A Farewell to Grenoble

In the late summer of that year we lived in an apartment in a city that looked across the river and the cemetery to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was dirty and swiftly moving and brown in the channels. Young people on Vespas went by the apartment loudly and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the young people motorcycling along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the young people passing and afterward the road bare and grey except for the leaves.

We visited Cheryl at Spar and Wendy at the Shannon and Arthur at Pizza Arthur in the Parc paul mistral and Alpheus at La Bobine. Most importantly, however, we visited Floran (really Sylvie and Stéphane Grattier) at Maison Floran. We visited them to buy their baguettes, croissants, pains au chocolat, quiches, coeurs fruités, and even -- when the mood struck us right -- theirs pains de campagne.

The mountains held in the smog but also the heat. Vengeful and full of pride, they towered above us at the end of each dusty road. Many times we ventured into the Vercors, and the Chartreuse, and even the Belledonne, while the city slowly awoke below us.