Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Le Concierge!" (The Caretaker)
...I AM "LE CONCIERGE", your apartment-resident caretaker. I clean & mop the stairways & halls, I can accept your Mail, your un-wanted Guests I diligently brush off. Your late-night drunk Lovers don't stand a chance. I give 'Em what for! In my building entrance quarters, my humble studio there's always a "Tizen" on the boil, an EAR to listen to your troubles, a friend to help U, a smile/compassionate, to glean the boulevard's tomorrow's gore, to remind U of your rich yesterdays? "It's ALL good!" -I lie incessantly.
"Je suis le Concierge", now just a residential watchdog. An old "frump" in a floral, cotton dress 'avec' Winter underwear & woolly shawl, comfortably seated, who as a bright young girl Student once sang "Le Marseillaise"& "Lillies in the Field" but I erased all my memories and what "A le cheche du temps perdu"? I left dying in the Montparnasse-cemetery rain. My late husband, then 2 two brave sons, lost in the 2 great wars. "Ou sans les neige d'antan?" But do they ever really go away? Or do they temper our Summers, keep us ever wary, I wonder.
"Je-suis le Concierge". I am that old Gal at your Entre-door! An elder SISTA, Aunt-Grande-Mama! A daughter of Fate. A Life's shadow.; except when I patronize the " Marchais de Flora", amongst that Parade of flower stalls where fellow Concierge madams gather & greet. Cafe, a Calvados. "Bonjour! - toute suite!"
Madame Katy (Katarina!), a displaced RUSSOS, White Russian. Her grandfather, a Count, once close to the murdered Czar. She speaks several languages, once a debutante at the imperial court, then captured, raped, exiled, tortured in the Gulags, she escaped, now manages within a lowly "Concierge" in the building next door. 90 years old if she's a day! Her eyes like scars!
...Madame Queen Juanita Aguiluzes, a Mulato, a tropical past. Now? In Paris. When her Concierge Day duties end, she goes out dancing, a "belle-epoch IMAGIO!" -with rich American writers, tourists, yet another "lost generation", wave on wave and she KISSES but she never tells: A side-gig in blackmail?... The "Maigret's" are always popping by to see if her house guests' raincoats are still wet or a rumpled bed, lipstick alibi? It's hard to say even for THIS Concierge as she's blasting out AL BOWLLY or DUKE ELLINGTON phonograph recordings night & day? Sound travels. Rumors? They reach into Tomorrow!
As for my custodiam, my dilapidated Parisian-GOTHIC building RESPONSIBILITY, I allow the tenants INFANTS to play with balloons, their interminably bouncing ball on the well-scuff stairwells which once, were trod by the Countess de Romaine before her appointment with the French Revolution's National RAZOR; her hay-day ambience, the scent of a powdered wig, the rustle of silk or satin gowns now vacuumed into history. Her Salon portraits torn down, miniatures stolen, a gifted Comb from Marie-Antoinette. The Auction houses of Christies/Southerbys never had it so good! A Lady's head already paid a price above rubies?
Atop my buildings grilled railing staircase, apartment No.1 (Aptmt. No's decrease a'la Dante's Circle of Hell as U descend): Monsieur Dupont, an outcast from a grande family. He occupies himself creating miniature wooden sculptures of the "Arc du Triumph", repetitiously, and after two 'demijohns" (?) of Vin Rouge he is prone to bellow/singing "Sur la pomme, d'Avignon, Lonnie-Dancer etc.", & sometimes, "Meet me in St. Louis". He also smokes pipes of Hashish. I know this. I smell it from under his stairwell door whilst mopping the staircase, getting a buzz on, humming Edith Piaf's "No regrets" whilst trying to look casually busy.
The latter? I let it go of course. He pays his rent on time. And because only ABOVE him in the garret/attic resides Sister Claudet, a de-frocked NUN confined to a wheelchair and for who I scour Pigalle-Clichy "pouisson/seafood" outlets for her weekly "Bouillabaisse" (le Bon Soup!). FROM Marseille, now syphilitic, the only joy for which she lives: "Les fruits de Mer." "Lucky Claudet" I sometimes think. At least SHE knows what Tomorrow will not bring. And like Hildegard of Bingen, famed Mediaeval Prioress, she is prone to droning/chanting religious dirges which hardly anyone can understand, leastways have the patience to listen to.
BELOW M. Dupont is M. Defarge and his wife Francine in an apartment. en-suite & a spacious balcony furnished with 2 ornate iron chairs & coffee table overlooking the boulevard... Francine, I suspect has a nervous condition yet a sumptuous wardrobe; she once asked me to assist her dress. I noticed bruises on her upper arms. Childless alas, her husband, a travelling salesman (Vacuum Cleaners?) dresses too RITZY if U ask me? He's hardly ever there.
And AT THE BOTTOM (above me) resides vivacious Madame Aurore de Chatelaine with her 3 bouncing, noisy, gossiping daughters aged 7 to 13 who - if U R in the mood - can put a smile on a Parisian rainy day and who are always dressed, well turned out, busy-bees, their Mama working 3 jobs. I give the kids toffee on Thursdays and on Sundays, if I bake a CREAM cake? I am their Goddess! Every great Parisian building IS its own community. Other than necessities, the Tabacci, the bakery, the local Cafe, Le Boulangerie, a smokey Jazz-club jive outing? Check with "Le Concierge", U never need to go out, seasonal good weather of course demands "Le Promenade!" And so it goes...
But THEN... everything went DIJON!!! (South). M. Defarge murdered Francine/his wife, gallons of blood seeping through the buildings porous ceiling into Mdm. Aurore de Chatelaine's "cuisine/kitchen" where her 3 daughters were sitting around playing an early version of TEXAS-HOLD-EM POKER, betting plastic counters, and all 3 kids attired in cotton white suddenly sprayed in blood-red poker dots!...some kindergarten hysteria ensued and when the "Maigret's/Cops" reluctantly showed up "sans Sirens", Rochefort cheese/biscuits/Vin Rouge smeared-mouths, stinking of garlic, struggling to light their "Gitane/Disc-Blue" smokes I yelled: "NE PAS FUMER ICI!" A CONCIERGE- ADAMANT in control adding "U clowns' better dust for fingerprints! And get SOMEONE to clean up this bloody BLOOD. I only mop stairways & hallway!" (I put my foot down!) "Vive la France!!!"
...There was a fairly decent/semi accurate report in FIGARO, French newspaper re. M. Defarge, high on "Absinthe", but probably Cocaine-Cola, of how after a cinematically respectable train platform chase by the Belgian "Maigret's" on his alighting the Paris-Brussels night train where this cheap-ass didn't even reserve a Sleeper-compartment, was wrestled down on arrival with a bloodied Samourai sword (?) discovered in his over-night bag. And under Gendarme-interrogation (repetitive "MERDES!!!) he eventually claimed he was Bi-polar, spoke only in Esperanto and asked for a grande piano that automatons, only played Claude Debussy!... Trying to dodge the guillotine.
Eventually the hue-cry, the murder notoriety died down. My fellow neighborhood Concierges however to this day give me the Eye. Modern day France is like that. I hear it's even worse in Germany. As for England? They're too cheap to care.
I AM "LE CONCIERGE" seated by the "Entre-Maison's" double doors. Within, a small courtyard. Iron trellis stairways to the apartments above. Stairs & floors I mop & clean. My FREE TIME I un-ravel then re-knit my knitting as TIME'S Guillotine falls for a non-existent nephew, my husband, 2 sons who one day I will someday meet. Oddly-lately, a postcard arrived from Honfleur! Sadly, sent to this wrong address. Lonely-on-lonely. On my seated Watchtower as you all pass on by.
And NOW it seems there's a GROWL on the boulevard I never noticed before. Perhaps it's from within myself? An old "frump" in a print dress & woolly shawl. An inner HOWL for the scoundrels, thieves, murderers, those beyond Good & Evil for the dark fate they are sure to meet. And as for, from my seated Watchtower, seated on my stool on this boulevard by the courtyard's double doors, I silent witness & finger the cardigan I knitted that I made for no-one...on the boulevard de Cligancourt where once now famous Poets/Painters in penury struggled, HOWLED & wept, who did herald our bright tomorrow through their VISION which they never got to know, I "LE CONCIERGE" still look & see "dans le boulevard", a street in Paris, today:"aujourd-hui!".
c.2026. Dave Delacroix.
