by Paul Zimmer
Louise! Emily! My God! The tiger ladies! I am saved. Emily picks up Balaclava’s formidable weapon and levels it on him. Louise has staggered over to join us. We are all ringing him now and pointing our weapons down at his bloody carcass—the fearsome Three Furies, a silhouetted triad of senior fury in the rising morning light. If Balaclava awakens and makes another move, he will end up like a Wisconsin swiss cheese dipped in salsa.
It’s over. The citizens of Viroqua are gathering warily on the sidewalk to look at this spectacle in wonder. There we are—three white-haired senior citizens with gats in our hands, circling a bleeding body. No one has ever seen anything like this before. It must look like a Weegee photograph. No one ventures too close. None of the citizens have the faintest idea what this incredible scene of victory means.
A siren is advancing from the distance through the streets of Viroqua. It is the sheriff. He leaves his red lights blinking when he arrives and his siren on. He hustles out of his cruiser and runs toward us, his brimmed hat tilted forward, his weapon out, his badge glinting. He stoops to check Balaclava’s pulse, looks at the wounds in his shoulder and on his head, then stands again to look at the three of us, one at a time, carefully. He lowers his head to his cell phone to call an ambulance, then turns again to us.
“Well, you nailed him pretty good,” he says. “You can all put your weapons away now.”
“These ladies,” I babble at the sheriff, pointing at Louise and Emily. “They drilled him!”
“He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere,” the sheriff agrees.
So it is over. Louise brings the monster down with one shot, and fearless, fearsome Emily finishes him off by creaming him with three ferocious blows to his head, while I stand around with my mouth open. This brute—who’d left me out for dead in a blizzard, who’d clubbed me with a pistol, threatened Louise, insulted Emily, stalked us and threatened us, and tried to steal my money—he’s down there bleeding, out cold on the pavement in Viroqua, Wisconsin, dispatched by two elder maidens. I take their hands, both of them—they are weeping with relief, and I join their blubbering. We put our white heads together.
We can hear the approaching ambulance siren. The sheriff stoops again to check Balaclava’s head; he looks at the harsh wound in his right shoulder, but slips handcuffs on him—just in case. Then the emergency vehicle arrives and the monster is given a quick bandage and loaded onto a stretcher, tied down, and hauled away mumbling, his shackled hands jammed beneath him. “I’ll be along in a minute,” the sheriff instructs the ambulance crew.
He turns to look at the three of us again, one at a time. His small moustache twitches over his upper lip. He shakes his head in wonder. “My God!” he says. “You old folks play rough.”
CHAPTER 26
Cyril
I do it: I get the money from under my mattress. It has stayed warm in the wool socks. I pay someone to drive me to La Crosse to a travel agent, and lay out serious bucks for two roundtrip first-class airline seats on a passage from Madison to Chicago to Paris, plus wheelchair service and a classy rental car out of Paris. We will be as comfortable as we can be. It doesn’t matter that I have no idea what I am doing. I do it. And I pay the agent in cash.
It’s amazing, the powerful effect a little money can have on you. You sweat as you peel out those bills into other hands, but it is all very exciting, very satisfying. There’s a bit of swing in my hobble as I leave the travel office and go to my ride back to the home.
I surprise Louise with the tickets on her birthday. Usually I’m the one who is timorous about our frolics, but now I am the one who has gone all the way, and Louise is the one who gets a little shaky. She is dazzled by the gift. “But aren’t we too old for such a trip?” she wonders. “All that money, Cyril! What if one of us gets sick overseas?”
“Then they will have to tend to us,” I say. “What are embassies for? We pay taxes for them. They can have us cremated and sent home in urns. To hell with atrophy! Let’s go! At our age, we must move until we cannot move.”
We arrange a leave of absence from the home. I don’t think they’ve ever done such a thing before. Another first. The staff is unnerved by our plans, never expecting to see us again.
But we have become local legends and made the home famous. The Brontë sisters have become notables, and their bookstore flourishes too, almost a landmark. More eastern reporters travel in from far-flung places to interview all of us and take our pictures. Tourism is up. I remark to one camera about the irony of how we are being honored for the one violent act of our lives—but not for our decades of quiet living. The broadcasters cut this section out.
When we appear on the national newscasts we look so old and tired. Such a strange couple we are—beautiful Louise, and me, with a lopsided head and strawberry nose. People must think we are a couple of cuckoos. Well, so. But Louise and Cyril are going to escape all this folderol! We are going to France! And when we come home we will be nobodies again. There will be other somebodies. But we will have each other.
Louise and I brave the whole plane trip, the chaotic, preoccupied airports, the shuttles, limousines, and cabs through to Chicago. Our hired wheelchairs get us to the gates, and we endure the soporific seven-hour-long flight, the French car rental, the European traffic circles out of de Gaulle, the salty honking of French drivers.
Brave, incredible Louise is driver and I am navigator. She takes us right into Paris perfectly to our very good hotel in the Marais district. She leaves our car with the parking attendant. Louise! Doing this as if she’s been doing it all her life.
The hotel is fairly new and immediately presents us with modern electronic challenges. It takes me a long time to figure out that I have to put our card key into a slot to make the electricity and lights go on. I never do figure out the trendy light system, no matter how many buttons I push. And we also find that the French just go to the bathroom, there is no door on it, just an opaque glass wall between the toilet and living area. It is enough to freeze my bowels. But we learn, us old folks, and we get it done. Vive la France!
Coming back to the hotel about ten o’clock after a late dinner one evening I am struck that there are almost no older people on the streets. Young people own the nights, couples, singles, gender-disguised or straight, all seeming to be on the prowl. We are the only white-haired people there, and we are not on the prowl. We toddle along.
We take our time in the great city, just stroll and gaze for a few days, nursing our jet lag, Louise using her flawless French to order drinks and meals for us, Louise remembering her visits to Paris as a young woman, when there were no Burger Kings, not a McDonald’s or a Starbucks, no people walking about with vacant eyes, speaking into cell phones. “They were all existentialists then,” she tells me. “They didn’t look at you then either. In Paris one must go within. The city is still here, I can feel it, as it always will be.” And so we take to the elegant side streets that she remembers, buy our glacés (the most memorable, a dip of black currant for Louise and a poire for me), and afternoon aperitifs in the smaller cafés and shops. I remember a light lunch of perfect shaved smoked salmon and goat cheese salad that will stay in my memory the brief rest of my life. We discover couscous and Indian food and Italian beyond spaghetti and meatballs. I even eat snails, and love them.
Then, by God—and each other—after four glowing days in the City of Light, we get in the rental car and Louise takes the wheel again to drive us all the way out into the countryside to begin our journeying, to Lyon, Nice, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Pau, Aix-en-Provence, Puivert, Marseille, Poitiers, and other rare towns large and small, even a dip down into Spain for a brief two days in Barcelona.
In Barcelona I have a moment which tests my aging to the limit: Louise and I are strolling on Las Ramblas, enjoying the shops and open stalls, performers, cafés, mimes, jugglers, and “living statues.” Barcelona seems to be a rambunctious, venerable city. Its energy and history are palpable, and young people work at extending the traditions. O
n these bright days it is like an exotic circus. Louise and I walk as much as we can, then rest on benches, or take slow refreshment in one of the tapas bars.
I am swinging along on my canes past an open flower stall when a street clown, who has been entertaining a tourist crowd, picks up on my weary-looking shuffle as I pass. I glare at him and this prompts him—he begins to follow close at my heels to imitate and mock my staggering gait. Louise has gone ahead to look at some clothing stalls and sees none of this. The clown staggers at my heels and sings a sauntering Spanish song, mimicking my weary steps.
I’ll just keep walking, I think. I’m a stranger here—a guest in this 2,000-year-old, deeply cultured city. I’ll ignore this presumptuous fool and maybe he will just go away.
But he does not go away, keeps tagging along behind and imitating my shuffling gait as I grind along on my canes. He is a clown and perhaps is expected to make fun of everyone, even old men. They snicker nervously as they make way for us.
I do not like being the joke. I feel something damp on the nape of my neck, and turn to see that the fool is dabbing me with shaving cream from a can. Finally he places his silly orange hat on my head from behind to see what I will do as I dotter along.
When he does this, I am so angry and humiliated, I want to turn around and drop the son of a bitch with one of my canes. It is impossible, of course. And even if I do turn on him, he will only skitter away from my fumbling, and make more fun of me. People would think I was a nasty old man.
So I am a “good sport”! It is one of my hardest moments—that I have come to this—to be the stooge. But I waggle my head and arms, pretending to stumble a bit on purpose to look even more like a geezer under the clown’s ridiculous hat, becoming the fool myself for the crowd.
At last he lets off, takes his hat back and goes off to mock someone else.
So to escape the clown, I became the clown. My red nose and one floppy ear. My cantilevered walk. The clown’s silly hat on my head. Oh, some people loved it, and laughed.
I don’t tell Louise about this incident until evening when we are in our hotel room. And I don’t tell all—the feeling of vulnerability we are sometimes compelled to feel as elders. It is no time to talk of such things.
Still, Louise is livid—so angry that she weeps. She holds me. We have grown old, but nothing in our lives prepares us for indignities. No choice. We will rest and go on. We hold each other some more. It is but one bad moment.
We drive back up to southern France and into the countryside, the two of us, just taking our good time, staying in very nice hotels with concierges who fuss over us. Louise orders our wonderful meals, buys our patés, soft cheeses and baguettes for our midday meals. And yes, wine for lunch. You bet! Just a small glass.
We travel to Louise’s old home area in Surmont—and find it all sadly changed. No trace of her family, no artifacts, no warm nostalgia to cling to, no familiar ghosts nor hints of the past. Her old family house, which the current tenants—after some persuasion and the passage of a few euros—kindly allow us to look in, is completely changed and redone. Only a few phantom memories for Louise: A corner where she sat and read books as a child, another nook that seems familiar, perhaps an original chandelier. I hold her hand as she shuffles through her old home remodeled beyond recognition with new paneling, plastic moldings, three television sets. I know she is very sad that her early French story has been so completely obscured. I expect her to weep, but delicate Louise is made of whipcord.
We move on, and as we travel, I conjure up in my head the many brief and famous lives that have made up the history of France—too many names to name, so many lives to remember. I only occasionally press a few of these on Louise.
But as we drive I read aloud to her from the ceaselessly cheerful guidebooks. Some days we don’t go very far at all before we have to stop in a town, take a hotel room, and proceed to an afternoon nap like sensible old folks. After our rest, we rise to stroll in these ancient out-of-the-way places, shopping store windows, then choosing a restaurant for the evening. We eat miraculous regional meals, sip marvelous wines.
At last we return to Paris for our final two weeks. We walk and talk in the great city until we are compelled to rest in cafés. It has been many decades since Louise has been in Paris. Of course it is not the Paris she remembers from her visits as a child. But my Louise—she looks so exquisite and perfectly in place under these trees, she belongs in these venerable streets—almost as if she had never left to spend her life near Soldiers Grove.
What does Bogie say to Bergman near the end of Casablanca? “We’ll always have Paris.” I reach often for Louise’s hand and hold it.
A great chunk of my “prize for valor” is gone. Who gives a damn? It was all a chimera anyway. I’ve never felt brave in my life. What a wonderful revel this has been—just the two of us wandering freely in Paris and the beguiling French countryside, doing what we can do.
To just hint at the serendipity of our travel, I’ll recall a resonating day we had in the French countryside just before returning to Paris: We were making our way through the northern countryside, driving through a pretty village called Moledor. We stopped for late morning coffee and I noticed a poster advertising a jazz festival in the area going on that very weekend. Moledor seemed to be a lively place with interesting stores and a nice market.
Crowds were coming in for the festival and excitement was mounting. We could hear the opening acts from the square in the distance. Jazz has always excited me, drawn me into its drive and passion. Louise also has great love for this music.
We decided to stay the day in Moledor and treat ourselves. With some effort we found a hotel in a nearby town that could accommodate us for the night. The festival was not a major event, but small and spirited. The groups were all French; some names I remember are Big Band Roquette and Pompon Swing. It was fascinating to hear European musicians swinging the great arrangements of Count Basie and Duke Ellington. There was even a trio that had absorbed the sound of the King Cole Trio, and the pianist sang Nat Cole’s tunes, “Sweet Lorraine,” “Paper Moon,” “I’m Glad There Is You,” with a French accent over the guitar and bass.
There was a break in the program, and Louise and I went to have a small beer in a lively café where people were excited about the music. A big Spanish band called Batucada started its set before we finished our beer. We sat and enjoyed their playing as it resounded through the beautiful medieval square. When we returned to the performance area we saw there were eighteen musicians dressed in light band jackets and spiffy panama hats. A lovely girl was on the stand with them, also wearing a hat, and we waited for her to sing.
The musicians were proud performers and their music was Latin, very warm and crafted—the kind of music that demands that you move some part of your body as you listen. Louise and I were swaying together on our canes, and people were beginning to drift out onto the small dance area in front of the band—mostly solitary dancers wishing to express themselves.
There was one very small woman, with a stocking cap pulled down over her gray hair. She was wriggling and hopping. There was something a bit askew about her, not quite right as she moved, but she was enjoying herself immensely as she squirmed around in front of the bandstand.
Some couples started coming onto the floor, several of them really accomplished dancers, flowing and turning, dipping, passing back and forth as they held hands and tossed their heads lightly. Finally there were some older dancers who joined the rest as the music beckoned irresistibly.
Louise poked me gently, looking at me imploringly. What on earth? She was saying something I could barely hear over the music.
I thought she said, dance. She wanted us to do our cane dance right there in the middle of La Belle France. Oh my God, we were such anciennes, such Americans! We would look like fools, I thought. They would call the gendarmes, call an ambulance, and rush us to thérapie. Please, I thought, Louise, no! I shook my head, but she was pulling on my arm.
&
nbsp; I had already been made a spectacle in Barcelona; I wanted no more European mockery, but my beautiful friend was guiding me firmly to the floor. I had forgotten to take a pee before we left the café . . . I was in trouble.
“Louise,” I pleaded. “I don’t remember how to do it.” But she kept me moving along toward the dance floor. “You remember very well!” she said. “It was one of your greatest moments. Come on!”
So, there we were standing on a dance floor in France, facing each other—two American basket cases leaning on their canes. Mercy on my mortifying bones! Spare me! The French were stepping back to see what we would do.
Facing each other we dipped to the left, dipped to the right, then slowly turned all the way around several times on our planted canes. More people were gathering around us now. They were cheering. Great God! We faced each other again, tapped our canes together, then tucked them under our arms, embraced and made a half dozen very slow turns in each other’s arms to the Latin beat. At last we stopped, let go and stepped back, tapped our canes together again and waved them to the crowd to show we were done.
Had we both become clowns? No, no, no. This was our show, it was what we could do, and it was enough. There was a quiet pause—then a large French tumulte, delighted clapping and cheers, perhaps even greater than it was at Burkhum’s Tap in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. We bowed once more to the crowd. We had become troopers. Selective and brief—but troopers. The French wanted us to do it again. Encore! they cried.
But no, no. We had given all our art.
As we moved off the floor, amidst admiring French chatter, I was feeling the power of what we had done. We moved to the edge of the crowd, and I announced to Louise: “I’m getting into this thing. We’re the Cane Dancers. We can really do it. Let’s practice and put our show on the road in France. Frédéric and Gingembre, we can call ourselves. We’ll be a sensation! The Elderhoofers. We’ll lay them in the aisles in Marseille . . . in Lyon and Toulouse. We’re going to need an agent. We need to make more money to take more trips. Italy! England! Tokyo! Moscow! Louise, we’ll dance our way around the world!”
