The Grand Tour pt 4: Toulon Postcard

photo by lentina_x.

Old sailors grounded in Toulon sit on doorsteps throughout the day, sipping beer in the mornings, biting their fingernails in the afternoon, tasting the dirt on their tongues. Their skin is deep brown and liver-spotted, tattoos of ships broken up on their withered arms. Cobblestone alleys lead crookedly toward the Mediterranean shore. Speakers hang over the streets, tangled in lines of wire and cable, bringing the streets alive with American sixties songs. In the farmers' market, hordes of tourists shout in broken French with the vendors, a tangle of hands shuffling honeydew melons and yellow plums and paprika. Further up the avenues, away from the shoreline, the streets grow quiet. In the squares, lovers mill about with entwined arms or sat in patio cafes waiting patiently for their drinks. A fountain stood in the center of a square, water trickling down a swell of moss and vines, dripping into a pool. A blackbird fluttered in the shallows, water beading its feathers.

We stay at the hotel Le Petit Chateau and wash our clothes in the boudoir with hand soap. Eating sandwiches of liverwurst, sardines, and tomatoes on a fresh baked baguette, Odlef sits on the windowsill looking out over the chaotic jumble of flats with red-tiled rooftops. In the afternoon we buy three bottles of chilled white wine, drink in the night and come alive; this is our daily ritual, to be followed by numb, wordless mornings. My life is something like water: without taste, bland, lacking intoxication, even here in France. That is why I reach for the wine bottle.

I write a postcard to a friend back home. There is too little space to cover everything going on, so I decide it best to describe only the items on the table in our room:
- crusts of stale French bread
- two husks of beach melon
- two plums from the farmers market (yellow)
- two half full bottles of white wine
- ashtray, filled (one pack)
- Paris guidebook (tattered)
- Rome guidebook (pristine)
- backpack strap (useful) and an American penny (useless)

I take Odlef’s spot on the windowsill and claim my perch four stories above the street. Sallows fly in circles above the fountain in the square. Church bells toll the evening vespers. Pickpockets withdraw from their day of work, street urchins laugh into the face of the coming night, and a dog kills a cardboard box.