“Pan American Airlines Flight 603 to Karachi now loading at gate 32” or “K.L.M. Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 709 to Johannesburg now loading at gate 49” and so on, what an airport, people hear me singing “Mathilda” all over the place and I’ve already had a long talk about dogs with two Frenchmen and a dachsund in the cafe, and now I hear: “Air-Inter Flight 3 to Brest now loading at gate 96” and I start walking—down a long smooth corridor—
I walk about I swear a quartermile and come practically to the end of the terminal building and there’s Air-Inter, a two-engined old B-26 I guess with worried mechanics all fiddling around the propeller on the port side—
It’s flight time, noon, but I ask the people there “What’s wrong?”
“One hour delay.”
There’s no toilet here, no cafe, so I go back all the way to while away the hour in a cafe, and wait—
I go back at one.
“Half hour delay.”
I decide to sit it out, but suddenly I have to go to the toilet at 1:20—I ask a Spanish-looking Brest-bound passenger: “Think I got time to go to the toilet back at the terminal?”
“O sure, plenty time.”
I look, the mechanics out there are still worriedly fiddling, so I hurry that quartermile back, to the toilet, lay another franc for fun on La Française, and suddenly I hear “Ma – Thil – Daa” singsong with the word “Brest” so I like Clark Gable’s best fast walk hike on back almost as fast as a jogging trackman, if you know what I mean, but by the time I get there the plane is out taxiing to the runway, the ramp’s been rolled back which all those traitors just crept up, and off they go to Brittany with my suitcase.
18.
NOW I’M SUPPOSED TO GO DABBLING ALL OVER France with clean fingernails and a joyous tourist expression.
“Calvert!” I blaspheme at the desk (for which I’m sorry, Oh Lord). “I’m going to follow them in a train! Can you sell me a train ticket? They took off with my valise!”
“You’ll have to go to Gare Montparnasse for that but I’m really sorry, Monsieur, but that is the most ridiculous way to miss a plane.”
I say to myself “Yeah, you cheapskates, why dont you build a toilet.”
But I go in a taxi 15 miles back to Gare Montparnasse and I buy a one-way ticket to Brest, first class, and as I think about my suitcase, and what Goulet said, I also remember now the pirates of St. Malo not to mention the pirates of Penzance.
Who cares? I’ll catch up with the rats.
I get on the train among thousands of people, turns out there’s a holiday in Brittany and everybody’s going home.
There are those compartments where firstclass ticketed people can sit, and those narrow window alleys where secondclass ticketed people stand leaning at the windows and watch the land roll by—I pass the first compartment of the coach I picked and see nothing but women and babies—I know instinctively I’ll choose the second compartment—And I do! Because what do I see in there but “Le Rouge et le Noire” (The Red and the Black), that is to say, the Military and the Church, a French soldier and a Catholic priest, and not only that but two pleasant looking old ladies and a weird looking drunklooking guy in the corner, that makes five, leaving the sixth and last place for me, “Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac” as I presently announce, knowing I’m home and they’ll understand my family picked up some weird manners in Canada and the U.S.A.— (which I announce of course only after I’ve asked “Je peu m’assoir?” (I can sit?), “Yes,” and I excuse myself across the ladies’ legs and plump right down next to the priest, removed my hat already, and address him: “Bonjour, mon Père.”
Now this is the real way to go to Brittany, gents.
19.
BUT THE POOR LITTLE PRIEST, DARK, SHALL WE SAY swart, or swartz, and very small and thin, his hands are trembling as if from ague and for all I know from Pascalian ache for the equation of the Absolute or maybe Pascal scared him and the other Jesuits with his bloody “Provincial Letters,” but in any case I look into his dark brown eyes, I see his weird little parroty understanding of everything and of me too, and I pound my collarbone with my finger and say:
“I’m Catholic too.”
He nods.
“I wear the Sacred Queen and also St. Benedict.”
He nods.
He is such a little guy you could blow him away with one religious yell like “O Seigneur!” (Oh Lord!)
But now I turn my attention to the civilian in the corner, who’s eyeing me with the exact eyes of an Irishman I know called Jack Fitzgerald and the same mad thirsty leer as tho he’s about to say “Alright, where’s the booze hidden in that raincoat of yours” but all he does say is, in French:
“Take off your raincoat, put it up on the rack.”
Excusing myself as I have to bump knees with the blond soldier, and the soldier grins sadly (’cause I rode in trains with Aussies across wartime England 1943) I shove the lump of coat up, smile at the ladies, who just wanta get home the hell with all the characters, and I say my name to the guy in the corner (like I said I would).
“Ah, that’s Breton. You live in Rennes?”
“No I live in Florida in America but I was born etc. etc.” the whole long story, which interests them, and then I ask the guy’s name.
It’s the beautiful name of Jean-Marie Noblet.
“Is that Breton?”
“Mais out.” (But yes.)
I think: “Noblet, Goulet, Havet, Champsecret, sure a lot of funny spellings in this country” as the train starts up and the priest settles down in a sigh and the ladies nod and Noblet eyes me like he would like to wink me a proposal that we get on with the drinking, a long trip ahead.
So I say “Let’s you and I go buy some in the commissaire.”
“If you wanta try, okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Come on, you’ll see.”
And sure enough we have to rush weaving without bumping anybody through seven coaches of packed windowstanders and on through the roaring swaying vestibules and jump over pretty girls sitting on books on the floor and avoid collisions with mobs of sailors and old country gentlemen and all the lot, a homecoming holiday train like the Atlantic Coast Line going from New York to Richmond, Rocky Mount, Florence, Charleston, Savannah and Florida on the Fourth of July or Christmas and everybody bringing gifts like Greeks beware we not of—
But me and old Jean-Marie find the liquor man and buy two bottles of rosé wine, sit on the floor awhile and chat with some guy, then catch the liquor man as he’s coming back the other way and almost empty, buy two more, become great friends, and
