Satori in Paris & Pic Read online

  I teach her Christianity.

  We neck a little later and she goes home to her parents. She wants me to take her to the beach at Tunis, I’m wondering if I shall be stabbed by Arabs jealous on the Bikini beach and that week Boumedienne deposed and dis-posed of Ben Bella and that woulda been a fine kettle of fish, and also I didnt have the money now and I wonder why she wanted that:’ I’ve been told where to get off on the beaches of Morocco.

  I just dont know.

  Methinks women love me and then they realize I’m drunk for all the world and this makes them realize I cant concentrate on them alone, for long, makes them jealous, and I’m a fool in Love With God. Yes.

  Besides, lechery’s not my meat and makes me blush:– depends on the Lady. She was not my style. The French blonde was, but too young for me.

  In times to come I’ll be known as the fool who rode outa Mongolia on a pony: Genghiz Khan, or the Mongolian Idiot, one. Well I’m not an idiot, and I like ladies, and I’m polite, but impolitic, like Ippolit my cousin from Russia. An old hitch hiker in San Francisco, called Joe Ihnat, announced that mine was an ancient Russian name meaning “Love.” Kerouac. I said “Then they went to Scotland?”

  “Yes, then Ireland, then Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany, then you know the rest.”

  “Rooshian?”

  “Means Love.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  —Oh, and then I realized, “of course, outa Mongolia and the Khans, and before that, Eskimos of Canada and Siberia. All goes back around the world, not to mention Perish-the-Thought Persia.” (Aryans).

  Anyhow me and the Breton Goulet went to an evil bar where a hundred assorted Parisians were eagerly listening to a big argument between a white man and a black man. I got outa there quick and left him to his own devices, met him back at La Gentilhommière, some fight musta spilled out, or, not, I wasnt there.

  Paris is a tough town.

  9.

  THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS, HOW CAN YOU BE AN Aryan when you’re an Eskimo or a Mongol? That old Joe Ihnat was full of little brown turds, unless he means Russia. Old Joe Tolstoy we shoulda picked up.

  Why keep talking about such things? Because my grammar school teacher was Miss Dineen, who is now Sister Mary of St. James in New Mexico (James was a son of Mary, like Jude), and she wrote: “Jack and his sister Carolyn (Ti Nin) I remember well as friendly, cooperative children with unusual charm. We were told that their folks came from France, and that the name was de Kerouac. I always felt that they had the dignity and refinement of aristocracy.”

  I mention this to show that there can be such a thing as manners.

  My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.

  I’m a Wretch.

  But I love love.

  (Strange Chapter)

  10.

  NOT ONLY THAT BUT YOU CANT GET A NIGHT’S sleep in France, they’re so lousy and noisy at 8 A.M. screaming over fresh bread it would make Abomination weep. Buy that. Their strong hot coffee and croissants and crackling French bread and Breton butter, Gad, where’s my Alsatian beer?

  While looking for the library, incidentally, a gendarme in the Place de la Concorde told me that Rue de Richelieu (street of the National Library) was thataway, pointing, and because he was an officer I was afraid to say “What? . . NO!” because I knew it was in the opposite direction somewhere—Here he is some kind of sergeant or other who certainly oughta know the streets of Paris giving an American tourist a bum steer. (Or did he believe I was a wise-guy Frenchman pulling his leg? since my French is French)—But no, he points in the direction of one of de Gaulle’s security buildings and sends me there maybe thinking “That’s the National Library alright, ha ha ha” (“maybe they’ll shoot down that Quebec rat”)—Who knows? Any Parisian middle-aged gendarme oughta know where Rue de Richelieu is—But thinking he may be right and I’d made a mistake studying the Paris map back home I do go in the direction he points, afraid to go any other, and go down the upper spate of Champs-Elysées then cut across the damp green park and across Rue Gabriel to the back of an important government building of some kind where suddenly I see a sentry box and out of it steps a guard with bayonet in full Republican Guard regalia (like Napoleon with a cockatoo hat) and he snaps to attention and holds up his bayonet at Present Arms but it’s not for me really, it’s for a sudden black limousine full of bodyguards and guys in black suits who receive a salute from the other sentry men and zip on by—I stroll past the sentry bayonet and take out my plastic Camel cigarette container to light a butt—Immediately two strolling gendarmes are passing me in the opposite direction watching every move I make—It turns out I’m only lighting a butt but how can they tell? plastic and all that—And that is the marvelous tight security around big old de Gaulle’s very palace which is a few blocks away.

  I go down to the corner bar to have a cognac alone at a cool table by the open door.

  The bartender in there is very polite and tells me exactly how to get to the library: right down St.-Honoré then across la Place de la Concorde and then Rue Rivoli right at the Louvre and left on Richelieu to the Library dingblast it.

  So how can an American tourist who doesnt speak French get around at all? Let alone me?

  To know the name of the street of the sentry box itself I’d have to order a map from the C.I.A.

  11.

  A STRANGE SEVERE PAROCHIAL-STYLE LIBRARY, LA Bibliothèque Nationale on rue de Richelieu, with thousands of scholars and millions of books and strange assistant librarians with Zen Master brooms (really French aprons) who admire good handwriting more than anything in a scholar or writer—Here, you feel like an American genius who escaped the rules of Le Lycée. (French High School).

  All I wanted was: Histoire généalogique de plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne, enrichie des armes et blasons d’icelles … etc. by Fr. Augustin Du Paz, Paris, N.Buon, 1620, Folio Lm2 23 et Rés. Lm 23.

  Think I got it? Not on your—

  And also I wanted:– Pêre Anselme de Sainte Marie, (né Pierre de Guibours), his Histoire de la maison royale de France, des puirs, grands officiers de la couronne et de la maison du roy et des anciens barons du royaume, R.P. Anselme, Paris, E. Loyson 1674, Lm3 397, (History of the royal house of France, and of also, the great officers of the crown and of the house of the king and of the ancient barons of the kingdom), all of which I had to write down neatly as I could on the call-cards and the old aproned fella told the old lady librarian “It’s well written” (meaning the legibility of the handwriting). Of course they all smelled the liquor on me and thought I was a nut but on seeing I knew what and how to ask for certain books they all went in back to huge dusty files and shelves as high as the roof and must’ve drawn up ladders high enough to make Finnegan fall again with an even bigger noise than the one in Finnegans Wake, this one being the noise of the name, the actual name the Indian Buddhists gave to the Tathagata or passer-through of the Aeon Priyadavsana more than Incalculable Aeons ago :–Here we go, Finn:–

  GALADHARAGARGITAGHOSHASUSVARA-NAKSHATRARAGASANKUSUMITABHIGNA.

  Now I mention this to show, that if I didnt know libraries, and specifically the greatest library in the world, the New York Public Library where I among a thousand other things actually copied down this long Sanskrit name exactly as it’s spelled, then why should I be regarded with suspicion in the Paris Library? Of course I’m not young any more and “smell of liquor” and even talk to interesting Jewish scholars in the library there (one Éli Flamand copying down notes for a history of Renaissance art and who kindly assisted me’s much’s he could), still I dont know, it seemed they really thought I was nuts when they saw what I asked for, which I copied from their incorrect and incomplete files, not fully what I showed you above about Pêre Anselme as written in the completely correct files of London, as I found later where the national records were not destroyed by fire, saw what I asked for, which did not conform to the actual titles of th
e old books they had in the back, and when they saw my name Kerouac but with a “Jack” in front of it, as tho I were a Johann Maria Philipp Frimont von Palota suddenly traveling from Staten Island to the Vienna library and signing my name on the call-cards Johnny Pelota and asking for Hergott’s Genealogia augustae gentis Habsburgicae (incomplete title) and my name not spelled “Palota,” as it should, just as my real name should be spelled “Kerouack,” but both old Johnny and me’ve been thru so many centuries of genealogical wars and crests and cockatoos and gules and jousts against Fitzwilliams, agh—

  It doesnt matter.

  And besides it’s all too long ago and worthless unless you can find the actual family monuments in fields, like with me I go claim the bloody dolmens of Carnac? Or I go and claim the Cornish language which is called Kernuak? Or some little old cliff-castle at Kenedjack in Cornwall or one of the “hundreds” called Kerrier in Cornwall? Or Cornouialles itself outside Quimper and Keroual? (Brittany thar).

  Well anyway I was trying to find things out about my old family, I was the first Lebris de Kérouack ever to go back to France in 210 years to find out and I was planning to go to Brittany and Cornwall England next (land of Tristan and King Mark) and later I was gonna hit Ireland and find Isolde and like Peter Sellers get banged in the mug in a Dublin pub.

  Ridiculous, but I was so happy on cognac I was going to try.

  The whole library groaned with the accumulated debris of centuries of recorded folly, as tho you had to record folly in the Old or the New World anyhow, like my closet with its incredible debris of cluttered old letters by the thousands, books, dust, magazines, childhood boxscores, the likes of which when I woke up the other night from a pure sleep, made me groan to think this is what I was doing with my waking hours: burdening myself with junk neither I nor anybody else should really want or will ever remember in Heaven.

  Anyway, an example of my troubles at the library. They didnt bring me those books. On opening them I think they would have cracked apart. What I really shoulda done is say to that head librarian:– “I’m gonna put you in a horseshoe and give you to a horse to wear in the Battle of Chickamauga.”

  12.

  MEANWHILE I KEPT ASKING EVERYBODY IN PARIS “Where’s Pascal buried? Where’s Balzac’s cemetery?” Somebody finally told me Pascal must certainly be buried out of town at Port Royal near his pious sister, Jansenists, and as for Balzac’s cemetery I didnt wanta go to no cemetery at midnight (Pere Lachaise) and anyway as we were blasting along in a wild taxi ride at 3 A.M. near Montparnasse they yelled “There’s your Balzac! His statue on the square!”

  “Stop the cab!” and I got out, swept off me hat in sweeping bow, saw the statue vaguely gray in the drunken misting streets, and that was that. And how could I find my way to Port Royal if I could hardly find my way back to my hotel?

  And besides they’re not there at all, only their bodies.

  13.

  PARIS IS A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN REALLY WALK around at night and find what you dont want, O Pascal.

  Trying to make my way to the Opera a hundred cars came charging around a blind curve-corner and like all the other pedestrians I waited to let them pass and then they all started across but I waited a few seconds looking the other charging cars over, all coming from six directions—Then I stepped off the curb and a car came around that curve all alone like the chaser running last in a Monaco race and right at me—I stepped back just in time—At the wheel a Frenchman completely convinced that no one else has a right to live or get to his mistress as fast as he does—As a New Yorker I run to dodge the free zipping roaring traffic of Paris but Parisians just stand and then stroll and leave it to the driver—And by God it works, I saw dozens of cars screech to a stop from 70 M.P.H. to let some stroller have his way!

  I was going to the Opera also to eat in any restaurant that looked nice, it was one of my sober evenings dedicated to solitary studious walks, but O what grim rainy Gothic buildings and me walking well in the middle of those wide sidewalks so’s to avoid dark doorways—What vistas of Nowhere City Night and hats and umbrellas—I couldn’t even buy a newspaper—Thousands of people were coming out of some performance somewhere—I went to a crowded restaurant on Boulevard des Italiens and sat way at the end of the bar by myself on a high stool and watched, wet and helpless, as waiters mashed up raw hamburg with Worcestershire sauce and other things and other waiters rushed by holding up steaming trays of good food—The one sympathetic counterman brought menu and Alsatian beer I ordered and I told him to wait awhile—He didnt understand that, drinking without eating at once, because he is partner to the secret of charming French eaters:– they rush at the very beginning with hors d’oeuvres and bread, and then plunge into their entrees (this is practically always before even a slug of wine) and then they slow down and start lingering, now the wine to wash the mouth, now comes the talk, and now the second half of the meal, wine, dessert and coffee, something I cannae do.

  In any case I’m drinking my second beer and reading the menu and notice an American guy is sitting five stools away but he is so mean looking in his absolute disgust with Paris I’m afraid to say “Hey, you American?”—He’s come to Paris expecting he woulda wound up under a cherry tree in blossom in the sun with pretty girls on his lap and people dancing around him, instead he’s been wandering the rainy streets alone in all that jargon, doesnt even know where the whore district is, or Notre Dame, or some small cafe they told him about back in Glennon’s bar on Third Avenue, nothing—When he pays for his sandwich he literally throws the money on the counter “You wouldnt help me figure what the real price is anyway, and besides shove it up your you-know-what I’m going back to my old mine nets in Norfolk and get drunk with Bill Eversole in the bookie joint and all the other things you dumb frogs dont know about,” and stalks out in poor misunderstood raincoat and disillusioned rubbers—

  Then in come two American schoolteachers of Iowa, sisters on a big trip to Paris, they’ve apparently got a hotel room round the corner and aint left it except to ride the sightseeing buses which pick em up at the door, but they know this nearest restaurant and have just come down to buy a couple of oranges for tomorrow morning because the only oranges in France are apparently Valencias imported from Spain and too expensive for anything so avid as quick simple break of fast. So to my amazement I hear the first clear bell tones of American speech in a week:” “You got some oranges here?”

  “Pardon?”—the counterman.

  “There they are in that glass case,” says the other gal.

  “Okay—see?” pointing, “two oranges,” and showing two fingers, and the counterman takes out the two oranges and puts em in a bag and says crisply thru his throat with those Arabic Parisian “r’s”:–

  “Trois francs cinquante”. In other words, 35¢ an orange but the old gals dont care what it costs and besides they dont understand what he’s said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Alright, I’ll hold out my palm and take your kwok-kowk-kwark out of it, all we want’s the oranges” and the two ladies burst into peals of screaming laughter like on the porch and the cat politely removes three francs fifty centimes from her hand, leaving the change, and they walk out lucky they’re not alone like that American guy—

  I ask my counterman what’s real good and he says Alsatian Choucroute which he brings—It’s just hotdogs, potatos and sauerkraut, but such hotdogs as chew like butter and have a flavor delicate as the scent of wine, butter and garlic all cooking together and floating out a cafe kitchen door—The sauerkraut no better’n Pennsylvania, potatos we got from Maine to San Jose, but O yes I forgot:–with it all, on top, is a weird soft strip of bacon which is really like ham and is the best bite of all.

  I had come to France to do nothing but walk and eat and this was my first meal and my last, ten days.

  But in referring back to what I said to Pascal, as I was leaving this restaurant (paid 24 francs, or almost $5 for this simple platter) I
heard a howling in the rainy boulevard—A maniacal Algerian had gone mad and was shouting at everyone and everything and was holding something I couldnt see, very small knife or object or pointed ring or something—I had to stop in the door—People hurried by scared—I didn’t want to be seen by him hurrying away—The waiters came out and watched with me—He approached us stabbing outdoor wicker chairs as he came—The headwaiter and I looked calmly into each other’s eyes as tho to say “Are we together?”—But my counterman began talking to the mad Arab, who was actually light haired and probably half French half Algerian, and it became some sort of conversation and I walked around and went home in a now-driving rain, had to hail a cab.

  Romantic raincoats.

  14.

  IN MY ROOM I LOOKED AT MY SUITCASE SO CLEVERLY packed for this big trip the idea of which began all the previous winter in Florida reading Voltaire, Chateaubriand, de Montherlant (whose latest book was even now displayed in the shop-windows of Paris, “The Man Who Travels Alone is a Devil”)—Studying maps, planning to walk all over, eat, find my ancestors’ home town in the Library and then go to Brittany where it was and where the sea undoubtedly washed the rocks—My plan being, after five days in Paris, go to that inn on the sea in Finistère and go out at midnight in raincoat, rain hat, with notebook and pencil and with large plastic bag to write inside of, i.e., stick hand, pencil and notebook into bag, and write dry, while rain falls on rest of me, write the sounds of the sea, part two of poem “Sea” to be entitled: “SEA, Part Two, the Sounds of the Atlantic at X, Brittany,” either at outside of Carnac, or Concarneau, or Pointe de Penmarch, or Douardenez, or Plouzaimedeau, or Brest, or St. Malo—There in my suitcase, the plastic bag, the two pencils, the extra leads, the notebook, the scarf, the sweater, the raincoat in the closet, and the warm shoes—