Vincent and Marie
The Arc Triomphe stood immutable in the middle of “Lay Champs” as Vincent called it. His perversion of the pronunciation was deliberate and American despite that he was deeply French, born and raised in Avignon. His substantial family home had been built in 1859 in an unusual manner; it was constructed from pozzuolana, a mortar made from the volcanic ash from the Italian town of Pozzuoli that hardens under water. This was an appropriate constructional necessity since Vincent’s childhood home was surrounded by a moat.
The rambling three storied home was originally built for an English nobleman and his mistress and was the only domicile in the city surrounded by water. A sluice gate from a nearby canal directed water to a pond, planted with Brook Trout by the nobleman, which ultimately fed the moat, two feet at its deepest. The fish survived over the years but it was never clear to anyone how that was possible since the pond silted over in the hat of the summer. The gossip was that a mysterious person who worked only in the dead of night was responsible for the fact that the trout lived successfully over a century and a half.
No one understood the phenomenon but Vincent’s family appreciated the trout both aesthetically and gastronomically. Vincent’s sister Marie was the only one in his immediate family interested in fishing, actually from the age of three. Her first comprehensible word was “truite”. She had tried month after month to catch one of the elusive trout. Her favorite bait was cheese. She had tried Brie de Meau, Camembert, Bouchon de Sancerre, Pont l’Eveque, Chevre, Reblochon in no particular order. One day, when she was five, she spied a morsel of Saint Nectaire on the kitchen counter and squeezed it around the hook on her fishing stick (a piece of poplar with a line Vincent had made for her). Marie stood at her favorite spot on the west side of the pond, tossed in her cheese laden rig and within a minute had a massive bite. She yelled for Vincent, who at that moment was available since he was sitting in the back yard looking at a photography book. Within two minutes they landed a two pound male with an impressively hooked jaw.
“I finally hooked him,” Marie thought. She never fished again.
On the way up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, Vincent admitted that he was chuffed. Every year since he had turned twenty-one he had made an annual pilgrimage to the top of the tower constructed with two and one half million rivets, the one familiar sight in Paris he saw every morning from his tiny apartment in Montmartre. Each climb was faster than the one before because Vincent was constantly improving his physical condition, usually through esoteric martial arts (e.g. Krag Maga and more recently Sytema). Each time he reached the top of the Eiffel Tower he would pause, sometimes for upwards of an hour to absorb the scene: his fellow tourists incredulous that they actually had made it to the top level, views of the city in all directions and ultimately the self-assurance of his annual achievement. He had his camera and took advantage of his photographic largesse the City of Light always provided him.
Despite not being black Marie was the beauty editor for Jolie, an American magazine “devoted to helping women of color believe in their beauty’. She had also never been to America so it was strange that she found herself in the position she did. She had had a reputation for impartial and egalitarian beliefs and thus, on some level, her position with the magazine was not unexpected. Interestingly, she was able to quell any divisiveness amongst her staff and substitute peace for situations in which power politics seemed to disrupt the editorial room. It was unclear how she had developed this ability to mollify but it may have been partially due to the fact that she was a middle child. She also drank very little milk as a child and was constantly negotiating with her mother over her seemingly meager diet. She learned the art of compromise early on.
Vincent had grown into a man of very eclectic tastes. He was fascinated with swamp buggies even though he had never seen one in real life. At the age of twelve he happened on newsreel of a competition taking place in Naples, Florida on CNN France. He was captivated by a vehicle that had wheels but could move across the Everglades as an air boat.
He collected tie tacks even though he never wore ties.
He loved the thought of real maple syrup even though he had never tasted it and envisioned petites sucre moules might be even better. His grandmother had brought him a wooden mold from Quebec in which she had made maple sugar in the shape of a leaf for years.
“Assieds-toi, cheri, roucoula-t-elle a Vincent.” His grandmother had a soothing and mellow voice.
“Bien, grandmère,” said Vincent anticipating surprise. It was then that she reached into her Pierre Deux bag and pulled out a book, Marie the Maple Queen. She started to read it to Vincent in heavily accented English. That was how she practiced her acumen; she read it to him every time she visited.
After the second chapter, which talked about making maple syrup from maple sap, Vincent interrupted her. “Read that chapter and the one before.”
“Oh Vincent,” she cooed. “ça suffit.”
“Je le jure,” he said, “Promise I won’t ask again.” But she continued on.
Finally Vincent was interested in hoodoo, Afro-American folk magic. This appreciation did not develop until he turned twenty-one and began to listen to American blues. He even tried to find a black cat bone and a mojo hand in E-bay to no avail.
Marie, on the other hand, was very different from her brother. She spent most of her time looking for the perfect place for her to live. Most recently she had cased out Rue de la Tombe-Issoire and rue Chapon, in two disparate arrondissements. Each time she came to Paris she would visit l’Orangerie. She loved Monet’s “Water Lilies” and could never get enough of them.
Ultimately however indecision got the best of her and she ended up in her parent’s house in Avignon until the next mood struck her and she took the TGV to Paris in search of the perfect place to live.
