other things you dumb frogs dont know about,” and stalks out in poor misunderstood raincoat and disillusioned rubbers—
Then in come two American schoolteachers of Iowa, sisters on a big trip to Paris, they’ve apparently got a hotel room round the corner and aint left it except to ride the sightseeing buses which pick em up at the door, but they know this nearest restaurant and have just come down to buy a couple of oranges for tomorrow morning because the only oranges in France are apparently Valencias imported from Spain and too expensive for anything so avid as quick simple break of fast. So to my amazement I hear the first clear bell tones of American speech in a week:” “You got some oranges here?”
“Pardon?”—the counterman.
“There they are in that glass case,” says the other gal.
“Okay—see?” pointing, “two oranges,” and showing two fingers, and the counterman takes out the two oranges and puts em in a bag and says crisply thru his throat with those Arabic Parisian “r’s”:–
“Trois francs cinquante”. In other words, 35¢ an orange but the old gals dont care what it costs and besides they dont understand what he’s said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Pardon?”
“Alright, I’ll hold out my palm and take your kwok-kowk-kwark out of it, all we want’s the oranges” and the two ladies burst into peals of screaming laughter like on the porch and the cat politely removes three francs fifty centimes from her hand, leaving the change, and they walk out lucky they’re not alone like that American guy—
I ask my counterman what’s real good and he says Alsatian Choucroute which he brings—It’s just hotdogs, potatos and sauerkraut, but such hotdogs as chew like butter and have a flavor delicate as the scent of wine, butter and garlic all cooking together and floating out a cafe kitchen door—The sauerkraut no better’n Pennsylvania, potatos we got from Maine to San Jose, but O yes I forgot:–with it all, on top, is a weird soft strip of bacon which is really like ham and is the best bite of all.
I had come to France to do nothing but walk and eat and this was my first meal and my last, ten days.
But in referring back to what I said to Pascal, as I was leaving this restaurant (paid 24 francs, or almost $5 for this simple platter) I heard a howling in the rainy boulevard—A maniacal Algerian had gone mad and was shouting at everyone and everything and was holding something I couldnt see, very small knife or object or pointed ring or something—I had to stop in the door—People hurried by scared—I didn’t want to be seen by him hurrying away—The waiters came out and watched with me—He approached us stabbing outdoor wicker chairs as he came—The headwaiter and I looked calmly into each other’s eyes as tho to say “Are we together?”—But my counterman began talking to the mad Arab, who was actually light haired and probably half French half Algerian, and it became some sort of conversation and I walked around and went home in a now-driving rain, had to hail a cab.
Romantic raincoats.
14.
IN MY ROOM I LOOKED AT MY SUITCASE SO CLEVERLY packed for this big trip the idea of which began all the previous winter in Florida reading Voltaire, Chateaubriand, de Montherlant (whose latest book was even now displayed in the shop-windows of Paris, “The Man Who Travels Alone is a Devil”)—Studying maps, planning to walk all over, eat, find my ancestors’ home town in the Library and then go to Brittany where it was and where the sea undoubtedly washed the rocks—My plan being, after five days in Paris, go to that inn on the sea in Finistère and go out at midnight in raincoat, rain hat, with notebook and pencil and with large plastic bag to write inside of, i.e., stick hand, pencil and notebook into bag, and write dry, while rain falls on rest of me, write the sounds of the sea, part two of poem “Sea” to be entitled: “SEA, Part Two, the Sounds of the Atlantic at X, Brittany,” either at outside of Carnac, or Concarneau, or Pointe de Penmarch, or Douardenez, or Plouzaimedeau, or Brest, or St. Malo—There in my suitcase, the plastic bag, the two pencils, the extra leads, the notebook, the scarf, the sweater, the raincoat in the closet, and the warm shoes—
The warm shoes indeed, I’d also brought Florida air-conditioned shoes anticipating long hotsun walks in Paris and hadnt worn them once, the “warm shoes” were all I wore the whole blessed time—In the Paris papers people were complaining about the solid month of rain and cold throughout late-May and early-June France as being caused by scientists tampering with the weather.
And my first aid kit, and my mittens for the cold midnight musings on the Breton shore when the writing’s done, and all fancy sports shirts and extra socks I never even got to wear in Paris let alone London where I’d also planned to go, not to mention Amsterdam and Cologne afterwards.
I was already homesick.
Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how “successful” your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.
As usual I was simply concentrating everything in one intense but thousandéd “Ah-ha!”
15.
FOR INSTANCE THE NEXT AFTERNOON AFTER A GOOD sleep, and me spruced up clean again, I met a Jewish composer or something from New York, with his bride, and somehow they liked me and anyway they were lonely and we had dinner, the which I didnt touch much as I hit up on cognac neat again—“Let’s go around the corner and see a movie,” he says, which we do after I’ve talked a half dozen eager French conversations around the restaurant with Parisians, and the movie turns out to be the last few scenes of O’Toole and Burton in “Becket,” very good, especially their meeting on the beach on horseback, and we say goodbye—
Again, I go into a restaurant right across from La Gentilhommière recommended to me highly by Jean Tassart, swearing this time I’ll have a full course Paris dinner—I see a quiet man spooning a sumptuous soup in a huge bowl across the way and order it by saying “The same soup as Monsieur.” It turns out to be a fish and cheese and red pepper soup as hot as Mexican peppers, terrific and pink—With this I have the fresh French bread and gobs of creamery butter but by the time they’re ready to bring me the entree chicken roasted and basted with champagne and then sautéed in champagne, and the mashed salmon on the side, the anchovie, the Gruyère, and the little sliced cucumbers and the little tomatos red as cherries and then by God actual fresh cherries for dessert, all mit wine of vine, I have to apologize I cant even think of eating anything after all that (my stomach’s shrunk by now, lost 15 pounds)—But the quiet soup gentleman moves on to a broiled fish and we actually start chatting across the restaurant and turns out he’s the art dealer who sells Arps and Ernsts around the corner, knows André Breton, and wants me to visit his shop tomorrow. A marvelous man, and Jewish, and we have our conversation in French, and I even tell him that I roll my “r’s” on my tongue and not in my throat because I come from Medieval French Quebec-via-Brittany stock, and he agrees, admitting that modern Parisian French, tho dandy, has really been changed by the influx of Germans, Jews and Arabs for all these two centuries and not to mention the influence of the fops in the court of Louis Fourteenth which really started it all, and I also remind him that François Villon’s real name was pronounced “Ville On” and not “Viyon” (which is a corruption) and that in those days you said not “toi” or “moi” but like “twé” or “mwé” (as we still do in Quebec and in two days I heard it in Brittany) but I finally warned him, concluding my charming lecture across the restaurant as people listened half amused and half attentive, François’ name was pronounced François and not Françwé for the simple reason that he spelled it Françoy, like the King is spelled Roy, and this has nothing to do with “oi” and if the King had ever heard it pronounced rouwé (rwé) he would not have invited you to the Versailles dance but given you a roué with a hood over his head to deal with your impertinent cou, or coup, and couped it right off and recouped you nothing but loss.
Things