Two impressions of the city

 

Black and white, night and day, evil and good, pickled or candied, dead or alive.

There’s a lot going on in this city.

There are, every evening, folks staying in 30,000-euro-a-night hotel rooms directly over sidewalks people sleep and pee on.

But as the great Nicolas Cage said in Moonstruck, “I ain’t no monument to freaking justice.”

I just live here.

While living here, we both got something, maybe COVID, hopefully not whooping cough, whose main symptom, besides weariness and a bit of sore throat, is coughing.

So we’re lying around a lot lately, coughing, and two images from our city roaming keep playing out in my mind.

One:

We were in the port area looking for a butcher that might sell a lamb chop, but it was Victory in Europe Day, so it was closed.

We wandered to a main street, an intersection. A crowd silently gathered on the corner.

An accident had taken place.

A motorcycle sat in the middle of the street. A large pool of liquid was under it.

Was it gas? Oil? Or blood?

Ten meters beyond, two people inadequately held a blanket to shield the scene of a man sprawled face down on the road.

He was inert.

There was something unmistakably dead about him.

A woman turned away from him.

“C’est fini.” she said flatly and clearly.

“C’est fini.”

Two:

We are having coffee at a café next to the fish market part of the Liberation Market.

It is not a good café exactly, but it is lovely and charming.

My darling wife laughs and eagerly says, “Look up.”

A large, well-weathered, deeply stained canvas canopy covers us and the whole outdoor seating area of the café.

On top of it is a seagull walking around.

We cannot see the seagull, only his large, wonderfully comic orange feet appearing on the canvas as he takes each step.

In delight, we watch the colorful footsteps of the seagull appear and disappear above our heads.