Sudden heavy rain scatters on the skylights
of the hotel’s restaurant – and finds a small gap
in the putty last summer baked biscuit-dry.
A drop falls then another onto the floor’s tiles.
The apologetic waitress carries
my Pastis, Vittel and Madeleines
to a dry table near the door. I follow
with the ashtray and packet of Gitanes.
She asks me if later I am going to see
the carnival in the square. I say, ‘Peut être’.
I have just finished my liqueur, eaten my cakes,
and am about to light up another Gitanes,
when two early, sodden, loud revellers
enter the restaurant. The smoke and noise
of the carnival follows them briefly.
I think of ‘Une Soirée Au Carnaval’,
that surreal painting by Henri Rousseau,
part time artist, full time customs officer.
A woman and a man in fancy dress
stand in front of dark, calm, leafless trees.
He looks at us, she at him. He is Pierrot,
she Columbine in a peasant bonnet.
A street lamp has been lit. In the clear, dry sky,
a full moon and scattered stars are shining.
There is only the soft soughing of the wind.
Though they are dressed for joy, there seems to be
no merriment. They are impassive, still.
Meanwhile, in the round window of what might be
a shelter in the wintry copse where
Columbine and Pierrot patiently wait,
lit by the street lamp is an older man’s head.
He has a moustache, and wears a peaked cap.
The new customers are dressed in costume too: he
as Marie Antoinette, observing
the crumbs of Madeleine still on my plate,
and winking; she as Louis XV,
smirking at my apparent disapproval
of such contraband merriment. ‘Après nous
– le deluge!’ she guffaws.
By David Selzer
