III. Spring

I would sit outside in Place Coderc when it was warm enough to do so, sipping an espresso and passing the afternoon. I often thought of documenting life in that small plaza: the produce vendors arriving early in the morning to set up their stalls; the butchers unloading truckloads of frozen meat; the retirees pouring beers at ten AM on a Wednesday morning; the small crusty-eyed dogs scavenging for scraps of duck; the café waitress with her Italian-twinged French; the white cat, maneuvering across a balcony beneath the nose of a white-haired lady, just awake. The square was a microcosm, and at its core stood two Lime trees whose bright green leaves, bursting forth from the bud, made something out of a nondescript early-April afternoon. So too did the woman in the house with the blue shutters who, pushing those shutters open with a clatter that woke the sleeping dog next to me, raised her hands to the sky and stretched long and deep. So too did the small child in bright white sneakers who, running with hands wildly waving, with his voice high-pitched hollering bumbled through a pile of leaves to pet the same dog who had, moments before, sniffled at an ant crawling across his sleeping muzzle. So too did I, putting words and pictures together and sounding them aloud to make sense of things. That is something, isn’t it. 

The new season brought changes. The city was reanimated and the region burst into color – it was not long after that the first flocks of tourists came. I spent most of my time outside, taking trips to nearby towns and swimming in the still-frigid rivers of the Dordogne. My soccer team, the worst in the Périgord, spanned five games without registering a loss, even after our captain found himself ejected from a match for wrestling an opposing player on the halfway line. This was progress. On the weekends my friends and I would spend hours at the local bars or shooting the breeze with Dave, the Long-Island-hailing owner of Périgueux’s only English bookstore.

On an evening in mid-April, Andrea, Thomas and I were at a bar with two new friends called Sam and Wylhen. At a certain point somebody mentioned politics and we said some words about the burgeoning trade war before the topic was exhausted. When the conversation veered towards the situation in France, Wylhen shifted in his seat. “Here in France,” he said, “we don’t talk much about politics at home.” He remarked that the topic was treated as a taboo, that his parents rarely spoke about politics, and that it was most commonly discussed using broad terms. When Marine Le Pen was outlawed from holding political office in late March, it took some persistence to gauge local opinions. It was quietly commented on by my colleagues, with only one or two venturing so far as to label the decision a “good” or “bad” thing. The topic was sensitive. 

The American situation, however, was freely spoken on, and I began to understand that these conversations served two purposes: first, they revealed a very real French concern for the state of things in America. Early on I had failed to recognize the truly intense consequences of American politics on the French nation, and like me, my colleagues were overwhelmed by it all. The second purpose of these conversations may have been more subtle. Maybe, by talking about America, there was an opportunity to shed light on political opinions that would otherwise be omitted from the dinner table. In a way, developments in America highlighted similar trends occurring in France, and so it became possible to talk about France by talking about America. Then, too, was it possible to build unity through a shared disgust over events in America, without ever uttering a word about Le Pen, Macron or Bardela. To stretch this idea further, I too, by unintentionally provoking political conversations on the schoolyard, may have played a social role in introducing these sorts of chats.

The days stretched longer. I swam in the shivering Dronne at Brantôme and bought fresh strawberries from south of the city. I split my weekends between Bordeaux and Périgueux and the winter coats were finally retired for the season. Tourists arrived and the little train that carried people throughout the old city returned. Shutters were left open, the river rose and fell, a flash-flood carried it high above the Voie Verte. I began to say goodbye to Périgueux. Though I had spent much of the year awaiting the spring the city was, upon its arrival, occupied by a different crowd. The old plazas, which during the winter were home strictly to locals, offered themselves up to new faces. Still, I would run into my students here and there. Nearly every day since my arrival I would catch sight of one of them in the busy market, or at a café with their parents, or at the English bookstore. They would always wave and maybe even shout across the square Charlie! and I would wave back and say see you soon! and they, because I had taught them, would say see you soon! and skip away, beaming. 

April 10, 2025

It is one of the final classes of the school year, and I am reading aloud to the children: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It is just before noon, the last class before lunchtime, and they are restless, fidgeting. Beams of sunlight pierce the curtains and brighten the many colors of the classroom, a gallery of sun-faded educational posters of every color, colors at which I have pointed and spoken their names until my tongue was sore. I have reached the end of the story and the caterpillar is no longer a small caterpillar but a big, fat caterpillar. The children are leaning forward in their chairs, making faces at one another, miming the caterpillar eating a leaf. They are listening for familiar words. Strawberry. Lollipop. Hungry. When he builds his cocoon and finally emerges as a butterfly, their eyes widen with recognition and they shout a long awwww until one of them laughs, flapping her arms as butterfly wings. And in turn the rest of the class, grown giddy, burst from their own cocoons, flapping their wings and the classroom is momentarily transformed into a flight of butterflies and the desks are daffodils upon which the butterflies perch and beat their wings into colors, known and unknown. 

They are returned children when the teacher, having stepped outside for a moment, shrieks at a grasshopper camouflaged against a stone wall and those children, still beating their butterfly wings, run outside and surround the creature. The grasshopper is still and so are the children. In fact they are still and silent, sometimes tip-toeing for a better view as they listen, watching how the insect rubs its legs together like a harp, singing its springtime melody.

April 16, 2025

It isn’t much longer now. It is a Wednesday afternoon and I am playing a much-postponed tennis match with Wassim on a court at the edge of town. The court is overgrown and blades of grass peek through cracks in the blue-green asphalt. Wassim drove. We met months before, on the soccer team, on those rare days when we both made the lineup. When he picked me up it was raining, and now the rain is gone and the sun has seared the damp from the grass. Now, we crawl through a gap in the chain-link fence, pushing his speaker through the hole before climbing onto the court. On the drive over we ribbed each other, him saying whoever loses a match 6-0 has to shave their head and me laughing nervously, unsure of his skill level. He called me chicken-shit in the car but now he is grateful that I didn’t accept the wager as I hold match-point, leading 5-0, advantage me. Wassim serves, a cheeky soft lob just passing over the net, and I scramble but return it, sending him chasing toward the corner. He hits a backhand, straight down the line, and I stretch but can’t reach it. It’s a deuce, and on the next serve he hits it hard, straight at me. I cannot adjust my body and hit a weak forehand that floats in the air before landing just out of bounds. Wassim chuckles but quickly focuses again. He serves and I return, backhand, to the far side of the court. He sprints, returns, and I fluff my forehand, sending it into the net. Set, Wassim, 5-1, he can keep his hair. 

I am up 45-30 in the next set. Match point. Wassim has been floating me looping moonshots since game one and I’ve learned how to return them. I serve to his right and he whips it right back at me, pushing me back onto my heels. My forehand lands generously for him and he slices it at my feet, charging toward the net but too early, as I lob my shot over his head and watch him whiff a last-ditch ‘tweener attempt, the ball spinning against the fence. That afternoon Wassim would take a long route home, driving up through the forested hills beyond Périgueux. There would be a gate and a sign, which we would ignore. It would be peaceful and, looking down at the cathedral in the distance, he would tell me that he often came here alone at dusk, tracking the lights of the city, and that he would not stay for long, that he dreamed of traveling to America. And I would stand there for some time, up on that hill, watching the people, watching the swifts glide through the centuries-old stonework of the belltower.