Arles

Many years ago, having left art school when I was 18, I went to live in Arles in the south of France. I had very little money, and quite by chance came across what I believe was at the time the cheapest hotel in all of Arles.

On the ground floor was a restaurant where Henri the proprietor would cook pizzas in a large oven right next to a small bar where I would sit drinking other people's drinks when they left them to take their seats in the restaurant. Henri would often slip me bits of pizza, and on two occasions lent me money which he refused to take back when I tried to return it. After a few weeks I didn't have enough money to pay for my room and Henri agreed to let me pay him with paintings instead - then, after a few months, when he saw that I had made some friends, he asked for his room back, saying that if I could find somewhere to sleep he would give me a bed and a mattress, which he did when my friends found me a place to sleep in the back of their small restaurant.

He was a wonderfully kind man, and whenever I get back to France I always look him up, but one year when I returned I found the hotel closed down, and Henri told me that he had been shut down by the police for six months for allowing the hotel to be used as a brothel.

Of course as a naive 18 year old the thought had never occurred to me, but looking back it was obviously being used in the same way when I lived there, which explained some of the strange behaviour when the maids came to do my room...

There was a second chef in the kitchen, and every Saturday his bullfighting son Igor would come and get changed into his costume there, ready for the afternoon fight in the nearby Roman arena. In those days Arles could be a dangerous place, and a few years later Igor's brother Christian was killed in a knife fight.

Dragoslov, who everybody called Pepe ('Grandpa' in French) was a mysterious Russian emigre with several missing fingers who would never talk about his past - he spoke to me once about the Tzar, but I could never understand if he was for or against.

The 'girl in the corner' in this song could have been one of many, I only remember Betty and Marie - I saw Marie years later, standing in the street barefoot, looking dazed and confused and talking to herself; she didn't recognize me, and to my eternal shame I didn't stop and talk to her. I hope she's OK.

If ever you visit Arles, the hotel was in Rue Reattu, although Henri has since sold up.

Philip Jeays

[Marie and Pepe also feature in October.]

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