RASPUTIN RIDES AGAIN

ANTIQUING AND THE BROCANTE

An antique dealer in Burgundy once tried to sell me an artificial leg, vintage 1918. Fingering its cracked leather straps, sturdy beech structure and only slightly tarnished fittings of surgical steel, I agreed on its collectable condition and sterling craftsmanship.

“But what would I do with it?”

            Reluctant to see a sale slip away, he said “Perhaps…a lamp?”

            Last Sunday, we spent the morning, like countless other such mornings,  at a brocante.

            A brocante is a street market for second-hand goods. The word has the same source as broc-a-brac, the origin of the English bric-a-brac. It also describes the sort of thing sold in such markets: items like that leg, too interesting or worthwhile to throw away, but too recent or trivial to be called an antique; things often dismissed as “junk” but embraced by others as “collectibles.”

Outside France, you often hear brocantes called marchés aux puces -“flea markets” - but the French shun the phrase with its suggestion that their stock is infested with vermin. They prefer variations on the verb chiner, meaning to buy and sell,  and call themselves “chineurs.”

This brocante was in Marennes, a small town near the coast. Narrow, winding lanes of 18th century houses, built flush to the street, without sidewalks, using the powdery white local limestone, led to a square dominated by a steepled church and the statue of some forgotten grandee. Next to him, a carousel was doing good business, its loudspeaker bawling an old Boney M hit, vintage 1978. No matter where we went that morning, we were followed by “Ra Ra Rasputine, lover of the Russian queen…”

Brocantes take place all across France year-round, though fewer in August: even chineurs go on holiday. The town and suburban councils that license them sometimes attach cosmetic names, such as Grand Balai (Big Sweep-out), Vide Grenier (Attic-Emptier) or Marché Pour Tous (Market for Everyone) to suggest they represent a community effort, but most are run by syndicates which charge to take part.

This one was all amateurs, however.  The tables ranged around the square and along side streets were heaped more or less randomly with toys, books, DVDs, pots, plates, childrens toys – but also, here and there, a few curios, included under the  rule of “let’s get rid of these old things.”

Others had dug into ancient chests or explored attics. The result was a bizarre miscellany. I bought a heap of ancient sheet music from the nineteen-twenties, including two with Joséphine Baker beaming from the cover. (“Like to sing, do you, dear?” enquired the lady who sold them.) Another seller had yellowed newspapers c. 1925, filled with political scandals and bloody murders that might have happened yesterday. I couldn’t resist.

We browsed on, to the umteenth repeat of “Ra ra Rasputine/Russia's greatest love machine…” I thought a couple of bright blue enameled buckets might look good on our balcony - until Marie Dominique explained they were of the kind used in old-fashioned outdoor toilets.

I was tempted by a plate produced to commemorate the return of Napoleon’s bones to Paris in 1840 to be interred in his sumptuous tomb, but bought instead a booklet of postcards of the liner Normandie’s luxurious interiors;  sleek art deco lounges and restaurants, and a chapel which, in trying to represent all faiths, managed to resemble a night club with pews….

Parisian chineurs are a tough bunch but the Charentais are more hospitable. “I love your accent…where are you from?....Australia! Imagine!” When we stop for a coffee and I leave an extra coin on the dish, the waitress says “That’s too much.” When I tell her it’s a tip, she looks surprised. Something tells me I’m not in Paris any more.

How the French feel about throwing things away has a lot to do with why I like living here.

Gertrude Stein said of nineteen-twenties Paris “This was where the future was.” Australia, at least in the country town where I grew up, was the other side of the coin – a place where everything had already happened. Reflecting this, almost nothing was new. The town had no second-hand or antique shop. One seldom discarded clothing but altered it and handed it down. Cars and utensils were repaired, not replaced. Everything was dented, chipped and scratched – not least the inhabitants.

I reacted by embracing the future. Jazz, science fiction and the cinema preoccupied my adolescence. A need to know more about them drove me to leave and, eventually, end up in France – where, ironically, I learned to appreciate the past.   

            There is a trick to brocanting. One doesn’t go too early, since people are still setting up, and there are always a few professionals who shoulder you aside to get at cartons even before they’re opened. Nor should you wait until mid-afternoon, known in the trade as l’heure du musée, when people, after digesting their lunch, decide to load the kids into their prams and check out the brocante.

Blocking the paths between stalls, they never buy anything, but tend to rummage, commenting all the time as if the vendors weren’t sitting impassively a few metres away.

“Look at this, Jules,”says a woman, holding up some artifact. “Remember? Our first flat?”  “How much do you want for it?” she asks. “Fifty euros? You’re joking….”

            Best time is late morning, when sellers are thinking about lunch. Perhaps the wife and daughter are unfolding the card table, setting out a baguette, salad in a Tupperwear bowl,  paté, a bottle of wine.  Then you hold up the fifty euro item and say “Thirty for this?”

“Yes, sure,” they say vaguely, taking your money. “And listen….you don’t happen to have a corkscrew, do you?”

And all the time Rasputine bangs on: Most people looked at him /With terror and with fear/But to Moscow chicks/ He was such a lovely dear…”

The past is another country. They do things differently there.