A Tale of Music and Movement
by Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Reporter
January 19-20th, On the Move, Northern France

So when I hear that I have been tried and condemned for crimes against Ireland, and that a team of shooters are on their way here to Amiens, I take a sudden interest in seeing the Ribo concert way down in Creil this weekend. I call Renaud, and he sets it up so that I meet Benedicte at the station, and she drives me and Jacques down south through the pummeling rain.

I am quiet and distracted the whole way.

At the toll station, we see the red car containing Fabien, Morgan, Elodie, and Marge. They snob us and rush off through the gate instead of following us to the Maison des Associations in downtown Creil where the fun takes place. Rightfully, they get lost and we don't, and we pull over and wait for them like a little scout vehicle, in constant portable phone contact.

Creil: A bedroom community 30 miles north of Paris. What they call a "dortoir", a dormitory here. Think somewhere in Northern New Jersey. In the old days, lots of heavy industry, lots of sucking down metal particles over a lathe until you kicked off at 40. Still many large factories by the train station, but back where we are, it's all recently-built apartment blocks. Must have had the hell bombed out of it in the war.

The Maison des Associations is a sort of art gallery/community center in the middle of a big parking lot. We ease on in the rear door and pay the entry fee: 7.62 Euros, about 7 bucks. 7.62 is the same caliber as the M-60 bullet scar on my right hand. Don't get impressed. I got burned by the brass, not the lead. I wasn't on the receiving end.

I give the man 7.60 and fish for more change. He says it's fine.

The first thing I notice is that they have a bar set up in the main ground-floor room. There is a guy in a jester's hat serving beer, aided by a guy in a straw cowboy hat. These two gentlemen in fools' hats are selling Maredsous and Leffe half-pints for 1-euro-50. My first aquaintaince with the 9 percent Maredsous was in Cricket's in Waco, Texas, where it allied with the forces of gravity to defeat my schemes. I respect it.

With my Maredsous in hand, I wander the art gallery in the next room. They have lots of works made from pieces of glass and rock hanging on the walls, and from temporary walls as well. The walkways between these fragile pieces are exceedingly narrow, and I am sure they will sell some to the clumsier patrons.

A blond-haired woman keeps dropping to one knee and photographing the room.

I see Renaud and his parents. They ask me what my plans are. I have none. Maybe I'll get a room in Creil, maybe I'll take the train to Paree. Renaud's mom looks at me:

"But there aren't any late trains, and by the time the concert ends, all the hotels will be closed. You will stay with us, and we will make a little place for you to sleep."

Sounds good. They don't live in Creil but somewhere nearby. Maredsous is good.

A red-headed bushy-haired man with sad eyes addresses us from the balcony overhead: "Messieurs-dames, the concert is beginning!"

We move on up the stairs into a big dark room with a stage, which is like a bar that doesn't stink. There is an opening act, whose name I am appalled to say that I forget, getting ready: a stocky short dark girl in a doo-rag, a man with a prematurely-gray crew-cut, a guitarist with a Last-of-the-Mohicans look to him, and a skinny-hippy percussionist.

They start out with Irish and Quebecois folk tunes, and they are good.

I look at the crowd. Mostly people from 20 to about 40, but a good number of small children too. There is a lady about 80 years old with her cane seated near me by the wall. She has a snub nose and hair that once was golden. Two other women are with her, identical in all but age, who must be her daughter and grand-daughter.

The first band gets the crowd warmed up, and then the crew-cut man asks everybody to get closer to the stage. The crowd, being French people cutting loose, surge forward and act like they are about to climb up with the band; much laughing and "whoa whoa whoa" all around.

Marge, of the Ribo Fan Club, laughs that goofy laugh of hers and says: "Merde! C'est la nuit des morts vivants!"

"Night of the Living Dead!" I snort out loud. The old lady with the cane jerks her head around at my American accent and beams a big happy smile at me. I wonder what she is remembering.

They play, and people scuffle around and dance. Accordians, guitars, kazoos, drums, found objects, a tiny toy piano, and a whistle made from a bicycle pump. They are having fun. Then it is time for supper downstairs, and despite people crying out for an encore, they say they have to stop, but maybe they'll do an acoustic set in the dining room.

In France, they don't yell "encore", even though that is a French word meaning "again". What they chant is "une autre, une autre", "another, another".

Downstairs I pay about 3 Euros for a filling supper of pasta, paté, and bread. All over Europe (even on the Channel Ferries,) I have noticed a reluctance to gouge customers. The food prices at a festival will often be the same as in a grocery store.

I eat at a table with Renaud's father and mother, his sister Coralie, her boyfriend Nicolas, and a couple of family friends. His father, a rounded man with long frizzy hair, says: "Walter! Bush! Pretzel!"

Now, there is a surprising thing I have learned about the French in my time here: they really tend to like America. In fact, if America were ever to be truly threatened, by, say, the Red Chinese allied with Space Aliens, I have no doubt that millions of French people would volunteer, and volunteer proudly, to come help us. They know who bled for them, and, all occasional snittiness aside, they will return the favor when it really matters.

That said, I have yet to find a single French person who doesn't almost piss themselves with laughter thinking of Bush choking on a pretzel in his easy-chair. He asks me if bin Laden likes pretzels now.

"I don't know—If I were bin Laden, I'd want Bush alive—Anybody who comes after him is probably smarter."

The man next to me with a long white pony-tail smiles. He looks to be the right age to have heaved some molotov coctails down in Paree back in the 60s.

Nicolas, Coralie's boyfriend, is part Italian. We start yacking "sta bene, grazie, bella ciao..."

The band does indeed set up in the dining room, and they play. People sing along to the first song, "La poule a Colin", which I recognize.

"Is that a Tri Yann song?" I ask.

"It's an old French song," says Dad.

Coralie perks up, "You like Tri Yann?"

"Oh yeah, just got an album of theirs, I like that old marching song, 'Pelot, uh, Pelot...'"

"Pelot d'Hennebont?"

"Yes!"

And we all pound the table with our fists as three or four of us sing it, dishes jumping and rattling:

"Ma chere maman je vous écris que nous sommes entrés dans Paris,
Ma chere maman je vous écris que nous sommes entrés dans Paris,
Que je sommes déja caporal, je s'rons bientot général
Je sommes déja caporal, je s'rons bientot général!"

"My dear mama, I'm writing you, we've come into Paris,
I'm already a corporal, soon I'll be a general,
In the battle we fought the enemies of the nation
All of them who came our way we busted heads and sent away
The king Louie he said to me "My enemies are in the town"
"In the town" is not my name, I'm called Pelot d'Hennebont!

A trumpet rings out upstairs, bull-fight style. It is time to go see Ribo.

Ribo has sevenpeople playing tonight: Laurent, singing with his hair spiked up and his eyes looking tired, a drummer, two guitarists, Marie on fiddle, Fred on trumpet, and a tall young kid right in front of me playing trombone with a lit cigarette in his slide-hand, curling smoke. High energy maniac jazz-rock.

The Ribo Fan Club is screaming out for the song "Leo" at every pause but never getting it.

I have seen other concerts in France besides this one, and I must say, French musicians certainly seem to enjoy themselves on stage much more than American ones. Same goes for the audience. There is a happy goofy vibe going around electrifying everybody, who are hopping and skipping and singing back the choruses. Little kids are dancing right in front of the stage, imitating the band. There is a white-haired man standing right in front of Laurent, listening, squinting a little to concentrate on the lyrics of "Mauvais Recrue", the tale of an inept Army private back in the days when they had the draft here. The lady with the cane is still in her chair, taking it all in.

Next come the head-liners, "Au debout sur le zinc", "Standing up on the bar", a string-heavy group of gentlemen in silk shirts. They are hitting on all cylinders, switching out singing between three different guys. The main attraction is their stand-up bass player, a shaggy bear who laughs gap-toothed the whole set, during their final encore he picks the giant instrument UP over his head with one hand and plays it with the other. By this time the crowd is a surging mob of people dancing in rings like some parody of a Greek wedding. I go slamming off some people as our circle dissolves into crack-the-whip, and then I raise up my empty plastic glass, slap it down to the floor, and stomp it with an "Opa!". Morgan gets the joke.

Three good groups, good beer, and good food. Not bad for a little community center somewhere in Jersey.

I wake up on a sofa-bed in a town called Crepy-en-Vallois, with turtles bubbling in an aquarium near my head. Coralie and Nicolas are in the kitchen, Renaud and Benedicte are still asleep. Maman says Papa caught the flu and won't be eating with us.

Nicolas is brewing coffee as fast as Coralie and I can drink it. When he drips it on the tablecloth, he wipes it up quickly and professionally.

There is a family tree on the wall with photos on it dating back to about the thirties. Other more recent photo-collages show the whole family, including cousins, decked out in make-up and finery for the Carnival at Dunkerque. In the photos Renaud and his two cousins, all big dark square-jawed guys, are dolled up as women and are showing off their legs and red panties.

There is some Arabic calligraphy on the walls, and two cats: Panty (Pon-tee) is sweet and cuddly; big bad Leo is not.

I plunk on my mandolin as Panty kneads dough on the soft case.

After everybody gets a chance to shower, it's lunch-time. Nicolas and Coralie went to get bread, and they are back with fresh crunchy-soft loaves. We sit at a long table with benches, with Maman in a chair at my end. We spread rabbit paté on the bread, as well as "bisquine", which is a sort of sausage made from duck meat wrapped around foie gras. I am almost full when Maman brings in the main course, a large steaming pot of "blanquette de veau", veal stew, it falls off the bone like pot roast. It also has tiny onions, mushrooms, and carrots. We eat pasta as well, and put fresh cream sauce and ground pepper over it all.

To drink, we have all the good cold water you want, and a slug of red wine.

Nicolas and Coralie both work in the bar and restaurant of the Hotel Clarion-St. James in Paris, and they entertain us with the usual waiter-stories that are repetitive and hilarious at the same time: of rich jet-set jackasses who pay top price for private dinners, then stagger out of the bathroom drunk and step with wet feet on the Armani jackets they dropped on the floor...

Then it is time for dessert.

That is "galette de roi", ie, King Cake, just like New Orleans. Maman gets the baby, or in this case, a little toy bottle of wine.

We must rush to the train station. Leaping out, handshakes, run through the tunnel under the tracks, then Coralie, Nicolas, and I are on the 12:30 train to Paree. There is someone else there, an Asian fellow named Manata that Coralie tries to warn me about, but there is no time, and we cram onto the train, which consists of only about three cars.

There is no place to sit. We walk through all the cars, then settle in the baggage compartment at the rear of the last car, an almost empty First Class carriage. We sit on our bags and on the little fold-down seats, hunched low like dwarves.

That is when Manata starts. He was once in the US and in Canada as well. He is fascinated with America. He never stops to take a breath. He smokes constantly in the small compartment. At every frequent stop, Coralie makes a production of waving the door to get fresh air. Manata keeps lighting them up and talking to me. He uses a good 10 minutes to explain the legislative, judicial, and weather systems of various US states to me, states that I have actually lived in. He just won't stop.

I look over at Coralie. "Coralie! How's it going!"

It was a cheap ploy, but it works for a few minutes. Manata turns to look at Coralie and Nicolas and unleashes his verbal bombardment on them. He starts prying into Nicolas' family background:

"Your last name, it's not French," says Manata.

"No."

"What are you?"

"What do you mean, what am I?"

"What is your origin?"

"I grew up in (some little village that I forget), then I got this job in Paris."

"You're really Portuguese, aren't you?"

"Alright," says Nicolas, shifting about, "NOW you're insulting me..."

"Well, what are you?"

"OK, I'm part Italian, I'm not 100 per cent French, ALRIGHT?"

I look over at him: "Don't worry, Nicolas, I'm not 100 per cent French either."

Nicolas and Coralie get wide-eyed then laugh. Manata swings around smiling and decides he wants to talk to me again.

I try to be polite, I really do, but he wears me out. Alexandre Dumas and the names of the individual musketeers. The region in France that they were from. The agricultural products of that region. I am reduced to leaning against the window, watching the scrubby winter foliage blur by, and grunting "oui...ah, oui." at random moments as I try not to drool.

We are pulling into the Orc-caverns of the Gare du Nord. Manata is still going in my left ear. "...and so that reminds me of my favorite quote by Cocteau: an Italian is just a happy Frenchman, and a Frenchman is just a sad Ital—"

"STOP!" screams Coralie. "Manata! You NEVER stop talking! I can't stand it anymore!"

We all part. I don't have to enact Plan Shake Loose From Manata, he's off about his own business.

About 15 minutes later, I emerge topside into the drizzle at the Cadet Metro stop, not far south of Pigalle, or Pig Alley as the GI's used to call it. Nobody's answering the phone at Richard and Vanessa's, where I left my guitar before Christmas. I leave a message from the phone booth— my portable phone has no more credit on it and will need to be recharged before I can call out on it again.

Trains back to Amiens are at 5, 7, and 9. It's 3 now. Couple of hours to kill before I have to do anything. I start walking down toward Hunchback Island on the Crick.

I haven't gone more than 2 minutes when I see the two men in front of the fruit store lifting the third man up against a car. He is flopping about almost lifeless. I am walking past, and it occurs to me that my phone will still call out on the emergency numbers, whether it has credit or not. I circle back around and stand by them.

"You want me to call the Pompiers?"

One man looks at me and my phone, and walks off leaving me holding the limp man. The limp man is late-fiftyish, nice material in his tweed jacket, tie, balding, what hair he has somewhat long. There is a ferret on a red fabric leash crawling all up and down his chest. The other man helping me prop him up against the parked car is a short bald brown man, apron, looks to be the store owner. He speaks with a heavy r-trilling accent that sounds Italian to me. There is a little blonde girl on the sidewalk holding a plastic shopping bag, staring at us with eyes huge behind her plastic-rimmed glasses.

Apron-man is talking to Limp-man: "What is the matterrr? You do what?"

"My heart", he gasps and falls forward onto me.

I pick him up: "Cough!" I say, but I mix up the words and say "Spit!" instead. Then I correct it: "Cough! Lift up your arms, cough!"

Apron-man looks at me, then turns to Limp-man: "Spit! Cough! Spit! Lift up you arrrm!"

Limp-man moans: "Just take me home..."

I dial 17, the number for the Pompiers. After an endless time, some hag gets on and says: "The new number is 15!" and slams down the phone. I try 15; It rings forever. Damn French lunch breaks. I hang up. The ferret is loose and running across the pavement. I stamp down on the trailing red leash and then Apron-man picks up the little animal and puts it back on Limp-man's jacket, where it stays.

Maybe it's not 17. I call 18 and get a message to stay on, because they have locked onto my phone and they can find me. On a portable. Luckily, a cop-sounding guy answers very soon.

"What is the problem."

"Man with a heart attack, Rue Bleue, aw hell, wait a second." I hand the little black phone to Apron-man, who starts shouting into it. "Yes! Numberrr thrrree RRRue Bloowoo, ninth arrrondissement!"

He nods once, twice, then gives me back my phone.

Limp-man is almost sobbing. He wants to go home. I look at Apron-man, we both shake our heads. I tell Limp-man: "Sorry, monsieur, I am doing what I have to do. You need help from somebody who knows medicine." He collapses forward, holding my jacket. I hold him up with one arm around his shoulders and put up the phone with my other hand.

Apron-man comes near, looks up at me. "You are German? English?"

"American."

He nods, points with his thumb to his chest, and says "Morocco."

He goes back in to tend his store. Limp-man is getting more coherent. I keep talking to him. He says something I don't catch. He repeats it: "I just don't want to be a bother to you."

"A bother?"

"I just don't want to be a bother to you."

"To be honest, I had a little free time today anyway with nothing to do, so now you helped me out with that."

He is just shaking his head looking miserable. He does seem a little stronger. I venture to reassure him.

"Maybe your heart is going to be OK. Do you feel better?"

"It doesn't matter. There are so many other things wrong..."

I see the ferret poking its little nose around from behind the man's lapel.

"Tell me about him", I say.

"Ah...Fifi, my little Fifi, he loves me, don't you Fifi...Fifi is my ferret... Fifi...."

He says to me: "Look, I know you are trying to help. I appreciate it. But you need to go before the cops get here. I don't want you to get in trouble too. Me, it's OK, but you don't need to get in trouble too." His eyes are large and dark, pleading.

The siren comes up the street, flashing blue light on top of an orange van. I wipe a little dirt off the side of his forehead, and then I hold him by both shoulders and look him in the eyes: "They are coming, monsieur. They are here. Composez-vous."

He straightens up a little and looks up at me again: "You are really American?"

"Yes."

"I cried for you. I saw it when it happened, and I cried for you."

The Pompiers park and jump out. Tall buzz-cut paratrooper-looking guys who probably see more combat, doing this paramedic job in this town, than most soldiers ever do. Three of them. They get up around us and look at the man. I stand next to him on his right.

"He said his heart hur—" I begin.

The leader doesn't hear me. He looks at the man: "You been drinking?" and then turns to me and gives me an icy smile: "C'est bien."

I am dismissed. Limp-man gives a feeble cuff to the ear of the tallest pompier, but he ignores it and keeps talking, going through a list of questions in his head. I duck into the little store.

Apron-man takes a second to look out onto the street, then seems satisfied. He puts his two fists together and says:

"USA!—Morocco!—Together!"

The last time I saw the group by the car, they were still talking. The youngest pompier was a kid who looked 17, blond buzz-cut, leaning forward to take up the weight of the huge medical pack he was hauling on his back, mouth slightly open as he concentrated on the conversation in front of him.

At the Gare du Nord, I mistakenly bought a first-class ticket back to Amiens instead of the usual second-class one. About 23 dollars instead of 15. Lucky break. When the train started loading, the crowd mobbed the blue-green second-class carriages. I was in the next first-class carriage behind them, sprawled in the nearly-empty car on the plush red seats. A conductor caught a man in my car without the proper ticket and moved him forward, staying behind to ensure no others crept back.

I thought I saw one of my office-mates who constantly commutes between Paris and Amiens walking forward to find a place in the car ahead, but I did not call out; she was not of the proper railroad social class and would not have been allowed to sit near me.

In the second-class car ahead, I could see them sitting on the floor on their bags.

The sight distressed Walter, the Count de Selmes d'Alabame, so he drew a perfumed lace handkerchief from his waistcoat and held it to his face, carefully not disturbing his artfully-placed mole, rouged cheeks, or powdered whig, and dreamed idle dreams as he left Paris for his country estates in Picardy.