Monday, October 31, 2005

Hasards et coïncidences

Pascal is telling funny stories, typing on his notebook. Agathe has made a piece of pottery, a proud woman in white, her belly is pregnant. Celine is reading words doggerel from a children’s book, she is trying, tasting the words like unknown fruit. Roi et reine, ils n’ont pas des enfants, ils sont déséspérés. My hand slips pouring tea over the Japanese paper, the ink smudges, the characters washed away by bitterness. Marie Cecile loves to walk, like Camille’s mother, she rests in herself, she dyes her hair with rainbow colors. She dances in the parlor, Salsa dancing steps, pictures from Africa in blazing orange behind her back. A woman is chasing her memories, taking videos from lost places. An empty boat on the sea. A man painting a woman in salmon pink on a bridge in Venice. A man falling in love with a nameless woman shot with a stolen camera. Water leaks from the shower down to the ground floor. The kindergarten will be on strike tomorrow, someone left a note. Celine spells my name, she wants to become archeologist, she cannot pronounce the word, archéologue, she chuckles, I’ll miss her. At night at the port, ships with dancing bars burst into light and music, the crowd moves like a wave, shaking its body, the eyes filled with rapture.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Bordeaux



I am not sure whether to give a tip. Isabelle is serving me, a girl with glasses and chubby face, she collects the money with the pride of a queen. The wind blows slips of paper across the flagstones before St. André, glossy ads from magazines, unstilled yearnings, while the bell strikes, every hour, the only continuum. At the door of the cathedral a beggar woman opens her hand for money. A bike leans against the iron fence, like a loophole getaway. People taking photographs, holding their cameras with extended arms before their eyes, like strange toys. A boy with books in his hands watches the big cars parading down the adjacent street. A few prowlers, les marginaux, walk over the square, guys with dogs, scrawny girls like kids. A young maghrebine is following her guy, a few steps behind him, she wears a chain of pearls around her naked belly. A man with crutches takes the crutches away, takes his cellphone, the woman by his side talking on another. They turn to stone in the heart of the square, talking prayers into their mobiles while a chopper above their heads is circling the square. A pizza driver takes the short cut. A woman with burnt skin and sunglasses looks strained, gets deeper into her newspaper, takes another coffee. A girl with flaming red hair throws her cigarette away, the butt rolls over the flagstones. At the table next to me, a few people talk about Sinsemilia, you cannot take it more than twice, one says. It makes you imbécile.







Pigeons scrabble on the ground. Eat pigeons, Koen screams with laughter, he wants to join the game, he is a bright boy, he is studying linguistics in Maastricht, he drinks too much, waves his hands, throws his hands up into the air, dances the tarantella, the bite of the tarantula makes a man go insane. They sit in the kitchen, a bunch of males fighting for virility, yelling at each other to drown the music out. The Englishman makes dirty jokes, his young face is empty, he shakes his hips like a dancer. You know, they say, banging a Chinese girl makes you stick in her, you don't get loose. The air is filled with smoke, leaden time, patterns of words and behavior reeled off. A girl from Corea enters the kitchen, doing the dishes, preparing food. The guys hit on her: Wanna stay with us, don’t like us? She keeps silent, drops her eyes, hurries to leave the kitchen. I barely hear her voice, tu veux goûter? A mobile rings, a ring tone of despair. Koen has a girlfriend, she is calling from Belgium, cutting the relationship. He locks himself in the toilet for hours. Later, I see the Englishman walking up the hall, he moves slowly, pulling his crippled legs. It takes another rapid eye movement to wake up.



A few slouch hats are carrying drums and saxophones, playing Jazz. Ms. Illinois, the beauty queen, is writing poems. She voted for Bush, she has to justify herself, fights against the gunfire of our propaganda. She has serious, alert eyes, keeps her mouth wide open laughing, shows her white teeth. You have to be silent, she says, just absorb the sounds, the odors, the images of this town. I drop some words into the yellow postbox behind the café. I mistake the languages, mingle the words, l’incendie à Paris, les jeunes femmes raised the fire dans l’immeuble, the newspapers search for explanation. I jump through a thicket of foreign words like a messenger between front lines, for reconciliation. Darkness comes early. People are gathering around the place. In the back road the police deploy forces, taking precautions. An indistinct sound fills the air,
a chant? a siren? a murmur? A girl is sitting on the steps, drinking from a can, looking at her watch. She rises, starts to dance in the middle of the square while the slouch hats push their collecting box closer to the people, the crowd claps its hands, she moves like a supple animal, the eyes closed. I put a spell on her to freeze the moment, to freeze the gasping sound of this city, the rhythm of the streets filled with litter and hopes and passion. But she gets back to her place, looking at her watch again, waiting.

Kriss Crumble

It has been raining for days, the rain gets harder. The radio sings nursery rhymes, gets excited about strong winds and high waters in the South. Moses supposes his toeses are roses. It is getting bright as day at night, a clap of thunder, rumbling up the mountain, like hell.

Friday, October 21, 2005

San Juan de la Peña

Where are you going? Where the wind blows.
Where are you going? To the market, buying fruit.

Sue opens the door, warily, she speaks French but I hear her British accent. Daren, her husband, looks like a rocker, bearded face, tangled hair, with a soft voice. He is locked in his mother tongue. He is a bricklayer, a skillful worker, spends day and night restoring the house, polishing the Harley in the garage, caressing the dog. They are living at an intersection of a French village au pied de Pyrénées, they are happy people. You have to go to Jaca, they say, cross the Spanish border and just follow the route, never miss San Juan de la Peña. In the morning they talk about violence, about living in the suburbs of England, about their abandoned life. About coldness of the heart. Sue was a social worker, she pours cereals into a bowl, she still needs to free herself from images of horror. Ben, the 11-year old son, enters the kitchen, leaving for school. He has changed so much, Daren says later. He used to sit before the TV there, killing time. He was so scared. Sue gets some fresh milk from the fridge. It is his second childhood here, they say, now he is alive.

It is late in the evening, almost dark, when I follow the bumpy road aside the motorway, the sign reads Chambres d’hôtes, I need to find some place to sleep. The building looks uninhabited, just a diffuse glimmer of light oozing from a window. The door opens into a kitchen, a woman with white hair is sitting at the table, shyly smiling at me. She starts to speak, apologizes for being nearly deaf, her daughter would be here in a minute. A huge garden behind the villa with lawns and pruned trees, plastic chairs and tables, rusty bars, parasol. A Chekhov zone. A Chabrol scenery, forlorn land, once flooded with laughter, with life. Who was living here? The daughter, in her sixties, looks like a countess. I am on my way to Bordeaux, I say. The rustic parlor is filled with clocks and rugs and yellowed dreams, a map of the historic Paris and a photo of a girl in dancing dress, beautiful and real. My daughter, she says. I was working as a real estate broker, I was living in Paris. A proud, lonely lady living with her mother in an empty villa. One day I got here for business and I fell in love with this villa, so we left Paris and moved here 23 years ago. It was deserted, then, she keeps saying.

San Juan de la Peña, the monastery is built into a rock. Fat men are taking pictures, posing before the chapel. I listen to the water flowing underground, to the sculptured faces at solitary pillars which had once been the living space of the monks. Later, I return to France through le tunnel du Somport, I do not like tunnels. There is no border just the road and a valley of rock faces. But at Urdos, 8 miles away, the border police stops me, the customs officer is a young tall woman. Where are you going, she asks. You’ve got something to declare?