April 21, 2024, Marseille.

Ivan de Monbrison

In the meantime, this morning the wind has finally died down, and no longer makes the large plane trees that line the main street of the town, called La Canebière, shiver. A little further up, by a large church called Les Réformés, although it is Catholic and not Protestant, some hackberry trees have been planted, with darker foliage and gnarlier trunks. Yesterday morning, like every Saturday, it was flea market day along this street, there were old dusty books, obsolete trinkets, old-fashioned paintings; and me, I wanted to find an old wooden pipe for myself, but those proposed being a little expensive,  I gave up. And yes! There’s no denying that I’m truly a man of our times…I smoke the pipe, I play chess by myself for no clear reason, I badly strum my guitar, and recently, I have started to read “The Tales of the Vampire”, translated from Sanskrit by Louis Renou, more than sixty years ago now. Here, there is no computer, no television, only scores of paintings vainly hanging on the walls, in rows, and outside, through the window, the imperturbable view of the old roofs of Marseille. I live on rue Mazagran, right next to the famous Thiers high school and the Gymnase theater. If ones goes down La Canebière, it’s easy to quickly get to the harbor and the sea. Sometimes, when the weather is bad, it also rains in the old attic where I live, so then I put a plastic bucket on the floor to catch the drops, and when I’m not present, there’s inevitably a puddle that grows there but which, fortunately, dries out quite quickly, due to the arid air of this southern land. The old attic, turned into an apartment, still a little rickety, is inhabited mainly by my past, by passing through women whom I’ve slept with there, or by visitors who might have visited me, from time to time. One day, I can imagine, I too will finally leave this place, having broken my pipe, as we say for passing away in French, in my turn, for good. Then, the old attic will remain vacant, with only canvases as sole guests, those which I have been clumsily painting on relentlessly, while waiting for death for so many years, with but shadows of my poor unconscious usually casted over them. They will stay all alone in here, probably waiting for  a last  late visit, forever postponed.

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