From Nice to Paris with Terrorists

By Eliot Gabriel Graham

The man on the platform was eating his sandwich greedily. A few teeth in both his upper and lower jaw missing. Muscled out, probably, by his bulging, pugilistic hatch. I thought he behaved like a bug. I don't know why. He was all instinct, it seemed. No pre-frontal action behind that hard forehead. Just a tightly bound knot of nerves, chords and whatever was in that sandwich. Every sloshy bite of which was splashed down with a fat gash of Coca-Cola—the 1 litre kind sold only in Europe. I couldn't make out even a nano-second pause in his actions, between bites, sips, swallows, coughs. It was autumn cold and I was nervous. Not American nervous, you know, like nervous for my life and the lives of others from a very real and very immediate threat of wounds and death at the hand of shiny heavy metals. The European kind of nervous. The sketch that stems from a sort of perceived threat of inconvenience. Nothing serious. Nothing universal. Not yet, at least.

He took up most of the bench. His lady friend sat meekly at the extreme edge of it, calves and all three upstage gluteus strung tightly so that her clawed feet could clench the ground, like a bird and a branch. Her niqab betrayed a bit of uneasiness, quivering. Or maybe it was the breeze. It was cold, for sure. Late October in Nice, and I was on my way back to the even colder North of France. Armentieres, to be exact. “Poor but proud” they say up there, with crusty grins and Bobcat Goldthwait accents, “Pauvre mais fiere!”

There’s: a Dude monstering sandwich, his trembling mistress, my terrible French, Gendarmes everywhere, and now a group of terrorists! Three of them. They were speaking Arabic, unquestionably. They appeared to be in their early twenties, the identikit trio: a tall, skinny one; another slightly shorter though stockier; and the one with the average height, but the most sway and say—he spoke more than the others, and the others listened to him harder. Dark skin and rangy and with a chaffing presence. They stood near the edge of the platform smoking big cigarettes, hiccupping huge bubbles of blue smoke, between glottal stops and cracks, pops and chokes of dialect they called their own. The shortest one scanning in all directions like a spun-out owl. From what I could see, each only had a backpack with them on or near their feet. First sketch.

My rail pass wasn't mine. That is, my puny name wasn’t printed on it. I met a brother/sister pair of Virginian travelers at a hostel in Paris the other night, the Peace and Love Hostel to be precise. Their last and my first night and, after a shit match of darts, dude traded me a pint of beer for an unlimited rail pass, valid for two more weeks. Lit with the romance of hitchhiking, l’autostop, having an insurance plan was assuring, and illicit and therefore exciting. Though I wasn't quite sure how to use the fucking thing, and surely they'd ask to see identification that corroborated with my name, right? It's a really cheap-looking piece of paper, the pass, something that could be replicated quite easily, I surmised. As teenagers our fugazi Weehawken Community College IDs were more skillfully crafted. And I had to use this cheap fucking thing, and soon. On top of that stress, I gotta keep my eye on these three fuckers? Second sketch. North was a distance, not a direction.

Nice is a dirty town, by the by. My first impression was that of a dirty Long Beach. The one in California. Or, just, Long Beach, really, LBC of the blue-line boulevard sort. The Mediterranean of all that. No waves similar to that coastal stretch of Southern California. I wasn't impressed by Nice, and no shiny kaleidoscope of images flash through the mind about my short stay here. Just the beach, the cliff-grappling bus ride from Cannes, and this balls-hard train platform. Nice ain't, as it were.

I have to be back at work soon, couple days, back to Lycée Paul Hazard for flunky work, as my former boss retorted in a revealing reaction to the description of what I would be doing in France. “Oh, so you're gonna be a flunky!” The VP in charge of research at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, Jerry, didn’t get it. I still don't think he does. I didn't realize it was an awesome job at the time, frankly. The work was cold and banal, spreadsheets, meetings and office shits. It's only through the response of others to the question of what I was doing before moving to France that forced me to believe that it was noteworthy. “Ehh, you wur do-ing wat een Lahs Anzhules, ehh, beforr now-a”? The Professor in charge of babysitting me asked at lunch during the first week. “Ohhh,’ she responded, visibly impressed. The “Big Bang Theory” sitcom did and is doing quite well, in fact. Jerry and I have lunch whenever I’m back in town. No mention of flunky.

Teaching is harder, though, even if I’m only an assistant for the time being. That is, of course, if I make it back up North, through these next few paragraphs, ba-bam to the end of this fucking story! Maybe I’ll get to the teaching stuff later. Full attention to the present required. We get on the train, uniforms let us on. First things first: I don’t want to get on the train, but I have to. If the thing blows up half way through the trip, that’s the future’s problem, I reason, or Newton’s—whichever you find cleverer. For now it’s just cool me—I have a right to be on this train; I have the same right as everyone one else, even the terrorists; my ticket is real and valid. Here we go. Green as a cucumber. Up over a couple of janky steps and the conductor asks for my billet. Twitchy as a cricket, I hand it over. He doesn’t request ID, amazingly. But he does inform me the train is fully booked, save for a sleeper bed, for an extra charge. All well and good, I sigh. I produce my bank card to pay for the upgrade. Then and very then we’re floated up by a foul group of bobo’s. Smoking, chortling, fingering their nappy heads while they actively ignore all else besides. Conductor immediately forgets about me and charges towards his duty. Dipped and sipped they accept the challenge, out of feeling, out of fear, out of self-expression and existential delight. What else is there to do? Skinny bottles of cola and crisps, campsite-like, and their them—in whichever manner the moment dictates and designs. “On a le droit de manger, voyager…de vivre!” One of them throated this repeatedly to the uniform, with increasing intensity. The French seem to have a much higher decibel tolerance for verbal abuse. I have yet to see a Frenchman interrupt a verbal abuser with a fist; Americans don’t have that kind of patience or self-respect, or many other things. The icy-blue hot torch was aimed away from me for a few moments, and oh, merci for that, yo. Merci. Slurping up the moment caused ease and fun in my muscles and tone, toenails relaxing, hair soft-settling back on my ears, the propane in my eyes dissipating. Improvement in posture, station no doubt. Uniform could cull no concession from the natty knot of funky monkeys. “Putain,” he grinned as he racked me back into focus. “Carte Bancaire?” I was at a wonderful loss as to the balance of my funds… Approved. But not before smoking as many cigarettes as my tender lips and lungs and face could countenance. I did: I smoked at least four fags before heading to my sleeping quarters—you could do that on trains in France, between the cars, back then. One of the Three smoked. Fuuuuuk. I find myself shoulders with him. His bag was still at his feet. They all had valid tickets, him included. “Irak,” he jowled out when one of the bobo’s asked him where he was from. “Seriyou…” Bobo carried on, perking up with concern. “T’a quoi, une bombe?”

Dark as bitumen pitch in the room. Two bunks. Mine was the upper left, number four. Grinding snores from hard-core mammals regulated the atmosphere of the small room. Insomniac I felt like. I lay there, myself laying there, with knuckle thoughts of what has transpired, train clipping and gently swaying. Excellent opportunity to review how I got here and there, I reckon.

Pleased to have had the opportunity to come here, to be here. Worked hard to be here, to come here. Moon dwellers and followers beware: the nest will never forget, will never forgive me for getting out of there. It was always my goal to get outta there, either inchoate, subconscious, subcutaneous, subterfuge, submission, subterranean, subsistence, sustenance, substance, or fuck luck: who knows why I had to; I didn’t know I knew, but I knew I had to. The flyer was hanging on the classroom wall, so I looked up, looked it up. I followed up just before I graduated but it was too late for that year. Next year I would, and did. Paperwork was submitted and the all the embassy correspondent could say in response to an application status request was, “don’t stress.” I kept it up though, just where I like it, nice and comfortably high. “Does that mean, ‘yes,’ it’s on its way?”—my visa paperwork? Only Kafka characters believe in waiting for what’s next, and prefer it that way. Kafka people. People I grew up with, family people. Those who are unwilling to search for fate’s antonym. Altitude cruising, at, or above, or through, whichever feels forward. Or below; let’s not be too silly about this. No one knew what I was up to—my coworkers, family, friends; I was in heavy contact with all of those people then. Much more so than now. It all worked out, in fact. The whole big messy plan. I finished up Uni in Colorado Springs, looked for a job, nothing poppin’. (Made it to a third interview at the History of Dinosaur Museum in Woodland Park, though.) Hurricane Katrina hit so I pulled up stakes and got on down to Houston to help out. And then to Los Angeles to be an actor. That fucking sucked. Copped out and took a desk job. Just for the meanwhile. I mailed off my teaching assistant application at the post office right next to Television City, immediately following my second interview.

Floccinaucinihilipilification, Jerry and I used to joke. Good word and a good boss; I miss working for that dude, actually. I left the left coast never to return, I thought. John Lee Anderson’s biography of Che was quite influential to me. Still is, really, as I don’t feel, like others do, apparently, that affinity for the notion of “home.” I once gave my mom a card that read, “Home is where your mom is.” But I haven’t felt that way in a really long time. I’m not quite sure I felt that way when I gave her the card. That gins up a problematique. What’s the essence of an action? Meaning: the threshold by which and through we commit to a discrete volunteer movement? Meaning: how much does one have to agree with something to actually do it? Cognitive dissonance? Does that matter? Is meaning a prerequisite for value, in an action? Probably not. But it stirs an uneasiness in me, the lack of meaningful sincerity. It makes me feel as if I’m lying, untruthful, delaying the inevitable exhibition of truth, and thus wasting time. Life time, the dearest value imaginable. Right? There’s no way I could have articulated that much back then. I can barely get it across the table now. But that’s why I traveled. That’s why I left home, took a flunky job in the crappiest part of France; that’s why I set out to hitchhike around the L’Octagone, travel with an illicit pass and get on a train with a trio of terrorists. So far so good.

High stress, norepinephrine-stress, paradoxically, leads to fast asleep, conked-out.

I could hear them whispering. Something was going on, my bunk mates were talking. Still jet black in the room, but I woke up suddenly, feeling well-tuned and rested. Primordial, murmurs, actually, just long, slow and soft sound waves politely requesting the molecules around them to clear a small meandering path that stretched asymptotically to my left, exposed ear. It was a comforting sound, like falling asleep with good television on. I forgot where I was during this lullaby. No windows in the car but I sensed the French landscape flowing past our train, the vineyard-drunk firmament, a blueberry rich, saturated membrane, punctured and punctuated with Starry Night stars. This feels good. Rolling with the soft hills, wearing my shoes in bed. The door softly opens, letting starlight spill onto the floor like glitter for a few soft ticks. It’s a different uniform this time, a woman—the most beautiful French woman Europe has ever seen. Europa herself. Mixed Maghreb with blue eyes, high cheek bones and skin incandescent with health. She shadowed over to me, conveyed on the beds of hushy chatting. She reached up, slid her hand under the Achilles of my left ankle and breathed out, “tout est en ordre?,” over-biting “ordre,” letting her ivory top front teeth slip ever so just under her delicious upper lip. “Jyes,” a voice within, but above, the sounds below answered. The timing was so natural I thought my body produced the word. It was a scratchy ‘yes’, though, the kind one hears from Spaniards and Arabs, like the first syllable of an anglicized ‘Jessica.’ In perfect rhythm with the steady motion cadence vibrating up from the track splices, wheels, struts, undercarriage jangle, floor, my bunk and my ankle—the one she still had her hand on, my favorite one at the moment, my favorite moment heretofore. All the light we can handle at our feet. “Permettez-moi,” the continuation…as she began to ferry my shoes away, peeling them from my blue socks. I was unaware the universe produced this much honey. All motor functions reduced to a single lisp, nothing less than the perfect curvature of the spine, flow of neurotransmitters, dendrites and axons clicking in agreement, excited delight, puppy happy. No excuse for consciousness, no trace of individual space-time chalk line. One juicy singularity—enough to go around, for everyone to go around, be around, a noumenal squish. And we expand out this way, future forward, “as fast as our fingernails grow.” Yawning as far as the stretch allows, in unison,—only those who worked up through pecuniary have it. Entertainment for all others, assuming you’ve made it this far down the page,—smearing up to the frontier of snap-back. The big Involution. Things get stickier and gooier each day. Time is like: imagine what time would be like? Like it is right now on this train. In this cabin, in her hand, in my head. What in the hell are they working on down there? On the bottom bunk across from mine? That glitter is damning up behind the door, stretching its hinges, creating a square spotlight almost fully and deliberately focused on unfolding skullduggery. Those lovely Air France mittens now want my socks, want my socks off! The door is breathing, the collapse is coming inside, from outside in the countryside, from the vineyards and beautiful hills, it wants in. The collapse we all stumped for, wrote into the program, wants to realize itself. Armed with gravity and design, and maybe a couple unicorns, ferry dust, and perhaps a pixy stick or two, it will break this door down and reckon with all. She doesn’t seem to care so long as she gets these socks. And they’re feeling the same way, the bottom bunkers, with this bulging square light on them. Lantern heads, concentrating on the fucking light, swelling commensurate with its encroachment, advance, push. A puckering brightness finds its way in, such that red is the only color felt behind the eyeballs, with black stains floating in and out. We’re all confetti spaghetti, back with each other, our genie, together at last.

• D-duh, duhno-duh: Le’Intercité de Nuit, Numéro 5774, en provenence de Nice Ville arrivera sur le quai 22, dans 10 minutes.

My eyes snapped open, responding to the familiar cold morning bright. Our door was ajar and the corridor was awake with anxious travelers, scampering around, to and from the toilettes, getting in that last brush, scrub, dump, clearing their throats in public, saving a little time. The rat water of the Seine treading behind the windows. I slept like I do anything else in public: fully clothed and shoed, no dreams remembered, not a byte. The shortest one of the Three shouldered back in the room, toilette bag in hand. His two almond eyes strained wide, rheumy with novelty and angst, toothpaste crusted to either side of his furry little mustache. He looked a lot younger now, set against the full blast of daylight. He met my awake face with a genuine smile. All three did, actually, looked younger than they did on the platform last night, and smiled genuinely when I looked at them, the other two when I quickly hung myself under to spy their whereabouts. Check out those smiles! Those faces! That glow! Those smiles hadn’t been corrupted yet, I reckoned. No scars. Fresh. We exited the train as a group, walked through the marble-boned station, soaking in each other’s vibe, surprised faces, the four of us. I got a kiss on both cheeks from each one as we parted ways at the main entrance. These terrorists are all right, I thought to myself, stopping to light a cigarette. I turned around to see them waving goodbye at me as they giddily filed into a McDonald’s.

***