28 Days From Now... (2/2)

My burden hasn’t been halved, but it has been lessened considerably. Niels, the new kid, is fifteen and pretty nice. His family was from Denmark before moving to Paris. Yesterday we set up two of the five tents and slept in the first last night. Ah, I’ve missed that smell of canvas and the feeling of rising while the sun is shining but the air still holds the night’s chill.

Thérèse is getting harder to deal with each day. She’s one of the most anal and nervous persons I’ve ever met. We can’t use towels to dry dishes, because they’re filled with germs. We can’t pet dogs in the street, even if they are collared and look well cared for. We can’t buy frozen food because it might thaw between the store and the house and unleash bacteria that could (yes, she actually said this) KILL somebody! She also insists that we clean the bathroom floor and toilets every single night. This is the problem: you’ve got a high-strung germaphobe dictating the rules for a guy who, apparently, has spent too much time at a college for dirty hippies. If it looks clean, it is clean, dammit! You’ve nothing to fear from dirt, it’s the chemicals that’ll kill ya! If I hadn’t already been inoculated against crazy French women by my stay at the Chamayous, I’d probably want to come home right now. I just keep telling myself that my current situation is not as bad as what I left. It’s like telling yourself that the shack in Kamchatka where you’re hiding from the KGB isn’t as bad as the Gulag camp you escaped from; it’s true, but it doesn’t really make you feel any better. At least Thérèse isn’t a fundie Catholic.

This morning Thérèse showed us how to mix mortar with sand, chalk, and water, and how to apply it to a wall. You literally just throw handfuls of it as hard as you can at the wall, then let it dry and repeat until it has stuck in all the cracks. That job’ll be much easier once we get more people and equipment.

After lunch Niels and I walked all the way to the Old City, and then waited two hours for Thérèse to get there too. We walked through the Château while Thérèse gave me a list of things to photograph tomorrow. A raging summer storm kicked up, but the sun came through the clouds and there was some amazing light over the Old City.