I boarded the train in X. Smoking was much more common in those days. In France, in particular, some people would smoke even in nonsmoking compartments. Even though I had a seat reservation, I changed compartments after two men, who both looked more or less like Jacques Brel, lit up their Gauloises and merely laughed when someone pointed out this was a nonsmoking compartment. In the other compartment, I came to sit next to a young Spaniard who started a conversation. I could tell he liked me. We shared a sandwich and exchanged addresses. I got off the train in Y. Those were the milestones of this eight-hour train ride. Z., a lesser known nouvelle vague director, turned it into a ninety-minute movie which, someone told me, won an award at a festival. I was, at the time, the girlfriend of the director’s camera man, who suggested to the script writer who wrote all the scripts for Z.’s films to write a script based on what I’d told him about the train ride. The writer added a few things to make the movie more palatable. The sex scene with the Moroccan in the toilet did not happen. The only Moroccan on the train I remember was asleep standing up in the aisle outside the compartment. He’d been riding trains for twenty-seven hours, someone said, all the way from the south of Spain. There was an Algerian across from the young Spaniard and me, who kept butting in on our conversation and was giving me smoldering looks under hooded eyelids.
– Jacqueline Maisdemois (© 2019)
Note
This text was submitted by the author, who is unknown to me, in English in the form of a comment to a previous blog entry. – James Steerforth
Steer Forth! 