As the summer settled into July 1989, the hordes of foreign tourists from northern climes thronged to the beaches and mountains of the Côte Vermeille by the tens of thousands. I had spent the past two months with the Brial family in Perpignan, an ancient Catalan city close to the Spanish border. I knew the family from their only son, Olivier, a music producer in Paris.
The Cote Vermillion was the South of France, but not the Riviera. Still I went fishing with his father, Doctor Brial, and on gambling excursion to Cadaques with his cousin Jacques as well as trips into the Pyrenees and the fortress harbor of Collieres, while I badly typed on a collection of short stories on a manual Brother EP-20 typewriter. My infantile dyslexia had evolved into manualyxia in my adulthood. Everyone reading my work complained about my typos. My grammar less so, but it was good to be with a family. Mine was in Boston over three thousand miles away.
Still I wrote and drank iced wine without any moderation and by the middle of August I had compiled over two-hundred and eighty pages. I counted the typos on the first ten. More than thirty. I calculated over six hundred in total, unless my typing had improved throughout the process.
The summer had departed for the North. September was only a week away. It was time to return to my tenement apartment in the East Village. My subleasee had only paid rent up to Labor Day and I bid farewell to the Brials, promising to see them again. The family referred to me as a ‘cousin’ to save time explaining our relationship. My cousin, Jacques, with whom I had traveled several times to Barcelona on business trips, dropped me at the train station and I traveled north to visit English friends in the Luberon Valley east of Avignon.
With time to kill before my friend, Tiki, picked me up, I meandered through the city to the famed Pont d'Avignon. Floods over the centuries had destroyed most of the arches, but I hummed 'Sur Le Pont d'Avignon' and sang the chorus to myself. I knew other french songs. Mostly by Serge Gainsbourg and Francoise Hardy. Very French.
The historic valley of vineyards along the Durance had been civilized for thousands of years. Mostly asleep throughout the 20the Century, until the chic leftists of Paris and English gentry priced out of St. Tropez discovered its rustic charm in the 1970s. The ancient provincial village of Gordes perched on a promontory beneath the mastiff was a highlight for everyone passing through or living in the Luberon.
My British friends, Tiki and Annabel, lived below the ghost village of Oppède-le-Vieux abandon in the 19th century. My friends were upper-class English. Dinners beneath the ruins rang with laughs and sew drank abundant bottle of common red wine chilled with ice. No one had any lismits.
Mornings after recovering from a hangover I typed in my room overlooking the garden. The young children played with young Laboradors. My collection of short stories was my only child. After a mediterranean lunch I hiked through nameless vineyards past a stone quarry to ascent a narrow path to the massif with its views of the Mediterranean, the Rhone, and a volcanic dome of Mount Ventoux.
On the first of September four of us, the fourth being Elisabeth Kime, who had been coming here since her childhood, traveled to the Font de Vaucluse in Tiki’s BMW. Our destination the source of the Morgue River. The spring flowing with evergreen water was the largest in France. The four of us I hiked to the source. The water had retreated into a subterranean hole. It begged for a plunge.
Tiki’s wife called us stupid. Both of us in our late thirties. We ignored her warning and dove into the water. Freezing cold. An old man on the rocks overlooking the pool complimented our courage, as we rose from the font shivering.
"The water is so cold. People have a heart attack and drown."
“Oh.”
Every summer Tiki rented a villa in Oppede. He spoke decent French and had overheard a few of the locals’ histories in the small village cafes. Some were true and he whispered, "That man is an old Nazi collaborator."
"And the Marquis spared him why?” The resistance to the Nazis and their Vichy France compatriots ha been fierce throughout the Midi.
"Because half of France were for the Boches. They couldn’t kill everyone.”
Neither had the Nazis.
Later in the week my soul hit empty. Dark thoughts overwhelmed the beauty of the Luberon and the warmth of my friends’ families. My life was empty of all that fille theirs. The quarry cliff to the south called to me. I had stood on heights before. Jumping off the Quincy or Rockport Quarries. No bad thoughts in my mind. Bridges too. Now not the same. Jump jump jump.
I said nothing to my friends. I passed through the quarry without a hello to the stone cutters. I met no one on the trail.
A wild she-boar attacked me atop a wind-scoured plateau. I ran from her tusks and the cliff. Killing myself was one thing. The fear of a mauling by a wild boar had revived the will to live, however I need to be alone and left the Luberon to hitchhike to Paris, but not by the Autoroute. I had to settle my mind before returning to New York.
Late in afternoon evening I reached Briacon, the highest city in France. I stood at the entrance to D1091 leading into an alpine valley. The air was different from Perpignan and the Luberon. Flowers and vineyards had been replaced by pine forests. The scent of the Alps. The scent of the elements and I felt strong again.
Two resistance fighters in their sixties gave me a ride to Col d’Iseran. The Marquis combatants spoke of ancient battles against the Nazis and their Vichy allies, as their Peugeot fought up the steep incline. Like humans the old cars performed better at sea level. Streams ran from the glaciers into the Guisane River. We finally arrived at the Haut-Alpes pass at 2770 meters, the highest mountain crossing in France.
Neither man had spoken of Nazi reprisals for their actions against the Occupation. The SS had massacred civilians in the thousands. The resistance had known the cost of freedom and France had learned that lesson as well. The Germans had abandoned France in the summer of 1944. Now they came as tourists. Same as me. An American.
"Au revoir," the two wished me at the pass.
I dropped my bag behind boulders and pulled on a sweater before setting out on a path up into the mountains. Drops of rain fell from a gray sky to dot the dust. Snow lay on the mountains. Autumn arrived early at this altitude with the winter not far behind. The trail led into the sky.
The gigantic boulders along the trail had rolled from the heights. The sun burned through the overcast and torched my skin. Meandering goats gnawed grass to the nub leaving nothing, but dirt. There were no trees at this altitude. The goats saw to that and I headed into the sky accompanied by a warm wind.
I ascended to a false col. One more step brought me to a precipice. A drop of over a thousand feet. All my strength gone. I stood at the edge. I thought of the snorting sow in the Luberon. There were no boars here. Only goats. I breathed deep and stepped away from the edge. At least for now.
The sun dropped behind the western peaks and I descended from the col and retrieved my bag. People were honest in the mountains. There were none. The hotel at the pass had been closed for the season. There were only goats and me.
I caught a ride with a farmer back to Bonneval-sur-Arc, a small village on the Arc River. The sun dropped below the western peaks and the valley darkened with the dusk. I was safe for the night.
I smelled the forest before seeing the firs. The fragrance odor of burning wood marked the return to the land of Man. The alpine village was right out of Heidi. Stone houses and narrow paths. Like it had existed since the epoch before humans.
A chainsaw buzz overwhelmed the sigh of the wind. Villagers labored as long as there was light. A room in the stone chalet cost sixty francs. $20. The dinner: a Tartiflette, a baked dish of potatoes, reblochon cheese, bacon, and cream, a favorite plate in the Haut Savoy. Stomach full. I retired to bed. A small window offered a view of the Alps. Stars shone across the heaven. I wanted to stay here forever and fell asleep till dawn.
The next day I hitched a ride to Bourg St, Maurice and caught an overnight train from Grenoble to Paris. At the station I turned to gaze at the mountains. Clouds obscured their peaks. I was sad to think I might never see them again. The train stopped at every station on the way to Gare de l'Est.
I love the City of Light. I had live there from 1982 to 1986. The French capitol worshipped life. I fell in love with a movie actress and worked at a nightclub. I worshipped Paris well before returning to New York and winter. Gussie drove me to the aeroport. A last kiss before check-in. Our very last. I had a short shelf life with women, but at least I had had a few months in love.
My mother passed in the winter of 1996 in Mass General. On her bed in a private room overlooking the Charles River she had said that I should find a woman like my sisters or aunts in the Emerald Isle. I would have rather flown to Thailand, but no good son can refuse a mother's incestuous last wish, especially since she left me money to accomplish this task.
"You will be my eyes and ears for the what is to come."
At her graveside in a wooded cemetery south of Boston, my father seized my hand.
"Find a woman for yourself. You mother will be happy. So will I."
We tightened our grip to seal the pact.
At summer's end I traveled to Europe on my way to the West of Ireland, planning on meeting my bereaved father in France. I had first stopped in London to see my friend, Sam Royalle. We had met in 1990 on my final leg of circumnavigating the world. He had just opened a bar in Pimlico with a Scottish investor. Princess Diana had just died. London was so very very quiet. The sound of a city in mourning. The world had lost a good woman. I still had my father.
Three days later I flew from Heathrow and I met my father coming from Boston in Charles DeGaulle. We rented a Fiat Uno and set off south for the Val De Loire to drink wine and tour the chateaus of 'le Ancien Regime’.
We ate oysters and drank wine on the walls of the old corsair port of St. Malo. I swam in the tidal pool and dove off the three meter platform. The high tides returned to strand the offshore islands with the rush of the Atlantic. A thing of wonder. Twice a day.
Later upon our return to Paris I guided him through Versailles. I had visited Louis XVI’s palace often in my years in Paris. A refuge from the nightlife. We met friends from my past. He laughed and spoke French he had learned in college. His was better than mine. Heading back to our hotel near Odeon, he lowered his head and said, "Your mother would love this."
Sam Royalle showed up unexpectedly in Paris. The Englishman was on the run. He had ripped off a gang of Rasta Yardies. Not for drugs. Money from a bank wire scam. France was a good place to hide from Brixton thugs. Paris was even better. Rob was one person in a city of millions, but in his mind it was too small for him to be safe. Yardies had connections everywhere.
The next day I dropped my father at the aeroport. Rob was waiting outside by a phone booth. My father shook my hand. His sadness had been appeased by this trip. Never 100% and he said, “Good luck in Ireland. Find someone to love.”
Finding a woman wasn’t my problem. Keeping them was. I had yet to find the solution.
Outside I explained to Sam, "I have another week before moving to the far west of Ireland and the rented car is ours for that time. What about a road trip to the South of France?"
"An excellent idea. The farther from England the better." No good could come from a return to London.
I phoned the Brials in the southern city of Perpignan. Madame Brial said come on down without hesitation. Olivier, their son and my dear friend, had passed the previous year. Rob had met him in Paris. I wanted to see Olivier’s grave. We left the next day and stayed off the Autoroute through the Auvergne, the deepest France of France profound. O
On the drive through the rural region's volcanic domes Sam and I listened to French pop music. I was on the road with money in my pocket. My only mission to satisfy my mother's wish and fall in love with a woman in Ireland. How hard could it be?
Olivier's family was happy to see me. I reminded them of their son. We toasted my departed friend with Cote De Roussillon on Carnet-Plage. I stood by his grave. I had been to his funeral. Their sorrow remained strong as I did for me. I will always love my mother and Oliver and everyone I have ever loved. The doctor and his wife Jacqueline were the same. No one was ever truly gone and the entire family was happy to have Mssr. 17 there.
Throughout the day Sam excused himself to speak on a payphone. Dr. Brial looked at the unfinished wine glass and commented, "Is there a problem?"
"Woman trouble," I whispered to them.
"Ah," replied the doctor and then said, "That explains everything. It is good to see you again, Mssr. 17."
It was an old joke from my first trip south in 1982.
After closing the Rex on the Grand Boulevard in July Neil Nepola, my college friend, Walter, the DJ at the club, and I accepted Oliver’s invitation to take a vacation in the south of France. Not the Riviera. His home town Perpignan on the border with Spain. Neil drove his rented car the entire distance. More than 800 kilometers on various autoroutes with only one stop in Lyon
We arrived at his father's house of Rue e La Paix to be greeted warmly by his motor and father, one of the town’s doctors. The tennis open Roland Garros was on the TV. In French. His father was a devout fan of tennis and their son had joked that in the 1970s I had been the 17th ranked tennis player in the USA. I had denied Olivier's claim. The doctor thought I was being humble and proudly told the town about his guest. I thought it was strange that everyone bought drinks for a failed poet. He later learned the truth, but to this day my friends in that Catalan city called me 'Mssr. 17'. It didn't matter that I sucked at 'le tennis'. I had trouble with left-handers.
Sam was happy to hang in Carnet-Plage, a nearby beach resort on the Med. No yardie was finding him here. Closer to the Spanish border Foreign Legion casserne lay on the of Collieure harbor. He could always flee into the Legion.
I visited Oliver's grave twice more. My future grave was on the South Shore of Boston. Right next to my baby brother, Michael, and my mother. My father’s future grave was also there. Neither of us soon.
I had met no women in London, Paris, or the South of France. I hadn’t expected to meet any. I was waiting Ireland as ordered by my mother. Sam was happy. He had stopped calling the yardies.
It was time was time to return the rented car in Paris and get over to Ireland. Our last evening at Carnet-Plage Madame Brial cooked up sardines on a olive wood fire. The seared fish was washed down with a cold bottle of chilled red. We ate more than we should as drank twice as much as was good for us, but woke in the morning no worst the wear. Good food and good wine can never really hurt you along the Cote Vermeille.
The Brials loaded us with peaches, the local cheese local Tomme Catalane from the Pyrenees and Tomme drenched in Muscat, a crisp baguette, saucisson sec, and two bottles of Cote de Rousillion for the road.
"Reviens bien-tot."
"I will. Promise."
And I meant every word.
"So are we heading back to Paris?” asked Sam, as we got on the Autoroute. The Fiat’s gas tank full. All of France north before us.
"Not just yet." I had a hankering to see the Luberon Valley and the Alps. It'll be a slight detour." I liked driving the small Fiat Uno. It had good gas mileage and economy was really important at the expensive French gas pumps, plus it had handled well through the river valleys of the Auvergne.
"I'm in no hurry, mate.”
Sam was happy. He had stopped calling the yardies. The Brixton Yardies back in Brixton were not interested about a tour of France. They wanted their money and he wasn’t ever going to give them any.
I stepped on the gas. The speed limit was 80mph. The Fiat hit 100. Same as everyone else. We were on the road.
Two hours later I slowed down exited the Autoroute du Sud for Avignon. During the Middle Ages the enclave had been the center of knowledge in Europe. Newly arrived university students packed the old papal city. Against my advice Rob got change from a Tabac and made a call to London. The yardies. He returned after five minutes.
The yardies wanted his London house or the money. They were getting neither.
“I don’t care where we are going as long as it’s not London.”
After a lovely lunch of steack and frites I drove along D901 to Ile-sur-la-Sorgue, a pretty market town. Sam had been a photographer. He shot me in front of a small canal.
“Where next?” He had yet to look at the map. Everything was new to him. Only slightly new to me. Two weeks short of the equinox the day held several more hours.
"No, I have a surprise for you. Let's get back in the car.”
“I hate surprises.”
“You'll like this one.”
I put on the Velvet Underground CD on the cassette player. None of their songs were in French.
I drove without any haste and turned north of D938 and then east on D25. A river the color of cloudy emeralds ran to the right of the road.
"What is this place?"
Sam ignored the beauty of the river and stared up at the sheer cliffs.
"We are approaching the Font de Vaucluse, which flows from a bottomless grotto deep in the earth. Supposedly this is the fifth largest spring in the world. The Latin poet Petrarch lived here and fell in love with a much younger lady of birth, Laura. He wrote several famous sonnets about her and love. They never spoke.”
"Do you know any of his poems?"
“Just a few lines. When Love his flaming image on her brow Enthrones in perfect beauty like a star,” I answered with surprise. I couldn’t even remember my own poetry., although I had memorized the highways and byways of the world and I knew my way around the world. A poetry of a kind and I knew what lay back the end of this cul-de-sac.
“Get ready for this."
I put on Serge Gainsborough's MELODIE NELSON on the tape deck and slowed down up the valley with the river to our right. Every second and every note of this 1970 album was sexy and so very very French.
We turned a corner and the ruins of a religious monastery rose on a small hill across the fast-moving Sorgue. The river every shade of blue and green. A massive limestone cliff walled the scenery and Sam shuddered in the passenger seat.
"What's wrong?"
"I have a fear of heights." Scared of yardies too, but the yardies were in London not here.
"We're not high." The road was wide and smooth.
"Seeing that cliff threw me for a loss. These are even taller.”
"You want to stop? Tomorrow we're going into the Alps. They are much higher."
"No, I'll be fine." His right hand gripped the door. His knuckles white. His fear real. Mine too, but I wasn't scared of heights. Something else.
We parked at the end of the road and walked to the source. The summer in Provence was always dry and the water was as low in the Font de Vaucluse as it had been when Tiki and I had our swim. The old Vichy traitor was not here. Neither was Tiki nor Annabelle.
"Come the spring and the water gushes over these rocks."
"Have you swam in it?"
"Yes, but it's cold enough to give you a stroke. Let's go."
This time I heeded the warning of Tiki's wife. I was on the wrong side of forty.
After a glass of rose wine at a riverside cafe we got back in the car. I let Sam drive.
"I'll be co-pilot." I opened a Michelin map. I was familiar with this land and directed Sam up the Luberon Valley. In July lavender robed the valley with purple petals heavy with aromatic attar. In August the harvest had been shorn to leave rows of green awaiting the next spring. Sam's hands were steady on the wheel. There was nothing to fear on a day like this.
"Over there is Gordes. People drive hundreds of miles to see the charming little town." The buildings to the north of D900 shone white in the afternoon sun like a citadel from another century. In the 16th Century after St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in the ruling family had resisted the king’s orders to kill all protestants and the Catholic baron had declared, "I am the King's lieutenant, not his executioner.”
I said nothing of this to Rob.
"How do you know this road so well?"
"In 1989 I had spent the summer in Perpignan with the Brials writing a book of short stories. After typing The End I came up here to visit friends at Oppede-De-Vieux, a town of ruins under the cliffs. I thought I had written a masterpiece, but with my typing and grammar it ended up more a minorpiece rejected in New York by literary agents and publishers..
"I like your writing." Sam had finished grammar school and attended a few seasons of English Private schools before dropping out to pursue his fortune. “Your typing sucks.”
"Thanks." I pointed to a white gash on the northern face of the Luberon mastiff. "That's a quarry. I almost threw myself off the edge in 1989."
"Why?" Sam glanced at the drop and shivered at its height.
"After finishing that book I experienced a down like giving birth. My friends had family. I had no one. My typing sucked. I was a failure at what I loved and thought 'what's the use?', as I climbed to the plateau.
I could see the Rhone River, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. It seemed like the right time. I walked toward the cliff...."
"I've heard this story before. A baby pig ran out of the bushes and the mother saving you by attacking you."
"I was a lucky man."
"As a kid in England nothing scared me more than Jimmie Stewart hanging from a tower for dear life in VERTIGO." Sam loved the movies.
"The real sell in that movie was Kim Novak. Hitchcock loved blondes. According to him “Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”
"Eve St. Marie in THE BIRDS."
"Grace Kelly," Sam spoke the dead princess consort's name with reverence. She had died in a car crash over seventeen years ago.
"Monaco. TO CATCH A THIEF."
"And Princess Diana."
The woman who might have been queen had died in a car crash in Paris. Less than a month ago. Sam and I had laid roses on a chest-high pile of flowers before her Kensington palace. The mourning tears of the world could have filled the Thames or the Fount de Vaucluse.
Rob relinquished the wheel. He hadn’t called London in a day. I hadn’t asked him his plans or where was the money. We drove in silence listening to France-Inter on the way to Gap. He fell asleep and awoke on Route 85.
"Napoleon traveled this route to Waterloo.” A sign announced ‘le Route de Napoleon’,
"Which he lost to Wellington. Anglo Irish."
"Not true Irish." A protestant landowner.
Over a third of the Duke's army was Irish.
"Fuck off. We Brits did all the fighting."
Even to this day the Brits don't admit a debt, but Sam was a friend adn that battle had nothing to do with the Irish.
The Fiat climbed the foothills of the Alps. Better than the maquis' Peugeot nine years ago. The radio station faded in and out. Some of mountains were over 12,000 feet high. The snowfields on the peaks gleamed like a clouchard's broken teeth. The beauty conquered his fear and Sam looked at me and said, "Magic."
We stopped for the night in Bonneville-sur-arc. The river ran strong and the air was once more fragrant with pine. The stone village hadn’t changed in my absence. In fact it was more what it was. A place out of time. The hotel restaurant served trout. We ordered two plates and a two bottles of white wine. Arriving in our rooms I opened the windows. The full moon glowed on the summits. I lay bed and mumbled, “Yes, magic."
After dinner in our rooms I opened the windows. The full moon glowed on the white summits. I lay bed and mumbled, “Yes, magic."
That night I dreamed of Stephania in Barcelona. I had visited her several times during my 1989 stay in Perpignan.
She was no Princess Grace, but she had been a good dream for someone without a woman in his life.
The next morning I woke early. Sam joined me on the terrace around 8.
"The Alps."
"Nothing like it on the East Coast."
"Nor in England or Ireland."
"Are you okay?"
"You mean my fear of heights?"
"Yes."
Sam held up steady hands and answered, "I could stand on the Golden Gate Bridge without a problem."
"It's six thousand miles from here."
"I'll be fine."
We ate a breakfast of croissants, coffee and Calvados.
"You think you can handle a small hike," I told him about the resistance fighters and the false pass back in 1988.
"Where?"
I pointed behind me.
"Sure, why not?" He had one big reason, but was willing to face that monster.
I downed the rest of the Calvados. It tasted of Normandie. A flat land with good apples and oysters. I ordered the l'addition from the waiter. The bill came to 40 francs.
Less than $3 each.
We had another Calva before hitting the road and Sam took the wheel. Steady on the wheel.
On the way up D902 Sam turned to me and asked, "So now I realize this entire trip has been like reliving your summer from years ago."
"Not at all." I was good at lying to myself.
"Perpignan, the Alpes, and then Paris. What do you want to relive then here now?"
I had never told him about Gussi. I had met her after my return to Perpignan. We had an affair that autumn. It ended upon staying good-bye at Charles De Gaulle aeroport. I still recall that kiss. That heartbreak was a secret and I said, "Just drive."
My life was meaningless. Bob Dylan's DON'T THINK TWICE played on the France Inter. Every word was as familiar as the road. My mind was talking to itself. It wasn't saying good things. Maybe I will be lucky in Ireland.
Deja vu. 1988. The Col d'Iseran.
"Stop here."
"You've been here before?"
"Yes." I had been everywhere before.
Then a gray sky and now sunny.
"It's time for a hike."
Sam warily studied the mountains and I said, "You can stay here."
"Not a chance."
We headed up the trail. Same as before. Not as narrow as I recalled. Sam wasn't scared and neither was I. We both had our fears. Different, but the same.
I thought about the elements. Life, Mountains. Heights. Not about my life.
We reached the false pass and I stood at the precipice. Nothing had changed from before. The height the same. The drop the same. I had been here before. Many places. One step forward. The end. To everything. I breathed in and out. My foot rose from the ground.
Sam grabbed my arm.
"Where do you think you're going? I am not going to have to recover your body. You want to jump. Go ahead. I’ll be out of here. I have enough to eat with in my life. Where we going?”
“To Paris.”
“And?”
“To Ireland. To fall in love with an Irish woman.
I stepped back from the cliff.
"I like Paris." I started down the path
"And so do I." Sam crawled on his hands and knees down from the pass. In the car he regained his breath. Safe as was I.
"You okay?"
"Yes, you?"
I nodded and handed him the key, then we drove through the night to the City of Light.
Nothing was tall in Paris other than the Eiffel Tower and we both felt safe at the Hotel Louisiane. Away from London and high places.
Even on the hotel's fourth floor.
Because Paris offered life and we knew just the bar to make that happen.
The Cafe le Flore.
Wine, women, and Welsh Rarebit. Gussi too, but only as a friend.
"So where should I go now?" asked Sam.
"Not back to London. You could always come with me to Ireland."
I was renting a haunted house from the Guinness family.
"Too close to England."
"Then get on a plane and fly to Bangkok. Stay at the Malaysia Hotel. Room 203 overlooks the swimming pool. No Yardies go there." That establishment of Soi Duplee was a good refuge for fugitives. I had stayed there more than once.
"Thanks for the advice." He slid an envelope across the table. I hoped it was dollars, but we were in France. 6000 francs. Almost a thousand dollars.
"And don't come back. Yardies have long memories."
"I know."
"Maybe next year we'll take a trip to the Himalayas."
"I like the lowlands."
"Bangkok is below sea level sometimes."
"Sounds perfect to me."
"Up to you, because I have no fear of heights."
Not in Paris, Ireland, or Tibet or any where some far.
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