Write For You

The Featured Prompt for May is now closed. But don’t worry! The Featured Prompt for the month of June will be open June 5th.

You can still find the prompt in our Just For Fun prompts page. Feel free to continue submitting things inspired by this prompt, but you will not be featured on our home page.

Thank you to the following people for their submissions this month:

• Kleine Klara for their submission, “The Queen of Nothing: Chapter One”.

Chapter 31

by Doltciferaneous Urchiniferoneous

Arrangements are made. We’re going to meet with Bènèdicte in Nancy.

It’s hard to say goodbye to Andrè, Madeleine and Annick. But after much hugging and kissing, we do manage to say our farewells. I’m going to miss Annick, and make no mistake about it—I was right to put her in my “List of Treasures”.

It’s still raining, albeit off-and-on, and will do so all the way to Nancy. I hope the rain turns out to be something substantial—more than just a flash in the pan. Knowing Andrè has helped to change my mind about some things. For example, back in Switzerland I wanted it to be clear, but now, I want it to rain. It’s like the proverbial adage about the prayer of the farmer and the bricklayer—the farmer prays for rain, but the bricklayer prays for sunshine. For now, at least, I’m on the side of the farmer—even if that means enduring the increasingly pungent smell of pig manure.

The rain has put Andrè in good spirits. He’s all smiles now. He takes each of our hands in his, and then proceeds to shake them vigorously.

He looks to me and says:

Aufwiedersehen

then to Mom:

Bonne Nuit

and finally, to Dad:

Buenos Noches

The road out of Logelheim is bordered with cherry trees, and seems to go on and on through fields of wheat, grain, maize, zucchini, cabbage, sunflowers and grapevines. There are also fields of potatoes, which the French call Pomme de Terre (“Apple of the Earth”).

We stop for a little sightseeing in Riquewihr, a walled city that was built in the 1200’s. The wall surrounding this city is formed by putting together all the outside walls of the homes within it. I’m fascinated by the main entrance, because the stone archway and portcullis of metal-shafted wooden spikes are original and well-preserved. The city itself is surrounded with vineyards, all of which seem to be laboriously negotiating their way up the hillsides in long straight lines. Swallows are everywhere, flying and nesting under the eaves of homes which all seem to have wooden beams protruding out of colorful plaster walls. Ancient winepresses and wells lined with potted flowers add a pretty accent to the village.

We walk on a narrow cobblestone street that’s filled with puddles. We stop in front of a small open door, and then listen to the sound of clinking glass and smell the wine that’s wafting out into the rain-laden air. I discreetly peek into the opening from under my black umbrella and see an elderly man and his wife hastily lifting large green empty wine bottles from off the floor, where they seem to have congregated en mass. The bottles remind me of empty green supplicants in a church service, crowding together elbow-to-clinking-elbow, restlessly awaiting their turn at communion. The minister and his wife grab them by the throat and hold them under the fount of libation, steadfastly filling them with spirit before discharging them to their predestined fates. This is the first of many mom-and-pop wineries that we’ll run across in this little village.

I purchase a small French doll for my daughter. I’ve stopped thinking about all this foreign stuff for the moment, and have started to think about my family for a change. And, as if to validate my thoughts in this direction, we suddenly run into a MaMa with her older son and younger daughter. All three of them are arm-in-arm under MaMa’s umbrella, singing together in the rain. The little girl has a smaller version of MaMas umbrella, and is waving it about as they skip energetically through the puddles.

They skip right up to us. The little girl sees my doll and smiles. She’s going to say something—to me! But before she can, MaMa and her brother hush her—probably telling her not to speak to strangers, especially to strangers who look as outlandish as we do.

It’s not hard to see the analogy here. This family is my family’s French counterpart. The husband is away—probably off visiting America!

The family skips past us, and I turn around to watch them go. They’re heading off into a pretty picture—French provincial buildings topped with a hillside covered in vineyards.

The peace of this place is suddenly shattered. It’s time to hug the walls. Some cars are racing down the street, and it’s obvious that they’re intent on taking their legal right-of-way.

We leave Riquewihr, and then follow the Route de Yin (Wine Road) to Nancy.

The Route de Yin winds through thousands of acres of vineyards. There are some small villages dating from the 12th through 15th centuries scattered here-and-there, but other than that all we see are neat rows of vines going up-and-down the hillsides—visible for as far as the eye can see—for the next fifty miles.

After every few miles or so we run across a big wine casket that’s sitting by the side of the road. It’s ten feet or more in diameter, and rests on its side in a framework of metal or wooden supports. It marks the location of an underground wine cellar—a cellar that has been delved into the hillside right next to the Route de Yin.

We leave the Route de Yin and take a side road to Haut Köenigsburg Castle (high castle of the king). This is one of the highest castles in France. It was built by Kaiser Wilhelm when Alsace was under German control. Since Alsace has had a history of flipping back-and-forth between the French and the Germans, the Kaiser tried to preserve his precarious foothold by doing two things: First, he put his castle in a strategic location, and then, he fortified it with so many cannons that it looks like a porcupine.

As we climb the hill to the castle, the rain turns to fog and our visibility drops to less than a hundred feet. But that’s not the worst of it. We’ve arrived at the castle at twelve-thirty in the afternoon. And that’s a bad time, especially for tourists, because most of Europe shuts down between the hours of twelve-o’clock noon and three p.m. for lunch—no exceptions. This applies to banks, stores, businesses, and now, we discover, to castles as well.

Instead of waiting for this three-hour long Siesta to come to an end, we decide to continue on our way.

As we drive back down the hillside past the castle, I look out of steamed windows to a massive stone wall. It has large and small cannons protruding from holes that seem to be scattered haphazardly all over the place. Over there are some long narrow vertical slits for bow-and-arrow defense. And at the top of this thing are big wooden superstructures which were built for what looks to be even more fortification, not to mention intimidation. The funny thing about all of this is that, from what I’ve been told, this thing was not a military installation at all, but a vacation spa for Wilhelm. Talk about paranoia!

We continue on our way to Nancy by way of the French Autobahn. I look at my watch and smile—we’re way ahead of schedule!

We begin to encounter continuous tolls, much like those I’ve experienced on toll roads in the eastern United States. Since we have plenty of time, we decide to get cheap and try to sidestep these tolls by searching for alternate routes through the country. We’ll make sure to keep to the roads marked with green signs, and to stay away from the roads marked with blue (which signify the Autobahn).

The skies are gray and overcast now, and the sprinkles haphazard. I wonder, what’s happening back in Logelheim? Is Andrè still smiling?

And so, in what turns out to be a very slow and methodical manner, we wind our way over wooded hills and through hayfields galore. The hayfields are filled with hay that’s been rolled up into five-foot diameter cylinders and then laid over on its side.

We come to a place where both sides of the road are planted with trees that are spaced about fifty feet apart. I’m reminded of Belgium. The tree trunks are denude of branches, and tower up to fifty feet before they blossom out into an intertwining canopy of leaves. And when that happens, we find ourselves steering through a tunnel of foliage.

The small villages we’re passing now are beginning to look a lot more modern than the ones we’ve left behind. We’re coming to a more advanced kind of civilization—and Nancy.

We arrive at Nancy and are promptly stopped by a traffic signal. Yep—that’s civilization all right. I saw the signal change from green-to-yellow earlier, and now, it’s changing from yellow-to-red. We sit and wait. The signal changes from red-to-yellow. Hum… that’s something I haven’t seen before. The cars around us are revving up their engines. What’s going on? Suddenly, the signal changes from yellow-to-green, and, before I can even get my foot off the brake and onto the accelerator, the cars have all shot off down the street.

Back in the States the green-to-yellow and yellow-to-red sequence is the same. But in the States the light changes from red-to-green without this weird intervening yellow.

We begin to look for the street on which Bènèdicte lives. We discover, to our chagrin, that the street signs are often painted on the corner of a building. And so, when a building is in a state of disrepair (which it often is) the street signs are either badly worn or missing altogether. We’ve seen this before—especially in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

We tool down the main drag and I have many first impressions—deciduous and fir trees are plentiful, as are the purple-blooming Wisteria. There’s also a plethora of automobile and foot traffic. The number of cars surprises me, because the French are required to attend an expensive driving school (that costs between three-hundred and four-hundred American dollars) before they are even permitted on the road.

The foot traffic is fascinating. Interspersed amongst the French are many Blacks and Orientals. French Blacks look a lot different from American Blacks. This is because they’re more purely African, having had less of a chance to intermarry and diffuse their genealogy. I noticed the same thing with the Eastern Block Blacks I saw back at the Eastern Train Station in Budapest.

Bènèdicte will have something to say about these Blacks:

Many American Blacks have discovered that they are more accepted in France than America, so many have left America and live here. Also, since Europeans do not have a background mentality of associating Blacks with slavery, they are more easily able to relate to Blacks without encountering this barrier. This is one reason why it is hard to get Black gangs started in France.

That may be, but this indulgent and unquestioning acceptance of ethnicity also has its pitfalls—which will be easily taken advantage of by Muslim terrorists.

Most of the women I see in the foot traffic appear to be wearing loose fitting pants, something that Mom calls “three-quarter length skirts”. They do not wear any stockings, probably because of the summer heat. The women’s legs are muscular and stone-like, which attests to their much walking and stair-climbing. Most of the older women I see have wrapped their legs in Ace bandages—perhaps to force their disintegrating muscles and joints back into place to prolong their walking careers.

A few men wear ties, but not many. What is common is to see men carrying purses. Dad has often carried Mom’s purse in Europe—a dainty brown leather clutch secure under hairy strapping arms. At first it looked rather ridiculous to me, but then, as the days progressed and I grew more accustomed to seeing such things, I didn’t give it a second thought.

I hear a siren in the distance, and notice that it has the same “daa-doo daa-doo” sound as those I’ve heard in the movies about Great Britain.

We find Bènèdicte’s address on main street, and then start looking for a place to park. In France, it’s rare to find an individual parking meter. Instead, at the end of each block there’s a machine from which you can buy a parking permit for a specified period of time. You either place this permit on your dashboard, or get a ticket like we did back in Riquewihr.

The tickets are written in French, German and English, so there’s little hope of a contrived misunderstanding. However, in Riquewihr it was raining and the ticket must have somehow gotten soggy and fallen off under the car. Right. At least, that’s where we left it. No matter—each time a French president is elected he “forgives” all the outstanding traffic violations, not to mention the parking tickets.

Bènèdicte will explain it this way:

Giles and I never pay our tickets, and we owed over one-thousand five-hundred American dollars. This is because our newly-elected president “forgives” them as a token of appreciation for voting him back into office.

Has bribery ever been so blatant?

We’ve arrived early for a change, and so, must wait for Bènèdicte to return from work. She’s coming home on the bus.

Now we’re doing what we always do when we look for a parking space in a European city—sitting double-parked while waiting for a car to move out of a legitimate parking space. We have plenty of time, so begin to debate on whether to buy a parking permit, or, to watch any ticket we might end up with get soggy in a rainstorm and fall back under the car again. But then, the decision is made for us. A car begins to leave, but not before a passenger gets out. He walks over to our car, and then hands me his permit. Have I just met my first nice Frenchman besides Andrè, Madeleine and Annick? Wait a minute. We’re driving a Citroën—a French car. He probably thinks we’re French. If he knew we were American, he’d probably kick himself.

Finally, Bènèdicte arrives. We’re greeted with a round of hugs and kisses. She opens the door to her apartment complex, and we follow her up a spiral staircase. Forty exhausting steps later we reach the third floor, which happens to be the bottom floor of her so-called “modern” city duplex. Our bedrooms are up another twenty stairs.

Bènèdicte is not winded at all, but must have heard us huffing and puffing because she apologizes:

I am sorry, but there are no elevators in this building.

Her duplex is nicely furnished, but the wall lights are strange. Maybe that’s because there aren’t any light fixtures. Instead, the electrical wiring sticks out of a hole which has been plastered over, and then connects to a simple light socket in which a naked bulb glares unforgivingly into any unaverted eyes. I’m going to have to get into the habit of not looking at these bulbs, much like I’ve gotten into the habit of not looking at the sun. But Bènèdicte doesn’t seem to think much about the matter. Instead, she brags about something else:

We are surrounded by individual businesses that are all housed in a common structure. We are right next door to a laundromat, a gift store, and a restaurant. The booming business in town right now is something special—a Mexican restaurant. It’s the first Mexican restaurant ever to open in this area. Now we have a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and an American pizzeria. We are very progressive, no?

Now where have I heard that before? Can you say Jan? Can you say Peter?

Nancy reminds me of Denver. The shops are similar, and so are the prices. There are supermarkets too, and the shopping malls are all indoors. But there is one difference. It’s subtle and under the surface, but it’s huge:

Most businesses and companies in France give their employees five weeks of paid vacation after one year of service.

Where do you work, Bènèdicte?

I work for a German company that makes dashboards for cars, tractors and planes. The company requires its employees to speak German, but I am fluent in German. I like my job, but I hate Nancy. It is too small and too trashy. It is too cliquish and too ingrained. I do not feel safe on the streets at night. I plan to move to Strassburg in one year to be with Giles. I graduated from the University on Strassburg, so it feels like home to me. I am looking forward to going back. Giles and I plan to be married there, and then to honeymoon in Los Angeles.

Dad butts in and pipes up:

It is good you will marry, because then you can sleep in the same room together if you visit me. If you are not married, then I will demand that you sleep in separate rooms.

Bènèdicte:

I will never understand why you American Christians take such a Puritanical view on unmarried couples sleeping together. Giles and I have been sleeping together for over three years now, and when we do, we have always found ourselves closer to heaven than to hell.

After her pronouncement Bènèdicte shakes her head and smiles, as if to say:

How much longer must I suffer through all these backwards Puritanical customs?

Bènèdicte may seem pretty liberal about these things, but she’s really not. I’ll meet her friend Dominique later on, and when I do I’ll find myself red-faced for most of the day.

Conversation drifts to her boyfriend:

Giles was transferred to Strassburg. Now he is living with his grandparents in a small outlying village called Erstein.

Does Giles speak English?

Oh yes, but only a little. He says things like:

Yes

No

Girl, and

Ooh La La.

Hum. Seems to me that Giles is pretty much like Peter Danko—in full reverse.

Since Andrè told us in so many words what he thinks of Giles—einige hochnäsig Börsenmakler, we ask Bènèdicte if she thinks his job is “dog-eat-dog” like it is in America. She does not understand this phrase, so asks us to explain. After we do, she agrees:

Yes, you are correct. But in France the phrase is:

Man is a Wolf for the Man.

There are other things we say like that in France:

“Fire Under Your Rear” means “Itchy Feet” in America

“Ca Va” (pronounced Sava) means many things in America, like:

“That goes” or

“Okay” or

“Are you okay” or

“How is it going” or

“Yes”

Conversation takes a natural turn to how God can change a person’s heart and life, and how a person can be happy and content with what he has. Bènèdicte has a definite opinion about this, and doesn’t hesitate to let us know:

No. You are wrong. People are selfish. And it is impossible for anybody or anything to change them.

I’m shocked, not by what she said, but how she said it—it’s almost word-for-word what I heard Peter say back in Hungary.

Our discussion about sex and selfish unchangeable people has hit a roadblock. I lean back in my chair and notice a small black book lying on the round coffee table between us.

Bènèdicte, what’s this?

She picks it up.

It’s a Catholic missal that belonged to my great-grandparents. It is in excellent condition. Would you like to see it?

Yes. Thank you.

I leaf through the missal and can’t help but admire the quality of the handcrafted velour pictures and script. A date of 1806 is on the flyleaf—I’m holding a book that’s one-hundred and eight-four years old! In America, this thing would probably be under glass someplace.

Bènèdicte, this book is amazing.

No. It is nothing special. It is only a family keepsake.

It’s getting on towards supper, so we decide to eat.

Bènèdicte prepares us a modest meal of melted Raclette cheese, ham, bread, an unusual salad of shredded cucumber, radish, carrot and potato, red wine, lemonade and an éclair for dessert. She apologizes for our dinner:

This is an accomplishment for me because I hate housekeeping and cooking.

And I believe her. This dinner was basically my doing. We had all gone to the supermarket earlier, and while my parents were away looking at something Bènèdicte took me by the hand and directed me away from my parents. She knew I was the only one who spoke German and so, she confided to me in German instead of English. And I’m shocked—again. Bènèdicte is more concerned and embarrassed about making dinner than she is about anything we discussed earlier—like sex, religion, or the recalcitrance of human nature:

Boob. Ich bin eine schreckliche Köchin. Was soll ich zum Abendessen zu kaufen? Alles was ich essen ist Cornflakes, und alles was ich trinken ist Wein, aber vor allem Kaffee. Ich will nicht wie ein Narr vor deinen Eltern zu suchen. Können Sie mir helfen?

(Bob. I am a terrible cook. What should I buy for dinner? All I eat is cornflakes, and all I drink is wine, but mostly coffee. I do not want to look like a fool in front of your parents. Can you help me?)

Although the meal’s basically my idea, Bènèdicte has somehow managed to pull it all together and seems happy enough. But there’s a boatload of Raclette left over. I guess I bought a little too much of that.

After dinner Bènèdicte makes another announcement:

I am sorry. I must work tomorrow. I will leave my flat to you. We can all travel together to Strassburg over the weekend. If you are hungry, please—find some Raclette or something in the refrigerator. Do not worry. When I get home, you will hear me.

She’s no Peter Danko, but she’s good. I can see why Annick envies her.

Now I will show you Nancy. We will go to Stanislaus Palace and the city hall.

As you can see, Stanislaus Palace is a large square which you can enter into through one of four golden gates. These gates were built by Stanislaus, who was a king in Poland and a prince in France at the same time. There are many Poles in France today, and most of them are the descendants of the attendants which King Stanislaus brought with him.

Bènèdicte, are the gates made of solid gold?

No, they are only gold leaf. Still, the French government spends over three million dollars each year to restore the gold leaf.

Makes me wonder who’s been scraping off and pocketing three million dollars of leaf each year.

Marie Antoinette used some of the apartments in this Palace. Look up to the roofs and eaves. Do you see them? Do you see the statues of dogs and gargoyles? They were put there to frighten away evil spirits.

I wonder what gorgon is lacking to frighten away all the black pollution from this place. It’s covering these buildings from head to toe.

We’re out of the car now, and walking about.

This avenue is paralleled on both sides by trees that are one-hundred feet high.  They were planted by King Stanislaus. The king also loved roses, and this is his rose garden.

The rose garden is illuminated with spotlights, and is a striking display. It makes the rose garden I’ve seen at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in Southern California look simply pitiful by comparison.

It’s eleven o’clock at night now. We’re walking back to the car in the waning light, right past an old beggar-man who’s holding out his hat for a handout.

A lot of people are still up and about. They’re either busy visiting with each other, or walking aimlessly around the grounds, or eating at various sidewalk cafés.

Bènèdicte, do people stay up this late every day?

Oh yes, the French do this every day. The Germans are more—how do you say—restrained. They stay up late only on the weekends.

(To be continued)

There are only a few days before we close the Featured Prompt of the Month for May. Send in your works inspired by this prompt to be featured on our sidebar!

by whisperingsea

Rated PG

Floating words.
Islands apart.
Drifting

and waiting
for the sunset

to make its mark.

I’m standing here

alone.
at the water’s

edge.
its murky saline

kissing

my veins.
making its way into

my aching

lungs.

The clouds scream;

swollen

with rain.
and I find comfort

in the biting

wind.
warming

the tips

of my fingers
then

my heart.

The blazing gaze

of the setting sun.
Bloodying

the treetops.
the air breathes

its whispering comfort.
and I smile;

changed.
but

forever the same.