as I sat at table, I surveyed the room, wondering if any of the pensioners present might be involved. The Japanese rarely came down to eat. They cooked in their room. You could smell their food the moment you entered the stairwell. Dufavre frequently threatened to oust them, but they were still there. Other than the Belgian and Christine, the other guests were all Frenchmen, or widows, and elderly at that. One old gentleman always came down in coat and tie, smartly dressed, save for his unpolished shoes, and would line up a row of spices and hot sauces to douse on each course, save for his dessert. That was usually a pudding or tart. Once in a while I would see him in the park, reading newspapers, or playing boules with a small cadre of other old gentlemen.
The only younger pensioners were Christine, myself, the Japanese, and a French woman in her thirties, along with her teenage daughter. They sat at the far end of the salle à manger, near Christine. Both had dyed their hair red; wore short skirts, and squabbled quietly between themselves. Sometimes the mother would suddenly stand up, throw her napkin in her plate, and denounce her daughter for all to hear. My knowledge of her colloquial slang was limited, but I gathered she was accusing the girl of bringing boyfriends to their room when she wasn’t there. Since they didn’t room on my floor, I had no idea how true her accusations might be. The two guys to my right would turn their heads and listen with amused interest. “Alors! There you go, Gaston! No more bus rides across town. Oui?”
“Silence!” Gaston would blush. He was the taller of the two and younger as well.
The Belgian was an engineer and worked for an electrical company on the outskirts of Paris. He dressed conservatively—dark trousers and gray shirts, with black ties, and kept to himself. He never once spoke to me, but he would nod respectfully toward Christine and greet her with a smile. Maybe he was the one? To my knowledge, he roomed in the top floor, just under the attic, which was reserved for the dishwasher, server, and cook. It was unheated, and I always felt sorry for them. They wore the same clothes, or outfits, everyday, appeared clean, but, as in the case of the server, no amount of cologne could disguise or suppress their body odor. I never knew the cook’s name, but the dishwasher was a tall, dark haired French girl, obviously poor, but pretty. The server was a shorter woman of medium height, jet black hair, her face always white from an over-application of facial powder, and her lips a bright red. Her name was Madame Cueillier. The dishwasher simply referred to herself as, “Charlene.” She would have made a good match for Gaston. Surely none of these were suspects!
Upon returning to my floor, I walked down to Christine’s room and knocked on her door. She had left the dining room earlier, glancing secretively at me.
“Hello!” she said, as she opened the door. “We still on for tomorrow?”
“Yes! You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“Heavens, no! Remember, I have quite a story for you. But I want it to wait till tomorrow.”
“Will I like it?”
“Maybe!” she cooed, with teasing eyes. “Tomorrow! After we’ve eaten dinner, I’ll tell you. At the café-bar! Ok? Just come for me up here.”
“Sure! There’s a great little place on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, I’ve been wanting to try. We’ll go there.”
She opened the door enough for me to step in. “Kiss me,” she said. “I need a kiss, till then.”
I complied and returned to my room.
7
A delicate, translucent blue sky stretched across the morning horizon. I had awakened earlier than usual and had pulled back the curtains to peer out the windows. After so many gloomy and rainy days, it portended better weather. I glanced at my watch. It was 6:08, too early for breakfast down stairs. I shaved, showered and dressed and decided to catch a cup of coffee at the little news kiosk on the corner of the street just up from the pension. Its proprietor, a Greek, often managed a smile when he saw me coming. Usually, I didn’t visit his stand until mid-morning. We would banter for a few minutes. Afterwards, he would steam up his machine and serve my coffee.
“Ah! My American friend, a bit early today! The sky is très joli, isn’t it? You should be visiting my country. The smell of our coffee! The aroma of the beans! The odor of fresh baked loaves! Our cheeses and goat’s milk—all fit for the gods! What will it be?”
By now he knew, so I stood there until he served up his Peloponnesian version of mud-thick coffee, which I drank without sugar or cream.
“Remember. Sip it. Don’t gulp it.”
I paid and bought a copy of Le Miroir Français. I had not read Gibert’s paper’s columns for over a month now. I preferred Le Monde and the international edition of The Herald Tribune. Even then, I read them less than twice or three times a week. My own work consumed inordinate mental energy. What little free time remained, left practically none for papers. Reflecting on each day’s study, my findings, translations, writing, and walks claimed any residual vitality.
I sat on a bench near the metro entrance and turned to the editorial page. There was Gibert’s column. “De Gaulle’s Third Force and its Meaning for France.” I knew that de Gaulle had abandoned the presidency less than a year ago and that Gaullism, as it was called, was fast fading as a polestar for a post-de Gaulle France. But as I skimmed the article, it was clear that Gibert was still wed to the old General’s vision of France as a troisième pouvoir, a third independent power, between the British and Americans, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and its Eastern Block, on the other. He feared the thought that de Gaulle’s successors would surrender that objective, and that France would reel back into political weakness. I looked for the major thread of his piece:
We have lost our North African Empire, our prestige in Chad and in the Cameroon, our honor and pride at Dien Bien Phu. Who listens to us in London, Moscow, or Washington? Or takes us seriously even in Quebec? Or Cairo? Or Lebanon? Our voice has been silenced, our langue intermingled with the dialects of a hundred
alien tongues. Our cultural achievements but monuments to a grandeur that is passing away. Who comes to our shores now, to our treasures of art and history, but the curious, the profligate, the philistine? That is not the France of the future, or with a future, but with a vestige of decay.
Like it or not, France must interject herself again upon the Moulin Rouge of modernity. Fighting Cervantes’ windmills in rusting armor no longer charms the world. We must command a say in the political affairs of the globe, in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, Palestine, and the Far East, if we are to reclaim our place in history as a people worthy of her past. Yes, that may require a military force, prepared to protect and enhance French interests and culture, wherever either faces risk. Yes, it means continued opposition to NATO, when NATO excludes our interests.
Yes, it means a courageous Non to American imperialism, when that imperialism imperils our own destiny and fate. De Gaulle sought to make us proud again. Yes, he made mistakes. He could be vain, pigheaded, and, yes, wrong. But in his heart of hearts, he was right. He was French. He was a nationalist, through and through. He tilted in the jousts of the greatest kings of the crown. Charlemagne, along with the Valois, the Bourbons, and Napoleon, would have understood his cause, embraced his zeal. No state is perfect; no king, emperor, or president is without fault. No nation of sovereign people has ever existed without revolutions, quarrels, and defeats. But how I despair to see our country become a stripped and silent mannequin in the shop windows of a decadent world, coming of age.
There was an advertisement at the bottom of the page for his forthcoming book; but no date of publication was mentioned. I turned to the arts and fashion section to see if Mme. Gibert had written anything.
