Day one

I’m in my new car driving to France.
(I’m in my bed in Amsterdam)
This is my solo trip. 700 kilometers of concrete before I reach the town of Dole.
(I’m staring at a white Word document.)
I stop for a coffee break at a big gas station. I park my car in the middle of a deserted parking place behind the gas station. It shines in the cold December sun.
(This is the night before my trip. It’s 4 am.)
When I get back from my coffee I see how four identical white trucks with red stripes have surrounded my tiny blue car. The truck drivers are looking at it. There’s a huge mirror in the back. When they see me approach, one of them makes a remark in a Slavic language and the others start laughing.
I put my coffee on the roof and open the door. When I start the engine, the music picks up where it left off. ‘I used to care, but things have changed’. I give the truck driver closest to me a wink and pull up.
(I can’t sleep. I feel a bit lost.)
In my rearview mirror I see all four of them staring at my car, my mirror and me. I make a sharp U-turn and start circling their trucks, making the guys do a pirouette in slow motion. I honk the horn and speed off.
(My baby shrieks in her sleep. I stop writing. Turn off the light.)

I’m drinking hot tea on a wooden bench in a parking place between Antwerp and Brussels. It’s fucking cold. A Eurolines bus drives past. I look to see if I can spot a Jew with curly hair, headphones and a pen behind one of its windows.
My car, my mirror and me turned off the E 41 for a short stretch. The mirror blocks my view to all possible blind angles, and to be able to sit behind the wheel of this tiny car I have to slightly bend forward. I feel like a little blind boxer in a huge arena…ducking invisible blows.
I’m on the road to Georges Perec. The big mirror and the tiny car fit the quest for the writer who lived his life, as it was a game. A serious game though.

Suddenly everything is white. A hawk flies over. I think I see snow clouds in the distance. I’m heading straight for them.

I’m in a Chinese restaurant in Dole, drinking a 1664 Kronenbourg after a ten-hour drive. Asian girls in summer dresses surround me. They laugh and stare at me. I take a snapshot. They don’t mind. Seem unmoved even. The fish in the three aquariums bounce back every time the camera flashes.
It’s Saturday night and the place is packed. They put me in the corner for lonely strangers with the fish tanks and the Asian pin up posters. I cannot see any of the other customers; I can only hear the different French conversations. I try to make out what they say, but my French is bad, and four or five conversations are taking place at the same time.
I decide to stop understanding and start relaxing. Now it’s just a comfortable sophisticated French blur.
I drink my beer and wait for my duck and asparagus. A few times all conversations die out at the exact same moment. The sudden unplanned quietude reminds me of high school parties. I’m shouting in a girl’s ear, hoping to impress her with a well made-up story. Suddenly the music comes to a hold, changing the whole atmosphere.
This night though I enjoy these middle moments since I don’t have to say anything, except ‘Avez-vous chopsticks?’

Day two

I’m sitting on a blue bench under a tree in the courtyard of the Dole Lycée. The school looks like a Roman palace. Pine trees and bushes surround the building. It’s Sunday and the small regional town is deserted except for an occasional stroller with a baguette. I suspect some underground bakery business going on.
It’s a clear and cold winter day and I’ve been walking around for a few hours –scanning the little squares and narrow alleys for a good spot to take a picture of my mirror and me. I need people in it so I hope this schoolyard is bursting with kids tomorrow who will dance around the Strange Man with the Mirror.

La Musée des Beaux Arts will open its doors any time soon now. It’s right across the street from my hotel. Looking through my telephoto lens from my bathroom window I can see Georges grinning at me from the poster on the wall. He has a black cat on his shoulder.

I’m strolling along the Doubs river at the foot of the old city wall of Dole. Iron cables cross a small stretch of the river. Dangling from them are chains with red, yellow and green colored plates with numbers on them, starting with one. I follow the chains and just before the stretch turns into the river again, the row of chains ends. The last number reads 29, but it has a big red cross through it. I feel my final hour has arrived.

Santa Claus begs for a cigarette. The guy from the merry-go-round gives him one. They shake hands and Santa strolls on.
I’m working on my final thesis about Perec and photography in a bar on one of the many squares. Sunday afternoon Christmas shoppers pass by the window. I drink a homebrewed beer and Britney Spears is singing.
I see a jester walking by. Then some young families. Fathers my age or even younger are roaming around, pushing buggies, pulling carts filled with singing children, carrying babies in baby slings. They seem to multiply like ants while I’m writing about them, swarming the window frame, obscuring my thoughts, taking away my observational mood. I think I saw close to thirty dads in the last five minutes. And the number is increasing rapidly. I finish my beer and order another one.
A guy enters the scene. He’s taking pictures in a fast and steady rhythm. He reminds me of Serge Ligtenberg.  He photographs a door sign, a garbage bin, a shopping window, the merry-go-round, a white dog with a black ear. After every shot he quickly checks the display on the back of his digital camera. Then he looks up, takes a step or two and when he finds a new subject, he aims, focuses and shoots. Two minutes and nineteen shots later he disappears from my view.

Day three

4 o’clock in the afternoon and I’m taking a hot bath in my hotel room. I got white foam on my chest and my toes are slowly defrosting. There’s some French cheese and some grapes on the edge of the bath. I feel like Sean Connery and I’m expecting that a Chinese kung fu pinup will walk in any moment now.
An hour ago my girlfriend called telling me Dylan is dead –one of our cats. I was standing in a Renaissance schoolyard with my mirror and my camera and didn’t know what to say. She was crying, I told her there was nothing more she could have done, and then I was crying too. Two plumbers walked past, one of them an Arab. They looked at the mirror, then at me, and saw my tears. ‘Tu es beaux’, the Arab said and looked straight into my eyes, giving me a comforting nod.
I looked in the mirror and couldn’t link my reflection to the person holding the phone and staring in the mirror. It didn’t make sense. I put the huge mirror in the tiny car and headed for this bath.

 

I’m in my hotel bed. I packed my bags, prepared my breakfast, and wrapped my mirror in a sheet. I’ve decided to go to Paris tomorrow. There is an exhibition titled ‘Photography from Düsseldorf’. The Bechers and their children. I’m excited to get closer to the Ruhr by driving further away from it.
It’s midnight. I have to get up at 6. I turn off the light. Day four.

Day four

Hundreds of cars race over a cobble stoned square and try to be the first in the Avenue de la Grande Armée. This feels like Paris. On the Place de l’Etoile everybody’s honking their horns. I wish Ohad was here with me, shouting insults to the French.
(I arrive back home in the middle of the night. I take the mirror out of the car.)
My little blue car with blinking indicators looks lost when I park it in the middle of the Place de la Concorde. Nearby, on the Champs-Elysées two army jeeps pull over. Six armed men jump out and run into a building. Two policemen on roller-skates fly past. One is blowing his whistle and they are closing in on a white van.
(I turn the key to my house. The front door is stuck. I push hard but it doesn’t open.)
When I enter the museum on the Place de la Concorde I notice that there is no exhibition about the Düsseldorfer School. I try to get some information about it but the girl behind the desk of the museum doesn’t understand my questions. My French is terrible. Her English is even worse.
‘You come from the East of France?’
‘Your car is from Düsseldorf?’
‘You want student discount?’
Suddenly I’m very tired.
I need coffee and food. I want a foot massage. I need people whom I can talk to.
(I give the door a final kick; the door jumps open but bounces back, hitting the mirror and breaking it.)
I leave the museum.
(I put the broken mirror in the living room. My baby is asleep.)
I return to my car. I get in, start the engine and drive back to Amsterdam.