William Wharton - Houseboat on the Seine

We measure all around, and Arthur writes it down in a small notebook.

‘I’ll even send it air freight. I have a special rate through the company. It should be here within two weeks. What color do you want, blue or green?’

‘Green to match the Seine.’

‘That water looks more black than green to me.’

‘OK, then black.’

‘No, we’ll be optimistic and make it green. Maybe by the time those paintings are worth all you say they’ll be, the Seine will be green again.’

Arthur didn’t know how predictive he was.

Two weeks later, I receive a call from a transporter for air freight. Luckily, Matt’s home so he can translate for me. Trying to understand a Frenchman on the phone is quite a task, no pantomime. He says he has a package addressed to me and wants to know if I want it delivered. He claims there are customs duties to be paid as well as his transportation costs. I tell Matt what to ask, I’m already suspicious.

‘How much are the customs duties, monsieur?’

Matt’s face falls. The customs duty is sixteen hundred francs, about four hundred dollars. I don’t have anything nearly like that. I know the package is the pool cover I’ve been waiting for. I ask Matt to tell the man we’ll come out to look at it ourselves. Matt smiles at me.

‘We’ll come out to look at this package. Who, by the way, would authorize anyone to pay customs on something like this without having seen what’s in this package?’

Matt tells me the transporter is furious. He says he’s already paid and can’t realize the money back from customs. Matt winks at me; he’s enjoying himself.

‘That’s your problem. You should have consulted us first.’ We both smile.

After some more hassle, he admits he could probably recoup the customs duty money, but we need to come sign some papers. He tells us the number of the air-freight terminal where the package is being held at Le Bourget. Also, he tells us that after tomorrow, there will be storage bills to pay as well. What a farce.

Next morning, I’m working my way through the twists and turns at Le Bourget to Freight Terminal A5. I have Matt with me. One day missed at school isn’t going to matter; he’s not complaining. After several false leads, we find the warehouse where they’d put the package. The warehouse is huge! The package is huge, too. The officials there want to know what a ‘pool cover’ is. That’s what Arthur had written on the customs form. Matt tries to explain. I want them to open the package. Matt is telling them what we intend doing with it. The customs officer keeps repeating, ‘Pool cover? Qu’est-ce que c’est? ’

There’s a woman at a desk nearby. She says clearly, ‘ Piscine. C’est pour une piscine .’

Matt smiles and verifies. The man talks through and around poor Matt, insists we must pay the customs duty.

I have Matt tell him it isn’t worth that much. We don’t have money to pay. It becomes apparent after much back and forthing that we aren’t getting anywhere. He’s not going to accommodate us. The freight man is in a sweat. He has the papers for me to sign so he can recuperate his money. I don’t give a damn, once in a while these middlemen need to lose. I reach over and sign the papers with a large X. I turn to Matt.

‘Tell him it’s all his. If he wants, he can cut it up into small pieces and use it for papier hygiénique . He can ‘ pisc-ine ’ it if he wants, I don’t care, let’s get the hell out of here.’

I turn away quickly and stride out from the customs house. Matt is about to ‘ pisc-ine ’ his pants. He’s sure the cops are going to chase us. Even so, we’re both torn between being scared stiff and laughing our heads off. Matt keeps looking out the back window, but there’s nobody following us. I wonder what the customs man told his wife over dinner that night.

That’s the end of ‘operation diaper’. I’ll never know if it would have worked. I can’t imagine what they’ll do with such an odd-shaped huge pool cover, either. I don’t care too much. I write and tell Arthur what’s happened. He phones back, laughing. He’s sympathetic, but he still wants his paintings.

A Visit to a Graveyard and a Decapitated Dragon

We go back to the boat, and there’re about six inches of water in the bottom of the hull; the automatic pump didn’t turn on. We prime it till it’s working again and bail like crazy. Two hours later, the hull is more or less dry. I’m going more or less berserk! I’ve reached the point of having the boat destroyed after all.

The next day I receive a phone call. It’s from M. Teurnier. He says he has something to show me. He’s downriver from me and he’ll pick me up and take me to his boatyard. He also says he’ll drive me back in the afternoon. This is all tough to get across on the phone, especially without the pantomime. Under duress, my French must be improving. I’m hoping I understood him correctly, there are so many different ways I could be wrong. I’m also wishing I had Matt with me. It’s the story of my life apparently – my boat life, anyway – half the time not understanding what’s going on, and what I do understand isn’t going well at all.

I’m doing some adjusting on my little pump and bailing more water out when M. Teurnier arrives promptly as he said he would. He pulls up to the bank where I’ve been trying to glue my furniture back together.

He goes down the bank past me and looks around the inside of the boat. He comes out shaking his head and motions me to climb into his rattletrap of a car. His head just about clears the dash so he can see out the windshield. To make it possible, he has three ragged pillows to boost himself up on, giving him a few centimeters of height, and half a chance.

The seats in the back of the car have been ripped out, and the space is filled with grease-smeared tools and pieces of cut metal. He drives the way a madman should.

After half an hour of twisting, turning driving, we stop in the middle of nowhere. His house turns out to be a houseboat pulled up onto a section of land, a sort of small island between branches of the meandering Seine. He pantomimes with his arms how the river rises with floods.

It turns out, he moved his boat up onto the land when the flood was high, then, as the water went down, he built concrete foundations under his boat. He laughs and slaps his knee as he tells this. It certainly makes for a peculiar-looking house.

We go inside and I meet his wife, who speaks a little English. She tells me their daughter is studying English at school and will be home soon. It turns out the daughter will translate. M. Teurnier pulls me by the arm down to one of the riverbanks. I can see this is the equivalent of a boat cemetery. There are half-sunken rusty boats everywhere, from rowboats to enormous barges. They’re all rusting into nothingness. Men are cutting and arc-welding on all sides. The smell of burnt metal dominates everything, even the foul smell of the river.

M. Teurnier is dragging me over to an abortion of a filthy barge. To me it looks something like a giant sea dragon with its head cut off. It’s rusted everywhere, and where there isn’t rust, there are streaks and puddles of oil smeared haphazardly.

Now I know this kind of thing might be heaven to a real boat person, but it looks hellish to me. Before I acquired my sinking violet of a wooden boat, my marine experience had been limited to some rowing of rowboats in parks, a few fishing trips on hired fishing boats off the Jersey shore, two half-day excursions in Arthur’s sailboat out of the marina in Los Angeles, and playing with boats in my bathtub as a child. What I’m seeing in front of me is an unmitigated horror. I find myself flinching, I want to escape.