Happy and Earring

The French have no desire for perfect roads, or I guess for cyclists to maintain reproductive capacities. The north wind had brought me hobbling into the Saône region, from Luxembourg to Vesoul, where I'm writing this. 

My day yesterday started in Crévéchamps, a town 20km under Nancy with just one bar owned by two brothers. I sat down there on their terrace. My Airbnb wasn't open for check ins yet. I ordered a coca. One of the two brothers, I'll call him Earring, as he was a big fella with an earring, took the order. The other one brought me the drink. I'll call him Happy, and I'll tell you why. 

Happy and Earring took a seat behind me on their wee Coca-Cola sponsored plastic terrace. It wasn't cold though the sun was shrouded by some light clouds. I tried reading my book, tried jotting a few notes down, but I could feel their eyes massaging my neck. I turned around. Happy smiled and Earring took a drag of his rolled cigarette. I believe he smiled too. They didn't say a word. 

            "C'est votre café?" I asked. 

            "My brother's," Happy said. 

            "Non, my brother's," Earring replied. 

            They laughed and Happy told me he caught fish. He'd go out on the Mosel and catch fish, then he'd come back, and they'd sell his fish in the restaurant. The pair didn't need much to stay alive and joyful, I think. 

Besides Happy and Earring there were two old men were sitting inside drinking a beer. They were wearing hunting clothes: padded sweaters, heavy duty cargo pants, and it seemed to me they weren't just wearing that for show. They were discussing something half serious, with a raised voice being followed by laughter every now and then. Outside parents were gathering in front of the school, which was located on the other side of the street. They were talking together, standing in the middle of the street where I, since I'd arrived an hour earlier, hadn't seen a single car pass. One mother came to the terrace and started talking to Earring. She was pale with brown hair she wore to her shoulders; she had a natural beauty about her that time had carved into character. I looked at her, she said bonjour, she looked at my tight bike shorts, then looked at Happy, who looked at me and winked, who then looked at Earring, who pretended to act blasé as he asked her what sounded like: 

            "What's good shawty?" in French. 

Happy winked at me again and smiled, stood up, and sat at another table to give the two some time to talk. As Earring and the mother spoke, her son came running out of school and hugged his mother, said bonjour to Earring, looked at my bike and looked at my bike shorts, laughed and ran circles around his mother for twenty minutes as she stood talking to Earring. In that time, Happy sat there like the Buddha on a Cola chair, looking at the children leaving school, the sunlight shortly fading, considering, I guess, the fish he had caught, the day he'd enjoyed, the evening to come and the morning afloat on the Mosel, entirely at peace. Happy perhaps also for his brother, who was making the natural beauty smile.

            I paid for my coke and left the brothers for my accommodation. 

            The place where I stayed boasted breakfast, dinner, and turtles, which was why I booked it in the first place. It was an orange stucco just outside town with a 20% incline ramp to the door and five white statues of Venus loitering around the patio. A small villa where I'd have the balcony room overlooking the neighbour's laundry line, their wee white terrier with a black spot on its shoulder, and the trees in the distance which were a combination of oak and birch trees. 

            There were seventeen turtles. One large one and sixteen small ones, occupying an enormous terrarium in a cordoned off room in the house. The owner of the place, Isabelle, told me they were about to go into hibernation and wouldn't be any fun at all until at least March. 

            "What fun are they now?" I asked. 

            "Oh, just look at them," she said, or I think that was what she said, because she said it with the loving affection you'd give a puppy or a kitten. They were cute and horrifying at the same time. An image popped into my mind that the guests at the bed and breakfast were supposed to be the breakfast themselves. That the turtles at night would get let into the room to feast on the occupants. Ideas like that sometimes enter my head. 

            Uneaten by turtles I awoke the next day to a thick mist over the river. I ate a breakfast of aged bread and a cup of yoghurt that was sourer than it should have been. I got on the bike overdressed expecting the cold. I wore three layers and gloves. The sun broke through the clouds as I found myself following a 125-kilometer trail to Vesoul, where I entered a turtleless accommodation, finding a washing machine, giving my clothes their first wash since leaving Eindhoven two weeks ago. Now I'm setting off again, the north wind persists, and Grenoble is calling me.