the sea, ready in preparation for this time that has come. So the tables with their white napery and flowers, the chairs on which everyone is at ease, raising glasses, all will be folded away, the ice buckets where bottles of Provençal Rosé are powdered with chill, and the chefâs incomparable
Tarte Tatin
that is displayed among dessertsâall will disappear. No. No? A German gentleman has bought the restaurant. As if one can âbuyâ a restaurant whose character has been formed over thirty years. A German. Sauerkraut and sausages. Or worse, something imagined as international French cuisine by those who are not French.
An imperious scream from under a bower. âBon jour! Bon soir! Hullo! Ãa va?â reminds: and Auguste, what will happen to the parrot? Can he be bought along with the premises?
The parrot will move to the apartment. What a question.
But there is a question: what life will it be for him, alone with an old couple gazing at the sea. Oh the family, the children and grandchildren will visit. Sometimes. Everyone has found other work.
The final week of the restaurantâs life it is more fully patronised than ever. One must eat there just one time again, itâs going to be the last time. For some people: of many phases, stages, stations of lifetime. The parrot has witnessed these; those that people remember, have forgotten, or want to forget. He is particularly talkative during his last chance of recollection declared, it seems that if the creature is long-lived, it also has a relentless memory. It is all there in whatever strange faculty is hidden in that feathered throat and blunt grey tongue behind the probing beak. He laughs the crescendo laugh of a coquettish woman who may or may not hear herself in it as she comes stooping on an invalidâs walker to sit for one last lunch at her usual table. Now heâs tittering nonsensically from the adolescence of girls who have disappeared into the cities; the parents, eating their ultimate
Daube Provençale
, havenât had news for months. The tittering sweeps away to a drunken blast (that poor devil, relic of former habitués, begs now outside the market). The murmur of lovers across a table (the hostile couple who donât exchange a word while they eat), the insinuating laugh of gossips whose predictions of mismatch and betrayal have come to pass, thereâand someone smiling a farewell, cajoling, Auguste, Auguste, turns away from the cage at lack of response, the creature has gone silent. He fidgets about the cage as if to find a bribe of sugar he has missed. But itâs more than that. He yells anguish, PAPA PAPA PAâPAA! Where is that child from whom this cry came, and is stored, maybe for the rest of a hundred years? PAâPAA! Where is the father who was called for in desperate appeal, and did he ever come. HULLO HULLO PAâPAAA PAâPAAA! BON JOUR BON SOIR WHAT? WHAT? ÃA VA? ÃA VA? The parrotingthat isnât only that of parrots repeats how we hide from one anotherâs hurts. ÃA VA?
How goes it.
And from the depths of whatever he has that mocks vocal chords, low and angry, there is what was overheard, what he shouldnât have overheard.
Ãa ne va pas du tout
.
Doesnât go at all.
a beneficiary
Â
Â
Â
Â
CACHES of old papers are graves, you shouldnât open them.
Her mother had been cremated. There is no marble page incised Laila de Morne, born, died, actress.
She always lied about her age; it wasnât her natal name, that was too ethnically limiting, inherited generations back, to suggest her uniqueness in a programme cast list. It wasnât her married name, either. She had baptised herself; professionally. She was long divorced although only in her late fifties when a taxi hit her car and (as she would have delivered her last line) brought down the curtain on her career. Her daughter Charlotte has her fatherâs surname and has been close to
Tarte Tatin
that is displayed among dessertsâall will disappear. No. No? A German gentleman has bought the restaurant. As if one can âbuyâ a restaurant whose character has been formed over thirty years. A German. Sauerkraut and sausages. Or worse, something imagined as international French cuisine by those who are not French.
An imperious scream from under a bower. âBon jour! Bon soir! Hullo! Ãa va?â reminds: and Auguste, what will happen to the parrot? Can he be bought along with the premises?
The parrot will move to the apartment. What a question.
But there is a question: what life will it be for him, alone with an old couple gazing at the sea. Oh the family, the children and grandchildren will visit. Sometimes. Everyone has found other work.
The final week of the restaurantâs life it is more fully patronised than ever. One must eat there just one time again, itâs going to be the last time. For some people: of many phases, stages, stations of lifetime. The parrot has witnessed these; those that people remember, have forgotten, or want to forget. He is particularly talkative during his last chance of recollection declared, it seems that if the creature is long-lived, it also has a relentless memory. It is all there in whatever strange faculty is hidden in that feathered throat and blunt grey tongue behind the probing beak. He laughs the crescendo laugh of a coquettish woman who may or may not hear herself in it as she comes stooping on an invalidâs walker to sit for one last lunch at her usual table. Now heâs tittering nonsensically from the adolescence of girls who have disappeared into the cities; the parents, eating their ultimate
Daube Provençale
, havenât had news for months. The tittering sweeps away to a drunken blast (that poor devil, relic of former habitués, begs now outside the market). The murmur of lovers across a table (the hostile couple who donât exchange a word while they eat), the insinuating laugh of gossips whose predictions of mismatch and betrayal have come to pass, thereâand someone smiling a farewell, cajoling, Auguste, Auguste, turns away from the cage at lack of response, the creature has gone silent. He fidgets about the cage as if to find a bribe of sugar he has missed. But itâs more than that. He yells anguish, PAPA PAPA PAâPAA! Where is that child from whom this cry came, and is stored, maybe for the rest of a hundred years? PAâPAA! Where is the father who was called for in desperate appeal, and did he ever come. HULLO HULLO PAâPAAA PAâPAAA! BON JOUR BON SOIR WHAT? WHAT? ÃA VA? ÃA VA? The parrotingthat isnât only that of parrots repeats how we hide from one anotherâs hurts. ÃA VA?
How goes it.
And from the depths of whatever he has that mocks vocal chords, low and angry, there is what was overheard, what he shouldnât have overheard.
Ãa ne va pas du tout
.
Doesnât go at all.
a beneficiary
Â
Â
Â
Â
CACHES of old papers are graves, you shouldnât open them.
Her mother had been cremated. There is no marble page incised Laila de Morne, born, died, actress.
She always lied about her age; it wasnât her natal name, that was too ethnically limiting, inherited generations back, to suggest her uniqueness in a programme cast list. It wasnât her married name, either. She had baptised herself; professionally. She was long divorced although only in her late fifties when a taxi hit her car and (as she would have delivered her last line) brought down the curtain on her career. Her daughter Charlotte has her fatherâs surname and has been close to
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