Tag: stories

Cliff

Cliff came ambling down Route de Gueret from the Brasserie, encumbered by three sacks and a backpack. We noticed him first because the dog stood to attention and her hackles rose, but Pat got there in time and the dog rolled over and showed her neck upon noting her lady’s displeasure. Cliff was allowed to approach with no danger to his ankles or eardrums.

As he got closer I realized who it must be. Cliff had contacted me weeks earlier via Google, where he found our website and sent me a message in French. From the grammar I could tell he was a confident speaker with a pretty good knowledge but was certainly not a native speaker, and after seeing his name I thought he must be a Yank or a Brit and I replied in English to the chat.

Cliff had requested lodging for two and a half months, he wasn’t sure when exactly, and he could only pay 25 euros per night because he was retired and on a budget. Of course that’s less than half of what we charge per night for our small studio rental! I told him I would need specific dates and that we already had bookings all over our spring calendar for both apartments, but I would send him some suggestions nearby. After a few back-and-forths via Google he said “well I’ll just come to Treignac around mid-April and we’ll figure it out.” I warned him that Treignac was out of the way and he should reconsider, and he replied that he’d been coming to France for 20 years, often simply showing up and finding a place to stay. His intention was to do so again. “I can camp in your garden if that’s OK.” Then I didn’t hear from him for a while and thought he’d given up.

I was immediately struck by Cliff’s age. I’d assumed he was early to mid 60s, but he’s actually 88 years old. To get to Treignac from his home in Kansas he’d flown to Texas, thence to London, thence to Paris, where he caught a train to Clermont-Ferrand, then a bus to Meymac, and in Meymac he hitch-hiked outside the Renault dealership without luck for several hours. Then he asked the Renault dealership for a piece of cardboard with which he made a sign. Immediately a woman picked him up and drove 26 km out of her way to bring him to town. Unable to find us via GPS she dropped him at the Brasserie next door, where the proprietors directed him to walk across the bridge. I’m almost 55 and that trip would exhaust me! While we had coffee in the kitchen our Frenchie Bou went out on the porch where we’d stowed Cliff’s bags, and a minute later she proudly marched through the kitchen with something in her mouth–an adult undergarment she’d pulled from his backpack pocket. Poor Cliff took this in stride and was more amused than mortified.

We had a bit of a scramble at first. We put Cliff up the first night but had guests checking into both apartments that weekend. So we moved him to a friend’s pilgrim hostile apartment for the following two nights, then back to us for two weeks. Now due to a previous reservation he’ll have to leave again, but we got him situated in a nice studio apartment in a rejuvenated vacation village at the top of town. They can accommodate his budget and host him for the next 2 months. He needed a spot where he could walk to town and to the grocery, and Domaine de Treignac fit the bill.

Cliff says he retired at 39 after making a mound of cash in the PR industry in Pittsburgh and NY and California, but then drank his money away. After sobering up, on $1200 a month social security he managed to save enough to do shoestring world travel a couple months a year by hitching and camping and relying on the kindness of strangers (one time he was adopted by a French actress and stayed at her place in Aix en Provence for two years).

Cliff has been everywhere and remembers dozens of small French villages, including many surrounding us in the Correze and Le Lot and in the Perigord and Dordogne. Of the villages we’ve both visited his memory is far more reliable than my own. He’s a vet who spent a few years in Seoul and when he told me he was an old Boy Scout I told him to help any ladies in town across the street. He said “I surely will, and right into my bed!”

We won’t make much money from Cliff’s stay because it’s been cold and he’s using the electric radiator. Even with the solar panels electric is very expensive. But it’s been amusing to hear his stories and see him each day and help him out with logistics. He’s always asking if he can do odd jobs or work in the garden, and when I say no he takes a stool and his kit into town to sketch and paint old houses and walls. Last night he emailed me a play he wrote about Marx, Carlyle, and Dickens.

The Relation of My Imprisonment (Part 1)

On Friday December 15th I was riding high. We’d been to the Prefecture in Tulle the day before in order to retrieve our renewed visas–applying was a somewhat arduous process which took almost six months, and we were quite pleased to find our renewal was not only for one year, but for four.

We’d had a successful year with our gite rental business, and had also expanded to host several successful events including multiple concerts and a huge Christmas Festival. We were considering maybe getting away for a week to explore a new part of Europe to celebrate. All in all, our move to France appeared to be going quite well 1.5 years in.

We went to the Treignac Christmas market and ran into friends outside the Salle de Fete, and after a quick tour of the vendors decided to go to Cafe du Commerce for a quick coffee. As we made our loop around the market I’d had a strange kaleidescopic prism worm its way across the top of my left eye, after which I felt a bit out of sorts–a tad tired and grumpy. I chalked it up to being spent after so many days in a row of work and stress, and continued on my way.

At the Cafe we had a wide-ranging conversation about spirituality and shamanism and drugs and Jesuits and life on an Indian ashram. I’d continued to feel a bit out of sorts and then realized that I was having trouble forming words. I finished my point speaking to the Irishman to my left and remember thinking “well, just stop talking. Be polite and nod and smile, but take a rest from speaking.” I’d only had a coffee to drink, but felt as though I were intoxicated. I could see everyone and was able to follow the social niceties, nodding appropriately, smiling, laughing a few times, but I realized that the conversation had grown beyond my capacities to follow. My awareness, my conscient core, was shrinking rapidly. Everything grew dim, and the people around me were all faceless. I could only recognize their hair, it was too much to decode their faces. A friend across the table was speaking to me directly and I knew I was being addressed but had no idea what he was saying. He handed me his phone to show me something, I took it and mimed looking at it, and nodded, but could see nothing on the screen. I felt like I was becoming smaller and smaller, and yet my main concern was an adamant focus on not alarming anyone or causing some sort of scene.

I took out my own phone to occupy myself and found that I couldn’t read or understand its function. I leaned over to my wife and said something about “all these messages, I don’t understand them, who is messaging me” but I couldn’t hear what she was saying in reply and did not even know for sure if I’d spoken.

Another friend arrived and joined our group. I reached over and shook his hand and smiled but had no idea who he was. At this point I realized there was a dog at the table but I had no idea how it had got there, and then looking around I discovered that I didn’t know anyone’s names. I sat back down and my wife was saying something and clutching my arm and suddenly I snapped back to myself. She was saying “I’m taking you to the emergency room, you’ve had a stroke!”

My full awareness returned so suddenly and all at once that I responded indignantly “what are you talking about, I’m fine!” But as I stood to pay our bill I staggered a bit, and then could not summon the basic French to interact with the bartender. I managed to pay and walk out and the entire time my wife was hammering me about going to the Emergency Room, but I felt completely fine. I drove us home, where she kept telling me names of people I didn’t recognize at the bar, and I kept saying that either I didn’t know such a person or that they hadn’t been there. She got very frustrated with me and called our German friend who drove over to assess me himself. After he left thinking I was OK I drove us back to the friend’s house where we were staying while we babysat their hound dog. I fed the dog, let him out, and played with him, and then the entire episode came back to me. The confusion, the sense of shrinking awareness, the inability to follow or participate in a conversation, not recognizing familiar people.

I agreed to go to the ER in Tulle, and after explaining in French what had happened, was quickly taken in the back, given an EKG and an MRI and told that the results were normal/negative. I thought “Ok, no stroke, no aneurysm, I’ll be on my way!” But no, they took me upstairs, admitted me and kept me 8 days in the hospital.

(End of Part 1)