The Pillars of Hercules

“I live in Nizza, I know. I read newspapers. If you are a tourist one week, two weeks, is okay. But you maybe want to stay long, buy a house, talk to people—talk to women. Then they put a bomb in your car, burn your house, fight you.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Nazionalists, you know? And fanatics.”

“The Corsicans seem friendly,” I said, though I had hardly done more than exchange pleasantries. Actually they seemed not friendly but bluff, offhand, taciturn, rough and ready, with weather-beaten faces and horny hands, men and women alike.

“Maybe they are more friendly than the French. I hate the French.”

There is a point in every conversation with a stranger when you decide whether to end it or else press on. As soon as he said, “I hate the French,” I realized he was reckless and probably good for a laugh.

“Why do you hate the French?”

“Because they hate everybody. You have seen Nizza? You see all the peoples has dogs? Ha! Is the reason!”

“Reason for what?”

“They has no friends, so they has dogs.”

“The French prefer dogs to people?”

“Is the truth. Even me, when I stop traveling I buy a dog, a caniche, how you say it?”

“Poodle.”

“Everyone in the Côte d’Azur has a poodle.”

“But you can’t sleep with a dog,” I said.

“The dog is your best friend always.”

“Better than people?”

“Yes, I think.”

He said he had just arrived from Ajaccio and before that had traveled through Sardinia, Sicily and Croatia. This was helpful, since I was headed in the direction he had just come from. I asked him what Croatia was like. “No fighting in Zagreb,” he said. He did not know about the Croatian coast, which was my destination. But he had had no visa problems, and he had traveled most of the way by train.

“What sort of work do you do?” I asked.

“No work. Just trains and going, going, going.”

In life, it is inevitable that you meet someone just like yourself. What a shock that your double is not very nice, and seems selfish and judgmental and frivolous and illogical.

I questioned him closely, of course, but I was merely verifying his answers; I was not surprised. His life was the same as mine. Wake up in the morning, walk somewhere. Drink a coffee, take a train, look out the window. Talk to strangers, read the paper, read a book, then scribble-scribble. Now and then passing a phone booth, punch in numbers—anywhere—and get a clear line to Honolulu and some love and reassurance. Then leave the solitude of the confessional phone booth and enter France again, back in Juan-les-Pins, the click of boules, the salt-sting of wind and waves at Calvi. Is this a life?

“You write things down?” I said.

I suspected from his eccentricity alone that he was a writer.

“No. Just looking. Just going.”

“It’s expensive.”

“Trains are cheap.”

“Eating is expensive.” The meal I had just eaten in Calvi had cost fifty dollars.

“I eat sandwiches.”

“What about Corsican food?”

“What is Corsican food? It is French food! They have no spécialité, but I buy things to eat in the boulangerie.”

“What about Nizza?” I said. I was thinking: What does this guy do for money? He wasn’t more than thirty-five or so—and he was dressed fairly well, from what I could see. “Nizza is expensive.”

“I spend one thousand U.S. dollars a month. Six hundred for room, the rest for food.”

“Isn’t it boring, not working?”

“Sometimes I buy something, sell something, get money.”

That was as specific as he got, regarding his employment.

“Then I take a train. But here I am careful. You are not careful. Ha-ha! Is still a nice place. Corse has the bombs. Amsterdam has the drugs. San Francisco has the homosexuals.”

“I don’t see the connection. Do you hate homosexuals too?”

I had just finished the Francis Bacon biography and was indignant on Bacon’s behalf.

“I never went to America,” he said, being evasive. “Is too many people. And I like Nizza. But here in Corse”—now he was becoming agitated—“these people cannot get food if the French don’t give them money. They want freedom but they has no food.”

“You’re not French, are you?”

“No. Israel.”

“Oh, God.”

“You don’t like Israel?”

I laughed. “I was thinking of the four billion dollars a year America gives to Israel, so the Israelis can eat.”

“We don’t need the money,” he shrieked. “They give it, so we spend it. They are stupid to give it.”

“I agree. But where would Israel be if they didn’t get the money?”

“No problem. Israel don’t need it.”

“Maybe we should give the money to Corsica.”

“Planes! Guns! Israel buys planes for millions. Some politicians steal it. Spend it. Throw it away. Israel is not stupid like America!”

“And yet you live in France.”

“I hate the Arabs in Israel, the way they make trouble,” he said. “There are thirty thousand Jewish in Nizza. Synagogues. Everything. I feel it is like home, all these Jewish. So I am happy there.”

“But you travel all the time.”

“All the time,” he said.

“In the Mediterranean.”

“Only in the Mediterranean,” he said.