Bamboo Read online

  Back in London my agent could make no headway—phone calls went unanswered, letters were unreplied to. I was told that André Balland would be writing to me himself. My journal, 9 June 1986: “Pathetic letter from Balland saying he hadn’t read my contract properly and that he has a cash-flow problem. I’ve written to him demanding 250,000 Frs up front and the rest in monthly instalments. A good letter, it was, but a sad compromise.”

  It was a good letter—it took me about two days to write, hunched over my French dictionary and grammar book. I have copies of our subsequent correspondence. Boyd: “Je me trouve au bord des embarras financiers vis à vis le fisc. Souvenez-vous, c’est mon argent—pas le vôtre—que vous gardez à ce moment.” And so on. Balland: “Cher William, Merci pour votre gentille lettre. Je suis extrêmement soulagé de voir que nos relations puissent reprendre leur cours normal.”

  The lawyers met in Paris. Various documents that were copied to me attest to ways in which I was to be reimbursed. In August I received a cheque for 150,000 Frs—50,000 Frs less than had been agreed. In October I received another 50,000, the money seemed finally to be on its way. Boyd to Balland: “Cher André, Merci bien pour votre lettre. Vous savez que, moi aussi, j’ai eu les ennuis fiscaux cette année et, par conséquence, c’est crucial que les versements arrivent ponctuellement. Comme ça peux régler ma vie, vis à vis mon banquier et le fisc. Le nouveau roman marche bien et j’espère vivement que nous pouvons oublier nos difficultés de l’année dernière et continuer notre association dans le futur. Bien à vous, William.” Balland to Boyd: “Cher William … si des choses heureuses in-terviennent dans ma vie professionnelle, vous pouvez être assuré que j’augmenterai le montant de ces mensualités afin d’être en défaut le moins longtemps possible. A très bientôt, j’espère, André Balland.”

  The monthly payments continued for a while and then stopped. I was still well short of what I was owed. My agent and I decided to sue and so we engaged a firm of English lawyers, Heald Nickinson, that had an office in Paris. There was some kind of judicial hearing (my agent and I shared the costs of the lawyers’ fees) and a form of repayment was set out. I was to receive a down payment of 200,000 Frs (say £20,000) and then monthly payments of £5,000 until the amount due was settled. Matters were further complicated when we discovered on analysing Balland’s accounts that other payments were also delayed, not just on An Ice-Cream War, but on my other two novels that Balland had published—it now appeared that I had actually been owed some £65,000.

  It was by now mid 1987. By October 1987 another deal was sorted out between our lawyers and Balland’s to regularize repayments. Beyond all this, life was going on: my fourth novel, The New Confessions, was published in Britain and was sold to a different, and very eminent French publishing house, Le Seuil (who, significantly enough, had also published the paperbacks of the first three).

  And then it all goes quiet for three years, a kind of phony peace. I was now happy with my new French publisher; I’d had a fair chunk of the money owing to me, paid in dribs and drabs (I was still short by £15,000), but Balland seemed to have gone off the radar, at least as far as my journal was concerned: there is no reference between October 1987 (when the repayments scheme was formalized by the lawyers) and April 1991. More than three years of silence. The monthly payments were coming through and when they stopped, it seemed I made no fuss. I put this down to a kind of malignant unworldliness that tends to afflict novelists (there are exceptions, of course). To describe it at its most simple I think the reasoning goes like this: you, the novelist, can’t believe you are actually earning your living writing novels—and to complain about being defrauded, messed about, unpaid, or ripped off under these circumstances seems somehow churlish. True, in my case, everything was going fairly well, especially in France, and I suppose I had written off the Balland affair as just one of those bad experiences that afflict writers from time to time. But looking back over my papers and journals, as I researched the background to this story, I found myself baffled and angry with myself for being so compliant and complacent. So they still owe me £15,000?—well, let’s not rock the boat.

  In early 1991 Editions André Balland formally declared themselves to be in financial difficulties. In French the expression is to déposer votre bi-lan. No exact equivalent exists in Britain (it’s not like going bankrupt) but in the USA the expression is “to file for Chapter 11.” What it means, in real terms, is that your bank (supervised by a court official) takes over the running of your business and you, the enterprise, admit you cannot meet your financial responsibilities. Creditors are thus warned. And I was a creditor.

  In 1991 I started to receive registered letters from Paris about my status as said creditor. I had to notify the authorities exactly how much I was owed by the moribund Editions André Balland. I really didn’t know what to do. And here my translator steps in. Christiane Besse (a truly remarkable woman) had (and has) translated all my novels into French and had become a close friend. As a result of the new association with Le Seuil it became clear that, over the last few intervening years (since 1989), royalties from my paperback sales (of my three Balland titles) had been properly paid to Editions André Balland but I had not received a penny. When Balland had déposé son bilan it had been bought by another company called Copagest. “Copagest” is an acronym for “Com-pagnie Parisienne de Gestion Automobile de la Gare de l’Est”—in short, a taxi-firm. Balland-Copagest, this unlikely coupling, had been receiving the monies due to me (from Le Seuil, from another paperback company and from book clubs) but had neglected to pass my share along. As well as the £15,000 Balland had not paid me, and for which Balland-Copagest was liable, it seemed I was also owed other sums of money by way of unpaid royalties by the new company.

  After some discussion, Christiane Besse introduced me to a lawyer in Paris called Anne Veil, who specialized in literary and publishing litigation. We met one afternoon in Christiane’s apartment. As we took tea, Anne Veil spoke with eloquent, enormously grave, yet reassuring calm: the case was clear-cut—it was up to me. If I wanted to proceed we would institute a procès against Balland-Copagest. How much was involved? At that stage of accounting it appeared that, first, they should have paid me the outstanding £15,000 that Balland owed me (plus interest); second, there seemed to be some £7-8,000 of outstanding royalties that I should have received. And then there was the question of costs and damages.

  A few dark nights of the soul ensued. All the old reservations about going to law came to mind (the time, the stress, the benefit accruing only to the lawyers, and so on) but it seemed to me I was in too deep now. I had already sued (via Heald Nickinson) and had achieved partial reparation. But now, by all accounts, it appeared I had been wronged yet again—all my royalties and earnings from my three books since Balland went bust had been quietly sequestered. The malignant unworldliness that afflicts novelists for once didn’t apply; this was a matter of principle—it seemed to me there was no other course of action to take. I instructed Anne Veil to sue Balland-Copagest.

  French justice moves slowly, but inexorably, and French lawyers are paid half their fee up-front. It wasn’t until 9 September 1993 that the “Affaire William Boyd v Balland-Copagest (dossier no. 82231091)” was pleaded before the 3ème Chambre Civile du Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. Anne Veil and I were now on first-name terms and I have to say I had a confidence in her abilities that was adamantine. I felt sure we would win; she hoped for the best—she just kept warning me it would take a long time. The judgement of the tribunal was scheduled for 13 October 1993. In the meantime I had formally cancelled all the contracts of the three books I had had with Balland and had resold them to Le Seuil. I should mention that I could not have undertaken all this litigation without the tireless support and energy of Christiane Besse (all authors should be so lucky with their translators): she was busily orchestrating events behind the scenes—Anne Veil was our force de frappe. Looking today at the dossier we presented to the court (a formidably arg
ued case, some thirty-five pages long) I see we were suing Balland-Copagest for 150,000 Frs (£15,000 approximately)—(“dus aux termes des relèves de comptes remis par les éditions André Balland, et non réglés depuis 1989”), 59,132 Frs (unpaid royalties for 1989 and 1990). And 103,460 Frs (unpaid royalties for 1991 and 1992). Altogether approximately £31,000. On top of that we were asking for 100,000 Frs (£10,000) “à titre de dommages-intérêts pour le grave préjudice matériel et moral à lui causé,” and another 50,000 Frs towards our legal costs. All in all, getting on for £46,000.

  13 October came around. We won. Balland-Copagest were ordered to pay me the 150,000 Frs, 59,132 Frs and 162,116 Frs representing the various unpaid royalties (curiously, this last figure represented more than we’d asked for). In the dommages-intérêts clause we received 80,000 Frs and 10,000 Frs costs. Balland-Copagest immediately appealed against the judgement. All the money that was owed to me (and which I had legally won) went into an escrow account (non-interest-bearing) to which I had no access. The fight had to go on.

  We move on to May 1996 (French justice is slow but inexorable). Balland-Copagest’s appeal against the 1993 judgement had been thrown out by the 4ème Chambre de la Cour d’Appel de Paris. I received a letter from Anne Veil: “Cher William, la société Copagest et les Editions André Balland ont fait un pourvoi en cassation [lodged an appeal] contre l’arrêt [ruling] rendu en votre faveur par la Cour d’Appel. J’ai, par conséquent, été contrainte de confier vos intérêts à un avocat à la Cour de Cassation … Vous trouverez sous ce pli … la facture de ses honoraires.” Ah, another lawyer, another court, another bill. What, in the name of justice, was the “Cour de Cassation”? It turned out that this court was, in effect, the court of last resort: it is a court designed to test the absolute propriety of a case—where the minutiae of the legal arguments and the precedents (and for all I know the punctuation of the documents) of the warring parties are scrutinized. My journal: “The Balland case continues, into its 10th year, I would say. Balland-Copagest are challenging the appeal verdict in La Cour de Cassation which, as far as I can understand, is purely to do with legal technicalities, where they will attempt to find a point of law that is wrong and therefore overturn — casser—the judgement. Anne Veil said she thought we were blindés [armour plated ]—mais on ne sait jamais dans la vie. There must be a ton of money in the escrow account—maybe one day I’ll get my hands on it.” I was now to be represented by Maître Piwnica (whom I never met) and whose fee was £3,000.

  In September 1996 the case was pleaded before the Cour de Cassation. Now we had to wait for them to pronounce their judgement. French justice is slow but inexorable.

  26 March 1997. My journal: “Fax from Anne Veil saying that we had won the final appeal against Balland-Copagest. MOMENTOUS DAY! Eleven years of litigation. I reckon I’ve spent £20,000 on legal fees and as far as I can tell I will receive an immediate payment of £23,000 from the escrow account. I wonder if it’s over. But surely they haven’t got a leg to stand on after all this?”

  Well, they hadn’t. And it is a measure of my exhaustion that I had to resort to upper case and an exclamation mark to register my relief that it was all done and dusted. In March 1997 I was on the final stages of my seventh novel, Armadillo: when the whole business had begun in 1986 (“Hello, Will? Bad news, I’m afraid …”) I was halfway through my fourth, The New Confessions. Then, I was thirty-four years old; now I was forty-five. Had it all been worth it?

  L’Affaire William Boyd v Balland-Copagest hadn’t dominated my life over the decade of its comings and goings to the various French courts that dealt with it (Le Tribunal de Grande Instance, La Cour d’Appel de Paris, La Cour de Cassation). It had rumbled away in the background, sometimes naggingly, sometimes quite unobtrusively. Totting up the figures now, I reckon that I was paid some 75 percent of what I was originally due after the great success of An Ice-Cream War—I was £15-16,000 short, in terms of unpaid royalties and I calculate that I had probably spent on the various lawyers—Heald Nickinson, Anne Veil and Maitre Piwnica—some £22,000 plus VAT. Let’s say the whole adventure of fighting the case cost me close to £40,000. Editions André Balland paid me approximately £40,000 of the £57,000 they owed me (before they declared themselves in financial difficulties) and eventually, eleven years later, I retrieved £23,000 from the escrow account. So I was more or less £23,000 ahead. If I hadn’t sued, if I hadn’t gone to law—it’s quite clear to me now—I would have received a small fraction of the money I was owed. I have absolutely no regrets about the course of action I took.

  I am glad I decided to fight the Affaire William Boyd v Balland-Copagest as long as I did, even though my ardour, my zeal for the battle, waxed and waned (particularly when I had to sign cheques). But now that it’s over I look back on the decade it lasted with some satisfaction. For me it exemplifies a strange truth about the novelist’s life—indeed, a truth about any writer or artist’s life: namely, that however much we love what we do, however driven or obsessed we are with our calling, our vocation, we are wise never to forget the fundamental link between art and commerce. I was thrilled to have my first book published, and my second; I was hugely pleased to have it published in French and I was exhilarated when it became a bestseller. But novels are also commodities that are designed to be bought and sold and are not just objects of delight for the author. Dickens and Balzac knew that, Joyce and Chekhov knew that—but I don’t need to enlist eminent names to make the point: every author knows that. And every author knows, all too shrewdly, that if their novels sell many copies, then many people will make a great deal of money. Thus, for me, the Balland Affair is fundamentally about that commercial, money-driven, profit-motivated, commodity side of the writing life. In this particular case it went wrong, turned sour and was corrupted. But if I hadn’t contested the non-payment of my royalties, if I had, instead, walked away, deciding to cut my losses, I think I would have let myself down—not just as an individual but also as a writer. In the world of commerce we, the artists, must not easily yield our ground and I see my fight (with my stalwart allies) against Editions André Balland and then against Balland-Copagest as a small symbol of that tenacity. We are not just schmucks with Underwoods, as Sam Goldwyn described us. Well, not all the time.

  And what of the other participants in the story? Anne Veil still practises law with her devastating, cool expertise. Christiane Besse is still my close friend and my translator. More surprisingly, perhaps, Editions André Balland continues to exist, flourishing in its modest way, publishing fiction and non-fiction from its offices in the rue St André des Arts on the Left Bank in Paris. For my part, all my novels and short story collections are in print in France, and selling well, including the three books I published all those years ago with Balland, all the books with my current and highly estimable publishers Le Seuil. As for André Balland himself, he’s abandoned the profession of publisher to become a novelist, and he’s found himself—wise man—a good and reliable maison d’édition—which happens to be the same as mine, in fact, Le Seuil. One of these days, I’m sure, I’ll bump in to him in the lobby of the old house on the rue Jacob where the Le Seuil offices are and we’ll shake hands, shrug our shoulders resignedly, exchange pleasantries and go our separate ways. But—I will know that I won.

  2001

  Anglo/Franco

  A Personal A-Z

  A. Avant-Propos

  A few facts: I am a Scot who was born and raised in West Africa. I went to school and university in Scotland. I first visited France in 1969 when I was seventeen. I studied at the University of Nice for an academic year in 1971. I moved to live in England (in Oxford) in 1975. I moved from there to live in London in 1983. In 1991 my wife and I bought a house in south-west France. We still live in London and we still live in our house in south-west France. Everything that follows about these two alien countries that I have come to know fairly well over the past few decades is irreducibly, unapologetically, subjective and personal. It seems to m
e that this is the only way to encompass such a monolithic and multifac-eted subject as the nature of the relationship between two nations. Generalizations about countries and their peoples are usually specious, tendentious or blandly stereotypical. The only observations of value are those that arise out of personal experience and since everyone’s experience is different it strikes me as best to present such observations as randomly as they come, but marshalled under some kind of overriding modus operandi—such as an alphabet. Out of such apparent haphazard-ness some sort of understanding, something meaningful—and possibly harmonious with others’ experiences—may emerge.

  B. Brasseries and Bistros

  In a nearby village close to our house in France there used to be a perfect bistro. It was called the “Café de France” and everything in it—the bar, the seats, the billiard table, the radio, the decor—was from the 1930s. Going in there for a drink or a meal was a form of time-travel. Then two years ago the owners retired, the cafe was sold and the dead hand of modernization took over. And so now we never go there: all the old furniture was thrown out—the old zinc bar too—and the place was smartened up and made more efficient. And in the process something valuable—a little emblem of France and Frenchness—was destroyed. I search constantly for the perfect brasserie and bistro in France and I have to say they are becoming very hard to find. Paradoxically, such establishments are more common in British cities, where you can find fashionably retro versions of a typical brasserie du coin. They are lovingly recreated but they inevitably remain ersatz and inauthentic. But they are intriguing symbols, nonetheless: a British version of une vie française that lives on in our dreams.