. From the Still Life Prop Cabinet: Part II . The…

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From the Still Life Prop Cabinet: Part II
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The French Connection: 1993

“Is this thing breakable?”
“Everything is breakable.”
“I mean, what’s it made of? Not that Plaster of Paris, certainly.”
The bookstall man, who spoke English, shrugged French as if to say, it’s a gargoyle—take it or leave it.
I took it.

Just up the quay, the Ile de la Cité sat barge-like in the Seine. On it, the blocky towers of Notre Dame Cathedral peaked in the slate-grey skies of October, peeking over the government buildings closer to the Pont Neuf. On those towers gawk many gargoyles, several of which, including the one I had just bought a model of, are immediately recognizable.

Notre Dam’s gargoyles don’t achieve the Nosferatuesque gothic dimensions of those climbing the cathedral in Cologne. No, they are different. Distinctly French–kind of sexy with a refined sense of humor and the macabre. The Cologne gargoyles are German. They go right for the throat.

Most of the time, I’m OK with my inability to read French, but not when I’m browsing bookstalls along the Seine. There is an entire culture to the paperback novel and philosophical tract in France. It would be great to take a cellophane-wrapped book from the stalls and a pack of Gauloise smokes to a café in the Sainte Germaine district and just …be myself. Instead, I cherish the mystery of it all on the sidewalk, which is kind of nice. I search out art books. I always find good ones, too–the Skira Rouault book and one on a Romanian painter named Petrescu were great finds. I take them to the café and look at the pictures.
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A poster in a lot of the cafes featured a black and white police photo of an Algerian man who had bled to death through his left nostril. My shaky French came up with two possible translations of what the poster said:

1) Inform on a drug pusher, because this is the kind of thing drug pushers do to people.

Or

2) Don’t inform on drug dealers, or we’ll see to it that you get this.

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These “full-bleed” mug shots of a dead junky may as well have been Chagall prints to the locals sipping espresso near the old port. The old Port in Marseille, that is, the city I used to visit each time I came to Paris. Marseille is, in fact, the first city that I visited in France.

This poster scene set a tone for the city. This is where Popeye Doyle traveled in pursuit of Frog One in The French Connection II. It has historically been a major conduit in the drug trade from Africa and the Middle East into Europe, and there is an associated crime and drug problem in the city. And there has been considerable social unrest–much of the population is comprised of poor or unemployed Algerian immigrants, many of whom are refugees from the civil war in Algeria. The industrial port was also the scene of serious labor conflict in the 1990s .

Marseille was designed by Barron Haussmann, the architect that laid out Paris, as a sop to the south from Napoleon III. It sits west of Nice on the Côte d’Azur. The old port, or Vieux Port, is Phoenician with a catacomb at its mouth. It is surrounded by cafes, hotels, and fish mongers selling marvelous seafood—urchins and octopi—from buckets and pans on tables lining the sidewalk. It is filled with small, crustily-rigged fishing craft and a few tour boats. The new port, not far to the west, is not unlike the Port of Newark. Much of the city, in fact, looks like a cross between the boulevards of Paris and the hardest part of Newark. From what I saw of Marseille, it is a weighty, beautiful, truly amazing place.

My visits were always as a guest of the Port Authority, which every two years hosted a two-day tour and conference catered to chemical companies they hoped would invest in the industrial zone. The PA fought a major uphill battle against Rotterdam. They were preponderantly outgunned by the Dutch because,… well, look at a map. These Marseille guys were scrappy, though. I liked them. In a sense, they are more “French” than Parisians, perhaps in the same way that heartland Midwesterners are said to be more representative of the population of the Unites States then New Yorkers. Same phenomenon, shall we say, different cultures. Fernandel is from Marseille. The people of Marseilles are rough and gregarious, loud and in love with seafood. Scrappy as hell, and very hospitable.

Getting there was interesting. I would fly into Paris at dawn with the New York crowd, sitting in a reserved seat and hearing announcements in French and English (the Port put us on Air France, which has its carpets vacuumed by the same folks that vacuum the Chamber of Commerce). Then, for the flight to Marseille, I would board something like a state-operated PEOPLExpress—free-for-all seating with passengers who seemed not to understand that mattresses are not legit carry-on items, and flight attendants tired of trying to convince them. All official communication was in French on domestic flights.

One time, the trip came a few days after small bombs went off in garbage cans around Paris. Algerian terrorists were suspected. When I got on the plane, I noticed a man in the back was crying. As the plane filled with people, he became quite hysterical. All of the flight attendants and, finally, the pilot circled around him as he flailed and cried in Arabic. Suddenly, a rear door opened and a 20-something soldier entered with a machine gun. Several people escorted the crying man to the front of the plane, then to the back, and out with the soldier. After a slight pause, during which the flight attendants shared a little nervous eye contact, the crew exploded into action, opening every overhead compartment and looking in magazine racks. Satisfied that there were no bombs onboard, they went back to telling people to put cigarettes out.

I wasn’t convinced about the “no bombs.” I called a flight attendant over and asked what was happening. She told me in English that the man didn’t have certain papers he needed and that he feared he’d be deported to Algeria upon landing in Marseille. Apparently he decided to get the process underway in Paris. I suggested, given the guy’s extraordinary effort to get off the plane before take-off, that maybe we should all get off immediately. And maybe the plane should be rolled to a safe zone and detonated with unattended luggage from the terminal. She smiled and held my hand as she assured me everything was safe–that they would get the man’s luggage from the cargo bay and we’d be off.

No sale. I sat tensely during take off, watching the little plumes of cigarette smoke rise like campfires at a Napoleonic Army bivouac. As the plane left the ground, some molding fell off the bottom of a seat in front of me. The guy in the seat picked it up and looked at it, shrugged, and tossed it in the aisle.

Soon, Bernard F. from the port greeted me at Marseille airport. He took me to my hotel, the one Doyle stayed at, right at the head end of the old port. Above us, the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde stood tall atop the steep hill of La Garde, which rises on the east side of the port. The conference itself took place on a cruise ship docked in the industrial port. During the conference, journalists sat in onboard theater rooms with translator earphones on our heads. Toupee-wearing local politicians speechified and fat cat industrialists made their pitches. At a lunch I sat at a table with a reporter form Japan and one from Spain. The Spanish guy didn’t say much. Finally, he interjected with a smiling salutation. He pointed at me and produced a pack of Marlboro cigarettes from his jacket pocket. Then he smiled, pointed at our companion and pulled out a Sony tape recorder. He gave us the thumbs up, and nearly collapsed laughing. The Japanese fellow and I looked at each other as if to say, “my, what a corny rube,” just as two men in dark suits trotted to our table and escorted the Spanish gentleman out the door—and into the limousine of the CEO of Elf Atochem, the most important person on the trip to get a personal interview with. Damn! I looked at my Japanese friend. “Yep,” we tought. “What a rube.” We continued interviewing each other.

On the last evening, the Port threw a lavish banquet in the old Bourse building. We sat at candlelit tables under big chandeliers in a train station-sized hall filled with ornate sculpted columns and lined with balconies and staircases. At the end of the evening, they cut the chandelier lights and true magic ensued. Our hosts, who had painted along the lines of all the architectural elements of the room with white day-glow paint, turned the space into an ethereal white light line drawing of the heavy stone room we had eaten in. Then, about 200 Corsican singers appeared along the balconies and sang traditional choral pieces. It’s very hard to describe the beauty of it all. I went back to my room overlooking the Port. By this time I was used to the constant two-toned European police sirens that never stop in Marseille—to that and to the constant grumbling buzz of small scooter engines. I watched The Lover, a film of a Marguerite Dumas novel, on the tiny TV in my room, looking forward to seeing Paris for the first time in the morning.

I returned several times to Marseille, exploring the city on my own and on junket buses. I was intrigued by the collection of naïve paintings by local artists at the Basilique depicting folkloric Marseille mishaps and visions of Jesus. Most had a nautical theme—storms at sea, ship wrecks,… that sort of thing. Some were very old. One of the newer ones depicted a beaming Jesus on the corner witnessing a scooter accident. Quite poignant. Outside, the neo-Byzantine basilica showed its bullet pocks from World War II.

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One day I set out to the art museum, an enormous Napoleonic palace with an elaborate garden and stair system. I was one of very few visitors inside–I remember only an older British couple. The tall, thin man was dressed formally, and the woman had a parasol. We chatted. It felt like time travel being there with them. The museum has several important paintings by Adolphe Monticelli, a Marseille painter of the late 19th century who heavily influenced Van Gogh and other impressionists and post impressionists. He was somewhat of a hermit, as was another local painter, Paul Cezanne. Not far from Marseille is Aix-en-Provence and Arles.

Folks from the Port once took us to a local vineyard where a friend of someone entertained us ceremoniously in an ancient, family-owned wine cellar. One night we went to an equestrian circus—elegant and truly engaging with little more happening than people in simple costumes riding horses. On another evening trip, we walked through Les Baux, a medieval citadel near bauxite mines close to St. Remy. Van Gogh spent some time in St. Remy.

I’ve traveled to other cities in France, notably Lyons and Toulouse. But for me, France is a matter of Paris and Marseille. The capital and the south. I have a painting in my living room called Paris et Provence featuring the gargoyle I bought in Paris and the sunflowers of the south—the flowers Van Gogh painted for Gauguin in Arles.

Marseille reminds me of a New Orleans on a larger scale, with a longer historical reach. The Port finally stopped hosting chemical industry journalists nearly ten years ago—the basic chemical industry was investing elsewhere, and the region’s hopes of attracting the “down-stream” fine chemical and drug companies fizzled. Bernard, a very smart man, convinced the Port to put gritty Marseille on the cruse ship circuit that includes Nice and Monaco. The idea was to ship folks in and buss them immediately to Aix and Arles. The plan worked. And I’m sure that a lot of the people on those boats choose to spend their time in Marseille.

Try the sea bass (loup de mer),
Vanx
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Photos:
Notre Dame Gargoyle
Breakable Gargoyle
Hackman in The French Connection II
Vieux Port de Marseilles
Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde
Monticelli Still Life with Seafood
Paris et Provence

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Still Life Cabinet Series Part I