New Year’s Eve: 1956:1
Cold roast beef, hunks of bread and red wine in a fat glass carafe for supper in the Gare de Lyon: outside the window, trains steaming in their cradled tracks, people running, rushing with duffle bags, suitcases; an already out of date Christmas tree blinking colored lights on and off in chains: is it a code? Colored lights saying Merry Christmas in morse code? to the initiate who know. There is some rhythm hidden for those who wait and watch the flashing combinations of red, green and blue lights.
Carrying bags, square gray vanity case, olivetti, black umbrella, climbing steep steps to train, lugging cases, compartments filling with joking sailors in blue, stocky wrinkled peasants pulling ham sandwiches out of bulky leather bags. Finally, a blue compartment 3rd class, settling in, tearing off the loue tags and feeling guilty. Eight o’clock. Whistles, people pushing past compartment, bumping suitcases. A porter bringing luggage for a couple: vivacious blonde in big gray fur coat, unshaven legs, caramel=colored loafers and black skirt and jersey, slightly untidy, rather enchanting, playing up to her companion, a stolid restful man, rather stocky, with a pleasant ugly face which became beautifully alive and craggy when he smiled. At last, the shriek of whistles, the yell of porters and the moment of intuitive silence. The train began to move. Off into the night, with the blackness of a strange land knifing past. In my mind, a map of France, irregularly squarish, with a minute Eiffel Tower marking Paris toward the north, and a line of railway tracks, like a zipper, speeding open to the south, to Marseille, to Nice and the Cote d’Azur where perhaps in the realm of absolute fact the sun is shining and the sky is turquoise. Away from sodden mud and cutting winds of gray Cambridge, away from the freezing white frosts of a cold gray london, where the sun hung in the white mists like a bloody egg yolk. Away from the rain and wet feet of Paris, with colored lights wavering in the gutters running with water and the Seine flowed gray and sluggish by the quais and Notre Dame lifted two towers to a lowering, thick, curded gray sky.
On the train: staring hypnotised at the blackness outside the window, feeling the incomparable rhythmic language of the wheels, clacking out nursery rhymes, summing up the moments of the mind like the chant of a broken record: saying over and over: god is dead, god is dead. going, going, going. and the pure bliss of this, the erotic rocking of the coach. France splits open like a ripe fig in the mind; we are raping the land, we are not stopping. The pretty blonde turns out the light and it is warm and dark in the compartment with the blinds into the narrow corridor pulled down, and the night landscape outside the window slowly slowly coming alive in a chiaroscuro of shadows and stars. For we are leaving the thick clouds and smoky ceiling, we are plunging through into clear moonlight, first edging the thinning clouds like curded cream, then breaking forth pure and clear, in a spinning blueness. Single lights and clusters in villages. Then the weird whiteness of roads, as if made of broken white shells, or trails of bread crumbs left by the babes in the woods. Stars now too against the sky, turning in spirals, growing to look like Van=Gogh stars, and the strange black trees, wind=blown, tortuous, twisted, idiosyncratic pen-sketches against the sky: cypresses. And quarries, steep like a cubist painting in blocks and slanting roof=lines and rectangular whitish shacks, bleached in the light, with geometric shadows. Then blackness again, and land lying flat under the clear moon.
Drowsing for a while, stretched out on my back on the narrow compartment seat, with the good weight of Sassoon, sleeping fitfully, on my breast. And underneath always the tireless language of the train wheels, rocking us gently, within a network of steel. Slowing, calming, into lights of Lyon, and rousing from a dizzy coma to jump down the steep train steps onto the platform where vendors are selling bottled drinks and sandwiches. We buy a bottle of red wine and two large soft rolls of white bread with ham in side. We are very hungry and rip into the large soft sandwiches with our teeth, drinking down the wine in a white paper cup, finishing the peanuts we brought in a little paper bag and the cellophane parcel of dried figs, and finally the three small tangerines, which we peel, smelling the sharp fragrance as the porous skin tears open, spitting the slippery white seeds into a brown paper bag which we put under the seat with the empty wine bottle and the crisp little coats of peanuts, scattered about whispering underfoot.
Hours leap or delay on the luminous dial of Sassoon’s watch. Between dozing and waking to stare out into the night, straining to see, to evoke the colors locked into the all-comprehensive blackness, France runs past. Secret, hidden, giving only the moon, rocky hills now, with clotted patches of whiteness, perhaps snow, probably not. Then, lifting my head sleepily once, suddenly the moon shining incredibly on water. Marseille. The Mediterranean. At last, unbelievable, the moon on that sea, that azure sea I dreamed about on maps in the sixth grade, surrounded by the pink, yellow, green and caramel countries the pyramids and the Sphinx, the holy land, the classic white ruins of the greeks, the bleeding bulls of spain, and the stylized pairs of boys and girls in native costume, holding hands, splendid in embroidered silks.
The Mediterranean. Sleep again, and at last the pink vin rosé light of dawn along the back of the hills in a strange country. Red earth, orange tiled villas in yellow and peach and aqua, and the blast, the blue blast of the sea on the right. The Cote d’Azur. A new country, a new year: spiked with green explosions of palms, cacti sprouting vegetable octopuses with spiky tentacles, and the red sun rising like the eye of God out of a screaming blue sea.
Breakfast in the dining car, after balancing along the aisles of countless train=cars, staring in at sleepy people in their compartments, stiff and yawning from the night spent dozing upright. A sense of keeness on the surface, sleeplessness, because of the blaze of new shapes, new color. Fresh orange juice, crisp croissons with little yellow snails of bland butter, bacon and eggs sizzling in a tin platter, and large, generous mugs of steaming café au lait, reclaiming us from shaky fatigue, infusing solidity, resilience. And always, the incredible shocks of blue coastline moving past us beyond the window: blue curved inlets, steep reddish hills, planted with palms, their bark like pineapple skin, and the pastel colored villas, with shutters boarded up: turquoise, salmon pink, with the black wrought iron arabesques of frivolous balconies, drawn with the bizarre finesse of Steinberg. Green steep hills in back of us, and the sun bleaching the pastel fronts of the villas – and the blown steam of the train golden and rose, trailing and shimmering beyond the window.
January 1: Sun well up, losing red and paling into blinding gold, air fresh and cold, essence of snow melting in sun, checking baggage and wandering toward the sea in a strange city. It is Sunday morning, and we have not slept, but the coffee and the bacon and eggs sustain, and the longing for the sea. We walk arm in arm in the broad, pastel streets, down the Avenue de Victoire, past the pink casino with light green shutters, through the green park and formal gardens with little pink and fuschia flowers and spiky green palms and blinding white statues, and the sunlight like cream on the elaborate clean facades of the fresh-painted hotels with all the little black wrought-iron Steinberg balcony fringes. There is the sea, heaving blue against the roundly pebbled shore, and the white gulls planing and crying in the quiet air, like the breath from a glass of iced champagne. Everywhere little black-clad people walk along the sparkling Sunday morning pavement, sitting in the turquoise-painted deck chairs along the Promenade des Anglais and facing into the rising sun: painted bleached blondes pass by in high heels, black slacks, fur coats and sun glasses; old men in navy-blue berets amble stiffly along, smoking pipes, blinking behind dark glasses; someone has brought out a pet monkey, and a little crowd has gathered to watch the monkey jump for the lowest branches of the palm and swing by one long hairy black arm.
The promenade is broad, with wide white sidewalks and brilliant green palms. On the left, as we walk toward the steep humped hill which shuts off the view of the old harbor, there are small one-story restaurants, with bright plaid table cloths, and picture windows facing out on the sea. It is warm in the sun, even if the air is chill yet in the early morning, and a few people are sitting at the pastel wicker tables and chairs drinking coffee and reading the Sunday papers. Behind the pastel facades of the restaurants, the hills mount steeply, showing row upon row of pink and peach villas against the dark green of the foliage. We climb slowly the steep hill with the ruined stone turrets. As the road mounts, we look down on the right into the oblong blue of the old harbor, bordered by quais. The houses are crooked and pink, with peeling painted shutters and linen hanging out to dry. The sunlight turns the colors to pastel cream. The road mounts steeply, and in the gutter on the left, clear water gushes downhill from drainpipes.
As the hill grows steeper, we climb into dark green pines, watching the land fall away at the right, and the pink villas shining above the blinding blue curve of the bay. There are several branching paths that fork away from us up the hill. Below, in a shallow hollow, there is a graveyard neatly and closely packed with white marble monuments, like relics of a monumental chessboard: little white obelisks, marble vases, Greek arcades with a weeping marble woman, flat slabs, sarcophagi, a small white sphinx or two. We try to find a door to the cemetary, but it is surrounded by a high green-painted wooden wall, so we go on, up the road among the pines, climbing wide natural steps of earth braced with borders of white stone. The view of the sea breaks upon us, and toward Italy, the snow=capped peaks of the Alps rise proud and virginal, touched with the golden rose light of morning against the blue sky.
At the top of the hill there is a round pavilion, where two little men compete selling colored postcards and painted dolls with “Nice” embroidered on gaudy striped satin aprons. We walk to the stone railing, and look down at the vista of orange tile roofs spread out below. In the valleys the church bells are beginning, clear voices speaking a language of chapel spires, separate dings and dongs rising to mingle in the rare blue air around us.