Paris
Francis had bad news. Our friend Anne had died a week earlier - just before her fortieth birthday. She had died all alone. Had lain dead in her bed a whole week.
Anne had had a difficult childhood, without a father, and had lived a painful life. She had married at twenty. Then three days after the wedding the couple suffered a serious accident. It left him paralysed, while the shock that Anna suffered triggered diabetes. She took on the burden of looking after her husband, earning money working nights in a factory. On her thirty-fifth birthday her husband died. In her grief, she went to Sarajevo to work for a children's relief organisation. Four years later, she returned to Paris where she had no friends left. The only thing that remained to her was death.
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My good friend Bruno the painter died five years ago. He continues to live in my memory. Bruno and I used to see each other once a week for lunch, and we would talk about anything and everything. Then we would each go back to work. Bruno worked every day, even on Sundays, from four a.m. till four p.m. Then he would go to the restaurant and afterwards back home. I too like to get up early and to hear the birdsong on my way to the Institute. In Paris we would always go to Pharamond: I visited the restaurant, but not even Bruno's memory could keep me there. The Pharamond too was dead.
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At the Café Flore I felt in better hands. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: "Les chemins de la liberté passent par le Flore."
