Gauloise

The cobbled street is slick with the morning’s rain.

My Solex moped slips slightly as I brake

in front of the café-bar. I dismount,

and hurry in. The place is full of smoke –

Gitanes and Gauloise, the odd cigarillo,

pipes – and lookalikes – Simone Signoret,

for example, over there, with Jean Gabin.

The radio is playing ‘Sous les toits

de Paris’. Maurice Chevalier sings,

‘Nous sommes seules ici-bas.’ I remove

my wet cape, and shudder, remembering

walking the paths of the cemetery

in the rain at dawn, searching for hours

in Père Lachaise for a grave I could not find.

 

I notice there is only one seat free –

in the furthest corner next to a man

with a pipe who might be Jean-Paul Sartre

perhaps or even Georges Simenon.

I hang my cape on the pegs near the bar,

order a Ricard, and make my way

to the corner. Sartre-Simenon looks up,

takes his pipe from his mouth and points, with its stem,

to the empty chair. “Merci, monsieur,” I say.

I sit. On the radio Yves Montand

is singing ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’. The double-double,

pointing to the sandy mud on my shoes,

asks if I found the grave I was looking for.

In response to my surprise, ‘Voilà’, he says,

pointing to his own shoes, and the floor tiles

bestrewn with the same detritus, and then

at the other lookalikes in the café-bar.

‘Nous en avons tous marre,’ he says. Each one

is silent, introspective, as Montand sings,

‘Et la mer efface sur le sable.’