BON AMI?

Isn't it funny how sometimes the details we remember the most from our past can seem like the most inconsequential things of all?

It was summer of '94 and on our last night in Paris we'd (by which I mean myself, my eldest brother and our close family friend 'Gorodish') ended up at a shabby looking bar that had almost nothing to recommend it outside of it being within walking distance of where we were staying at the Hotel Monopole, a dingy old thing where the creaking elevators sounded like they'd not been oiled in a hundred years, their threadbare cables liable to snap at any minute.  

With limited French and a sort of dissociative/autistic approach to tourism (listening to Keith Jarrett on headphones by the Arc D' Triomphe) and translating movie poster titles in French I already knew in English in the Metro, I wasn't exactly primed to invest in long term friendships/relationships with my Parisian counterparts.

We did, however, incur the favour of a most enthusiastic chap serving us behind the run down le comptoir masc who seemed to take an instant liking to us as we propped up the bar with our awkward English poses and culturally specific humour. As I now revisit the image of the bartender through the foggy mists of my mind's eye, I do distinctly remember a portly looking chap who had a decent amount of black hair,  a slight twinkle in his eye and a moustache that belonged in an 80's porno movie a la Tom Selleck meets Tom Conti. He was laughing with us  and encouraging us to toast with him something French. His amiable good vibes encouraged us to stay until closing time by which we felt as if we'd gained a brother from another mother, albeit a French one.

"What a great guy!" my brother Colin exclaimed as we walked the route back to our hotel room after midnight. We all concurred.  

After our happy experience at the local bar the night before, we had some time to kill the following day before heading home to England.

"Let's go back and see our friend!" my brother suggested whilst myself and Gorodish clocked each other with a look of mutual scepticism.

"We can have our last supper there!" Colin added, though it hadn't occurred to us that such a place had any correlation with food. Invoking the term "Last Supper" would be almost prophetic, too, as he was later to learn.

It was late afternoon by the time we'd made our way back to our friend's bar where he was nowhere to be found. A sullen looking woman behind the bar looked at us with disdain as we enquired where he might be.

"Jean-Bernard? He's asleep. You want me to call him?"

Perhaps it was our incredible ineptitude in saying no in a hybrid gobbledegook somewhere between bastard French and English that compelled her to walk up the stairs of the bar to stir Jean-Bernard like Smaug the Dragon from his slumber, which was not our intention.

Another nervous look of doubt/concern was shared between the three of us now as we sensed we were going to meet a very different character than the one we had shared toasts with the night before. And as we heard angry shouting from above, our fears were quickly confirmed.

Prematurely awoken, we could hear the sound of his heavy boots clomping violently against the narrow wooden steps as we prepared to greet him with a warm chorus of 'Bonjour'. But it was as if we were invisible to him as he walked straight past us into the galley-style kitchen to turn on the lights, his face as solemn as a monkfish.

"Tu veux à manger?"

We had no idea so the bar lady translated. "Food. You want food, yes?"

Nodding more out of fear than certainty we shouted 'Oui' like military cadets as if our lives depended on it.

"Choose quick then!" she urged us as if not wanting to further enrage her boss who seemed now more like a cross between Jack Torrance in 'The Shining' crossed with a French Basil Fawlty.

As for myself and Gorodish, we stuck to the least provocative choice of onion soup with baguette. My brother, however, was a braver soul than us and opted for scallops.

The stressed looking bar woman took our orders as our friend shouted more expletives back at her. Clearly none of us had got our orders to suit his mood at this moment in time.

Watching him from our table, I saw him slam some rock hard frozen scallops into a microwave nearly breaking the hinges of its door and I gulped in Chuck Jones fashion fearing the worst for my brother.

"Guys, does that look cooked to you?"

We didn't want to confirm as Jean-Bernard was watching us now with hawkish eyes. Eventually he passed by our table to check we were enjoying our food.

"Okay?" which sounded in this instance more of a dare to defy him.

We nodded like naughty schoolboys in detention as he traipsed back upstairs with his heavy boots to get some more sleep.

"He didn't even recognise us!"

"Shall we go?"  my brother suggested.

With his still frozen, semi-raw scallops and our tepid, watery soup there wasn't any argument to make for remaining so we left, leaving the last of our francs in the breadbasket tucked inbetween the indigestible, sawn off pieces of baguette.

As we waited to board our ferry home, my brother wrote down a list of all the memorable events that we had enjoyed in my first proper trip abroad. He encouraged us to shout out any he'd forgotten.

As a first time trip to Paris, the most indelible impressions for me had been made by observing our group's own quirks and idiosyncracies abroad. Some things that still return to my mind now include: my brother enjoying his hotel breakfast each morning reading/parading the 'Dictionary of Modern Thought' as a visual demonstration of his intellectual curiosity and prowess to any beautiful woman who might have been within proximity (a rare possibility at Monopole) ; myself and Gorodish's attempt to re-create our favourite French movie 'Diva' whilst having to deal with the practicality of doing things on a mutually agreed itinerary as a group ; visiting a Planterium at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and forgetting to take any headphones in with us as we stared at the star filled ceiling like morons and my brother buying some lunch for us all with beer at a French McDonalds and upending the entire tray by pretending to be a silver service waiter as the contents fell in a shower of burger, fries and lager in front of everyone else waiting to order.

These moments in miniature were strangely indelible considering it was a relatively short trip.

We had easily filled a few pages of the various memorable incidents but my brother insisted that we were still missing one.

Myself and Gorodish looked at each other with a wry smile before I said matter of factly.

"Scallops".