Eminence grise or an evil svengali...

Above: Charles Frappe told me I wouldn’t understand Sarkozy unless I read Ottenheimer’s account of the campaign.

I was on the boat about two hours that first evening. The room we were in comprised the foc’sul of the boat, rented by Charles Frappe from the owner (Charles then subletting a share of the room to Robert Leiper). Although it was a large room it seemed small because the walls were so high. It was also claustrophobic as the only windows were high up near the ceiling. The walls were painted beige and were covered with paintings. In one corner were bunk beds, the upper one of which was level with one of the windows. There was an armchair and a sofa, a coffee table heaped with books, a tiny dining table with two uncomfortable-looking chairs. In another corner was a sink and microwave cooker, and next to this a door (half-open) leading to a shower room and wc (I was informed the drains went straight out into the Seine). There was a slight metallic smell to the room.

Charles Frappe did not get up from the sofa as I was introduced. He was much older than Robert Leiper, with watery eyes a delicate shade of light-sky-blue. He had a long face, elongated in shape so that he resembled representations of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. His face was smooth and unlined, the upper lip had a congenital tremble. His head was balding with wispy fair hair (no trace of grey) around the sides (it was unusual to see someone going bald who hadn’t decided to shave their entire head). In build he was thin and tall.

His manner towards me was cold, and I got the distinct impression that Charles Frappe didn’t like me. In fact, it was obvious he was only being sociable in deference to Robert Leiper, who painfully wanted us to get on. For instance, Robert Leiper had to push him several times before he would show me the art collection displayed on the walls and in stacks of canvasses around the room.

These paintings were all by famous artists and represented a small fortune in terms of value, but were marginal works (“It’s a connoisseur’s collection” Charles Frappe told me haughtily). So there were mistakes by Augustus John, an almost-finished painting by a follower of Degas, a nude woman by Etty (the hips too heavy for the girl to be attractive). In all we looked at about sixty works. Robert Leiper explained that Charles Frappe bought these works cheaply at auctions then sells them on at a ten-fold mark-up. Robert had given all his money to Charles to invest in the same way. None of the works were insured, so if the boat went down that would be the end of things.

We discussed the recent election, although I got the impression that none of us really knew what we were talking about. Charles Frappe told me I wouldn’t understand Sarkozy unless I read Ottenheimer’s account of the campaign. He said he would lend me a copy.

In more general conversation I was struck by how similar Robert Leiper and Charles Frappe were in their backgrounds despite an age-gap of nearly twenty years. Both came from California and had lived in New York working in sub-academic jobs. Both were experts on particular writers – Charles Frappe an authority on Marcel Proust, Robert an “expert” on Scott Fitzgerald (although his expertise doesn’t really amount to much more than an undergraduate dissertation). They were both Catholics (Charles Frappe lapsed, although he had once been a sort of lay-Jesuit). Both had been working (in the same office) a block away from the World Trade Centre on the ninth of September two-thousand-and-one, and both had been traumatised by the experience. Both had undergone profound Nine-Eleven soul-searching, had given up their jobs and eventually sought refuge in this floating bedsit in Paris, where they lived an intensely frugal existence.

Looking at them together, I thought that they were so similar that Charles Frappe could be the person Robert Leiper turns into twenty years from now. I say “could” as the possibility needs to be resisted strenuously (Charles Frappe did not come across as a particularly nice person, whereas Robert Leiper, for all his faults, is basically a good guy). Not that it’s any of my business. But I got the impression that Robert had fallen under Charles Frappe’s influence, and it probably wasn’t a good influence. Whether Charles Frappe is an eminence grise or an evil svengali remains to be seen.