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.’
By David Selzer