leaving it off altogether. We congratulated Menicucci, and he allowed himself a celebratory Coca-Cola. He raised his glass.

“Today the lavatories, tomorrow the central heating,” he said, and we sat for a while in the 90-degree sunshine while he told us how warm we were going to be and went through his plan of attack. Walls were to be broken, dust would be everywhere, the noise of the jackhammer would take over from the bees and the crickets. There was only one bright spot about it, said Menicucci. It would keep the guests away for a few weeks. Eh, oui.

But before this period of enforced and ear-splitting seclusion we were expecting one last guest, a man so maladroit and disasterprone, so absentminded and undomesticated, so consistently involved in household accidents that we had specifically asked him to come on the eve of demolition so that the debris of his visit could be buried under the rubble of August. It was Bennett, a close friend for fifteen years who cheerfully admitted to being the World’s Worst Guest. We loved him, but with apprehension.

He called from the airport, several hours after he was due to arrive. Could I come down and pick him up? There had been a slight problem with the car hire company, and he was stranded.

I found him in the upstairs bar at Marignane, comfortably installed with a bottle of champagne and a copy of the French edition of Playboy. He was in his late forties, slim and extremely good-looking, dressed in an elegant suit of off-white linen with badly scorched trousers. “Sorry to drag you out,” he said, “but they’ve run out of cars. Have some champagne.”

He told me what had happened and, as usual with Bennett, it was all so unlikely that it had to be true. The plane had arrived on time, and the car he had reserved, a convertible, was waiting for him. The top was down, it was a glorious afternoon and Bennett, in an expansive mood, had lit a cigar before heading toward the autoroute. It had burned quickly, as cigars do when fanned by a strong breeze, and Bennett had tossed it away after twenty minutes. He became aware that passing motorists were waving at him, so in return he waved to them; how friendly the French have become, he thought. He was some miles up the autoroute before he realized that the back of the car was burning, set on fire by the discarded cigar butt that had lodged in the upholstery. With what he thought was tremendous presence of mind, he pulled on to the hard shoulder, stood up on the front seat, and urinated into the flames. And that was when the police had found him.

“They were terribly nice,” he said, “but they thought it would be best if I brought the car back to the airport, and then the car rental people had a fit and wouldn’t give me another one.”

He finished his champagne and gave me the bill. What with all the excitement, he said, he hadn’t managed to change his traveler’s checks. It was good to see him again, still the same as ever, charming, terminally clumsy, beautifully dressed, permanently short of funds. My wife and I had once pretended to be his maid and manservant at a dinner party when we were all so broke that we shared out the tip afterwards. We always had fun with Bennett, and dinner that night lasted into the early hours of the morning.