A WICKED GIFT FROM FRANCE
Many of my walking kieries come from trees in Africa, but not all. My apple stick, the one my darling son broke, comes from a wild apple in Yorkshire, England. And then there’s the chestnut one from France, my fancy bâton de marche, but dare I speak openly about this walking stick? I’m afraid it’s a bit of a naughty story, should I?
Oh well, “croquer la vie a pleines dents”, as the French would say, bite life hard with all your teeth and spit out the rest. Naughty also has its place in life.
I remember it’s May, spring in France, time for the annual film festival by the sea. How old am I? Thirty or so and already a cynical old journalist. I hint to my editor that I need a break. He knows I’m dying to experience the Cannes Film Festival with its Hollywood stars and he’s never been there himself, so of course he says no. Everyone in the editorial office knows he only says yes to places he’s been to so that he can give advice as the great old sage about what you should and shouldn’t do there. We really love him.
That same week, the planet almost stopped in shock: the current Miss World was not really a virgin and had to cede her crown to her first princess, Anneline Kriel of South Africa.
And guess where that pretty girl from Witbank will be this spring? First in Paris, France for model work and then at the Cannes Film Festival to advertise her first Afrikaans film, Somer. Producer Tommie Meyer couldn’t have known he was giving the next Miss World the lead role in his film of CM van den Heever’s award-winning book; I suspect he’s figuratively speaking on his knees with gratitude.
My editor can’t say no now, especially since Air France will fly me for free if I mention the airline in my articles, but he still overloads me with other assignments: I have to interview Desmond Colborn, the South Africa Foundation’s European director, in Paris, about the machinations of anti-apartheid groups in Europe. And do a personal interview with General Sir Francis de Guingand, former chief of staff to Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery in World War II and later a big shot at companies in Rhodesia and South Africa. The British royal family apparently calls him Sir Freddie and, according to The Economist, he lives in a retirement community on the mountain behind Cannes and you can see a Roman aqueduct from his toilet window. These interviews are political, of course, and have nothing in common with the chats I want to have with Hollywood stars at the film festival.
Shortly before I leave for Paris, our women’s magazine adds more work to my load: a fashion photographer with a trunk full of South African designed clothes wants to do a fashion shoot with Anneline Kriel in Paris and Cannes. The photographer will also take the photos I need for my Cannes articles. I know about Jasper, he’s quite famous for his fashion photography. Jasper is not his real name. He calls me Ticker. He calls all the reporters Ticker because of the sound our typewriters make.
The night before Jasper and I fly, I tell my first wife I’m lucky I haven’t been given another job in France. Then the phone rings. It’s my mother. She knows I’ll be back in two weeks and then it’s my father’s birthday, everyone knows he’s been looking for a real English whip for his farm animals. I feel I must mention that I’m going to France, England is a whole stretch of the North Sea away. My mother says I should stop being funny and fly safely, darling, remember your father wants real leather, plastic whips don’t work for him.
I put the phone down and my wife tells me not to look at her.
At the airport, Jasper is fighting a fierce battle because his container of new and expensive clothes is being loaded into the belly of the plane. Jasper wants to take the damn box on board with him – and his cameras, and he swears there’s room behind the last row of seats if they just unload a few of the food carts. The senior flight attendant’s look warns Jasper that he’s the one who’s going to be unloaded. He accepts her decision with a tight smile, but we’re barely in the air when he takes a first aid kit out of his carry-on and swallows a handful of pills without water.
“Fortunately for me, I know how to endure pain,” he says.
I thought he was joking. Jasper, I would later find out, is known in the fashion world as the King of Hypochondria. The painkillers soon knocked him unconscious and he slept through the night flight. I never sleep on planes, so I select a book from my shoulder bag full of books and start reading quietly. Jasper snores softly next to me. When I finish my book it’s getting light outside, Jasper opens his eyes and yawns like a hippopotamus.
“Don’t let it bother you,” he sighs, “it’s just my fate. I haven’t slept a wink all night..”
That’s when it hits me: this is not going to be my most enjoyable trip abroad.
We land at eight o’clock French time and have our first interview with Desmond Colborn of the South Africa Foundation at eleven. His rooftop place is in Rue Lepic, Montmartre, the old hilly neighborhood of Paris. I soon find out Jasper knows Paris better than I do, but his knowledge is mainly colored by Hollywood films. He leads me straight to Desmond’s address in Rue Lepic in Montmartre, informs me it’s also the street in which that crazy painter guy with one ear lived, you know, Kirk Douglas played him in Lust For Life.
During the interview with Desmond I decideJasper could be an asset. Desmond talks intelligently and comfortably, enjoys being photographed and his beautiful French wife obviously thinks the sun shines out of Jasper. Of course, she’s a photographic model, and she’s seen some of Jasper’s photographs in fashion magazines.
Desmond poses for one of Jasper’s photos with his finel walking stick. I admire the shiny chestnut wood, I confess I collect walking sticks. .
Jasper and I have to share a hotel room. My editor never wastes money. That first night in Paris, after I read myself asleep in bed, Jasper simply disappears. I recall he mentioned ironing out something, maybe he needs to buy an iron to get out the wrinkles in his container full of outfits. But at this time of night? I didn’t sleep on the flight and I refuse to wait for him, now it’s my turn to sleep right through.
Sharp noises wake me. It’s sunrise and the noises are coming from the bathroom. Jasper sounds in pain, as well as extremely indignant. I suggest he keeps it down, I’m sleeping.
He storms out of the bathroom in a shirt, no pants, angrily showing me his backside. “Look! Look what my bloody ass looks like!”
Jasper’s skinny butt is an ugly red with what looks like palm prints.
I burst out laughing. “Is this what you call ironing out?”
He suddenly hates me deeply. “Screw you, I was having a good time when she started hitting my ass. Pien, she screams, pien!, Bitch, I know more about pien than she ever will!”
Pien? A French prostitute mispronouncing pain? I wonder if Jasper heard right. He says he won’t pay a lady of the night cash then leave before the time is up. So he kept at it and and the lady of the night kept on slapping his ass.
Dear, funny, always ill Jasper: I don’t remember other visitors to brothels who actually referred to a prostitute as a lady of the night.
“Maybe she thought you liked pain?”
“I don’t like pain, I take something for pain,” he assures me. “I don’t do drugs either, I only smoke weed when I can’t get painkillers. Weed doesn’t really work for me.”
“Oh, you’re like the joke of the girl on the cow,” I say.
Jasper snorts bitterly and rips open his first aid kit, going for painkillers again. “You better pack your things, ticker. I called Annie last night, we’re meeting her at half past eight this morning across from that church of the guy with the hunchback, Anthony Quinn played him in a movie.”
The church is, of course, Notre Dame.. Annie is, of course, Anneline Kriel. And I know I dare not be late for my first meeting with Miss World.