by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.
Thirty years ago this month, millions of people around the world were glued to their television sets watching the first moon landing.
I wasn't one of them.
I probably would have been if I'd been at home, or anywhere with access to a television--but I was on a summer study trip in France, staying in a dormitory, polishing up my French skills, and exploring the walled pirate town of St. Malo.
St. Malo! It was a magical place to spend the summer in, even without the added excitement of being away from my family and--well, "on my own" would be an exaggeration. There were chaperones--ours were a young American French teacher and his wife, getting a free trip to France at the cost of having to keep watch over a small flock of high school students. There were the moniteurs, French college students whose summer job it was to ride herd on us most afternoons, after the formal classes were over, and provide additional enrichment by taking us to see all the local sights. And I'm sure the school had teachers of some sort to supervise us. But still--in a strange place, without my parents, and free, at least for a few hours each day to roam the town, alone or with a friend or two.
I think our chaperones were Mr. and Mrs. Franzoni. Pretty sure our group's moniteur was Joel, although he usually joined forces with his buddy Alain--probably for sanity's sake. Most of the girls in our group--the students were about 3/4 girls, as I remember--had a crush on one or both of them. I favored Alain, who had long hair, played the guitar, and taught us French folk songs. I can still, at a pinch, sing a few verses of Le roi a fait battre tambour or Chevaliers de la table ronde. Alain and Joel dutifully took us around to the main sights, but in wet weather--and I seem to remember there being a lot of wet weather--they would present the sights to us briefly before adjourning to a nearby cafe where over beers (for them) and soft drink (for us), in between the bouts of guitar playing and singing, they made an earnest attempt to teach us every known slang term for "drunk" that then existed in the French language.
On afternoons when when the moniteurs were off duty, we students would try out all the local patisseries and go shopping for souvenirs. My big souvenir was "the plaque," as I still call it. At the heart of the old town was a shop that made and sold hand-painted tiles. They specialized in large murals--several of the nicer restaurants in St. Malo featured these, inside or outside, covering whole walls sometimes, with dozens of tiles. But I set my heart on the smallest thing they made--a three-tile madonna. That's her to the right. She still watches over my office.
And a couple of times, in the evening, our chaperones took us out to cafes or small restaurants for dinner. I think that's what we were doing the night of the moon landing.
I find myself wondering if it was the same night that I ate only a small portion of a plate of "mixed seafood." We were at a restaurant that featured a multi-course dinner, and for every course I chose the non-seafood option--except for one course, where there were ONLY seafood options. I figured in a plate of "mixed seafood" I could find something I liked. It turned out to be a small mountain of shellfish--oysters, mussels, clams, and snails, topped with a tiny crab.
As I began dutifully gnawing on the first of the shellfish, I was startled to see--or did I only imagine?--that the tiny crab had wiggled its eye stalks. Must be my imagination. I mean, this stuff was cooked, right? They wouldn't serve us raw seafood, much less live seafood--would they?
As I was pondering this, the crab hoisted himself up on his little legs and began carefully picking his way down the side of the small mound of shells.
I spat out whatever I was chewing and pushed back the plate.
The crab began scuttling up and down the tabletop, no doubt looking to find his way back to the ocean. Up and down the table, people spotted him, stopped chewing, and pushed back their plates. Some them swallowed hard. Some deployed their napkins.
I think the chef may have come out of the kitchen to see what was wrong with that course. And no, I have no idea what happened to the crab.
So maybe it was that night, or possibly another of our occasional restaurant and cafe outings. Some of the locals pegged us for Americans--not hard, I suspect, although I like to think we were one of the better behaved student groups. And first one, and then nearly all the people in the cafe stood and applauded. "Vive la lune!" they exclaimed. "Vive les Americains!"
One of these days I want to go back to St. Malo again, walk the cobblestone streets and the walkways atop the city walls and to watch the tide come and go--it does so as dramatically as at nearby Mont. St. Michel.
Until then--vive la lune!