Tears Twice in France

     It was then that I realized how the stress of living in Beirut during wartime had taken its toll.

 

                                                         

                                                                Tears Twice in France
                                                                                     By Jean Frantz

      

      Summer in France.  What could be more wonderful?  And a welcomed change from Beirut’s high temperatures and the apprehension we sometimes felt while living and working there.  In Dijon we ate the most glorious country bread every morning, still warm, and full of elasticity.  Butter melted on it.  Petit déjeuner with a piece of fruit and French chocolate to follow.  Then it was classes all morning, working in groups, making dialogues, filling in blanks, working on the past and future tenses.

      Weekends were free, so my husband and I explored whatever was close by.  This week it was Beaune, a historic town not far from Dijon in the province of Burgundy, and it was our first real view of France since our language classes had begun, The date that Saturday was June fourteenth, Bastille Day.  “How do the French celebrate their equivalent to our Fourth of July?” I wondered.  I soon found out.  A boy, a young teenager, threw a firecracker at us as we were walking down the street.  “Just tourists,” he must have thought.  “A little joke.”  It exploded near me, and I was stunned.  I sat down on the curb of the street, put my head in my hands and cried.

      It was then that I realized how the stress of living in Beirut during wartime had taken its toll.  I didn’t think that my last nine months there had affected me in that way.  The occasional bombing, usually at a distance was followed by the inevitable anti-aircraft which at times came closer to us and was more dangerous because of the falling shrapnel.  I remember running up to our fourth floor roof that first October when there was shelling and being curious at the red shots fired into the sky, streaking it with light.  Fireworks came to mind.  But it was not until the incident in France-the firecracker landing at my feet- that I realized that fireworks, as fun and at times even beautiful as we think that they are, are representations of weapons of death.  We sing “bombs bursting in air,” with pride, yet do we think once about the numbers of people who have been killed by those bombs?

      Weeks later – in fact it was after our eight-week French course- Paul and I decided that we would do more extensive travel in Burgundy, but this time by bicycle.  Downtown Dijon had a bike rental shop, so we put money down for an eight-day trek.  Our plan was to go from village to village and stay in pensions (our equivalent to a bed and breakfast.)  Now even in those days, years ago, there was an American opinion going around that the French were snobbish and rude.  I had some armor planned, though that would put them in their place if they tried that on me.  I was going to tell them a story which I’d fabricated about my father landing in Normandy on D-Day, and how he’d lost both of his legs. I’d practiced my lines in French and I was ready. 

      It was our eighth day of cycling along gorgeous country roads, visiting museums, chateaus, wineries and churches along the way.  What I had not realized is that when you use a bike to tour a place, it is mostly the ditches along the road that you see, but in Burgundy even those were beautiful, lined with blue cornflowers, red poppies and ripening grass.  The people were not overly polite, but they noticed that we were learning French and helped us when they could. I was watching for rudeness, but so far, I had had no need to bring up the Normandy story.

      I was tired, and it was perhaps another thirty kilometers to Dijon where we would return our bikes.  We were just entering a very small village which had a narrow street running through the middle of it when a farmer on an enormous tractor came from his field onto the road, flinging mud clods from back wheels that were taller than I was.  I ducked to avoid the mud, swerved and crashed head-on into a tree at the side of the road.  The farmer stopped his rig, jumped off and came over to check on us.  He took a look at my bike and saw that the fork was bent.  He sat down, put the front wheel axel between his feet to hold it and attempted to straighten the fork with brute force.  Although still bent, he actually fixed it enough to make the bike able to ride.

       I was somewhat in shock when I looked down at my shin.  Perhaps it was the farmer who suggested I go into the near-by farmhouse and ask for help. I hobbled to the door and knocked.  A woman answered and invited me into her kitchen. I recall the cool temperature inside her home, a refreshing change from the heat of the afternoon.  This woman was maybe fifty years old, about my mother’s age I think, and she was kind.  She washed and bandaged my wounds as I struggled with my French to explain what had happened, and then suddenly, I began to cry.  She saw my tears and her eyes filled with them, too.  She left me then, for a moment, and came back with a large photograph in an old frame.  It was the picture of a boy, about age twelve.  “It’s a dangerous road here by our farm,” she confided.  “It was here several years ago that we lost our son.  He was hit by a car.”  We hugged.   Nationality and language barriers were gone.  In that moment of our shared knowledge the French people were endeared to me.  I knew that I would not need the Normandy story after all.

Comments

[robin rowe]

I am not surprised that you write of community and kindness. A wonderful story, thank you.