Guillaume
The wealthy owner of the bar where Giovanni works, and the man who decides whether Giovanni is paid, protected or discarded.
To be adored, and to be treated as the important man his name says he is. Giovanni notices the pattern: whenever something has humiliated Guillaume, he becomes suddenly respectable and starts remembering his family.
The book
At a glance
- Owner of the bar where Giovanni works; the man who holds his working papers
- One of the oldest names in France. His mother is still living
- In a small flat directly above his own bar
- A crowded, ill-lit tunnel near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, raided from time to time
- A job, a carte de travail, and a reason to stay within reach of him
- Anything better than "a disgusting old fairy" by anyone who knew him
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeGuillaume is the Frenchman who owns the bar where Giovanni works, and he carries one of the oldest family names in France. He lives in a small apartment directly above the bar. He gave Giovanni a job and the working papers that came with it, and he can take both away, which makes him the most powerful person in the novel and the least impressive.
The bar itself is described as a noisy, crowded, ill-lit tunnel with an emphatic reputation, raided from time to time by the police — who, David notes, apparently tip Guillaume off first, so that he can warn his favourite customers to bring their identity papers.
Baldwin gives him no interior life and no case to make for himself. What he gets instead is a precise account, from Giovanni, of how a man behaves when he has been humiliated and holds power over someone who has not.
How the book draws them
- The white handkerchiefHe is never seen in the bar without a long white handkerchief, which he waves. He greets Jacques by falling into his arms, and David's description of the two of them together is "like old theatrical sisters." Almost everything he does in public is performed for an audience he assumes is watching.
- How he met GiovanniIn a cinema, at a western with Gary Cooper. He followed Giovanni into the lobby claiming Giovanni had dragged his scarf off the seat behind him, insisted it was expensive and a gift from his mother, and kept the scene going until people assumed the two men were together. There was no scarf. The performance ended in an invitation to supper.
- "Strictement du business"When Jacques admires Giovanni across the bar, Guillaume drops his voice and explains the arrangement: "Ah, ça, mon cher, c'est strictement du business." He says elsewhere that Giovanni is good for trade, which is the actual reason he mostly leaves him alone, and Giovanni knows it.
- What he does when humiliatedGiovanni has watched it often enough to describe the sequence. Guillaume becomes formal and business-like, remembers that he belongs to one of the best and oldest families in France, and then remembers that his name is going to die with him. "Then he has to do something, quick, to make the feeling go away." Then comes the noise, or the drink, or the boy.
- The dressing gownGiovanni dreads being called upstairs to the small flat over the bar, because it always means a scene. On the day of the sacking he finds Guillaume in a dressing gown and covered in perfume, looking at him "as though he were some fabulous coquette," and then asking questions about David that Giovanni says would not be asked by a priest or a doctor.
- How he fires himHe does not do it upstairs in private. He goes away, changes into business clothes, comes down into a bar that has filled up for the aperitif hour, and calls Giovanni a thief in front of everyone. When Giovanni asks what he has done, Guillaume shouts "Mais tu le sais, salop!" — you know very well — and pushes money from the till at him: "Take it! Take it! Better to give it to you than have you steal it from me at night! Now go!"