Paris Letters #38
Saint Tropez was was beheaded in Pisa during the reign of Nero: they put his body in a rotten boat with a rooster and a dog, and he landed in the famous french Rivera town and his namesake. The symbolism was apt. I had also arrived headless —or rather, totally out of my head in love. I was a real romantic, a troubadour you could say.
I remember first meeting Jude. He was perched on a rock, and looked down at me with the same implacable gaze she had: the look of a fanatic. He spoke very little, but I could see they shared some part of the air — some radio station all of their own. She spoke tenderly to him, while I burned in quiet fury.
Jude was also a painter, and C had derived her raw and viceral style from him. They were shockingly similar in art as in life, with the same tangled black hair, the same dark eyes. You could say they were of the same earth—twin souls.
C’s family villa had a private cove—a real paradise where we all went to bath. There was nothing like those crystal blue waters, and little red starfish swam around at our feet. There were yellow flowers called immortals that dotted the landscape, the scent of pine and sage perfumed the air. All the treasures of the senses were available here. And yet there was a snake in the garden: Jude.
I wandered deep into the forest, swum out into the sea—I banged my head against the bedroom wall. When I smiled, I felt murderous. When I was polite, I imagined atrocities. C was rather blasé—she did her ecstatic dance of comparison and cruelty. She showed me Jude’s drawings, of a goat-man, with a giant penis. She wanted to take me over the edge, to break down the idealism in me. I started to hate her a little, for the first time — for I had never hated her before. Jelousy again, the visage of hell on earth. The seed of all the wars.
There were wild boars in the forest and somebody was chopping wood. That night there would be a big fire by the sea for a ‘meshui’ — they were going to roast the lamb. Was the lamb really me? Would I end up in some boat, headless, with a rooster and a dog—those ancient symbols of pride and blind obedience?
There was something about that bright golden seaside town of San Tropez that made my eyes bleed with such dark visions.
