Ad nauseam by
Robert Malacci
Chapter 3, p. 17-24
Three days later we took the Montreal-Marseilles flight. Squeezed between a fat woman and Pouliot, who demanded to be on the window side. I didn't sleep a wink. Unable to lower the back of my seat without bothering the passenger behind me, I spent eight hours in hell. I brooded about these charters that pack people like sardines nowadays, and comfort be damned: profit rules!
When the plane began its descent, one of my old memories resurfaced. I hadn't thought about this in a long while, but a girl's face was coming back to me: Anne. I finally understood why. The stewardess who was taking care of us had that name displayed on her jacket and, like that long ago Anne, she was a blond. However, even if I don't know what became of Anne, I like to think she's still living in Toulon, the city where I'd met her, almost ten years before.
When we disembark at the Marignane airport, it's as hot as in Montreal, but without the humidity. Pouliot asks me to find a taxi to drive us to Toulon. He won't hear of a train or a bus. A talkative driver takes us in less than an hour to the Hotel Le Molière, where Georgette has booked us two rooms. Exhausted, I'm thinking only of sleep. Not Pouliot. He already wants to go crusading!
"Cool it, Alfred! We calm down and rest a bit before going on."
He makes a face, but lets me take a nap. At eleven o'clock, he wakes me up and we go out into the city where I had this nice love story with Anne. We walk down the Boulevard de Strasbourg and I immediately note the same behaviours as in the past, the way people interact when they meet in the street in the South, everything expressed with a smile or a funny comment. Most are brown-skinned, with brown hair. Crossbreeding has been frequent over here, with Italian or Spanish blood. We stroll on to the Place de la Liberté where a pub has put out a few tables.
That makes Pouliot thirsty and we sit down. A young waiter arrives and asks us, with a nice lilting accent:
"May I serve you something, Messieurs?"
"Yeah," Pouliot says. "A cold beer for me."
"Lager or ale?"
"Whatever, as long as it's cold!"
"And for you?"
"Water with mint," I answer.
"Tabarnak, Malacci, you going dry?" Pouliot exclaims.
"No, but I didn't slept last night and it's too early for a beer. It would knock me out."
"You're nothing but a turncoat!"
"Bring me Le Mistral, if you can," Pouliot adds, to the server.
"We never buy it, but you'll find it over there."
He's pointing to a newsstand close to the pub.
"You're Québécois?"
"Yes, mon chum," Pouliot answers.
"I knew it because of the 'tabarnak'! I knew a Québécois girl who was always saying that!"
"After or while making love?" I ask.
"Hah-hah! No, never while making love!"
I get up and go buy the newspaper, which has just been delivered. The woman who runs the stand was putting it out with the others. My first impression is that Le Mistral is sold at a reasonable price, but I understand why when I heft it: it must not have more than twenty pages. I go back to Pouliot as the waiter comes over with our orders and enquires:
"What does it mean, exactly, "mon chum"? That Québécois girl kept on telling her girlfriends that I was her French chum."
"It means a bit of everything, friend, lover, it depends."
"So it was a rather nice thing to say?"
"Yes," I answer. "You no longer see her, that girl?"
"No. She must have found another chum somewhere else!"
He laughs, putting down our drinks, and leaves. Pouliot flips through Le Mistral while drinking his beer, as I sip my mint and water. His opinion is quickly made.
"No wonder the guy has problems! Nothing exciting in here, look."
Indeed, all I find are rather dated dispatches from the France Press Association. International news is reduced to a paragraph on the situation in Kashmir. Everything else is about local news: town festivals, sports, the annual petanque tournament sponsored by Le Provençal, the classifieds, and the inevitable obituaries. It looks more like a parish bulletin than anything else.
"Hmmm, I wonder how you will accomplish your 'mission,' Alfred!"
"Don't worry about me, I have a plan!"
Meanwhile, before Pouliot throws some shit in the fan with his "plan," I hope to avail myself of the sun and take the day as it comes. I think that the Toulon people don't give a damn about what new kind of newspaper we could give them. Their main subject of conversation, right now, must be their rugby team and its fifteen players, the RCT. They're meeting Agen in the semi-finals of the championship and it makes for a full page in the sports section of Le Mistral. Everybody must be talking about that in the bars. If the RCT wins, we can expect a parade of fans with horns and trumpets blaring all night long. Since we are in Raimu's town, it might disturb his sleep in the cemetery where he's been resting for years. I say this to Pouliot.
"Raimu? Don't know him."
"According to Orson Welles, he was the greatest actor of his time."
"Welles, I know! He was in Ben Hur!"
I smile, letting the blunder go. Why bother? Afterwards, to wet his appetite, I take him to the market in the Cours Lafayette. We go down to the Noël Blache square, before entering old Toulon. The contrast with the Boulevard de Strasbourg and its big stores is glaring: small streets, houses crowded together, cooking smells, a less intense heat. Then, though I thought it was farther away, we come to the Cours Lafayette and its market. We are at once bombarded with the smells from the stands and by the southern accent.
"Oh bonne mère, my lettuce is so beautiful, a real sun! What? Are you kidding? There are none bigger in the Cours!"
"Redfish, sea urchins, winkles, sardines!"
"They're fresh, your sardines?" a woman enquires.
"Hey, they were fished this morning! What more do you need? Brigitte Bardot's seal of approval?"
People come and go, lingering at a stand, hefting and eyeing a produce, sometimes trying to negotiate a price. Pouliot is staring open-mouthed at all this.
"Tabarouette, Malacci, it's bigger than the Jean-Talon market!"
"And you ain't seen nothing yet. Here, to eat is not to stay alive by ingesting just about anything, like you do. It's an art, almost a religion!"
"Okay, okay. Although a good cheeseburger and a beer..."
"Shut up, you wretched man, unless you want us stoned by the mob!"
At the lower end of the Cours, we come to the harbour where the bars are beginning to fill up with worshippers of the pre-dinner drink and their ritual pastis. The sea is tranquil, barely ruffled by a light breeze, and the ship captains hail the tourists, their boat engines purring.
"Tour the islands: Porquereolles, Porc-Cros, the Isle of Levant!"
"I'd like to see that," Pouliot says.
"Hmmm, one of those would surely appeal to you: the Isle of Levant."
"Why?"
"It's full of nudists."
"Oh yeah? Are we going?"
"Okay with me, but you'll also have to bare it all if you want to see them."
"Oh? I'll think it over."
Since I'm getting hungry, I spot a small restaurant and we take seats on the terrace. Pouliot orders steak and fries with a beer. I choose a half dozen oysters, a grilled red mullet and a half bottle of white wine. Seeing me sample my oysters with gusto, Pouliot makes a face.
"I could never swallow those things! How do you know they're good?"
"When they're dead, they smell bad as soon as they're opened."
"You mean those beasties are alive?"
"Of course."
"Calvaire, you'll make me puke with your cannibal food!"
"Oysters are part and parcel of the French traditions Chalifoux was talking about. Besides, they are supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Pity you don't like them, it might stimulate you, once in a while."
He looks at me askew, not sure whether I'm joking.
"I've got all I need to '"stimulate me,"' and it's very much alive too!"
"I believe you, but it must cost you much more than a few oysters do."
He doesn't answer, diving instead into the other regional newspapers. Hearing him snicker, I suppose he doesn't feel they're more exciting than Le Mistral. I finish my lunch quietly, savouring the smallest tidbit before ordering an espresso from our nice waitress. Pouliot went on with another beer. I thought the fatigue would just fell him, with the jet lag and all he'd drunk since yesterday, but apparently he's quite tough. Unless he just collapses all at once, leaving me to explain why he's in that condition! Which I wouldn't really relish.
Still, I'll have to find a way to give the slip to the "Jackal" if I want to find my old buddy Mario Barbaroux. I haven't seen him since he left Quebec, a few years back. Since he lives in Toulon, he must hang around here somewhere, in one of these bars and cafés. I would like to bring up a few good memories with him, and I also wonder if he regrets leaving the Belle Province. I would think not, but who knows?
My train of thought is interrupted by a loud belch from Pouliot. I smile apologetically to the waitress who was coming with the bill...
© 1999 Éditions Alire & Robert Malacci
To find out what happens next...
