The Body In the Vestibule Read Free Page B

hanging on the wall—Grand-père looks remarkably like Lenin, or maybe it isn’t Grand-père at all. It’s a bit strange to know so much about your neighbors—what they’re having to eat, the state of their lingerie—without knowing who they are or what they look like in some cases. By the way, the French really do say “ooh la la” or “ooh la” for short. They also say merde a lot, and I don’t think it’s as bad as saying “shit” at home. Anyway, back to the travelogue.
    Vieux Lyon, the medieval part of the city, is on the other side of the Saône and I haven’t been there much yet. The best cheese, cakes, chocolate, and sausages are all on the other side of the Rhône. I know this may not fascinate you as much as it does me, but it tells you how I’m spending my days. (Citibank, you’ll be happy to hear, has an office on the next block. So we are not totally devoid of amenities.)

    Not getting much done on Have Faith in Your Kitchen, but I plan to incorporate lots of Lyonnais recipes into it and so this all falls under the category of research.

    Faith looked up from the letter and out the window to the square below. Another thing that was making it difficult to work on the cookbook she was writing was the noise. Not the traffic, or occasional siren, but the music from the clochard ’s radio. Clochard was the word for “tramp,” she’d learned, and the literal translation did not take into account the kind of romanticism these men—and a few women—of the roads had been invested with by their more prosaic compatriots. She wouldn’t have minded a little Edith Piaf or Charles Aznavour for atmosphere, but this clochard had other tastes—the French equivalent of elevator music and loud.
    He arrived each morning quite punctually, spread out a small tattered blanket, took a couple of bottles of wine from the battered attache case he carried like a proper homme d’affaires, then positioned his animals—an old mutt and a rabbit in a cage—and sat down. Just in time for the first mass. He took a small brass bowl from his case, set it down, and placed a ten-franc piece dead center. By the end of the day when he reversed the proceedings, his bowl runneth over. Faith wasn’t too sure what the animals were intended to convey—a latent sense of responsibility or simply colorful window dressing. He was often joined by other clochards and frequently by non- clochards , especially teenagers, all of whom appeared to invest him with some special kind of wisdom. The court of the bearded philosopher beggar. The large, greasy-looking cap, casquette , he always wore—his crown. She resumed writing.

    So, there are the d’Amberts. They need a big apartment because they have five children. I see them on the
stairs, very polite, very BCBG, “bon chic, bon genre,” Stéphanie Leblanc told me. It’s some sort of French version of a well-born Yuppie. Stéphanie did not seem to be all that impressed. Tom told me the other version he’d heard from Paul, “bon cul, bon genre,” considerably cruder and roughly translates as “nice ass, may be underused.” I don’t know the d’Amberts well enough yet to know to which, if any, category they belong. They do have a very elegant card on their mailbox and a fancy, highly polished brass nameplate on their door, though.
    Then above us are the Joliets. He’s also at the university and always to be found at the forefront of whatever anyone is protesting, Paul told us. Madame is Italian, Valentina, and owns a small art gallery a few blocks away. She has invited us to a vernissage , an opening, Saturday night. She’s very lively, very pretty. No kids. She told me her husband was enough.
    On the top floor, there are some students and, in a closet-sized apartment, Madame Yvette Vincent, the widow of another professeur— it’s