Bistro “Cockade”

Eduard Schmidt-Zorner

 A book had captured Marcel’s interest so much that he read it until the late evening, only interrupted to prepare the odd cup of espresso. It was one of those Sunday evenings in Paris soaked with loneliness, intensified by the darkness and decline of his quarter.

Marcel put the book aside and made up his mind to visit a bistro in the vicinity. 

He left his house. A waxy, fat rat scurried under a pile of bulky waste on which lay the head of a mannequin- with wide open eyes. He crossed Place de Grève which was described in the book as the scene of bloody executions and agonizing deaths of thousands during the French Revolution. Marcel imagined luminous blood flowing down the gutters and between the crevices of the cobble stones, only to realize it was the reflection of the traffic lights that coloured the rainwater blood-red.

Three blocks away was a bistro named Cockade, which he had never visited before. He proceeded to the counter to order a drink. A middle-aged man with missing front teeth and a malicious smile came out of the kitchen with a tea towel over his shoulder. His appearance made Marcel shiver.

 A minute later, the man placed a glass of absinth before him.

“How did you know I wanted absinth?”

“Drink is on the house. I am the new owner, Charles-Henri Sanson.” He gave Marcel a clammy handshake.

Sanson? Wasn’t that the name of the Executioner during the Revolution?

Marcel sipped on his absinth. The guests looked like extras, dressed in funny costumes. There was not one known face among them. A woman dressed in black sat in the corner. She wept and held a bundle pressed to her chest. Two couples danced a Carmagnole to the sound of a bandoneon. Marcel was surprised to hear this Republican song and dance originating from 1792.

The bistro exhaled a strange, unreal atmosphere. He craved fresh air. When the owner noticed that he was about to leave, he pointed to a man at a nearby table who had two empty wine bottles in front of him. He wore a kind of Phrygian cap.

 “He is off his head”, the owner said. “He is a poet. Can you accompany him home?

 The man at the table looked up. "Betrayed by a whore," he slurred...

 ”Where does he live?” Marcel asked over the counter.

“Rue Quincampoix 34, ring at André Chénier.“ 

Not far from Marcel’s place.

Weird, he thought. A writer Chénier, whose head fell under the guillotine, was mentioned in the book he had read.

Marcel took his arm. The man staggered along, his legs giving up from time to time. They stood in front of a house which had been declared uninhabitable and was about to be demolished. Next to the official notice, graffiti was emblazoned on the wall: Revolution devours its own children. Marcel rang a makeshift doorbell hanging on two wires.

The creaking staircase was narrow, littered with fallen plaster. The walls dirty. Rats everywhere. Light was provided by a lantern from the street. A doorless squat toilet was yawning on one landing next to an apartment. A woman stood in the doorframe. She pulled André into the room and waved Marcel in and offered him a glass of wine. Along the walls stood paintings. “Do you like my paintings?” asked the woman, who was dressed in quaint cut clothes. They showed scenes of executions, decapitations. Their dominant colour was red. A hangman pulling a head from a basket to show it to the crowd. At the bottom of a painting what looked like a puddle of blood. Somebody must have stepped on a paint tube and squeezed the red colour onto the carpet.

Suddenly the man shouted: “You handed me over, squealer.”

“Same litany every evening”, she said.

She had long, sharp fingernails. When Marcel looked up again he was frightened: She had no face. Panic stricken, he made his way down the staircase. When he stood on the pavement he took a deep breath and lit a cigarette.

On his way to his apartment he passed the heap of rubbish again. The mannequin head was still on top. He stopped and had a close look. He saw the eyelids slowly lift, such as happens with people awaking or torn from their thoughts or when the head falls under the guillotine. After seconds, the eyelids closed again. Once more, the eyelids lifted and finally the eyes took on the gaze of the dead.  

Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is an artist and a translator and writer of poetry, crime novels and short stories. He writes haibun, tanka, haiku and poetry in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese style poetry and prose. He is a member of four writer groups in Ireland and has lived in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than 25 years and is a proud Irish citizen, born in Germany. His work has been published in 60 anthologies, literary journals and broadsheets in UK, Ireland, Canada and USA.