Paul Morand - The Man in a Hurry

“There’s the west, and over there, it’s the north-east…”

When Pierre brings his friends up here, they are as lost as they would be at sea.

At the foot of each section of box hedge there is a small flower bed where Pierre grows common flowers that bloom in about mid-June: flax, poppies, foxgloves, lupins. In the centre there is a larger bed containing early fruit and vegetables, consisting of two cold frames and lit with neon lighting, which he is not a little proud of and which soothes all the disappointments that somnolent nature inflicts on him.

“And above all, give me something that grows quickly!” Pierre exclaims to Monsieur Priapet when he calls at Le Bon Cultivateur on the Quai de la Mégisserie to place his horticultural order.

Imperturbable, having retained his florid countryman’s complexion in the heart of the city, Monsieur Priapet, the god of gardens, believes only in the established order of gardening traditions and in the celestial code. But since chemical products make a good profit, he happily yields to the impatient fervour of his Parisian and suburban customers.

“Give me something that grows quickly! Why do we have to wait till June when we have sown seeds in March?” asks Pierre, hopping from foot to foot.

“Because the earth is cold, monsieur.”

“Let’s warm it. What have you got in here?”

“Some Subitosa . Keep to the proportions of one spoonful to five litres of water. I know what you’re like, Monsieur Niox, don’t go and do what you did last year and put five spoonfuls to one litre. Remember that you burned all your spindle trees. Eh, do you remember?”

“And what does this sack contain?”

“Some Précipital .”

“What a beautiful name! Vilmorin has a genius for neologisms. How do you use it?”

Monsieur Priapet winks and brings out a Molière-like syringe.

“You apply injections.”

“A good crack of the whip on nature’s behind, that’ll teach her!” said Pierre. “Then give me some Activitte too. And add some Superroburella , one kilo, ten kilos!”

“Be careful. It’s a very stimulating product! Try some of our selected seeds instead,” advised Monsieur Priapet as he rubbed his bright red cheeks.

“Really? Are they guaranteed? Are they quick?”

“I wouldn’t just recommend them to anyone, except to a gardener like you! Look, you’ll get some ‘interesting’ results with the Bursting tomato and with the Lightning chervil . Do you know the extra-early Express sweet peas from Suttons?”

“Give me twenty packets. And put a sack of arsenic mash in my car; and another of Sulphuretted Prefoliate .”

“That’s hyperactive, Monsieur Niox. Watch out! I’ll do as you ask, but for a truly reinforced fertilizer that’s anti-cryptogamic and that will really benefit you, there’s nothing like Prematurol from Truffaut’s. Have you seen their Begonias semperflorens on the Cours-la-Reine when they’ve been watered with that? They’re huge.”

And Pierre departs straight away, his pockets filled with the Horticulturalist’s Diary , the Manual of Floriculture , eager to start planting and transplanting.

Once back home, he will increase his efforts, naturally, and fill his flower beds with stimulating substances and ashes that are so blazingly hot that they still burn the feet at the moment of planting.

“Here, I plant my clematis; behind them, the scabious; above, the pyrethrums. My delphiniums and my columbines are already in place: for two years I haven’t had to bother about them… My galloping wisteria has died from phthisis. I’m going to replace it with those nice things that are sturdy and that always grow before anything else: nasturtiums and runner beans. What a huge comfort runner beans are for the wretched amateur! They grow tall, they knock down walls, they explode, they cover everything, they get completely out of hand and they don’t give you any trouble.”

The man in a hurry pours on the nitrogen; he is unrestrained with the potassium phosphate, he shoves on ammoniac citrate at fever pitch. His ideal solution is to be rid of the sad geraniums and begonias his forefathers grew, to achieve those herbaceous borders they have in England where the flowerings follow one another on the same ground; from week to week, a blue flower bed gives way to a yellow one, then pink, then white, like a series of fireworks, with luminous fountains sending up rockets.

There is nothing else he needs; the one thing he lacks is land; but nothing is harder than finding land to buy in Paris. Horticulturists sell everything, except land!

In the gazebo, Pierre arranges his tools around a crate that is the last remnant of an unfortunate attempt to grow crops in catalysed water the previous year; with the aid of phosphoric salts, Monsieur Priapet had promised him instant canna, early anemones and a plethora of radishes: it was a flop.

Alongside spades in the shape of a swan’s neck, hoeing forks and harrows, there were scarifying claws and shears for cutting the lawn that stood rusting, while a tiny, toothless rake lay among the labels, with shards of broken pots and bits of vegetable cloches that cracked when you walked over them. A box of Armenian specifica for speeding up the laying of hens’ eggs provided the final evidence of an attempt to fatten up chickens that was abandoned at an earlier period amid corpses of one-day-old chicks that had died from white diarrhoea.

Pierre uses sulphated mulch and screens to protect his irises and primroses.

“Let us consult my Amateur Gardener calendar. ‘February… prepare your soil…’ Done that. ‘Beware cutting lilac too soon…’ These people really do lack any enthusiasm. Why not protect rose bushes from greenfly now? (But the greenfly are also late)… ‘Sow foxgloves in March.’ Who cares! Let’s try and sow them in February and we shall see…”

Thus does Pierre interfere with the flowering and overtax the vegetation. Every morning he will come, nose to the ground and with wet knees, to keep an eye on the new growths. He’ll scratch with a blackened nail in order to encourage the little tip of the tulip, he’ll raise up the wilting hyacinth (even though he has had them sent over from Scotland, so that on finding themselves in Paris, they might get a good southern surprise). He watches the hole. He sprinkles, he soaks, he splashes rather than waters. No matter what, no matter when. The water leaks through the ceiling (he waters so early in the year that there are sometimes stalactites down below, in his study).

“Nature needs to be tamed, to be given an example of vigour!”

Pierre mops his forehead, glistening with beads of sweat unknown in the Garden of Eden. He turns round: Hedwige is there, looking at him, simultaneously severe and smiling.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” says Pierre ironically. “You see: I lingered in the garden.”

She stands there in formal black clothes (an afternoon dress with only a small length of skunk fur fitted snugly round her neck) silhouetted against a very pale blue sky, high above the horizon, a horizon that barely reaches halfway up her legs, as in portraits of the Spanish School.

“Don’t make fun of me,” she says. “I got up late.”

Having made up his mind not to criticize her, Pierre continues in the same tone of voice:

“It’s like my tulips. This year, nothing is getting up.”

“Nature has eternity ahead of her,” Hedwige replies.

“Yes, alas! With nature one always has the impression that autumn is missing the summer and that winter never seriously settles in until the moment when you might rightly expect spring to be arriving. So when will these tulips, which are a particularly tough variety from the north of the Zuider Zee, reveal their colours? They’re white ones; I chose them with you in mind, you who like white flowers, with a border of black tulips, to show them at their best.”