14 July 1966
[letter]
[page missing, which described visiting Domrémy with Bill, then
starting out next morning to hitch to Paris and being picked up by a young
businessman in a sportscar]
So I find myself sitting in a restaurant terrasse overlooking the fishermen
on the River Marne, with a headwaiter and two garçons hovering. He's
a charming conversationalist this Parisian, he seems to have character too.
We begin with a plate of little fishes served whole, fried fresh from the
river, served on a paper lace doily. Then we have runions - kidneys served
with a brown gravy which makes them delicious. He talks about Pascal, his
house at Versailles, his dogs, his horses, his factories, his war experiences.
He smokes a slim cigar. He has nice eyes. There is something steely about
him, I wouldn't want to be a business rival of his, but at the same time
there is something wise and even kind. For dessert we have fraises des bois,
wild strawberries. (I sneaked a look at the price list - dessert by itself
costs $1.20.)
"If this is the first time you've come to Paris, I must think of
the most beautiful entrance route. You should have a good impression,"
he says, and the silver sports car dodges through the traffic under his
expert hands. We enter a deep woods and pass a vast castle with a zoo. It's
the Bois de Vincennes. A lovely introduction indeed - then he's driving
along the Seine smiling at my enthusiasm as I get my first glimpse of Notre
Dame and the quais of the Island, interposing in his self-assured but half-sincere
way that it's a good thing he won't see me again because he would be sure
to fall in love with my "belle bouche"! This spot of gallantry
(Mother) is not a gambit - ie he doesn't want anything from me but he has
cultivated the French art of savoir-vivre and it is at its best in men like
him. Savoir-vivre is an art of appreciation I think. One lives so as to
savour everything as intensely as possible - it's 'gracious living' I suppose
but perhaps less artificial. And it's something that, Monique (a new friend)
says, she did not find at all among Canadians. D'accord.
After a short tour le monsieur leaves me near my destination and is off
with a wave and a discrete roar from the Aston Martin's sleek motor.
A wide boulevard full of people, Avenue de l'Opéra. Jean-Jacques
has given me the address of his office, I'm excited about seeing him again
- I'm breathless, in fact, when I ask the girl at the reception desk where
I can find him. "Oh, he's on a boat bound for Israel," she says
coolly, and I fold up inside like a punctured rubber mattress. "He's
taking one of the student groups there and coming back on the next boat,"
she adds. "Oh": the sum of my feelings about this news - I'm broke
as usual, this time completely, and I'd counted on J-J to dépanne
me as I'd dépanned him in Greece. Traveling without money
doesn't pose any problems, but when you're stationary, meals don't drift
down from heaven in quite the same way. Oh well.
So I walk to J-J's parents' place, beside the Seine, overlooking the
railway station where Mr Gaté worked until his retirement, muttering
to myself, working off my disappointment at not finding my idiot-Frenchman
when I've been looking forward for a month to seeing him again - a good
hour's walk, then the house with its narrow stairs. I push a doorbell, and
the little flutter inside turns out to be Mrs Gaté. "Ah, Maurice,
c'est Ellie qui est arrivée." Well at least J-J had the goodness
to tell them I'm coming. I'm led to a living room chair, given a lemonade
and tactfully left to read my mail: the letter from you, a postcard from
Peter who is recapturing his lost youth hitchhiking through Belgium and
Holland to England, and two very sad letters from Jerry who hates being
back in America. Mrs Gaté is little and pretty, and as talkative
as Mrs Loewen - she tells me how her adored son came home on Sunday, read
my letter, announced that he was being sent unexpectedly to Israel. "I
said to him, 'She'll feel lost if she arrives in Paris and there's no one
here' and he said 'She can take care of herself,'" Mrs Gaté
explains.
I'm invited to supper - "Where are you staying tonight?" asks
Mama Gaté - I have think fast - "At the office of course"
I say. So after supper she puts on some lipstick and we all three go back
to the Place de l'Opéra to see the lights. Tomorrow is the 14th of
July and everything is lit. The boulevards, those famous boulevards about
which so many songs have been written, are wide, lined with trees, lined
with fabulous shops. At the office (the travel organization is called AMI
- Amitié Mondiale Inter-Jeunesse) we meet a young man with circles
under his eyes: I gather that this is Wieland, the young man who began the
organization and has directed it until now, and who at the age of 24 is
responsible for thousands of teenagers spread throughout the world from
India to Mexico, and a budget of incredible numbers of francs. Mrs Gaté
corners poor Wieland and talks on and on about Jean-Jacques. When they shake
hands and go home I ask if I may sleep on a little corner of floor at the
office - a normal request since everyone sleeps on the floor there - and
do a bit of work. We climb three flights of narrow stairs to a set of tiny
offices piled high with papers - I'm set to work addressing envelopes by
a boy called Barberousse.
At 2 a.m. when the addresses are finished Barberousse suggests we go
home - what, people don't sleep on the floor anymore? It seems not because
I'm taken through a maze of streets back to the elegant Avenue de l'Opéra
- Barbu pushes open a door twelve feet high and we go through two mirror-chandelier-glass-cream-and-gold
foyers before arriving at the elevator - a sort of wrought iron lace birdcage.
But we take the service elevator - it's better. Barbu opens a large opaque
window and steps outside through it onto a ledge. He tells me to wait around
the corner in the hall - suddenly a door opens and there's Barbu in the
doorway of a room - white walls, high ceilings, a green carpet. Against
one wall, two low benches pushed together for a table and covered with dirty
dishes, paper cartons, empty bottles. On the floor are three air mattresses
tossed in half-deflated heaps among the magazines and crumbs and clothes
and boxes. One low cupboard. No other furniture. Jar lids full of ashes
and butts. In the adjoining bathroom there's a shower, a bidet, even hot
water - but the garbage barrel has overflowed and wet wash cloths cover
the shower rods, the soap's on the floor and everything is filthy. Well.
I spread my sleeping bag in a corner and go to sleep in my bluejeans. Barberousse
says a very amiable goodnight and goes to sleep on a child-sized mattress;
two telephone books are his pillow and he's covered with a wooly bath towel!
At dawn, I'm awakened by someone else stepping through the window (the
hall window and ours are kitty-corner, you see, we can easily step over
the four storey drop from one ledge to the other - no one knows who has
the key). He finds himself an air mattress and goes to sleep on it under
another bath towel - in the morning when the telephone wakes us, the stranger,
who is big and handsome, says "Bonjour Mademoiselle" as if he
were being introduced at a reception, all French formality even flat on
his back with a bath towel around his flanks. Barberousse is still amiable
- he gets up and goes out to buy some bread and butter, then he makes coffee.
It's the fourteenth of July and the day has a holiday feeling. Sun's
shining. The view from our window consists of the external walls of an apartment
building built around a tar-papered low roof.
I wash the sink out with Ajax before I dare to use it, and Barberousse,
coming in and catching me scrubbing, says "If you continue like that
we'll not only accept you, but we'll take your passport so you can't leave."
The boys go off to the office to work and I can't resist powdering the
whole bathroom, camp stove, dishes, smelly floor rags and all, with Ajax,
and then - I turn the shower hose on it. And then - I take the carpet sweeper
over the rug like a lawn mower, picking up pounds of crumbs and lint. It's
brazen to clean other people's houses but I can't live in it if I don't!
At noon I'm invited to dinner at the Gatés. They are just the
two and me and a tamed Paris street bird but we have a ritual dinner according
to all the best laws of savoir faire, savoir vivre. First an apéritif,
vermouth with ice, and olives as appetizers. Then radishes. Then chicken,
then peas, all with wine, then salad, then cheese, then fruit, then ice
cream, then coffee. Nothing is served until the former item is finished
and the plate wiped clean with bread. Radishes are eaten with butter.
We look at photographs, I admire their antiques, they listen to the Tour
de France (the most important thing in France is this famous bicycle race
which makes a complete tour of France and arrives at Paris for the last
lap on the 14th of July, after the morning's military parade along the Champs
Elysées).
In the evening Monique (the girl from the office) and I go to the Latin
Quarter, the student area around St-Germain-des-Pres where Simone de Beauvoir
wrote her books. In one of the squares, an orchestra is playing fast jazzy
rock music and the square is full of dancers - long-haired boys, long-haired
girls, nearly everyone in pants but the girls in fantasy earrings. Now and
then, when the music stops for breath, you can hear glasses breaking under
the tables around the square. In the centre under the trees, two clochards
- the famous Paris down-and-outers - are lying on the sidewalk either drunk
or sleeping, paying no attention to the cohue. Nearly all the faces are
young, nearly all the bodies are self consciously attractive. Somebody slaps
my bottom, and when I holler in English, "Dirty Frenchman!" he
answers "You kidding? Richmond Hill, Babe!" A chain of shouting
boys and girls with their hair flying behind them runs through the dancers.
Monique and I are grabbed by the last ones and fly along behind them until
we all crash into the crowd.
Then we drive through the streets for a while. Everywhere the squares
are full of music and dancing. "The Parisian is usually proper and
polite. I like to see him the way he is tonight - it's the one time he lets
go," says Monique.
In the afternoon the Champs Elysées - an immensely broad avenue
lined with trees, nearly four kilometers long, finished at one end by the
Triumphal Arch and at the other by the gardens of the Louvre - was full
of strolling Parisians: Negro, Tahitian, Japanese, British. I sat on a bridge
for a while watching the sunset and the Seine. Do you realize the fantastic
classicalness of that? The thousands of people who've leaned on that
bridge and then years later written nostalgically about it? Even Hemingway,
and he's by no means the first.
The next afternoon I sat on the steps of the Opéra watching the
people pass and disappear among the shops on the boulevards and watching
the sun appear and disappear. A tiny Oriental woman with long hair, green
stockings, a flowered shawl over her knees, dropping earrings, asked me
to take her picture, "because tomorrow I have to go bye-bye, no more
money. Are you American? I am American. Are you artist? I am artist. You
think Paris very lice?"
Eventually I picked up a bearded boy or he picked me up, but anyway we
sat together on the steps and sang Brassens songs - he was a French-Canadian
called Gilles - on the tops of our lungs. He had an excellent voice, extremely
excellent, and sang with style and volume but most of the passers-by seemed
to find nothing unusual in his sitting on the Opéra steps singing
songs even as risqué-flavoured as Georges Brassens. In between Gilles
would sing his own compositions, songs without words, and then he would
burst out "Where is that bit? I sang it yesterday but I've lost it,
I've been singing and singing trying trying to find it again. Don't poke
me or puff! I'll explode, my head is so full of music!" And
he would plunge off into another song. He was full of energy and joie-de-musique
bursting-out-in-love with Paris. We sat there all afternoon, until the cold
wind came out, and I caught some of his ardour. This afternoon a welcome
gift from Paris.
And now I'm settled. It's Monday. In the morning I get up and make coffee
and go out, like the Parisians, to buy my baguette for our breakfast and
fetch it home unwrapped, swinging under my arm. We sit on the floor, slice
the baguette lengthwise, spread it with butter and jam to make a 'tartine',
and dip it into our coffee, which we usually have in empty big Maxwell House
jars because our glasses aren't big enough and we have no cups. 'We' is
Barberousse and me, sometimes Serge, sometimes Popaul, sometimes Thierry
- whoever works late at the office and doesn't want to go home. (When Jean-Jacques
is in Paris he lives here in 'le studio' too but he's never here to speak
of, because he's in charge of the 'camps' or groups going to Greece and
Israel and so is nearly always gone either getting a group or delivering
it. I was told to expect him today and - he phones from Greece!
We pile the dishes in the shower and the mats in the corner, then we
go off to work. Cathi is in the downstairs reception office - long haired
and witty. Up three flights of steps are the four cubicle offices, piled
high with papers, typewriters, telephones, files, stencils, stamps, old
clothes (there's a pair of bluejeans in the corner that I recognize by the
patch I put on them [for Jean-Jacques] in Athens), scraps of paper, record
player, photos on the wall covering all the places where people have gone
through the wall.
In one of the back cubicles I address envelopes, put stamps on envelopes,
write lists of addresses for future envelopes, wrestle with the French typewriter,
sort passports.
At noon we go to lunch. Afterwards we go for a long walk, peering into
basement windows, talking to printers, handing out leaflets at random. Today
we had a long conversation with a construction worker about how he should
leave all earthly cares and live in sun and culture - and if he must dig,
he should at least dig for Egyptians. In the evenings we work late, radio
and record player howling jazz, Beethoven, Bressans.
Nobody in the office plays at being "des grands personnes"
- adults. The boys are bearded, everyone is penniless because even the people
entitled to a salary can't get at it when there's no money in the pot. But
they have enough to eat and sleep and go to the movies once in a while.
At 2 a.m. we go home and fall into bed - but not everyone because someone
has to be there in case of long distance telephone calls from India, Mexico.
Sputter - pencil - parbleu!
But sometimes when we crawl in the window at 2 a.m., through the rain,
taking good care on the slippery ledge, we've got shop to talk and this
lasts until three - then come a series of long distance calls from Mexico,
Canada, India, Egypt. Somebody, one of the Mexico AMI representatives, is
in jail because he wrote a food cheque for which there was insufficient
money - but they had to eat didn't they - and the rescue funds sent by l'AMI
in Paris haven't arrived yet, and we have to be careful not to let the story
leak out and someone remembers something, just after the light goes off
for the last time - "Hey, Popaul, did you get Cathi to type up those
Israel lists for you?" and we start again.
July 21st
Jean-Jacques is back; I arrived at work and there he was, thinner than
ever; he'd just arrived from Athens. He takes another group to Israel on
Sunday and so he'll be gone again for over a week. Paris is lonely.
Unforgettable: last night, walking back from the student quarter after
a dinner in a 'dive' where the floors are covered with garbage from previous
diners, perfectly medieval and in keeping with the ancientness of the city
(the restaurant has no name - only those who know it can find their way
up the narrow crumbling staircase to it) - it began to rain; colored lights
reflected all down the Seine from the edge of the quai where we leaned on
our elbows to look, pebbly texture of the moving water because of the rain.
Lights inside the trees along the boulevards, making the wet leaves glitter,
brilliant green like enamel. The peculiar deep shade of night-blue caught
in glimpses of the sky between trees on the Boulevard des Italiens.
The boulevard in animation at night - shooting galleries, and candy stalls
with the smell of hot syrup; demonstrators with their portable tables, hawking
vegetable grinders, magic tricks, glass cutters; cafes open to the sidewalk
with an orchestra on the balcony playing Strauss waltzes; a street musician
standing in front of sidewalk tables playing an Eastern folk song, his face
so sad and so proud that I'm sad too and want to make some movement toward
him but can only stare at him until he picks up his shapeless leather bag
and walks on to the next café; the gilt statue of Joan of Arc with
a ragged banner; a tiny woman asleep on the warm-air grill under the arcades,
curled up so we could not see her face to tell whether she was young or
old; the 'beatnicks' along the quais of the Island, sitting against the
wall with their guitars and sleeping bags, mouching cigarettes from passers-by,
singing American freedom songs or Bob Dylan translated into French, young
mostly, dressed (a long haired boy singing "We shall overcome")
in the shabby green US Army surplus jacket that is the universal stamp of
beatnickism - I have one too, and I've been a beatnick often enough (in
the very wide sense of the word) this year to identify with them: I'm past
the gang stage tho!
The cathedral Notre Dame, partly washed so that the clean white edges
have an effect of Gothic stone lace. Inside, banks of candles (I burned
one for Joan of Arc), the long nave falling back into darkness at the apse,
where the reds and blues of the stained glass flicker out suddenly but coolly.
A stunningly pretty girl in pink stockings and a pink sweater, in mid-thigh
miniskirt.
The Paris 'kikis,' cheeky ragamuffins who've seen too much for their
age - arrogant and tough, but full of humor, children like no other children,
teasing old ladies on the street, puffing at cigarettes.
Equestrian statues all over Paris - the good king Henry IV covered with
sleeping pigeons.
Sunday
[undated journal]
Is happiness sitting at the studio window wrapped in a sleeping bag,
with a storm roaring overhead among the angles of seventh-floor walls, reading
aloud, full of pâtes à la sauce tomate, body tense with coffee
and the silent current of my longing for Jean-Jacques? (Which is there,
amplified by the silence of 1 a.m. when I go to sleep waiting for him, which
is there almost covered but pulsating as I laugh my idiot laugh with Barberousse
- 'conscience,' 'convive,' 'content,' 'comfortable' - and which is there
humming against the resistance of my humiliation now.)
Fault - my mental laziness - I find a question or a problem, mutter it
to myself in a sentence or write it down, throw it into a heap where it
melts down to forgetfulness.
Barberousse - look at him asleep in the corner in a tangle of child's
mattress, sleeping bag, rubber mattress. He's thinner than he was when I
came a month ago. "T'es un ange, Barberousse." Just after I arrived
he took me to the flea market; ever since he has been careful to ask whether
and what I'm eating; yesterday afternoon he took me for a long walk through
the streets of Paris to show me things he likes and knows, and in the evening
he took me to a dinner invitation that he'd arranged to have me included
in. We spent the afternoon laughing like idiots. And in the Metro I noticed
his face for the first time. Eyes green with brown shadows, clear as a little
child's, mouth childish and unguarded in his red blond beard.
He's simple and naïve - he brags about his adventures in a confidentially
lowered tone of voice, and the other AMI people laugh at him ("Je le
teste, le commissaire"), but he is the only one among them capable
of reflection or sincerity. He is really alone, without parents or support,
living in the studio without structure in spite of his need for order, and
he never shows any feeling of depression. He too is an outsider, as none
of the others are, even Jean-Jacques who is not an eskimo after all (an
ex-quimau). (Jean-Jacques! Apprivoisé then, but now shut up
firmly into himself. I've lost completely the "visage du p'tit matin"
and he's lost the capacity for tenderness that, at first, I thought he didn't
have and then, when I found it, fell in love with, and that now, lost again,
leaves me with my hands curved so carefully and expectantly around - nothing.
But once or twice - lying side by side on the green carpet after Barberousse
had turned off the light, we would wait until our breath deepened and quickened,
and then he would put out his hand to find mine (curved above my head) and
then we would wait again, and then I would move so that my hair fell against
his arm, and then he would kiss me through the hair fallen over my face
and we would struggle to find a way through taste of hair in our mouths
not wanting to move our arms already wrapped around each other moving. I
can't think of his body without intense emotion, the thin chest and back
(brown - he always wears Sagittarius on a metal chain), the delicate shoulder
bones and fine smooth skin, the long torso and flat cul. Moving and separate
from me, or still and focused against me I love the form of his body and
adore fragments of lines of it - wrist or neck or mouth, casual ankle and
insouciant hip.
Fault - I think about writing stories or poems but I don't. Afraid to
try.
Fault - I'm always afraid to bother people, even when I need to be a
chasseur des pieds, a gadfly. Tolerance, but not Father's apology for being
on the same sidewalk. I've gotten over the general but not the personal
inhibitions.
-
Louvre Gothique
Jeanne de Bourbonne 16e - Comptesse d'Auvergne - funeral dalle - slim
body and bent face, slender feet, one hand against the frame of the doorway,
standing with her long hair falling over her chest, her cloak falling away
- worms crawling from holes in her belly, a gash beside one round nipple,
a serpent curled into a ball over her sex. Face defleshed almost to a skull.
Beautiful perfect hands.
Tombeau de Valentine Balbiani - marble 16e by Germain Pilon - elegant
young woman laced into a narrow bodice with sleeves buttoned all the way
down to a cuffed wrist, ruff, wise poised face in a curving cap, brocaded
gown, puppy beside her - she's lying sideways propped up on two pillows
and an elbow with her ruff on the side of her hand, fingers holding open
a tiny book, staring into the distance - the [?] below is cut open to show
her half defleshed, naked under a cloak that has fallen away, hair spread
loose on her pillow, her breasts fallen dugs on a bony spread-open ribcage,
wiry muscled arms, hands more beautiful than ever holding the ribcage loosely
over her abdomen, face old, mouth open, muscled legs, lovely bare feet,
two tasseled pillows under her head.
Brussels
[undated postcard]
I started off working at Jean-Jacques' office in Paris and here I am
working in Belgium for a week, living at the Grande Place even, where
I've marked an x, with a working companion. Life is extremely vicissitudinous
since leaving Greece. I'm working here and in Paris until I come home. Send
the money -
Paris
[letter]
The last news you've had was from Brussels so you're far behind. I hitchhiked
back to Paris after a week, leaving on a rainy Monday afternoon. One ride
was from a sinister black man, bald, all in stiff black clothes with stiff
heavy boots. I was a bit afraid of him, but he began to talk child psychology
with me and it turned out he was a priest who works with the speech rehabilitation
of deaf-mute children. Then on the border I had to argue for half an hour
with the officials and tell a few lies before they would let me cross because
I didn't have any money and was dressed suspiciously like a good for nothing
vagabond. France is very concerned because all the bums in Europe tend to
come to Paris for their vacations. Then I got a ride with two Dutch jazz
musicians, young, going to play in the Latin Quarter in Paris. On the way
we passed by the town of Laon with a beautiful high fortress on the ridge
of a long hill, dramatic storm clouds flying behind it.
Immediately after my return to the AMI office in Paris we went broke,
abandoning several thousands of people in various countries without money
and disappointing several hundred more who wanted to leave and had already
paid. In the chaos which followed an order of bankruptcy from the Paris
police headquarters, the offices were filled with complaining customers
and anxious parents and policemen and inspectors, and we were all on the
verge of nervous collapse, shock, etc, especially those who've made AMI
literally their life for nearly twenty four hours a day.
Wieland, the boss, went into hiding, trying frantically to find some
money before turning himself over to police headquarters, where complaints
of abuse of confidence and cheques without provision as well as a hysterical
journalistic suspicion of swindle were waiting for him. No one knew where
he was, the police issued a warrant for his arrest, hundreds of people were
anxious to get their hands on him. Then at midnight one night when I was
at the studio alone the telephone rang I answered and it was Wieland,
calling from his hideaway in the apartment of a friend. "Can you come
right away?" he says. "Of course," I say, and he gives me
the address of an apartment building in a far quarter of Paris, telling
me that he will wait for me to pay the taxi as soon as it arrives. So I
run to catch a taxi and go humming through the strange dark narrow streets,
not knowing what he wants, not sure he'll really be there to pay the taxi,
craning my head anxiously to see if there is a police car following. He
is there to pay for the taxi, and no, the police weren't following, and
I'm still not sure what he wanted me for, but I think generally he needed
to talk to someone.
When the telephone rang a particular ring or the doorbell sounded three
short rings, one pause, two short rings, I answered. And I listened as he
explained what had happened to the finances (no swindle involved) and then
we tried to sleep on the sofa covered with coats. He was so frightened that
he trembled and so I held his hand.
For breakfast we had a tin of beans that we found in the cupboard. Then
he set to work writing a letter explaining the situation and its reasons
to the participants and the parents, pleading for help to patch the association
up until the participants could be brought home. When the doorbell sounded
its secret ring and I opened the door to find our two friends also from
the AMI office, he sent us to make a stencil of the letter and send copies
of it to all the parents. I typed the stencil, and then we licked envelope
flaps and stamps until three in the morning. The letters are mailed, we
reported back to Wieland and all went walking in the deserted streets of
Montparnasse until we found a café still open - and then we ate supper.
Home by four thirty a.m.
At one the next afternoon, I had just gotten dressed when there was a
knock at the door and two men flashed their badges at me. "You are
Mademoiselle Ellie Epp? We are looking for one Wieland Lempke." "He
isn't here." "Do you know where he is?" Silence. I knew he
had a one o'clock rendezvous at a certain café. "Was it you
who typed the letter that was sent out last night?" "Yes."
"Have you seen Lemke?" Silence. "Well them Mademoiselle would
you come with us to the station please."
We arrived in a set of dingy fourth floor offices near the cathedral
in the oldest part of the city, magnificent sunny day, excellent view from
the windows. Two inspectors set out to question me. When I explained that
for the moment I intended to say nothing because I wanted to give Wieland
a chance to do what he could to straighten out the affair before he handed
himself over to the police, they both began to roar like detective inspectors
(the Bad Guys) in the movies. They told me I could be held in jail for the
night unless I was willing to cooperate and that I would quite possibly
be deported straight home. I was overjoyed at the thought of both these
possibilities, but hid my pleasure as well as I could, not wanting to spoil
their fun.
Then they sent me off to another room where I was guarded by not one
but two policemen who gossiped to me about marriage in France, and whom
I amused by singing and doing exercises and writing poetry for several hours
(they also pointed out the various monuments we could see from our window)
until the moustached red-faced inspector stuck his head in the door to tell
me with malicious pleasure, "Ah, Mademoiselle, we have someone in the
next room whom you know very well."
Not five minutes later, the other inspector stuck his head around the
door to announce with the same malicious joy, "Mademoiselle, Mr Lemke
has been arrested." When I was taken into the other room again to sign
my papers of release, there was Wieland looking white but composed. He sent
me a sad wink, and then I was released to the custody of Barberousse who
was waiting in the hall. I found, then, that Wieland had not been arrested
as I had been told, but had come to the office himself after coolly telephoning
to the commissioner. The two inspectors, when they found that he was coming
to give himself up after evading their best efforts for nearly a week, were
livid with rage and chagrin. And, sadly, no jail for me.
Since then: Wieland is still in jail waiting a hearing - he may be let
off or he may do five years. Jean-Jacques is back from Israel after being
there blocked without money for several weeks, and it is he who has had
to take the responsibility of AMI and its fantastic debts while Wieland
is in jail - as a result he is so crushed by worries and disappointments
(his future, past and present in ruins around his ears with the dust still
rising all around) that I hardly recognize him any more and seem to be able
to do nothing to help him or to encourage him - so I'm sad and sickened
too, and Paris has a sharp edge of anxiety to it.
I'm still looking for a charter flight home but they are hard to find
and I haven't enough money for a regular flight. Am not sure what I'll do,
but something will come up.
In the meantime I'm not starving because we haven't been evicted from
the studio yet and we still have many packages of noodles and dried beans
left from previous summers' excursions. And now that we have had a week
of gloriously clear skies and brilliant sun with flaming mornings and sunsets,
Paris is radiant with light and forms and colors. I go for many walks, but
my feet drag a little and my heart is only half there, partly because I'm
still thinking of you as well. Olivia has written. She is looking for an
apartment for us, so I will at least have a home when I get back from Europe
and at least one friend.
The atmosphere at AMI now is very discouraging, everyone distrusts everyone
and works separately to achieve different ends, and there is no unity or
team spirit to pull AMI out of the mess it is in now. No one works except
Jean-Jacques and Wieland's secretary, everyone else spends their time talking
and scheming and trying to impress everyone else. Without a chef everything
has fallen to pieces. I've learned a lot, but negative.
Sunday
[undated journal ]
I took off my shoes as soon as I'd crossed the street from 22 Avenue
de l'Opéra; and it was raining a warm rain. Joan of Arc was on her
high horse at the intersection, the Tuileries stretched out toward her,
the Louvre was misted over, each section fainter and more mysterious than
the next, all diffused into mysterious outlines with the Carrousel arch
darkest against the far transverse wing. Grass wet, geraniums brilliant,
the strong young women alone and black among the flowers, all of the city
beautiful against the low sky. Almost dusk at four o'clock; transmuted,
dissolved, vaporized, the bank of trees and the arches of the Rue Rivoli
falling back; the obelisque almost invisible; the round pond deserted.
At five o'clock I came out of the Louvre and the sky was lighter. When
I passed near one of the strong young women, someone had put a branch in
her open hand, and I added a geranium. The gravel soft underfoot; wrought
iron chairs abandoned among the water and floating leaves among the trees,
the blue and red flower beds more brilliant than usual. The Place de la
Concorde from the balustrade above the Impressionist Museum. A small girl
with her mother. A wonderful long puddle with water higher than my knees;
day for a song from you, Georges Brassens! A flower at the foot of beautiful
Joan and home to read and cook more pâtes à la sauce tomate
and at 3:30 sit bolt upright to talk to Barberousse who can't sleep because
he's thinking of naked girls. I can't because I'm thinking of Mitchell and
Jerry and Alain and Jean-Jacques; I explain that they are phantômes
more real than reality because of this year of dépaysage.
Now it is quarter past five and I want to go back to my phantoms. This reminds
me of crazy what-was-his-name in Athens who wrote everything in his little
notebook. And Fernando the crazy Spaniard! And le petit patron. And Lellie
and Lucia. And the view of Delphi, and Jean-Jacques!
July 22-29 on the road
[journal]
Monday morning
Porte d'Italie dazzling in the sun, why is it so wonderful and fresh?
Space - I've been a city dweller for a month now. Wet lawns and glittering
tall buildings, Forêt de Fountainebleue, standing under the trees
thumb out.
The thin boy in his bright red Primula is going to Rome, but he smiles
with his mouth closed and says nothing.
Two kilometer walk through farm fields, a bushy hedge on one side, a
young boy on a bicycle singing with his transistor, the tiny farm hamlet
of Les Tuileries, where a woman washes her clothes on the edge of a low
stone trough in her water shed, muddy henyards full of flowers. A roadside
garden - carrots and beans washed in a puddle! I'm tempted to steal a tomato
from a windowsill, but it is too light. I feel like a troubadour with my
dufflebag slung at an angle over one shoulder, watching for berries that
might be edible or magic, looking down at the woman pounding her clothes.
A boy on a scooter smiles under his helmet and shouts back with the wind,
"Le moto, vous aimez ça?" "J'adore!" I run after
him. "Vous etes quelle nationalité?" "Je suis canadienne."
"Mois aussi, je suis canadien francais!" Handshake. Burgundy
countryside, wooded round hills, drift of smoke and scent from a pointed
roofed four-chimneyed railroad hotel. Peaked spruce and stratocumulus darkening.
A wild apple - heavy on the stomach with only carrots and beans and a beet-leaf
stalk in it.
Vézelay
Angel in the corner of a doorpost, one leg and face on the diagonal edge,
arms and wings flung backward, one leg too, simple line without shading,
an explosion of joy. (He is below a tympanum of the Christmas story.) (Angels'
heads appearing above the zigzags and strips of a hollow cloud, like birds
in a nest.) I noticed the angel because a heavy flat-shoed woman-photographer
is beaming a floodlight on it.
Thin childish bodies in robes that are creased but undetailed; long oval
eyes sometimes with a bored point for the pupil; flat oval hands held perfectly
stiff; forked beards making them look slightly like Mongols. Kings are differentiated
only by their crowns. They look like children playacting. All confrontations
of two figures are formal.
Stylized column of two heads peering out of a wall (inverted cone of
stone, with detailed door); wailing woman on the diagonal edge holding forward
a bearded head that appears to be hers before one turns the corner - great
sensible use of diagonal corners, never seen before. Heads round as eggs
framed by hoods. Stylized and perfect.
Many grotesque monsters; and angels calmly slicing heads off.
Nave - Romanesque round arches striated red and white, decorative bands.
Crypt: like a dark cave, two rows of low pillars holding shallow arched
vaults, all blackened brick with a broken stone ledge on which many low
candles burn and flicker down into a mass of white wax, smoky and warming.
Behind it is a dark grill, and the remains of Mary Magdeline. Uneven stone
floor.
I wander into the Pax Christi auberge and am taken to a bed under the
rafters. Everything is wonderful: faces, voices, me, the guidebook I've
stolen, the fact that supper is in an hour and apparently one doesn't pay.
I've taken the chance because I can't pay. I have two Metro tickets, but
no money!
Two German women, dressed in heavy thick suits sturdily cut, sensible
shoes, grey hair pulled back behind their heads. One is a bull moose of
a woman, ugly and thick-chested, the other has soft wavy grey hair and a
face that is alert, back-lit. Both are pastor's assistants, amateur social
workers in the Catholic Church frame - visiting old people on their birthdays
....
A German girl with wispy short hair, a lovely Jeanne d'Arc face and a
rapid Beyern accent.
We eat dinner elbow to elbow at a long table, soup and bread, ham, large
chunks of potato, cheese and bread, plums. A German boy full on energy and
faith I suppose, portrait of German Catholic youth. Horsey faced French
girl and amorphous faced future English teacher. Boy from Togo, an Algerian
called Alali.
We go to a low room with a fireplace and sit around the fire on benches
as a young priest, emotional but not at all articulate, tells us about his
walking pilgrimage to Le Puy. We hit some deep questions and he tells us
of his feelings of increased sensitivity toward himself, toward others,
toward nature. He says that sometimes he spends the day praying, singing,
talking to le Seignieur, full of le Seignieur to the feet. Another priest
talks about the expérience spirituelle and expérience
humaine. I'm excited because his pilgrimage is like mine; I recognize
that my year is as much a pilgrimage as his and that to me the expérience
spirituelle and expérience humaine are absoluement pareille.
"Je ne suis ni catholique ni protestante, plutot agnostique, mais c'était
pareil pour moi," I blurted when the priest asked me about the two
expériences. And as for his joie, I have had it today.
Alali the Moslem talked confusedly, "Je ne sais pas, moi,"
after a garbled series of half sentences about all looking for the same
god and of carême being ramadan and of penitence and pilgrimage to
Mecca. He had a beautiful mouth like Rasheed.
A little man in sandals said determinedly that l'argent ne fait pas le
boneur and I had to laugh like an idiot. Luckily I wasn't alone. Some knocking-against-each-other
of ideas. Contact.
Black sky; stars for a change. Light sheets on narrow walls; street lamps
on the trees and wall creepers; cobbles everywhere as if the village were
molded in one piece; deep cellars; Middle Ages arches, steps, stones; walls
all fused together. Complete emptiness of the streets. I love the village.
Tuesday
Smell of beeswax candles suddenly powerful in front of a display; colors
of candles - smell of candles; (a plum tree for breakfast) and a basket
of white crockery. When I take out my pad the little woman rushes forward
to wave her hand in my face, "Non, non, il ne faut pas copier!"
Atelier de Jacques d'Aubres, white plaster walls; old beams varnished;
stone capitals and columns coming out of the walls; a varnished stairway
leading upstairs where I could see a vast Romanesque arch. Webby shawls
in green, orange; never a jarring color. Vases with dried stalks and flowers;
a sprig of lavender laid against the fabric of a long woven skirt; candlesticks
and jewelry in the same webbed gold design; a chunk of stone, carved and
mossy, dug out of the garden, hung with ropes of beads.
Stone floor. A rise in level, covered with reed mats, then a stone fireplace
with a fire. The branch of Provencal cactus, fruits dried on the stalk like
flowers, faded to silver with age; what did she say? The perfect curve of
nature - la courbe parfaite. Jewels: dresses, scarves and shawls hung from
beams; every angle perfect. A doorway with piles of fabric and a garden.
A yellow skirt in floating tissue with tiny feathers sewed onto it. Everywhere,
adoration of color, love of form.
The woman, thin and long-legged, tanned, blond, in white Levi's and a
low-necked green mossy pullover, slanted green eyes, herself an element
of the perfect space. She asked me if my scarf was handwoven and we talked.
She asked what the discoveries of my voyage had been! We were both embarrassed
by the intensity of the conversation - I looked longingly at the tray of
beautiful coffee cups that her husband brought in but was not invited. She
gave me a sprig of lavender and a knobby yellow flower, "Ces deux arômes
sont la Provence pour moi."
I stocked up on plums, but as I walked down the spinal alley of Vézelay
to the road, the plums broke out of my net bag and rolled away - a gay capitaine
man blocked them with his feet and we both shouted with laughter.
Vézelay, the long hill slanting up to a high bluff with the cathedral
at the tip, huge trees surrounding it. the narrow stone houses and walls
all along the vertebral alleys, the side slopes covered with orchards and
vineyards.
From Avallon, a Marseillais truck driver with a large tank trailer stopped
for me before I'd even put my thumb out - he talked steadily or roared his
radio, and I was irritated, but he seemed a kind good soul, all courtesy
and meridional élan, waving to other drivers, shouting at bad drivers
and pretty girls. He was going all the way to Avignon. Miles of Burgundian
countryside green fading to blue across wide valleys with red roofs; the
colors making me think of Cézanne.
Night - casse-croûte beside the road. (Forgot - grapes stolen from
a field next to a truck stop.) Not far from Avignon he stopped to sleep
and I rushed out with my sleeping bag to spread it in some stiff aromatic
grass, but he came along and made a little attempt, which I repulsed, whereupon
he announced that I was not gentille and that he was leaving, good night,
but he turned around to say rather sadly, "Les hommes sont tous pareils,
eh?" and philosophize. He has never made love to a femme honnête
but prostitutes repulse him and he se sauves as soon as possible.
"Mais pourquoi pas, vous ne voulez pas un petit bonheur? On perde la
tête pour un moment et ..." "Non ça m'intéresse
pas du tout!" "Je vous dégout?" With your round soft
beer belly pushing your belt down, yes, but ... "Mais non, il s'agit
pas de ça." So he said goodnight rather grumpily, and, this
morning, roared the motor to wake me. He had something of good in him, tho'
ignorant and sad.
Wednesday
Sunrise seen from a crumbling wall where I sat eating bread and cheese.
Stole some grapes then the road to Avignon, Tarascon. Youth hostel, shower,
music, faces. (Night, aroma of the crushed plants and stars; cold wind but
comfortable in the sleeping bag.)
Toad man who offered to buy me dinner if ... "Si vous étiez
gentille, je vous payerai un déjeuner." "On se vende pas
quand même." And on to other subjects of conversation.
Les Baux. Pile of chalky white rocks with a castle at the top, broken
down to a few flat walls; small tourist souvenir town, disagreeable because
of the junk displayed and the no entry signs. I climbed the hill opposite
and unrolled my sleeping bag on a ledge in the half-egg hollow of a shallow
cave. From my ledge I could see the castle and beyond it other masses of
white rock, and beyond them the flat blue valley stretching as far as the
sea? I climbed through the thorn bushes to the top of the rocks and sat
among the lavender reading the books I took from the youth hostel this morning,
La sonate à Kreutzer by Tolstoi, Villon's Poèmes
and Eloge de la folie.
I wake suddenly in the evening. The castle is lit, dramatic, ivory-colored
sculpture in a rough mass with a background of deep blue and a single line
of lights on the horizon.
Restless sleep, a dream of talking to Jean-Jacques, smell of lavender
crushed under the sleeping bag; all night the same scene framed by the rough
unbalanced black oval of my cave's walls; the stars visible through the
opening of a window in the cave.
At dawn, a cold wind and the sudden vision of a pink light on the castle.
Then brilliant sun. Walk down full to the valley. Fields radiating from
the road; olive trees flashing silver because of the wind; the vines' heavy
underbelly of grapes. I lay in the grass beside a vineyard that was particularly
lush, eating purple sweet grapes until I was sick, and finished the Kreutzer
Sonata. (He talks of the Ideal of Christ and the bestiality of sex,
the degradation of women and children. Much of what he says is true.)
A wonderful line of green black spruce cutting off the mossy texture
of the vine rows and pointing into the dusty blue-green of the hill beyond.
Sun! Fig tree. Crossroads with a field of young olive trees, sharp and fragile,
smoke blue-green-yellow, as glass. The Devil's Castle and its cliff seen
like blocks of blue, grey and white; oddly square where it emerges from
the stone-strewn scrub of the hill flanks. Warm wind. Walking is a pleasant
sensation; there's something of the promised land in this abundance of trees
and fruit and the starkness of the citadel.
Lunch - grapes. Finished, I walked to the next village, four kilometers,
in the sun among the rocks and vineyards, with the white walls of the mas.
An amiable coffee-delivery man in his wonderful-smelling van, making a detour
north of Tarascon to a potato chip factory. The bag of potato chips he gave
me as we drove back through the fields of pear trees and tomato vines was
fresh from that morning, delicious!
At Tarascon he stopped to visit the Chateau du Roi René. Big bare
sculpture, 13th, 14th, 15th centuries, with a view from the towers of the
vast Rhone River basin, green hills, Tarascon and its twin Beaucaire, on
the right bank. A king's salon with Gothic vaulting in the adjoining dressing
room, and a WC made of stone with a drop beneath it into the Rhone.
A sea-captain-looking man gives me a lift to Palavas; he 'likes' my face
and wants to take me on a cruise (without his wife) - offer declined.
One more ride, very sympa, who deposits me on the beach among the dunes
and tenting families along the marais near Frontignon. I make a tour into
the bushes nearby and - an abandoned field of grapes, overrun by donkeys,
children, and bushes, but full of grapes at the peak of ripeness.
Back on the dune where I've left my bag, I speak with a blond boy, eleven,
who tells me he's been to Canada, to Québec. His mother told me later
that this is not true. A big-eared big-eyed friend of his, nine years old,
Patrick, comes to join us, then Patrick's little sister Cathi, who's seven.
Then Cathi's young mother with the remains of their supper (wine, tinned
octopus, bread, potato chips, chocolate, yougourt). Then Cathi's father,
young, handsome, with a warm smile and wonderful smiling eyes who insists
I come for breakfast next morning. All the kids help me find a sheltered
place to sleep among the reeds.
Next morning they come to fetch me to their trailer for breakfast, and
there's a grandmother too! By then everyone is in bathing suit and we get
into the water as soon as possible. Sand - white and fine, water - turquoise.
I'm invited for lunch. For supper. We make an expedition and bring back
pounds of grapes. Brilliant red sunset among the refinery lights on the
other side of the marais.
But at night the atmosphere becomes heavy and rank, I'm suffocated among
the dunes, and there's something else wrong too. At the first drops of rainfall
I realize that I'm violently sick to my stomach. The Déchanet family
has told me to sleep under their tent-porch if it rains, so I move, but
oh misery, I'm terribly sick, my stomach's wrung dry but I'm still heaving,
the rain is crashing down now, thunder and lightning, mosquitoes - suddenly
a huge puddle forms under my sleeping bag and I'm soaked all night.
In the morning I have an attack of the hot-cold flushes (that I had once
at home last spring, you remember Mother) and I go dropping off to sleep
in the car all day as the rain continues. (Since then I can't eat but it's
a good thing because there's nothing in Paris to eat. The airplane
money hasn't arrived yet.)
Then it is Sunday and time to go back again.
North of Avignon - sand-colored villages among the rocks and shrubs,
with tile roofs faded to a faint sandy pink.
The man at Montpelier who told me bitterly that France had changed since
the war, "Maintenant, tout, c'est l'argent. On n'a plus de coeur."
But the Déchanet family this morning, saying goodbye with more warmth
than relatives show, running to get the half bar of chocolate that was left
over. And Cathi after her last galoppe on my back. "Et il y a Patrick
qui pleure," said Mr Déchanet as I went off clutching half a
saucisson. Sun on the marais again.
The red-haired technicien in the deux chevaux who took me to dinner at
his pension at Nîmes and roared me through a tour of the Maison Carrée
and Les Arènes, lonely and pathetic.
A series of cons, finally at the side of the road near Lyon, a boy sitting
on his packsack. "Ca marche pas?" I said. He looked up from the
bread he was eating morosely - "Hello, are you English?" A Welsh
boy, very young, broke, called Thomas. I gave him the chocolate; he gave
me a green pear and a green apple and we walked off talking, lost the route,
finally when it was nearly dark I caught a ride and left him walking.
Morose young man in a crippled car, squeaking unbearably in third gear,
"L'autostop est contre mes principes," going to Paris. For supper
he ate a bit of bread and gave me a hard-boiled egg. Drove in silence. He
tried to talk but I couldn't understand him. Cold, uncomfortable car smelled
of gas. We stopped to sleep, he in the car and I on the gravel. It was cold,
the bottom of my sack was still damp from Saturday's storm and smelled suffocatingly,
trucks roared by on the road beside us, and I had another slight attack
of Friday night's sickness and couldn't sleep. Finally he decided to drive
on. Wrapped in my sleeping bag I was warmer and finally slept until he elbowed
me. "On est arrivé."
Five a.m., Porte d'Italie, the Métro, with crowds of amorphous
or hawky faced Algerians, ugly, going to work. Finally, Pyramides, #22 Avénue
de l'Opéra, the longed-for green carpet, but no Barberousse or Jean-Jacques.
As I'm sitting on the opera steps at noon a very young-looking Herald
Tribune paper boy comes up the steps to ask whether I'd buy a paper - "But
I'm broke, I haven't one centime!" "We're in the same condition,
then, shake!" he says - he's English, that's obvious. "Oh, and
I'm reading a great book, by Orwell, Down and Out in London and Paris,"
he says.
Evening: I've just discovered that my packsack has been stolen. A few
clothes, paperback books, my papers and letters. My journal is gone and
I'm sick at heart.
Monday July 29th
[letter]
I'm back in Paris after a week's vagabond into the south of France. (There's
nothing to eat in Paris; the trip was an economic necessity - it is true
that Barberousse still has a few packages of spaghetti and several quarts
of canned peas and some moldy tomato sauce, but everyone is broke and so
I'm waiting for my airplane ticket, but in the meantime there's this week's
eating to think of.)
August
- [journal scrap]
-
- Day after leaving Paris, after losing my journal.
- Resolves to begin again, study to begin again. Food: three points:
- No tension eating ever
- Strict attention to amount eaten
- Lose one pound per week until 120 pounds or what is attractive
[undated journal]
Quelle connerie! I have such a block between the experience and the desire
of a story, and the writing of it. (My journal is gone! My best writing,
all the fresh exact words!) Tonight, the story of a fattish, fastidious
business man who stopped for me on the road to Luxembourg. Near dark, outside
Longwy, past the curved sculpted black stacks and the sulphur smoke, past
the ladle pouring out its fire into railroad buckets, the dung-colored houses
without grass in their front yards, the dirty children ("Tu vois, c'est
une fille! Tu vois!") and the long grinning stares.
He's immediately intimate. He wants to tutoie me and he exchanges names
immediately. And almost as immediately he says "J'ai un rendezvous
à onze heures et j'ai des coups de téléphone a donner
maintenant, mais si vous voulez passer le reste de la soiree ensemble?"
I hesitated - it depends - well frankly I don't want particularly to sleep
with anyone - one should be frank under the circumstances I think - if you
want to buy me dinner because it gives you pleasure, yes, but otherwise
not - I've principles, not at all religious! - no, I have none - "bon"
- I can't sleep with strangers - no, no, I mean with people I don't know
("Seulement avec des Canadiens?") well.
He says that as for him, he sleeps with people if he wants to, that's
his only rule.
He stops. We go into a restaurant. They know him. We sit under the television
set (Thierry La Fronde) and he orders two Ricardos. He changes some floorplan
blueprints and makes telephone calls.
Then he talks about what he loves - 'wild' nature, Corelli, Vivaldi,
Bach, Palestrina. (His parents were Catholic, rigid, poor; he was the only
son. He had 'difficulties' but now he is making a great deal of money working
24 hours a day.) He says that he wants to do many things - he speaks passable
German and weak English, a little Italian.
He listens well. He draws me out. But he has a weak soft chin.
He says he has to change all his clothes at least once a day, shower
once or twice, use shaving cologne and masculine perfume; he's well groomed
and his fingernails are white but they're vestigial. He knows he's too fat.
His ring and cuff links look like gold, and I don't like them, but his suit
is conservative grey. He says he's 28.
I don't ask him if he is married, only if he has any children - a daughter
who's six. He doesn't say why he doesn't like his wife. But he says that
'society' destroys the best in man. I ask for an example. He uses marriage
- which makes a man rebellious he says, whereas if he were free to go as
he liked ...
He says that la petite canadienne is "mignonne" and "courageuse."
We eat and talk. He asks where I'll sleep. He says I'll sleep at the
hotel and asks for a room for me.
raw forming volume 6
- raw forming volume 5: september 1965 - september 1966
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|