Bastille Day
Joelle Ballonzoli
©
Copyright 2020 by Joelle Ballonzoli
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“Bastille
Day” is one of a series of short stories, each standing by
itself, which focus on the importance placed on the communal nature
of life in France in the 1950’s. The series is based on my
childhood memories in La Ciotat, a shipyard town of what was then the
blue collar portion of the French Mediterranean coast.
Two
summer holidays marked my childhood: Bastille Day, July 14, the
anniversary of the 1789 French revolution, and Assumption Day, August
15, which commemorates the Assumption in the Christian world - the
day when the Holy Virgin Mary disappeared from the human race, rising
up in the air on her way to heaven, her arms opened wide embracing
the skies, looking down on us saying: “Goodbye, be good!”
Assumption
Day was also my hometown’s feast day honoring the Virgin who
was its protectoress. For us it was a family day. My mother’s
first name being Marie, we celebrated her by showering her with
flowers, which she loved, and a big summer dinner at my
grand-parents’ house in the country. That day felt a bit like
the end of the summer to me because the second portion of August
usually brought stormy weather in the Mediterranean. September was
beautiful, but by then the beaches were deserted. The excitement was
gone. It didn’t feel like summer anymore.
I
liked Bastille Day better than Assumption Day not only because of the
weather, but also because it was more festive. The celebration
started on the night of July 13 with a parade led around town by the
Municipal Marching Band, in which Ciotadin adults and children
carried paper lanterns set on sticks. This tradition called The
Torchlight Retreat had been established in 1890 to commemorate the
symbolic storming of the Bastille by the people of Paris –
during the monarchy, the Bastille was a prison where convicted
aristocrats lived a luxurious life at the expense of the taxpayers. I
watched the Torchlight Retreat every year from the sidewalk, envying
the privileged kids who marched in it and wondering how they had
managed to get in, envying them.
The
Retreat was beautiful to my child’s eyes. At one point it
became magical. Getting to a part of the town that had very little
public lighting it would become shrouded in a dark haze. As it
entered the area the blackness accentuated the multicolored pastel
glow of the lanterns. Lantern bearers disappeared. The lights of the
multicolor lanterns bobbing up and down in the dark bounced like a
procession of fireflies floating down a mountain stream.
The
vision was enough for me to leave the real world for a few minutes
and cross the threshold into a dreamlike state. Depending
on the mood intensity, the tableau would take me to other areas of my
chronic reverie. Among them my observation of fishing boats lights
floating on La Ciotat bay, viewed from my favorite spot at the
entrance of the port, in the late afternoon when the days got short
in the fall.
On
the morning of July 14, the commemoration starts at the small
historical triangle shaped Liberty Plaza. Liberty Plaza is formed by
the meeting of three narrow streets each barely 10 feet wide, along
which stand three- and four-story pastel colored buildings. On the
Plaza’s western side lies the old convent and the chapel of the
Minimes, a Catholic order founded by Saint Francis of Paule in 1436,
now defunct in France. Also on the western side of the Plaza, still
stand the houses of dignitaries from before and after the Republic
was declared in 1793. On its eastern and northern sides, most
buildings were built in the 19th
century.
A
humongous poplar tree, The Tree of Liberty, stands in the middle of
the Plaza. The Tree is so big that its upper branches almost reach
the houses on each side of the plaza. Starting in 1789, the French
developed the custom of planting poplar trees or oaks all over
France’s cities, towns and villages as a symbol of the nation’s
strength and power – poplars and oaks were considered the
strongest trees able to overcome the consequences of time and severe
weather. I do not know how many times La Ciotat’s original
Tree was replaced, but the current one must be at least as old as I
am. By the Tree stands the Declaration
des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, Declaration
of Man’s and Citizen’s Rights, the equivalent of the Bill
of Rights, proclaimed in the
aftermath
of the storming of the Bastille. It is engraved on a stone shaped as
an open book. The piece looks very much like the one that Moses
delivered to the Hebrews on his way back from Mount Sinai in the
popular film, The
Ten Commandments,
which my father took me to see when I was eight years old in 1956. The
Declaration of Men’s and Citizens’ Rights was
explained to me in grammar school the following year demystifying my
confusion with the Ten Commandments of God. Nevertheless, the
impressive scene in which Charlton Heston stands before the Hebrews
with the stones tablets on his arms will ever be associated with La
Ciotat’s Tree of Liberty and the Declarations of the French
republic in my memory.
On
Bastille Day, La Ciotat’s mayor accompanied by dignitaries and
supporters gives a speech by the tree around 11 am. When the speech
is over, the attendants sings a somewhat discordant version of the
French national anthem. The scene today is far from having the impact
it had on me when Pascale and I attended the event after mass once in
the 1950’s. That crowd was larger and seemed more attentive to
the speech. The singing sounded more passionate. I couldn’t
explain the new emotion provoked in me by this powerful expression of
patriotism. It took me in the throat and obstructed my wind. I
didn’t want to let myself cry. I swallowed the lump in my
gullet as strongly as I could, so that the tears would stay in. Mimi
whose family was Communist and didn’t go to church, had met us
at the site. As the first words of the anthem reached her ears –
“Arise
children of the Patria. The day of glory has arrived….”,
Mimi
burst into tears. Pascale, who never missed an opportunity to show
her cynicism, would mock us making faces. “Dummies! Joelle you
look like you’re passing out.” She kicked me. Mimi
indignant hiccupping “My uncle died for France.” “OK,
but this is not a reason for bringing Versailles’ Great Waters
at any occasion.” Pascale would turn her back to us and caught
up with the anthem: “Against the tyranny, the bloodying flag
has been raised…”
After
lunch the bulk of La Ciotat population reconvened on the port to
attend another traditional event, the targues,
or
Provencal Jousts, a naval sport, which is still practiced but does
not attract the kind of crowds it once did. The Jousts’ origin
is lost in antiquity, but their tradition is more than tercentenary
in La Ciotat. The jousts involve two teams, with one player at a time
standing on a small platform placed at the end of two long beams,
each securely attached on the back of the two boats; one painted in
white and red, the other in white and blue, the colors of the two
teams. The platforms extend off the back of the boats about three or
four meters over the water. Each player is armed with a 10-foot-long
wooden spear and protected by a heavy hard wooden shield attached
around his trunk. As the boats ride towards each other coming from
opposite directions, each player aims his spear at his opponent’s
shield, attempting to knock him off his platform and into the water.
The
targues took place between two jetties, across from the church and
close to my house. I rarely missed a competition on Bastille Day. I
attended with my brother Gerard who was in charge of keeping an eye
on me, which he would do for a short period of time before he became
restless and lost patience watching the game. Over the years his
diversions during the games went from catching crabs and limpets on
the rocks by the entrance of the port to messing around with girls
wherever he could find a quiet remote place, such as one of La
Ciotat’s old stone washes that were deserted on the holiday. I
was not privy to those activities. When watching the game, one of his
favorite locations was an old small rotting raft that was attached to
the dock. He stood on it, legs apart shaking the slippery wood plank.
My mother had prohibited him to get on the raft. But she was not
there and he could not resist the prospect of an exciting ride,
rocking the raft back and forth, faster and faster, sometime losing
his balance and falling in the dirty waters at the docks edge. In
those cases, he would get back home sheepish, all wet and partially
covered with the fishing boats greasy exhaust that floated like a
film on the surface of the waters. My mother would then show an
incomparable dexterity in the art of the round-trip slap, which made
him declare: “My mom is short, but she has very ‘dry
hands’.”
Once,
I got bored watching young men falling into the water over and over
again after an hour or so. It was hot. I had gotten thirsty and I
wanted to go home. I just hesitated to do so as I was a little
worried that my brother, who had disappeared as usual, might have to
experience my mother’s dry hands again for leaving me alone.
Thus, I just stood there waiting for him to come back from his
adventure of the day and hoped that Pedru
Titia
- Peter-I’m-cold, the vendor, would come around. Pedru Titia
was the nickname given by the old Sardinians to one of their own. Pedru
was a tall dark man. In contrast, he had a short neck making
his shoulders appear very high and attached directly to his head. He
often kept his arms very close to his body, sometime hugging himself
like he was cold. It was these two very special characteristics that
had given him his nickname.
Pedru
carried a large basket full of bags of greasy potato chips, peanuts
in the shell and a few small bottles of orange flavored carbonated
water called Pschitt, up and down the port or along the beaches
according to the mood of the day. Lucky me! Pedru liked the joust
game and was walking the port on that day. Double lucky me, my
mother had given my brother and me 10 cents each to spend as we
pleased. I bought a Pschitt that had left the fridge hours earlier.
I
was just starting to sip very slowly on my straw to make the beverage
last as long as possible when Gerard showed up, all disheveled, his
knees bruised and his Sunday shirt in tatters. As I asked him what
had took him so long he replied “There has been a fight between
the Theater neighborhood gang and the Marin Plaza gang by the green
beacon. I had no choice but standing with the Theater guys because
that’s grandpa’s and grandma’s neighborhood. It’s
a matter of loyalty you see. I lost my 10 cents during the brawl and
I’m dying thirsty.” I should have been wary - my brother
could not help himself eating my holiday candies and stealing pennies
from my piggy bank. Instead I proposed to share and handed him my
Pschitt. With one gulp he sucked the bottle dry! I started crying
looking at the empty bottle. He put his arm around my shoulders and
said: “I am sorry. I didn’t mean it. But if you don’t
tell mom I drank all your soda, I’ll make it up to you. I
promise I’ll buy you two as soon as I have the money to do so.” I knew
he’d never do it, but I forgave him because I also knew
otherwise that our mother’s hands would be even dryer if I told
her, then just the dryness caused by the ruined Sunday shirt.
The
most important event of the day for me occurred at 10 pm on Bastille
Day when the fireworks started shooting streams of beautiful
illuminations up over our heads; shouts of Hoh(s)! and Hah(s)! rising
up from the crowd as the lights sparkled then faded into the sky. The
whole town packed the far east end of the port, as the fireworks were
shot from the western side by the port entrance. Even the Soeurs
Quiquettes,
literally Peepee Sisters, a slang expression to designate the
religious order of Trinitary Sisters, attended every year in a group.
A Catholic order of nurse nuns who serviced home bound patients, the
Sisters travelled around town on scooters, their clothing and veils
floating behind them on windy days; a vision worth appearing in one
of Luis
Buńuel’s
Surrealist period movies. Sometime in history, the congregation might
also have been known for charitable collections because in good
French they were called Soeurs-qui-quętent
for sisters-who-take-up-the-collection. Qui-quętent is
pronounced exactly as the word quiquette,
which is equivalent to peepee in the Marseillese region slang. It
follows in the Marseillese lingual tradition of playing on words,
usually associating them with body parts or functions.
In
addition to the sisters, the other Ciotadins I could not avoid
noticing were the ones who were on leave from their mandatory
military service. Young men, 18 and 19 years old, who a short time
before had been the town’s teenage “hunks”, now
looked like shy dogs after they have just come back from the
groomer’s neatly shaved for the summer. Their hair was gone,
their heads round as billiard balls. I had watched them playing
soccer on the street, or showing great dexterity in the art of
slingshot, or diving in the Mediterranean from the rocky hills of le
Mugel, tanned and strong. Now they looked all shriveled and awkward
to me without their hair. I noticed some of them had big ears, some
had pimples. I no longer found them handsome.
There
had long been a populist maxim among the French working class stating
that no man was really a man until he went through mandatory military
service. Now in the 1950’s, people didn’t seem to be so
sure that the military would necessarily emphasize manhood.
Especially where I grew up, in the world that had historically and
patriotically provided the bulk of cannon fodder. France was at war
in its colonies; first in Viet Nam from 1946 to 1954 and then in
Algeria from 1954 to 1962. Sending their youth to uncharted
territories, such as the torrid lands at the edge of the Sahara, to
fight a guerilla type war that no one could apprehend had become a
great source of uncertainty. Anxiety, doubt and fear was palpable
among the population. As children we perceived this uncomfortable and
troubling atmosphere. My older cousin who had been drafted right at
the end of the school year 1955 at 18 years old and had come back
home in one piece, never spoke about his experience in the army. No
one asked. Maybe nobody wanted to know. Or maybe my adult relatives
made sure not to discuss the issue when I was around. Still I
occasionally caught fragments of adults’ conversations.
“Rose
did Nine heard from her son? Do you know anything? I ran into her
yesterday. I didn’t dare to ask. She looks so drained. It’s
a pity.”
“No;
She is my sister in law, but I don’t feel comfortable asking;
just like you. My brother has decided he doesn’t want to speak
about it. They don’t even listen to the news on the radio or
read the papers. They feel our kids are being killed and the ones
who are safe and lucky to be in college, should have a little respect
for that. They find the demonstrations offensive.”
The
Communist Party…..”
“Yes,
Krushchev is telling them what to do!”
There were horror
stories circulating at low voice among the adult population about the
treatments provided by the Algerian freedom fighters to their
prisoners. No one could shield anybody from noticing casualties. One
of them, a young man who lived down the street from my grand-parents’
had been tortured and was now seriously mentally damaged. He walked
through the streets locked in a dream, staring off into nowhere.
“Hello
Jeannot. How is it going?”
“Comme
ci, comme ca…”
I
knew Jeannot since I was born. Only three years before, in 1953, he
had taken my brother and me to
a pine grove in the municipal park to sit among the trees. We both
had whooping cough and exposing us to the beneficial essence released
by the pines had improved our breathing. Now, seeing him that way
broke my little girl heart.
Whether
in war or in peace time, the victorious Republic had to be celebrated
on Bastille Day. After the fireworks ended, the crowd headed toward
the Great Ball Plaza. We, the crowd, walked east
towards it, along
the road that bordered the water, where the walls that protected the
town once stood. At 10:30, the Bastille Day ball would start. On our
way, on the wide sidewalk between the road and a parapet overlooking
the water, stood a carnival, which had long been coming to La Ciotat
three times a year for a two-week duration. Its ensemble consisted of
various carousels and rides for children and adults, candy stands,
shooting galleries and other amusements. We might have started on a
wooden horse at four years old and ended up shooting targets as
adults. There was entertainment for all ages. I didn’t like to
hang out there for too long. It was noisy, crowded and by the time
we reached the Great Ball Plaza we were covered with dust because
that sidewalk was really just a dirt path. It had never been tarred.
Despite
the drawback, there were two concessions I liked: Mr. Leandri’s
merry-go-round and the Russ candy stand. Mr. Leandri’s
merry-go-round was a small carousel for children. Mr. Leandri waved a
red pompom over the kids’ heads as the carousel circled. If
they caught the pompom they won a free ride. The Russ candy stand was
long and narrow. It was painted in white with the name of its owner
in fancy red letters on its pediment. There were mirrors lining the
back wall, in which I could see myself over the dumplings, nougat,
candied apples and lollipops. I liked to watch Mr. Russ working the
sugar of a Marseille region lollipop specialty flavored with anise.
It was similar to the work of a Mozzarella maker, except that the
candy man manipulated a meter-long expanse of anise flavored sugar
until it turned into a multiple-color-streaked paste. He stretched
it, twisted it and finally laid it down on a marble plate where he
chopped it in berlingot-shaped candies. At the other end of the
stand, his wife was standing behind two enormous copper cauldrons. In
one of them was bubbling a red sugar mixture in which she dipped
apples before carefully depositing them one at a time on another
marble plate, holding them by a three-to-four-inch long wooden sticks
that pierced the apples core. In the other cauldron was boiling oil
on top of which were floating a dozen Chichi
Fregi,
dumplings, which took
their name from their shape reminiscent of the human penis in the
Marseille slang, and way of cooking fried, or fregi
in the Provencal language.
As well as the apples, the dumplings were also carefully removed one
at a time with a big strainer prior to being rolled in powdered sugar
and deposited on a sheet of wax paper. I was always attracted by the
dumplings because it was one thing I could never have. My mother had
decided they were bad for me. “The oil in which they are cooked
is a hundred years old….” She bought Gerard and me a
lollipop once in a while, but no candy apple either because she had a
similar opinion about the red sugar mixture as she had about the oil
of the dumplings. “ It looks like the glue that Riri uses to
fix shoes!”
Next
to the Russ candy stand was a shooting gallery. Across from it, just
at the edge of the sidewalk by a palm tree, stood a music box, 2 ˝
by 2 ˝ feet square, 5 ˝ feet high. The box’s
lower part was made of wood, the upper part of glass. It was
attached to the tree with a heavy chain. Visible through the cubic
glass part of the structure was the upper body of a woman made of
celluloid. She had wavy dull brown hair arranged in a 1930’s
style. Her complexion was pasty despite her pink cheeks and red lips
which looked like they had been refreshed a million times. Her brown
eyes made of glass were glance-less with a point of hardness. Her
torso was heavy, covered by a dusty looking red velvet top. Her arms
were severed at the level of the elbows. With a nickel inserted in a
slot located just below the glass box, you could hear her voice and
see her lips move. She sang only one old tune in a mechanic
melancholic voice. There was something about this robot that caused
me to stop and observe her a bit every time I passed by. It awoke
mixed and contradictory feelings in me. I could feel all the misery
and the sadness of the world in this glass box. At the same time
there was something a little creepy that emerged from it. To a kid
like me who loved epic movies, books and storytelling, it evoked the
wretched ambience of the street performers’ world as it
appeared in some of the French populist literature of the 19th
Century and the adaptations of those stories in black and white film.
It took my imagination to the harrowing childhood of characters such
as Gwynplaine in Victor Hugo’s The
Man Who Laughs,
that our teacher had read to us a couple of chapters at a time on
Friday afternoons during the previous school year. Gwynplaine was one
of many abandoned children who was kidnapped by a carnival and
mutilated to be shown as a freak. His face was disfigured as to give
the impression of a permanent smile.
Around
the age of ten, I developed a fascination for the airplanes ride. The
red airplanes ride stood at the beginning of the carnival row,
right next to the bumper cars. The planes were mounted on heavy
supports attached to a central axis; the whole gear lit by white
fluorescents set along the supports. When the carousel started, the
planes slowly went up. Once at their highest, they got in motion and
now could be manually maneuvered up and down. I had been watching
those planes and lobbying heavily every time the carnival was in town
when my parents finally agreed to let me ride. I sat in one plane
with my father. The plane went up and started gaining speed.
Suddenly, in the plane, up there in the air, at great speed, it hit
me. I could not breathe. I felt like a ton of led was crushing my
chest. Paralyzed by fear, I had no idea what was happening to me. My
father cuddled me under his right arm, reassuring me at low voice
while releasing the steering wheel with his left hand, lowering the
plane as much as he could to the point of almost touching the wooden
board at the base of the ride. After ten minutes that felt like a
century, the ride ended and I finally got out of the plane to my
relief. Disoriented and ashamed of myself, with a few adults and
children that I perceived as a crowd looking at me, I apprehended
future taunts for having chickened out in what I considered a
personal failure. The only positive part of that episode if there was
one is that my mother bought me a Chichi for the first and last time
to console me.
The
last event of the day, the Bastille Day Ball tradition dates back to
1790, when a dance took place among the ruins of the Bastille, which
had been demolished after the attack. La Ciotat’s Great Ball
Plaza, which had been especially built to host that tradition in
1850, has survived time, bad weathers and three wars, including the
allieds’ bombings during World War 2. It is a structure made of
stone, which stands at the foot of a hill facing the Mediterranean,
on the land side of the coast road, opposite the end tail of the
carnival site. At the bottom of the hill, the dance floor is paved
with large stone slabs that have been smoothed by time. At the top of
the hill, overhanging, stands the Chapel of the Blue Penitents built
in 1612 by a Catholic seaman brotherhood, today an art gallery. On
the hill’s flank are rows of bleachers made of stone.
On
ball nights the whole area was lit by a garland of light bulbs that
ran along the periphery, side to side and top to bottom from the
Chapel to the road. A small orchestra stood on a stage set on the
hill flank halfway between its top and bottom. The more senior
Ciotadins and other watchers settled in the bleachers, the youth and
the dancers down on and around the esplanade. The watchers who could
not find room on the bleachers would bring a chair from home and
settled at the edge of the esplanade. Back in the days when TV sets
were rare and air conditioning non-existent, any opportunity for
people to get out of their house was always welcome in the hottest
month of the year. Besides, Bastille Day was a unique annual event,
patriotism and national pride prevailing. Some people would miss the
fireworks in order to arrive early and find room on the bleachers.
They brought food in picnic baskets: wine and trays of stuffed
tomatoes, zucchini and eggplants, summer fruit, peaches and apricots,
melon and watermelon. They settled comfortably on pillows brought
from home, commenting extensively on the dancing below. Some of the
bleacher people were of the guardian and chaperone category. They
were a mothers or fathers, or both who had taken charge of a group of
girls from their neighborhood to make sure that the action stayed on
the dance floor. In case of a stray, an alert was given. One of these
watchers, a Sardinian resident of Merlet Street, nicknamed Rabbit
Snout because of her two prominent front teeth, was the La Ciotat’s
champion watcher. She could scan the area in record time with
piercing eyes. Beware if you got caught disappearing from under her
gaze! It might be your last ball….
Down
on the dance floor it was all tango, waltz and polka. From the
sidelines I watched my parents getting into the action. They were
very good dancers, all harmony and coordination. If I start calling
up those images of them floating across the dance floor to a waltz or
a tango today, I feel a little pinch in my heart. Tears come up to my
eyes recalling the pride and emotion I felt watching them. A hunk and
a fairy! Not so harmonious was my brother’s dancing! He was the
only boy in the family. As such he had to take my cousin and me one
at a time on the dance floor. Gerard was an unruly and brutal dancer
who would take us out in fine form only to leave us with a spinning
head, exhausted and nauseous by the time our turn ended. His whirling
was forceful. We didn’t look light and elegant like mom and dad
their feet barely touching the ground when waltzing. We looked more
like a bull dragging a powerless calf along on a crazy spinning
rampage.
In
these fast days of Globalization, traditions that lasted many
generations can die quickly or evolve into episodes I no longer
recognize. Bastille Day rituals have not escaped this fate. The
Torch Retreat has been extinguished. No carnivals come to La Ciotat
anymore. The municipal government leadership found carnivals too
populist for what they aim to be the town’s future. Their
quintessential vision seems to be another seaside resort devoid of
character like most of the towns along the French Riviera today. The
Great Ball Plaza has been renamed May 8 Esplanade to commemorate the
1945 World War 2 armistice. Old timers still call it by its original
name either because they have a hard time changing, or else because
the World War 2 armistice doesn’t mean much to them since
France lost the war in 1940 and La Ciotat was liberated by the 7th
American Army in August 1944. The Bastille Ball disappeared from the
life of the Ciotadins, no traditional live band, no accordion, no
tango, no waltz, no polka, no nosey chaperones. All gone! The
Republic is now celebrated under strobe lights and disco balls to the
repetitive sound of a thumping bass and synthesizers, away from the
Great Ball Plaza. It was moved over to the beach by the hotels and
restaurants that serve the summer crowds. The magic is gone, there is
nothing in the new ritual to bring us together as one united town.
There are only Techno and tourists.
Originally
from France, I have been living in the United States since 1979. I
came to New York as a dancer-choreographer attracted by the
tremendous creative energy that animated the downtown scene in those
days. A few years ago, I became interested in writing as I witnessed
the rapid decline of the local culture, so dear to me, when I
visited in my hometown. The evolution of societies toward
individualism, as well as Globalization have left little room for
such culture and similar ones to survive.
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