Nurse the Hate: Pascale Petit

They used to show obscure foreign and independent films in a small classroom at the community college.  Tim had become the executive director of the group “Voices In Film” which was a hodge podge of art victims, outcasts, and iconoclasts that had found in each other a willing audience that would indulge their esoteric tastes in cinema.  When you got right down to it, it was a bunch of people that badgered their friends to pay to come see odd movies that they couldn’t afford to rent on their own.  Digital streams would not do.  They needed the actual prints.  This was cinema!  It was there that Tim first encountered the early 60s movies of Pascale Petit.

After their sparsely attended screening of the fairly terrible film “Une Fille Pour L’ete”, Tim found himself infatuated with the actress Pascale Petit.  He began to dress wearing odd little scarves and pedal about town on an antique bike.  Soon he was peppering his language with French.  He started to hand roll cigarettes.  His began to champion the actress in all meetings of “Voices In Film”, insisting on additional screenings of her work.  After those screenings failed to draw even meagerly enough to cover costs, Tim doubled down and firmly put forth a resolution for “an all Pascale Petit weekend” as a way for The Public to learn and appreciate her work.  This doomed idea led to Tim’s ouster as president of "Voices In Film" and led to the current leadership who, as you have no doubt noticed, have an affinity for the films of Akira Kurosawa.

Tim was ostracized after the coup.  He became even more gaunt, forlornly smoking his cigarettes and lingering over cups of coffee at outdoor café tables.  He lived his life in faded black and white film.  He started speaking like he was in one of the 1960s films of Pascale Petit.  Sometimes he even employed a trace of an accent.  “I love her you know…  You could never understand what it is to be in love like this.”  He swam in his despair, gloriously broken.  “How can I go on when I cannot be with her?  To know our destiny has been denied?”  He stubbed out his cigarette and looked off in the distance as if it had been called for in a script.

“Look Tim, I can see you have strong feelings for the woman.  I do.  But I would like to point out that you are in love with a movie character in France from 1962.  The real Pescale Petit would be an 80 year old woman in France, if she's still alive.”  He stared at me and shook his head slowly with a smile forming at the corners of his mouth.  “To question the way of love is a fool’s game my friend.  Time and space are nothing but illusion.”  He dug into his canvas mailbag and pulled out a pouch of tobacco.  His bony fingers worked methodically assembling the cigarette.  He dramatically lit the cigarette with a wooden match and stared off once again allowing the wind to blow his hair.  He was performing for himself at this point.

I placed two dollars under my saucer to keep it blowing away in the breeze.  “Well… Hang in there man.”  Tim was lost.  I felt sorry for him.  He had no idea how ridiculous he was behaving.  He was trapped in a prison his mind had constructed.  I left Tim to his beautiful gloom and walked across the square to the small specialty grocer.  There in the back I slid open the cooler and took two bottles of Sapporo beer to the cashier.  "Arigatu" I said as I shoved one in each pocket of my jacket.  The door let out an electronic "ding" as I left and made my way to the community college.  

 When I arrived, I hung up my jacket on a hook.  I went into the men's room and changed into a small white robe, tying it closed with a black sash.  I took two wooden sandals from my backpack and stepped into them.  I walked out and saw the other members of "Voices In Film" standing by a small grocery store sushi spread on a card table.  I made a deep bow and said "Kon'nichiwa".  It was Akira Kurosawa weekend at “Voices In Film”.  “The Seven Samurai” was screening tonight.  I had seen the film so many times I could recite dialogue.  I found a perfect seat in the center before the lights dimmed.  To not be seated would have been a great dishonor.  As a samurai myself, I could not allow that to happen.  The film began and I felt relaxed.  I felt at home.  The others could never understand.