Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [18]
They crossed the quay and entered rue du Fouarre.
“Fouarre means straw.”
Big Brother had already gone on to something else. Ra-chid was still on their discussion about God and his worshippers. It was bothering him some. If Big Brother was right, then nothing made sense. But Big Brother must be wrong, no doubt about it.
“Straw Street. Funny, isn’t it, how the streets of Paris always have a hidden meaning, a new story. Here they used to cover the street with straw so the students could sit down on dry spots to take their classes. The whole street was covered by those studious people. It was closed to traffic. And if a cart happened to go through during the classes the monks were teaching, the students would beat up the driver and they’d dump his load on the ground. To avoid fights, the city authorities would close the street off with chains. Classes began in the morning, after mass. Since bums would come and sleep on the straw at night, they had to kick them awake before they changed the straw for the students in the Middle Ages. Hence the expression the last straw.”
“How d’you know all that?”
“Books. Man’s best companions.”
Now they were walking along rue Dante.
“Dante is supposed to have lived here after he fled Florence.”
“Florence?”
“Shit, man, you really should get out of La Courneuve from time to time!”
Big Brother traveled a lot, crazy as it may seem. He had disability papers that allowed him to take the train free and gave him discounts on most airlines. He had been wounded in Sarajevo while defusing an antipersonnel mine. At eighteen, he had joined UNPROFOR and was sent to Bosnia. After he was discharged, he lit out for Italy, as he told Rachid, who’d never been out of the projects of La Courneuve: The only Italian he knew was pizzaand spaghetti. What’s more, he got bawled out by Big Brother whenever he cut his pasta before he gulped it down.
He had traveled, he said, to set his mind aright after the horrors of the war. A kind of convalescence. Rachid couldn’t really remember all the places on his journey. But he did know Big Brother had a disability card. And he was very discreet about his war injury. He never talked about it. When Rachid insisted, Big Brother would tell him to read The Sun Also Risesby Hemingway. But Rachid never opened a book, everybody knew that. Actually, that was the problem. If Rachid had the slightest bit of interest in anything written, he would have understood his older friend a lot better. But since hanging out with Big Brother had always paid off, Rachid just said forget it, even if his ignorance could fill the Seine.
“In 1309, Dante leaves Italy. He comes here, to Paris, to attend the lectures of Sigier de Brabant. Right here, on the straw of rue du Fouarre, he absorbs those odious truths, demonstratedwith syllogisms.”
Rachid was feeling the pangs of hunger. A sweet, heady aroma of kebab was tickling his nostrils: The only truth he managed to put into a syllogism was not at all odious to his belly.
“I’m starving.”
“One should have an empty belly and a light mind.” Big Brother began to recite, in a loud voice, right there in the street: “Is this the glorious way that Dante Alighieri is called backto his country after the affliction of an exile that has lasted almostfifteen years? Are these the wages of his innocence, obvious to oneand all? Is this, then, the fruit of the sweat and fatigue of his studies?Never will the man who is an intimate friend of philosophysuffer the disgrace of being chained like a criminal to be rehabilitated!Never will the man who was the herald of justice, and wasoffended, accept the idea of going to his offenders as if they werehis benefactors, to pay tribute! This is not the way to return toone’s homeland, father. If you or someone else can find a way thatdoes not blacken the reputation and honor of Dante, I will takeit, without hesitation. If there is no honorable way to see Florenceagain, I will never return. What then? Can I not see the sun andstars from any corner of the world? Can I not, under every