Toasted Snow

By John P Boswell

According to Orhan Pamuk there is a saying in Turkey that the child who cannot stop crying needs some toasted snow to soothe their distress. This is one of a number of proverbs across cultures that recognise our need, our desire and our ongoing search for that which is well nigh impossible to achieve. This book follows a number of different protagonists who knowingly, or not, are engaged on such journeys and how they connect, disconnect and re-connect, or not, as they stumble to or from the explosive beginning in a Paris restaurant in the 1980s.

The main story concerns the journeys of Tantan and Noizzie as they explore whether they are right for each other, as well as the friendships of Jay, Bo, Bruce and Jean from their different worlds of music, travel and art. Their lives are partly intertwined with that of two academics Marie Therese and Angelique, as well as the typically Parisians Emilie and her mother Cecille. Tantan's father, Daniel, appears to be invisible to all but it is he who is instrumental to the unfolding drama - drawn, as is Pierre, one of Tantan's fellow waiters in a Paris caf, to Draa, a dry river bed of a man, who has escaped to France.

The experience of the characters in trying to comprehend what is important in learning how to live, to love, to understand and to die combines with the instances when inconsequential happenings change destinies.

The Marais, the oldest part of Paris, with its potent mix of immigrant cultures over the centuries, features strongly and hidden gems, in and under its streets are exposed in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781481794039

John P Boswell

John Boswell is essentially a searcher. He has changed direction, very successfully, over the years working in pharmacology and biochemistry, becoming a psychologist and then building up through community development and health education to work at the top level of public health in Scotland. In addition he has worked with, and continues to do so, with a number of charities, and social enterprises across the United Kingdom. He has wide interests in both the arts and sciences and is particularly attracted to the merging of these approaches in the understanding and uses of complexity theory in helping us to live, work and play in our universe. Language is a constant source of amusement to him in the ways that it often disrupts, rather than enhances, communication and he has used his understanding of these areas in `Toasted Snow' to explore the human experience from a number of perspectives, with humour and imagination. He is married to Alison and they have two teenage children, Marc and Louise.

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Contents

L’Entrée

La Pied Noir

La Groupe

La Retour

Les Renvoi

Le Voleur

La Racaille!

Les Yeux

Monsieur Bojangles

Agité

La Gaia

Sur Les Toits

Le Parcours

Le Travail!

Les Banlieues

Le Marais

Les Artistes

La Fumée

L’Ambrosia

Le Voyageur

Chin-Chin

Après

L’Art et la Poesie

La Lutetia

La Rue

Entré Nous

La Fêtes Des Meres

La Sémantique

Arêttez!

La Performance

La Tajine

Vol-Au-Vent

Devant le Déluge

Voyage dans L’Espace

La Pudeur

Le Hammam, Un

L’Amsterdam

Le Hammam, Deux

La Chemise Blanc

La Présentation

Sur La Route

Encore Le Hammam

A Donf!

Jay

La Seuil

La Morocco

Encore Le Marais

Encore La Morocco

Les Fassi

Draa

Le Talmud

Pour quoi?

L’Irlande, non L’Écosse

Le Flashback

Les Bon Mots

Les Trou Noir

La Medluk et La Tadlakt

Tres Gentils

La Toulouse

Faire Le Sourire

Faire La Bagatelle

Que Est Que Sais?

Les Ligne Parallèle.

Quel Surprise

Le Clochard

Les Vieux Amis

C’est Ça

L’Arrangement

Le Kepi Blanc

Après

La Retour!

La Restaurant

Momo/Draa

La Promenade

Le Surprise

Le Grand Surprise

La Fin?

This book is for Alison, who has made it all possible.

Many thanks go to Mary De Vries and family at the Hotel Keizerhof in Amsterdam who provided the peace and space to let me write it.

According to Orhan Pamuk

there is a saying in Turkey that,

‘the crying child that will not stop

can only be satisfied

with toasted snow.’

L’Entrée

Smile

Draa opened the door of the restaurant and walked towards the centre. A smile–flash- boom. Just as he had planned, walk to the centre for maximum effect - to see and to be seen - to recognise and to be recognised - to remember and be remembered.

Draa smiled as the waiter approached and asked if he could take his hat. Draa heard this, but no meaning or understanding passed as he was instantly distracted by a small gentleman sitting alone to one side of the restaurant.

Flash

Why could he not? Why could he not understand French, a language which he had heard, and spoke all of his life? Were his ears, his brain not functioning or was it a final confirmation that he did not understand, was not or could be French.

Boom

The flash, the colours, like a sunbeam on a dewdrop, but many more sunbeams on infinite drops splitting the corona to give colour flashed upon colour giving birth to a myriad spectrum of all the colours in existence, now, and then forever gone into the darkness beyond light.

Nothing to guide.

The idea that all of your previous life passes before you in your mind’s eye at the final moment is widespread, however what Draa experienced came as a total shock to whatever level of sanity remained within his disintegrating mind. Each and everyone in the restaurant that was fatally injured were individually identified in his brain - and in fast forward motion. Their futures, their cut of lives, not now to be lived were indelibly identified in his brain, one after one, on top of each other, linking and interlinking as their paths crossed, uncrossed and re-crossed one another into their virtual futures.

The compression of so much life, love, loss, pain and joy, of no longer lived experience and potential from each of these lives was too much for any mind to be exposed to and remain sane. Certainty was shattered in a maze of complexity to be replaced by simple deep doubt, and despair of what now would not be - of futures that had been taken away.

Instant dharma of retribution flooded into his brain from the exploding painful energy of those present, and now past.

It was like a dark cartoon where the flash, the power, acts like an x-ray to highlight the skeletal frame of the characters. Everyone in the room saw each other like that, aglow in the dark from the flash. Matted, burned and torn flesh, the body they had become from the heat, flame and shrapnel impacts. No one was smiling now but their mouths were open. Their ears perceived only a high-pitched ringing. Everyone was stripped bare of any social face to reveal the blankness of their own deeply hidden personal I.

Words formed in their mouths but came out soundless. If there is no ear to hear the scream is there any sound? Yet ears strained to hear above or below the ringing. Eyes were seeking, but saw only the mirror image of what they themselves had became.

The steak could no longer be tasted, nor for that matter could anything else. It was less than irrelevant how it had been prepared, and tartare is too bitter a metaphor for the experience. It all tasted grey, metallic, flashfiredwooden, but they could not taste even that.

Their arms were told to rise, their legs to get up and run, but such actions came out as uncoordinated spasms as falling, collapsing and toppling became the end points for run, escape, flee. And that was for those that still had legs.

The fine Chablis, and the adequate pichet of house wine were equally shattered, dispersed and would not, could no more soothe their dry throats.

The one flash of lighting we see in an electric storm is in fact a composite of twenty or more flashes alternating from ground to cloud, and cloud to ground in very fast time. The flashes move so fast they heats up the air within the flash to a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun. The thunder we hear after the lightning flash is the sound of this superheated air rushing to fill the expanded space such a temperature demands. When you are in the flash it is impossible to differentiate between the flash and the boom, but for a small period of time it appears to be changing so very slowly in expanding the feeling, the perception and the appreciation of what is being experienced.

S mm iiiii lllllllll eeeeeeeee

ffffffffff ll aaaaaaaaa ssssss

hhhhhhhh bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb oooooooo ooooooooooooooo mmmmmmmmmmmmm

The result of many screams of pain, fear and terror all ejaculated at the same time built upon each other into a universal choir that was the first sound to pierce the silent ringing.

Fuckshitohmygodaaaghfuckfuckfuckshitfshugckoitdasfuhaaghfushcitk, as their throats drank in the smoke and heat from the flash. It entered not only their lungs but their stomachs, to the pits.

The screams, without accents were understood by all, and needed no translation.

La Pied Noir

His first memories were of playing with Saadia, his mother in the enclosed courtyard of their home. She tried to smile as they played, but he remembered even then that he saw that her eyes and face shone sadness. She called him Tantan after the town of Tan-Tan in Morocco where her family had lived although they had baptised him as Alain. Papa was there too - but then again was not. He did not play with either of them. His name, Daniel was of little importance to Tantan. He had not, like so many of his kind, abandoned Saadia with child. He had stayed with her, married her and gave them his name. Later, much later they shared a name for his father Sousou, although they never used it in his presence. His family were from Auxerre but he had come over to the northern shores of Africa to make his fortune in farming, in dealing, in working in whatever way he could.

A son of a colonist with a local woman was not a happy state to be, especially in changing times, but it burnt Tantan with the experience of divided and clashing worlds.

His father’s life was one of negativity and exclusion. Papa did not get on well with his fellow French, and he was not made welcome by the local people. Their marriage isolated them from both worlds, but truth will out and he would have been isolated anyway in any world. They found little solace from each other in their own world and without Alain they would not have remained together. It was not surprising that after a few further years of struggle he decided that they should all return to France.

Tantan remembered the day they left for France. As ever the sky and sea were piercing blue, and the hot sun framed their shadows in the dockyard as they boarded their boat back to Marseille.

Algiers. Algiers la Blanche. Algiers opens to the sky and sea like a mouth, or as Tantan saw from the deck of the ship like a gaping wound on the side of Africa. Algiers la Blanche cupped by deepest blue above and below expelling, like pus from a huge boil, the ship and its passengers back to France and away from Africa, away from Algiers to its twin city of Marseille.

The sadness Tantan felt was difficult for him to understand. It was so complicated, so mixed up yet as he found out throughout his life was so constant and simple. Tantan was always the one just missing, just too early or too late for what would have been a life and experience that he spent so much energy wishing for himself. There was sadness too for his mother for she was going into exile forever extinguishing any hope of returning to her family and the way of life lost to her, and to Tantan. There was sadness for papa, with his alien family returning from Africa with little success and less resource than expected by his family in France. The low prospect of any better success in France only added to their lack of joy on returning.

It was an early and ongoing lesson to Tantan that sometimes the only way to go is to do what has to be done even if that is certain to lead to disappointment, sadness and loss to others – and that everything that you do inevitably will affect others – acting in a selfish manner, only for yourself was never possible.

Tantan, at least, was leaving the only life he had known-one where he did play with other children, often lost in their shared innocence, building their imagined world of fun together- until all too often a friend’s mother or a brother called his playmates away before their journey had ended. Although he could not see it then the experiences, explored over and over in his memory, revealed the little love there was between the colonised and the colonisers. Their treatment by these invaders was partially balanced by the way the local people withdrew their children from playing with Tantan and others like him. Exercising the only power they had at that point of inflicting some kind of retribution, of pain on some of the oppressors.

How does one grow and prosper in a world where attraction and affection can only be shown by removing or forbidding its appearance; where papa was only able to tolerate Tantan and his mother and where best friendships were pursued through chasing, harrying, kicking and spitting.

La Groupe

The artist is a mirror and all of their work should reflect this. This was not fully shared by his companions at the table. They met at La Retour once a month or so to eat, drink, talk and even go whoring if the inclination took them. They were noisy but they were tolerated for their regular custom and left behind a large enough pourboire for the staff to forget the aggravation their visits always brought with them.

They did not order from the menu but just expected the best of what was available - to be served up, in the usual order, over four or five courses. The only words to the waiters was the inevitable ‘encore du vin’ without any ‘s’il vous plait’ except when they harangued or escalated any minor error of serving that occurred. It was Didier who was serving them tonight as the staff took it in turn to be ridiculed and ignored by them.

It was September and this was the first time since the spring that they were all there at the feast. Jean was at the head of the table if there was such a spot. He was the quietest of the four but always the most forceful in putting his views and opinions forward. He was most successful in terms of recognition, or at least he thought he was. Alongside him was Jay, an American who had lived in Paris for as long as he cared to remember; and Mr. Bojangles. No first name, Bo to them and such like them but Mr. Bojangles to the world. He had assumed the name in homage to Dylan in preference to his given name. The fourth member was Bruce who had just returned to Paris from his latest trip to conclude his agreement with the publisher of his latest manuscript.

Jean was in the process of creating his latest show. He had made his name, at least in France, for his conceptual visions of what art could be. He was often interviewed on television on such but not with as large an audience as his ego would have liked. He had explored his thoughts in a number of ways in public especially on his most popular art piece that was called ‘soundscape?’

He had created this by using a power microphone to collect the sounds inside other cars as they passed his own chauffeured car. The direction of the phone buffered from the sounds of his own car picked up quietly at first, increasing in volume until the cars were adjacent and declined as they parted as his car sped past. Conversations, alone or with background radio or tape, music and spoken word, sometimes in joy, other times in argument. Even the cars with no one speaking, or no radio on, intermingled with noisier ones in the natural randomness of the recording successfully conveyed their quietness all too well. These twenty second or so bursts of ‘sound’ from successive cars with variable but short intermissions resonated an addictive ever-changing soundscape of foreseeable but never predictable samples. The cars that were silent increased the mystery and expanded the imagination as their quiet pauses offered as much if not more than those belligerent with noise. He had eliminated all but a low, warm background of engine and wheel noises to act as a base to the sound aura of conversation bites between music and performance of all varieties to create a satisfying melange of fade to fade amongst silent whooshes as the recording car sped on.

The effect was to leave the listener both satisfied by the variety and diversity and the space and sounds to create their own imaginings on the outcomes from individual snatches or be annoyed, perplexed or frustrated by the incompleteness of each sample. They could guess most of the preceding, and consequent components but only with some aspect of predictability but they would never actually know the outcome of any, due to the arbitrariness and brevity. But then as Jean said, such is life.

The current work in progress however was the main point of conversation that night. It had been inspired by a giant turd left un-flushed, or un-flushable on the shelf of the toilet Jean had visited some time ago in this very restaurant. He had at first just considered it a little rude but it had come back into his mind again and again until it took root as the origins of his latest creation. It seemed to him to resonate with much that was occurring across French society at this time – and the ever changing and often ineffective initiatives that attempted to clean up and maintain the sanctity of Napoleon and Gaullist principles across France and beyond – but no matter what they did there still remained this sight and smell of shit across the land.

The laughter and shrieks that emerged from their discussion as he explained his opus were louder than usual. They even explored the possibility that the provider of this specific turd could be here in the restaurant tonight. It could even be one of them, although, of course, not Jean himself, unless he was being a little adventurous with the truth.

He had assembled about half of the ‘canvasses’ required for an exhibition and was soliciting for the remainder. He wanted his companions to sit for him as part of that oeuvre. He took out a box of toilet paper, interleaved and thicker than the standard rolled version. He wanted a wipe from each of their arses after shitting. The tears were flowing down their faces, sides were cracking and speech was nearly impossible as he outlined the procedure to follow. It was the second sheet used he wanted not the first as he had found that that was too often more thickly coated and less interesting in its impact. The second pass on a clean sheet of his specially designed paper gave a thinner, more dispersed and distinguished signature of the donor. The focus and lines varied with the finger(s) used, the direction taken and the pressure applied and so far he had assembled a range of individual pictures from near black through to light yellow and green. His own experiments in the beginning showed him the importance of diet on texture and colour so in addition he wanted a brief note of the previous day’s diet to place the sample in perspective. He wanted at least one sample for the show after they had eaten beetroot. Beetroot gave a pronounced and scary dark red colour to the shit and to the wipe. He expected these canvas/tissues to be the most sought after at the exhibition. He proposed to append a little dietary note to each exhibit so that the visitors to the gallery could attempt to connect the exhibit with the celebrity donors. The donors would be acknowledged but not overtly identified for their contributions in the catalogue by signed photographs. All of the pieces would be in sealed little boxes screwed to the wall and would be on offer at 1000 francs each. All of the pieces mounted in their pristine white rectangles, glass fronted and signed by himself, the artist on the glass, with the producers identity noted on the rear of the exhibit. A purchase conducted blind but with the promise of possibly something more than they expected if the donor was a celebrity.

Their laughter was at a crescendo when the flash, followed by the boom, cut this of.

They did not see a smile.

La Retour

Didier did not like the group. He thought that they were loud, they were rude, they were ignorant and paid no attention to any one else in the restaurant. Sometimes boorishness can be entertaining from a distance but theirs was a private enjoyment that all around paid for. They put off other diners and spoilt the ambience in the brasserie. At moments of empathy however even he relished the anarchy they created as it drove wedges into the closely controlled order of the black waist-coated silver service redolent of his place of work. Often he and the other waiters found it difficult to remain blank and distant on overhearing their latest exploit, scheme or jest. Or just the way they built upon each other’s starting lines to create a tower of ridiculousness overflowing in all directions. Such freedom rankled yet tasted sweet in comparison to stiff linen napkins, white aprons and the tight black waistcoats they all wore. Even Madeleine the only woman waiter in La Retour wore the traditional Parisian black waistcoat.

Didier particularly liked the waistcoat he wore, even though it was partially redundant with a pocket for each of the coins of the empire from sou to franc, but it was the badge of their office. He certainly did not use all of the pockets now except to occasionally lose a small pencil or thumb in whilst in vacant pose. Like the others a pocketbook attached to his waist by a silver chain was the modern walking cashbox that he and the other waiters used.

Didier was liked by the regular customers, even the gang of four as they were sometimes referred as, as he tended to smile more than the others, and approach customers spontaneously rather than enter into the rule encrusted fishing expedition the other waiters employed as they ignored, or forgot their role in taking orders and serving. His good-natured country manners, rather than Parisian aloofness, brought a freshness even his hardened colleagues enjoyed as his lack of a cutting style helped to emphasise their own skills to a finer sharpness by contrast. He also stood out from the rest of the staff as they were quite content in staying in their current posts until they died or retired and passed on the job to a favoured family member. Everyone at the restaurant and Didier’s family too thought that he had also reached the peak of his career but deep within Didier burned ambition and determination that he would reach, not just the highest level of waitering, but would eventually own and operate one of the best restaurants in Paris- then and only then would he allow himself to relax a little and start to enjoy what life is about.

When Draa entered the restaurant it was the same waiter, Didier, who approached him and offered to take his coat and hat. Draa returned his smile of welcome, but this was quickly followed by a perplexed and lost look before everything suddenly disappeared and reappeared in different fashion in the sudden flash and boom.

Fragments of paper, of linen, of waistcoat and much else filled the restaurant’s universe as order exploded into chaos in that flash of light; each with a glimpse of what was, and was to became, tumbling one over the other, in and out of focus.

Didier could not get a fragment of music out of what was left of his brain. ‘When you smile at me in the same damn way I can see my friend you’re from the other side’ over and over but it could not place the name of the song or the singer.

When you smile at me in the same

damn way, I can see

my friend

you’re

from the other side

who are you?

Les Renvoi

Daniel and his family settled back in Auxerre but they were not made welcome. Failure in his family’s eyes, an Arab as a wife and a foreign child. The resentment was palpable even. It was a time France did not wish to be reminded of its lost and receding empire where setback, defeat and liberation in the colonies struck deep at the pride of the nation. Tantan was seen as less than a pied noir, a reminder day and daily of France’s diminishing and lost powers.

It was for this reason that papa soon decided it would be better to move to Paris where they would know practically no one and where some parts of north African life was to be found. There some acceptance would be possible and perhaps some happiness.

Tantan’s favourite time there was the Sundays when he and his mother would go and spend most of the day at the flea market at Clignacourt in the north of Paris. Here at least he saw his mother smile as, now and again, a flattering comment emerged from the mouth of a Berber as they wandered the market. The smile always came a little after the comment, after they had moved on from the person who spoke it, so that the speaker would not notice her appreciation of it and continue with it. Papa never accompanied them to the market yet he never refused the food bought there which always reminded him of the warmth of north Africa, or to wear the clothes she selected for him from the stalls.

For Tantan it was as close as he could get to what life was like back in Algeria. Live, vibrant and noisy. Full of colour, smells and movement, and where cheap toys were abundant. Although the toys rarely lasted the week between the trips to the market Saadia always had a few francs to buy him a treat be it bird whistle, tin car, bubbles or a small ship. Despite his plea’s and pleases she never bought or