I'm beginning to get giddy. Paper napkins or cloth? Tables for eight or for four? Centerpieces? Entertainment? Costume party? (Come as who you want to be in your next life.)
I actually love to have parties and haven't entertained since coming here. I find myself beginning to generate some decor and food enthusiasm. I could create a program and make candleholders and dye special tablecloths.Wait! Red flags around the room for May Day! A small Lily of the Valley bouquet for each guest. Background music of labor movement songs and perhaps a rousing grand finale of everyone singing The Internationale. I'll have to make songsheets of the French lyrics.
L'Internationale
Debout, les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
Debout, les damnés de la terre
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passé faisons table rase
Foule esclave, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
: C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain
Sera le genre humain :
And in English:
Arise, wretched of the earth
Arise, convicts of hunger
Reason thunders in its crater
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us wipe the slate clean
Enslaved masses, arise, arise
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all
: This is the final struggle
Let us group together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :
I guess he isn't backing out. The next time I see Nathan he gives me a list of who he wants to invite. There are 30 people on it -- friends in Paris and other areas of France, two in Marrakesh, Morocco, two more in New York City and one in Spokane, Washington, and the rest spread out across Europe, including Fanny's great-nephew in Geneva.
I agonize over what to say to them. Finally, I write myself a script to follow and start with friends in Paris, which I hope will be the easiest. With the very first call I can see I'm in trouble. The woman, Jeanne-Claude, speaks English but she thinks this is a practical joke. When at last I convince her that it is real, she bursts into tears and hangs up on me.
I dutifully follow through with the calls. It takes days and I dread each one. There is shock and tears and anger and demands for explanations that I don't have. They all eventually end up calling Nathan himself which was the one thing we were trying to avoid. But he tells me everyone is coming. Even from the United States. And the locals are bringing their dogs.
I don't remember that I ever really said yes to this whole thing, yet here I am in spite of all my sadness and reservations. Stuck in suicide party hell.
Where to have this supper keeps me awake at night. Bernie stares at me with sympathetic eyes and tentatively wags his stubby tail. He can tell I'm upset. Nathan's place is too small. Our place is too small. Nathan suggests a private room at a bistro or cafe and he casually mentions he has just one food request: no meat. In the heat of the moment or hours or days, I forgot he was that rarity -- a Parisian vegan.
Bernie and I wander all over Paris trying to find an appropriate place. Most are too expensive. A few are too small. Paris is a meat-eaters heaven, full of coq au vin and foie gras and crackled duckling.
In the time since he decided to do this, there's a change in Nathan. He stays home more; he stopped singing. When I ask if he wants to go to an art exhibit or see a film, he says no. When I ask if he wants me to continue with this Last Supper thing for him, there's an irritable edge to his voice that I've never experienced before. Where has my friend Nathan gone? He is gone before he is gone.
I do find a place that is in Montmartre and specializes in vegan and vegetarian food. They have an outdoor terrace that is open for the season and yes, we can have it for May Day.
Bernie and I walk over to see it on an especially fine spring day. After all the emotional gloom, our spirits are up and life seems lovely today. Bernie has a little skip in his step. The air is balmy, that just-right temperature that is pleasing on your skin, nearly sensuous.
The city is filled with glorious blooming trees. Window boxes are crowded with flowers from spring bulbs -- tulips and daffodils and hyacinths send out a ripe intoxicating scent that makes you want to stand in front of them and bury your head in their blossoms. After weeks of a physical heaviness and a palpable weight in my chest that never goes away because of the impending goodbyes, today is good.
On several street corners I spot Gypsies selling lilacs. Their patchwork multilayered long skirts and headscarves contrast in some surprisingly pleasant way with the lush purple and white of the long-stemmed lilacs in overflowing metal buckets. The children of the flower sellers play in and among their mothers. Their shrill shrieks and laughter echo through the plazas. The women are wearing their urban faces -- stern, almost surly. The rumor is they still live in hidden caravans just outside Paris.
At the sudden trill of a police whistle all scatter and the corners are empty of women, children and lilacs within seconds. The lilac bushes are blooming along streets all over Paris. I wonder idly if the women have just walked up and down the streets clipping the flowers to sell at the corners.
Just before we get to the cafe on Place du Clavaire, a narrow cobbled street in the center of Montmartre, my phone rings. It is Nathan.
He was feeling a little shortness of breath so he went to his doctor. What did he say? "By the way, Doctor, in a couple of weeks I'm going to kill myself. Nothing bloody or unseemly. I'm just going to fast. Would you like to come to my Last Supper?"
In France, the terminally ill have a legal right to die with dignity. Nathan is not terminally ill. He's not even sick.
Evidently the doctor was so alarmed that he called Nathan's residence and of course they told him that he couldn't do it there. They would call the police long before he was gone.
"May I do it at your house," he asks. "Absolutely not." I answer.
"Oh, I didn't think you'd say yes," he says with only a slight touch of annoyance. "Listen, I'm just going to forget the whole thing. I want to be around for Bastille Day anyway. Just call the list of people we invited and tell them I changed my mind. "
