France IV by Jack Heart & Jon Valentine Lee
When I awoke, I went to the outsized double windows of Orage’s loft like room that served as a combination, living room, dining room and kitchen. The sun was shining, and a chilly wind was whipping down the alleyway below. Wares were set in front of stores, and tables were already set out for the cafés. The French, an attractive people who are rarely overweight, streamed in a constant two-way procession, some were carrying bread others seemingly just out for a stroll, many trailed children, dogs or both.
We stepped out into the cool air. The cobblestone corridor ended in another fountain ornamented with obscene sexual acts (cover photo) in the center of an open area encircled by cafés. BlackRock had bought up the best one but there were others, most notably a Vietnamese place known for its food. Back by the other fountain under the sprawling cathedral, a street market had been set up, but the wind, which the French call the mistral, and should not have been occurring in the middle of summer, was blowing everything all over the place. The vendors, perplexed why the mistral was blowing in the beginning of August, were giving up in disgust and packing up early. One middle aged woman told Orage she had never seen it in her lifetime.
The town of five thousand, which I am not at liberty to mention by name, is constructed around the slopes of a steep conical hill, crowned by a Knights Templar-like octagonal chapel, Notre Dame de Provence, where a medieval citadel once stood. The citadel was destroyed in 1601. The chapel with its panoramic view was built in 1875. We tried to drive up to it, but Orage ended up losing some paint off his right quarter panel attempting to turn on the narrow road hewn right into rock. We parked and hiked up the rest of the way leaving me quite winded. When we almost reached the top a shapely French woman loped past us at full stride straight up. The view at the top was magnificent and the wind seemed to subside a bit but not enough for me to light a cigarette. The chapel, like the chapel I had seen in Vienna, was crowned with a statue of the Goddess, which Christians prefer to call Mary. Neither Jesus nor his cross was anywhere to be found.
We were only fifty miles north of Marseille, a city that has captured my imagination since I was thirteen years old and read Albert Camus’ The Stranger, which still gets my vote for the greatest novel ever written. Maybe because I am from New York City and the ancient seaport of Marseille was NYC before there was a NYC, there is an instinctual affinity. Camus had talked about the appalling heat in summer. In the book it had driven his character mad enough to go out and shoot two Arabs simply because he felt like it. I saw no evidence of that as Orage and I left his flat that night for a concert recommended to us by his sister. We were both wearing hoodies out of necessity. In NYC the less clothes the better in summertime.
The particular piece of the Occitan we were in was quite ancient. Once a week all the farmers and fishermen from surrounding Provence would bring their produce in to sell in an open air market. This bazaar would draw in as many as fifty thousand to a village meant to accommodate five thousand, but it hadn’t always been that way. The twentieth century had brought decline as it had to much of rural Europe. After the war in Algeria some French veterans, realizing that not only is war a racket, but society itself, had begun a commune dedicated to the arts on the mountainside overlooking the village. The land had been donated by a successful artist and the rest was financed by Swiss bankers. The village along with its market was revived and became the most avant-garde settlement in the Occitan. Orage’s sister a forty-year veteran of the commune ran a radio station and coordinated the artistic events in the surrounding area.
Orage and I made the ten-minute drive to Sainte-Tulle, a smaller adjoining village, and parked Orage’s BMW in front of an industrial building, as the sun began to set. In the back of the building a stage had been set up with seating for about a hundred people. It was standing room only. We had not eaten anything, and the catering truck had run out of food. Orage made a comment about only the French would not bring enough food to sell. The crowd was mostly older people with some young families sprinkled in. The band, Ankle Beat, was featuring a local legend on the Saxophone, whose name I believe was Don Bess. He lived up to his billing and wailed that saxophone as good as I’ve ever heard. In fact, the whole four-piece band, drummer, organ, guitar, were all virtuosos with their instruments. The crowd was getting into it, with many dancing and swaying to the slickly played New Orleans jazz. So was I when they began to play; “Got my Mojo Working.”
I nearly fell out of my seat when they played the next song. The French singer with a very authentic southern drawl sang the refrain; “I could have gone to Texas but instead I went to France.” While the rest of America cowered under their beds I had spent August of 2020 with a very attractive colleague on South Padre Island in Texas, the furthest point south on the east coast of the United States. The mayor didn’t believe in COVID and neither did his town. It was a month of beaches, sex and partying under the relentless Texas sun. South Padre Island, with no airport, is much like Miami without the tourists. I’ve stayed in just about every state east of the Mississippi and it’s by far the most aesthetically pleasing place I have ever been in. Surprisingly the prices for everything including hotels are more than reasonable. Now that I had found a babysitter for my cats I had resolved to go back there for the summer of 2023 and explore with a surf rod its deserted beaches stretching endlessly north. But alas instead I had went to France tracing the source of the simulation. Now it was talking to me.
That night I ended up getting a gyro from the Arab kids who ran the Greek restaurant on the corner, it was stuffed with lamb, smothered in garlic sauce and tasted fine to a man who was starved for days but it certainly wasn’t French cuisine. At two in the afternoon the next day the mistral was still howling down the alleyways but the sun was bright and the cafés packed with people, eating, drinking and trying to prevent their paper napkins from escaping into the swirling wind. It occurred to me that it was my third day in France and I still had not tasted anything French. We chose a café under a canopy of twenty-five foot shade trees in the center of the historic district of town. It’s right across from the Cathedral with its incessantly ringing bells. Before leaving for France I had written something about “for whom the bell tolls.” The Cathedral’s bells would toll all the while I was in France, sometimes making it impossible to do audios.