I go back at one.
“Half hour delay.”
I decide to sit it out, but suddenly I have to go to the toilet at 1:20—I ask a Spanish-looking Brest-bound passenger: “Think I got time to go to the toilet back at the terminal?”
“O sure, plenty time.”
I look, the mechanics out there are still worriedly fiddling, so I hurry that quartermile back, to the toilet, lay another franc for fun on La Française, and suddenly I hear “Ma – Thil – Daa” singsong with the word “Brest” so I like Clark Gable’s best fast walk hike on back almost as fast as a jogging trackman, if you know what I mean, but by the time I get there the plane is out taxiing to the runway, the ramp’s been rolled back which all those traitors just crept up, and off they go to Brittany with my suitcase.
18.
NOW I’M SUPPOSED TO GO DABBLING ALL OVER France with clean fingernails and a joyous tourist expression.
“Calvert!” I blaspheme at the desk (for which I’m sorry, Oh Lord). “I’m going to follow them in a train! Can you sell me a train ticket? They took off with my valise!”
“You’ll have to go to Gare Montparnasse for that but I’m really sorry, Monsieur, but that is the most ridiculous way to miss a plane.”
I say to myself “Yeah, you cheapskates, why dont you build a toilet.”
But I go in a taxi 15 miles back to Gare Montparnasse and I buy a one-way ticket to Brest, first class, and as I think about my suitcase, and what Goulet said, I also remember now the pirates of St. Malo not to mention the pirates of Penzance.
Who cares? I’ll catch up with the rats.
I get on the train among thousands of people, turns out there’s a holiday in Brittany and everybody’s going home.
There are those compartments where firstclass ticketed people can sit, and those narrow window alleys where secondclass ticketed people stand leaning at the windows and watch the land roll by—I pass the first compartment of the coach I picked and see nothing but women and babies—I know instinctively I’ll choose the second compartment—And I do! Because what do I see in there but “Le Rouge et le Noire” (The Red and the Black), that is to say, the Military and the Church, a French soldier and a Catholic priest, and not only that but two pleasant looking old ladies and a weird looking drunklooking guy in the corner, that makes five, leaving the sixth and last place for me, “Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac” as I presently announce, knowing I’m home and they’ll understand my family picked up some weird manners in Canada and the U.S.A.— (which I announce of course only after I’ve asked “Je peu m’assoir?” (I can sit?), “Yes,” and I excuse myself across the ladies’ legs and plump right down next to the priest, removed my hat already, and address him: “Bonjour, mon Père.”
Now this is the real way to go to Brittany, gents.
19.
BUT THE POOR LITTLE PRIEST, DARK, SHALL WE SAY swart, or swartz, and very small and thin, his hands are trembling as if from ague and for all I know from Pascalian ache for the equation of the Absolute or maybe Pascal scared him and the other Jesuits with his bloody “Provincial Letters,” but in any case I look into his dark brown eyes, I see his weird little parroty understanding of everything and of me too, and I pound my collarbone with my finger and say:
“I’m Catholic too.”
He nods.
“I wear the Sacred Queen and also St. Benedict.”
He nods.
He is such a little guy you could blow him away with one religious yell like “O Seigneur!” (Oh Lord!)
But now I turn my attention to the civilian in the corner, who’s eyeing me with the exact eyes of an Irishman I know called Jack Fitzgerald and the same mad thirsty leer as tho he’s about to say “Alright, where’s the booze hidden in that raincoat of yours” but all he does say is, in French:
“Take off your raincoat, put it up on the rack.”
Excusing myself as I have to bump knees with the blond soldier, and the soldier grins sadly (’cause I rode in trains with Aussies across wartime England 1943) I shove the lump of coat up, smile at the ladies, who just wanta get home the hell with all the characters, and I say my name to the guy in the corner (like I said I would).
“Ah, that’s Breton. You live in Rennes?”
“No I live in Florida in America but I was born etc. etc.” the whole long story, which interests them, and then I ask the guy’s name.
It’s the beautiful name of Jean-Marie Noblet.
“Is that Breton?”
“Mais out.” (But yes.)
I think: “Noblet, Goulet, Havet, Champsecret, sure a lot of funny spellings in this country” as the train starts up and the priest settles down in a sigh and the ladies nod and Noblet eyes me like he would like to wink me a proposal that we get on with the drinking, a long trip ahead.
So I say “Let’s you and I go buy some in the commissaire.”
“If you wanta try, okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Come on, you’ll see.”
And sure enough we have to rush weaving without bumping anybody through seven coaches of packed windowstanders and on through the roaring swaying vestibules and jump over pretty girls sitting on books on the floor and avoid collisions with mobs of sailors and old country gentlemen and all the lot, a homecoming holiday train like the Atlantic Coast Line going from New York to Richmond, Rocky Mount, Florence, Charleston, Savannah and Florida on the Fourth of July or Christmas and everybody bringing gifts like Greeks beware we not of—
But me and old Jean-Marie find the liquor man and buy two bottles of rosé wine, sit on the floor awhile and chat with some guy, then catch the liquor man as he’s coming back the other way and almost empty, buy two more, become great friends, and rush back to our compartment feeling great, high, drunk, wild—And don’t you think we didnt swing infos back and forth in French, and not Parisian either, and him not speaking a word of English.
I didnt even have a chance to look out the window as we passed the Chartres Cathedral with the dissimilar towers one five hundred years older’n the other.
20.
WHAT GETS ME IS THAT, AFTER AN HOUR NOBLET and I were waving our wine bottles across the poor priest’s face as we argued religion, history, politics, so suddenly I turned to him trembling there and asked: “Do you mind our wine bottles?”
He gave me a look as if to say: “You mean that lil ole winemaker me? No, no, I have a cold, you see, I feel awful sick.”
“Il est malade, il à un rheum,” (He’s sick, he’s got a cold) I told Noblet grandly. The Soldier was laughing all the while.
I said grandly to them all (and the English translation is beneath this):- “Jésu à été cru-cifié parce que, a place d’amenez l’argent et le pouvoir, il à amenez seulement l’ assurance que l’existence a été formez par le Bon Dieu et elle appartiens an Bon Dieu le Pêre, et Lui, le Pêre, va nous élever au Ciel après la mort, ou parsonne n’aura besoin d’argent ou de pouvoir parce que ça c’est seulement après tout d’la poussière et de la rouille—Nous autres qu’ils n’ont pas vue les miracles de Jésu, comme les Juifs et les Romans et la ’tites poignée d’Grecs et d’autres de la riviêre Nile et Euphrates, on à seulement de continuer d’accepter l’assurance qu’il nous a été descendu dans la parole sainte du nouveau testament—C’est pareille comme ci, en voyant quelqu’un, on dira ’c’est pas lui, c’est pas lui!’ sans savoir QUI est lui, et c’est seulement le Fils qui connaient le Père—Alors, la Foi, et l’Église quiàdéfendu la Foi comme qu’a pouva.” (Partly French Canuck.) IN ENGLISH:– “Jesus was crucified because, instead of bringing money and power, He only brought the assurance that existence was created by God and it belongs to God the Father, and He, the Father, is going to elevate us to Heaven after death, where no one will need money or power because that’s only after all dust and rust—We who have not seen the Miracles of Jesus, like the Jews and the Romans and the little handful of Greeks and others from the Nile River and the Euphrates, only have to continue accepting the assurance which
has been handed down to us in the Holy Writ of the New Testament—It’s just as though, on seeing someone, we’d say ‘It’s not him, it’s not him!’ without knowing WHO he is, and it’s only the Son who knows the Father—Therefore, Faith, and the Church which defended the Faith as well as it could.”
No applause from the priest, but a side under-look, brief, like the look of an applauder, thank God.
21.
WAS THAT MY SATORI, THAT LOOK, OR NOBLET?
In any case it grew dark and when we got to Rennes, in Brittany now, and I saw soft cows out in the meadows blue dark near the rail, Noblet, against the advice of the farceurs (jokesters) of Paris advised me not to stay in the same coach, but change to three coaches ahead, because the trainmen were gonna make a cut and leave me right there (headed, really, however, for my real ancestral country, Cornouialles and environs) but the trick was to get to Brest.
He led me off the train, after the others, and walked me down the steaming station platform, stopped me at a liquor man so I could buy me a flask of cognac for the rest of the ride, and said goodbye: he was home, in Rennes, and so was the priest and the soldier, Rennes the former capital of all Brittany, seat of an Archbishop, headquarters of the 10th Army Corps, with the university and many schools, but not the real deep Brittany because in 1793 it was the headquarters of the Republican Army of the French Revolution against the Vendéans further in. And has ever since then been made the tribunal watchdog over those wild dog places. La Vendée, the name of the war between those two forces in history, was this:– the Bretons were against the Revolutionaries who were atheists and headcutters for fraternal reasons, while the Bretons had paternal reasons to keep to their old way of life.
Nothing to do with Noblet in 1965 A.D.
He disappeared into the night like a Céline character but what’s the use of similes when discussing a gentleman’s departure, and high as a noble at that, but not as drunk as me.
We’d come 232 miles from Paris, had 155 to go to Brest (end, finis, land, terre, Finistère), all the sailors still on board the train as naturally, as I didnt know, Brest is a Naval Base where Chateaubriand heard the booming cannons and saw the fleet come in triumphant from some fight in 1770’s sometime.
My new compartment is just a young mother with a cantankerous baby daughter, and some guy I guess her husband, and I just occasionally sip my cognac then go out in the alleyway to look out the window at passing darkness with lights, a lone granite farmhouse with lights on just downstairs in the kitchen, and vague hints of hills and moors.
Clickety clack.
22.
I GET PRETTY FRIENDLY WITH THE YOUNG COUPLE and at St. Brieuc the trainman yells out “Saint Brrieu!“—I yell out “S a i n t B r i e u c k!”
Trainman, seeing nobody’s getting much off or on, the lonely platform, repeats, advising me how to pronounce these Breton names: “Saint Brrieu!”
“Saint Brieuck!” I yell, emphasizing as you see the “c” noise of the thing there.
“Saint Brrieu!”
“Saint Brieuck!”
“Saint Brrieu!”
“Saint Brrieuck!”
“Saint Brrrieu!”
“Saint Brrrieuck!”
Here he realizes he’s dealing with a maniack and quits the game with me and it’s a wonder I didn’t get thrown off the train right there on the wild shore here called Coasts of the North (Côtes du Nord) but he didnt even bother, after all the Little Prince had his firstclass ticket and Little Prick more likely.
But that was funny and I still insist, when you’re in Brittany (Armorica the ancient name), land of Kelts, pronounce your “K’s” with a kuck —And as I’ve said elsewhere, if “Celts” were pronounced with a soft “s” sound, as the Anglo-Saxons deem to do, my name would sound like this: (and other names) :–
Jack Serouac
Johnny Sarson
Senator Bob Sennedy
Hopalong Sassidy
Deborah Serr (or Sarr)
Dorothy Silgallen
Mary Sarney
Sid Simpleton
and the
Stone Monuments of Sarnac via Sornwall.
And anyway there’s a place in Cornwall called St. Breock, and we all know how to pronounce that.
We finally arrive in Brest, end of the line, no more land, and I help the wife and husband out holding their portable crib thing—And there she is, grim misting fog, strange faces looking at the few passengers getting off, a distant hoot of a boat, and a grim cafe across the street where Lord I’ll get no sympathy, I’ve come to trapdoor Brittany.
Cognacs, beers, and then I ask where’s the hotel, right across the construction field—To my left, stone wall overlooking grass. and sudden drops and dim houses—Foghorn out there—The Atlantic’s bay and harbor—
Where’s my suitcase? asks the desk man in the grim hotel, why it’s in the air line office I guess—
No rooms.
Unshaven, in a black raincoat with rain hat, dirty, I walk outa there and go sploopsing up dark streets looking like any decent American Boy in trouble, old or young, for the Main Drag—I instantly recognize it for what it is, Rue de Siam, named after the King of Siam when he visited here on some dull visit certainly grim too and probably ran back to his tropical canaries as quick as he could since the new mason breastworks of Colbert certainly dont inspire no hope in the heart of a Buddhist.
But I’m not a Buddhist, I’m a Catholic revisiting the ancestral land that fought for Catholicism against impossible odds yet won in the end, as certes, at dawn, I’ll hear the tolling of the tocsin churchbells for the dead.
I hit for the brightest looking bar on Rue de Siam which is a main street like the ones you used to see, say, in the 40’s, in Springfield Mass., or Redding Calif., or that main street James Jones wrote about in “Some Came Running” in Illinois—
The owner of the bar is behind his cash register doping out the horses at Longchamps—I immediately talk, tell him my name, his name is Mr. Quéré (which reminds me of the spelling of Québec) and he lets me sit and goof and drink there all I want—Meanwhile the young bartender is also glad to talk to me, has apparently heard of my books, but after awhile (and just like Pierre LeMaire in La Gentilhommiére) he suddenly stiffens, I guess from a sign from the boss, too much work to do, wash your glasses in the sink, I’ve outworn me welcome in another bar—
I’ve seen that expression on my father’s face, a kind of disgusted lip-on-lip WHAT’S-THE-USE phooey, or ploof, (dédain) or plah, as he either walked away a loser from a racetrack or out of a bar where he didn’t like what happened, and elsetimes, especially when thinking of history and the world, but that’s when I walked out of that bar when that expression came over my own face—And the owner, who’d been really warm for a half hour, returned his attention to his figures with the sly underlook of after all a busy patron anywhere—But something had swiftly changed. (Gave my name for the first time.)
Their directions given to me for to find a hotel room did not evolve or de-volve me an actual brick and concrete place with a bed inside for me to lay my head in.
Now I was wandering in the very dark, in the fog, everything was closing down. Hoodlums roared by in small cars and some on motorcycles. Some stood on corners. I asked everybody where there was a hotel. Now they didnt even know. Gettin on 3 A.M. Groups of hoodlums came and went across the street from me. I say “hoodlums” but with everything closed, the final music joint already discharging a few wrangling customers who bellowed confusedly around cars, what was left i’ the streets?
Miraculously, yet, I suddenly passed a band of twelve or so Naval inductees who were singing a martial song in chorus on the foggy corner. I went right up to em, looked at the head singer, and with me alcoholic hoarse baritone went “A a a a a a h”—They waited—
“V é é é é”
They wondered who this nut was.
“M a h-r e e e e e-e e—ee—aaaah!”
Ah, Ave Maria, on the next notes I knew no
t the words but just sang the melody and they caught on, caught up the tune, and there we were a chorus with baritone and tenors singing like sad angels suddenly slowly—And right through the whole first chorus—In the foggy foggy dew—Brest Brittany—Then I said “Adieu” and walked away. They never said a word.
Some nut with a raincoat and a hat.
23.
WELL, WHY DO PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR NAMES? Have they done anything bad, are they criminals, are they ashamed of their real names? Are they afraid of something? Is there any law in America against using your own real name?
I had come to France and Brittany just to look up this old name of mine which is just about three thousand years old and was never changed in all that time, as who would change a name that simply means House (Ker), In the Field (Ouac) —
Just as you say Camp (Biv), In the Field (Ouac) (unless “bivouac” is the incorrect spelling of an old Bismarck word, silly to say that because “bivouac” was a word used long before 1870 Bismarck)—the name Kerr, or Carr, simply means House, why bother with a field?
I knew that the name of Cornish Celtic Language is Kernuak. I knew that there are stone monuments called dolmens (tables of stone) at Kériaval in Carnac, some called alignments at Kermario, Kérlescant and Kérdouadec, and a town nearby called Kéroual, and I knew that the original name for Bretons was “Breons” (i.e., the Breton is Le Breon) and that I had an additive name “Le Bris” and here I was in “Brest” and did this make me a Cimbric spy from the stone monuments of Riestedt in Germany? Rietstap also the name of the German who painstakingly compiled names of families and their scocheons and had my family included in “Rivista Araldica”? —You say I’m a snob ?—I only wanted to find out why my family never changed their name and perchance find a tale there, and trace it back to Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland and maybe Scotland afore that I’m sure, then down over to the St. Lawrence River city in Canada where I’m told there was a Seigneurie (a Lordship) and therefore I can go live there (along with my thousands of bowlegged French Canadian cousins bearing the same name) and never pay taxes !