Pascal
Paris, Rue du Milan
In the early spring of 1982, I was living in Paris. I camped with my cousin, Hughie on L’s floor in her flat on the 6th floor near Montmartre. Home for a short while was up a spiral staircase to the top, keep the noise down and a keen eye out for the concierge, a grumpy woman who lived at the foot of the stairs.
Most nights Hughie and I would play in and around the quarters of St Denis and St Michel. During the day we worked from Châtelet to Champs Élysées on the metro line. There are five stops including the Louvre. The Journey lasts about 15 minutes. This was ‘showtime’. We played a set of tunes and songs and hoped for the generosity of the commuters and tourists. Usually there was a variety show of performers on the trains. I remember an acrobatic puppeteer, a baroque blökfluit player, and a south American charango player. Each act would take a carriage and the train became a moving music hall. All the performers would catch up and have a smoke break at Champs-Élysées. One day in Châtelet we teamed up with a lovely mandolin player Canadian, Phillip Barker. Phillip knew some of our repertoire (he had been listening to us play and learned the tunes). Phillip joined us and promptly named our ensemble, Spondoolicks.
One balmy evening after busking around the cafés in the Latin Quarter we were sharing out our spoils on a park bench when we were approached by an old man in a long coat. His scent, that of a wild animal, was a pungent aroma found in a zoo. The feral smell a human acquires after living on the streets. The homeless man was almost invisible, about 5 foot tall and carrying two plastic bags. One bag held old newspapers and the other empty perfume bottles. He looked to me about 70 years old, although he was in his 40s. I started to chat to him when suddenly he burst into song. ‘When I get older, losing my hair’ We all joined in, much to his delight and he started dancing. A crowd gathered around to see the spectacle of the old tramp dancing and the musicians singing along.
When we finished playing the audience showered us with coin. He then told me the following strange tale. In those days, I believed everything, especially words that tumbled from the lips of a venerable old street man of the world.
“You know?” he said drawing in closely. “My father also played the violin. He studied at the Paris conservatoire, and he was much better than you. My family arrived from Mexico in the forties. My father worked in the psychiatric hospital.” I nodded and listened as he went on. “He once had two patients that claimed they were Napoleon Bonaparte. “Je suis Napoleon! one would cry, whilst the other would claim “Non, Je suis Napoleon Bonaparte.” These two Napoleons were constantly at war with each other. My father did not know what to do, so he wrote to the great Sigmund Freud. A letter came back from the great doctor, telling my father what he must do. ‘To cure the men and sort out the conflict, you must immediately put the two men into one room, for two weeks.’ My father did as he was bidden and placed the two men into the one room. For the first week it was dégueulasse. The nurses were getting their ears bitten off, the food was ending up on the walls. After a week had passed, a strange tranquility arrived at the room and after two weeks the men emerged. The first came out of the room and exclaimed “Je suis Napoleon’ whilst the other, following, proclaimed softly “Je suis Josephine.”
Pascal promised to return to perform with us the next night but he was gone with the wind.