La Vie en Rose

During Oregon coast winters, Nye Beach is nearly as deserted and shut as the off-season, Normandy coast of France.

 Today, though – in the glory of Summer – with the Northwest Trades blustering-in off the ocean – creaky old Jurgen, looking disconsolately out the little bakery’s street windows, just sips coffee and sighs complacently. He knows he really ought to care, to pay more attention to his surroundings, but he re-lives daily, the fact that he abandoned who once commanded his attention, just left her there, left her for a man with candy, back in another century.

Jurgen tries to savor his coffee. But when he lifts his porcelain cup to sip Panini’s marvelous Sumatra, the press of people inside the bakery bumps his chair from behind, forcing him to rush through the moment. He snatches a sip. Badly, his lowering cup clanks the saucer. His sip is ruined.

Too, from across the street, through the open front door of the old Sylvia Beach Hotel, a song sung in French wafts, but Jurgen can’t hear her over a man guffawing inside the bakery.

Through the bakery’s windows, Jurgen watches the Saturday crowd of tourists queued-up in the sunshine, waiting expectantly for croissants or pizza; at their feet, he counts seven scavenging sparrows – the little brown piafs, as he still remembers small, non-descript birds are called in French. Amused, he watches the birds skitter amongst all the feet, and peck at stepped-on crumbs on the sidewalk. Panini bakery is close as Jurgen can come to Paris now. A U.S. Army Doctor brought Jurgen to the United States, then died and orphaned him again. Jurgen never saw the streets of Paris, ever again. Now, paralyzed by their phones, texting, the people queued-up outside the bakery are to Jurgen, profane.

 When a bakery employee parts the crowd and wheels a large, dolleyed barrel out the front door, Jurgen is jostled again. Rather ruefully, he reflects that he is alive but his era of love ballads like the one flowing out the front door of the Sylvia Beach Hotel is gone. Even though he is in possession of perfect coffee and a sublime poppy seed muffin, a deep sense of loss and torpid moroseness he hasn’t felt since he was a starving teenager walking south to Paris, suddenly washes over him. He sags dejectedly.

That’s exactly when, just as on the night he escaped East Germany, he’s electrified by elation. Half way to his mouth, his coffee cup dangles! He gawks. In disbelief, he’s completely startled by the sight of a frail woman. She can’t possibly know he’s even alive! Incognito, she’s evidently been inside the bakery several minutes. Jurgen’s heart races. Stupidly, he can do nothing but watch her limp and hobble out the front door. By now, she’s lost half of her hair, but for Jurgen, there’s no question who the diminutive woman is. Her profile is exactly the magnet it ever was. The naked slice of pizza she’s carrying recklessly on a thin white paper plate is exactly the way she ever was. She is her – the one. She is Edith of la Rue de Chaine!

Jurgen’s heart is in his throat! Still in shock, he watches her peg with her cane toward the street. Gingerly, from the curb, she puts forth a left foot, narrow as a popsicle stick. Cautiously, she advances between parked cars.

Once, a long time ago, Jurgen’s legs could fly him fast as a Panzerfäust. And he did. Orphaned, in Christmas snow, he’d escaped fleet-foot from behind the Iron Curtain. He’d dreamed of America. In Paris, among the other street waifs, Edith’s hands up under his shirt, she’d whispered to him “C’est toi pour moi, moi pour toi, dans la vie.”  He hadn’t understood a word, but he’d known in his heart even then, what she wanted.

Jurgen stands up abruptly. On his cold old stick-legs, he wobbles. Clumsily, he shoves his chair back. The bakery crowd gives way. He glimpses her. He sees her recede across the street. Ringing her head like a white halo, her fringe-like hair glows in the sunshine. Jurgen is frantic - to once again, just touch her!

But just right when he gets to the curb himself, and feebly calls-out her name, just right then, just right when his foot touches between her parked cars, just right then in the far lane of the street, she does it. She drops her slice of pizza.

And according to a Law of Physics, it falls.

And according to the Law of Falling Food, it lands on the pavement – yes – face down.

Standing in the street, looking down at her pizza, she is blocking the far lane of traffic. But defiantly, according to the international, war-time Law of Slim Pickens, she drops her cane and cautiously bends her brittle frame at the waist, to pick-up her pizza. A silver car, then a rumbling green garbage truck pull up behind her. Uttering a painful groan, she gathers-up and slides her slice of pizza, re-centers it on her flimsy paper plate. Possibly, a small bit of paving gravel has stuck to the cheese topping of her pizza, because she remains still, looking carefully at her food. Disdainfully, she lifts an invisible mote from her plate and flicks it away.

She begins to disappear on the far side of a moving line of traffic that has stopped Jurgen’s advance. Worse, from the front door of the Sylvia Beach Hotel, he can hear the powerful voice of the singing woman he had spent a life time trying to forget. As if to mock him, somebody inside the hotel has deliberately turned up the volume. Her voice filling the whole street, she sings, “...Je vois la vie en rose.”

Just then, though, stopping directly in front of him, a wall of smell and slam and the short air-blast of its parking brake setting, a giant black semi tractor and trailer interrupts the entire street.

Jurgen panics. He lurches and shuffles to the front of the huge truck. He changes his mind. Running his left hand along the truck’s chill metal side, he tries to hurry toward the truck’s rear. Where is she? Edith was so near! It’s futile. Jurgen is too old. His panic deepens. His breaking heart races dangerously. So badly, he wants to see her, to just touch her once again. He stops. He gasps. He feels he is dying. He begins to sag to his knees, catches himself.

And then the truck drives away.

Except the compelling voice from the Sylvia Beach hotel, the street is empty of everything now. Inanely, the bakery crowd texts and chatters. In front of the hotel, strange in her loneliness, a solitary dancer spins to the booming, defiant French song. In front of Panini, a few of the waiting faces glance up from their phones and look across the street toward the sound of the war-time woman proclaiming defiantly, “Non! Je ne regrette rien!”

But steel fingers wrap coldly around Jurgen’s heart; their grip tightens. They crush. His Edith is gone.

In Paris, a lifetime ago, everyone had lined the streets, the Americans throwing them candy from their muddy tanks. Everyone dreamed of America, where there was more candy. A lifetime ago, adopted by a yankee Doctor, Jurgen never saw Edith, ever again. Yet magically, after so long!  Just now, he has glimpsed her, but it is hopeless.

Completely spent by the episode in the street, Jurgen sags onto the concrete bench in front of the Sylvia Beach Hotel. The concrete work of the old bench – the unbroken finish – is old-world artisan-perfect, enduring – with none of the usual re-bar rusting through the surface. Even at its age, the bench is a graceful thing. People often come just to sit on this remainder of a bench. Jurgen can see this by the worn-away patches in the bit of grass at the foot of the bench – worn away by countless feet – probably feet of people sitting side-by-side, possibly holding hands. Beside the bench, is a big clump of unruly Rosa Rugosa – blooming deep red.

But Jurgen is desolated. Under his breath, bitterly to himself, he remarks, “Arty-farty.”

That’s when the fight starts. It is a fight for life! The swirling combat of tiny, flitting birds brushes his left pant leg. At his feet, three or four of the little brown piafs he’d seen across the street are in a struggle over a bit of bread – a faster-than-his-eye-can-follow struggle that carries into the street and back. Then, the power of a single crow flashes in, cuts the squabble short.

In the end, numbed by his grief and tears, Jurgen sits desolate. Even the old bench has no mercy. At first, his blurred eyes see nothing but the lively little bitty piafs pecking, chirping, gobbling a trail of crumbs someone has just dropped. The hungry piafs dart, but as they follow her trail of crumbs ahead of the tiny birds, Jurgen’s sore eyes spot again her diminishing figure, the sun glowing silvery in her whispy hair.