2.  "RECENTLY I WAS IN FRANCE"

On Bastille Day, July 14, 1983, the president of France stands at the foot of the Obelisque in the Place de la Concorde and reviews his troops. He will salute from a huge wooden platform erected by the city. Permission has been granted to leave the platform up so that I can sing a free concert on July 15. It will be a concert dedicated to nonviolent struggle.

I am in a flurry of excitement. We must have radio ads, posters, television spots, and gossip to create "an event."

I leave France for a tour of Germany and take my stomachache with me. What if I give a concert at the foot of the Obelisque and nobody comes? Me, alone on a big wooden platform with as many police as spectators. Ugh. Marie Antoinette was executed there also.

In Wurzburg, I hear from Paris. There is trouble from a ministry. Sorry, Madame Baez. There is no police permit. Without a police permit there can be no concert.

Voila la France.

I have offended someone. Perhaps the minister of culture by refusing his invitation to sing at the official Bastille Day celebration; perhaps his wife by deciding not to sing a song she taped for me.

I call the Ministry of Culture.

"Je suis desolee, Madame Baez, mais nous n'avons pas la permission de la Prefecture de Police." I'm sorry, Madame Baez, but we have no permission from the police.

Perhaps it is the fault of my French promoter, who curses at officials over the phone. Nothing I can say will stop her.

The days go by. I am on tour. Each morning I hope the call will come from France saying the concert is set. Until then there can be no publicity. We are pulling every string I ever had in Paris to get the police permit.

I need a rest after Germany.

I go to Canisy, to my beloved castle in Normandy. Well, it is not actually my castle. It's been in the young count's family for 800 years. He just lets me feel it's mine. He is away. There is only one week left and no permit. All the police will be tired from working on Bastille Day. Two thousand police would have to be brought in from the provinces.

Six days left.

I wander around in another century, picking wildflowers, riding horses, and dreaming.

Five days.

I call Madame Mitterrand, the wife of the president of France. She is a friend.

She has just left for the country, her secretary says. In broken French I explain my dilemma to the secretary: Madame is the only chance I have left, I say (and it is true).

I hang up and look dismally at the royal red curtains of the seventeenth-century room. They mock my impotence. Madame will never get my message. I give up the whole bloody effort and go lie on the lawn of the little house where the guardians of the castle live, and pick daisies and blow a kiss to my beloved stable boy, Cher Ami.

Cher Ami climbed onto a horse when he was eight years old and, holding on around the huge warm neck, flew like the wind at the edge of time, hearing only the barrel echoing gulps and pounding hoofbeats, and feeling only mane and tears on his face. He slept in the snow with his dog when he was ten, and left his heart in the forest when he went home, to work and eat in silence. Before he was Mon Cher Ami, he was Mon Sauvage. He still traps poisonous snakes and talks to them as he frees them in the tall grass by the lake. To hell with the ministries. I will lie here and listen to the humming of the bees. And tonight, when the castle sleeps, I will put a fur coat over my nightgown and walk in the moonlight with Cher Ami. He will wait for me in the long grass between the lakes. We will go to his loft over the horses, and I'll lie with my head in the turn of his neck and my nose against his fine jawbone and downy cheek, and I'll smell the hay and the wheat dust. Who needs Paris and stomach cramps?

A smile spreads across my face as I watch a hundred suns dancing in the slate panels of the castle roof.

Here comes Cher Ami with his sleeves rolled up over Heathcliff arms.

"Telephone, Madame Baez."

"Pour moi, Cher Ami? Qui ca?"

"Le president de la Republique de la France," he mocks, but through his long hair I see his father waving excitedly from a window in the stone house.

"Ha!" he shouts. "C'est pour toi! C'est Francois! Oui! Il a dit Francois! Ooo, la la!" and the leathery imp grins at me with one tooth missing. He has the beautiful eyes of his son, only they are blue, and set in creases. He winks and hands me the phone from the wooden box.

"Halloo?"

"Bonjour, Joan Baez?"

"Qui, c'est moi-meme."

"C'est Francois ici."

"Francois qui?"

This must be a joke.

"Francois Mitterrand, le president." And he begins to talk, but my mind has flown out the window. What on earth is he telling me?

"C'est a dire, calmez-vous, tranquillisez-vous." He is telling me to relax and not worry. When an intellectual talks to me in French, I can understand one half, on a good day. I think he is telling me that the concert is on.

Now he is inviting me to lunch at the Palace. For Wednesday. That much I understand.

I can't ask him to explain about the concert again, so I thank him enormously and hang up, wondering if the concert is on for this year or next.

My promoter screams. "I don beleeve eet! EE call you direct? You are keeding! Zat eez rrreally somesing!"

"But I don't really understand what he said."

"I weel find out eef ze police has our permit." Click, she hangs up.

Jangle.

"Zee police, zay don know nossing. I'm going cghrazy. Zay says no show."

I go to my room and take a bubble bath. There are clumps of weightless flies trapped in the light on the ceiling, high above the tub. I'll put on something pretty and go visit the old countess in her house across from the stables. While we drink champagne I'll tell her my miseries and make silhouette designs with my riding boots on the tile floor.

She is in her sixties. A doctor, a conservative, and, of course, an aristocrat. She has no use for this sloppy bunch of Socialists who run the government now. When she was young the Germans occupied the castle and used it to house the inmates of the local insane asylum, which had been bombed into rubble.

"In the full moon you would see them jumping from the windows." She points toward my room. "They were completely mad, of course."

We eat dinner together in the castle kitchen, enveloped in the dank smell of centuries and of cobwebbed wine bottles.

I walk the ancient hallways past lingering shadows and gloomy paintings. They usually make me laugh. The ugly lady in the white wig with a bird perched on her useless white hand smells cheese and watches me over her bird. I stick my tongue out at her. It has been a disappointing day, as I am now sure that the concert will be next year. I gaze out my window at the lake below. The swans glide miraculously, like two white feathers.

My room is a mess. I must pack for Paris and lunch at the Elysee. A dejected face stares at me from the bathroom mirror. There are footsteps in the hall.

It's the countess, hurrying along in her jodhpurs. Swish, swish.

"Joanie! It's for you! Someone is saying that the concert is on!"

"Who?"

"I don't know." She puffs, out of breath in my doorway, her hair sticking out in red wisps. "Some frrrpghtful little man from one of the ministries."

Back we go through the endless, echoing corridors, back in disbelief. I sigh and take the phone one more time in my clammy hands. Yes, the man says, the police got their orders and we will have a permit.

I can't help myself. I say, "Oh, I wonder who gave the orders ..."

"Oh!" he says, "they came from very high up."

"Yes, I imagine so." I gloat. I am happy. I am more than happy. I am giddy.

***

Cher Ami drives me into Paris for lunch at the Palace. He hates Paris, but has memorized the route from the castle to the Hotel Raphael.

I take a shower, but the sweat comes back in little dots on my nose and forehead from the heat and the approaching lunch with the president. There is a smudge on my linen slacks and the only belt I brought doesn't match my high heels.

That morning Cher Ami and I raced horses on the beach at dawn. Then we pranced them into the waves to cool their steaming flanks. I wore my purple Indian full skirt which blackened and doubled in weight when the white water rushed up to claim it. But that was the other me.

Across the gravel and up the grand steps I go. I've been here before, and I know the man with the plasterboard shirtfront and the gold keychain around his neck. Leading with a white-gloved hand he smiles me to the waiting parlor. I am left alone with day ghosts and tapestries until the penguins come to lead me through hallways to the fireplace room.

The first time I saw this room was when I had tea with the conservative president. There were just the two of us, and he sat so far across the room I could barely hear him.

The first time I visited the Mitterrands, the same room was filled with family, and dogs lolling and scratching cozily on the rug.

This time there is only the Official Family Friend, and he chats with me until Monsieur and Madame arrive. When they are announced we stand up and I go right to Madame and hug her. Thank you so much for coming to my aid, I say, from memory. How do you do, M. le President? Forgive me on the phone, but I was afraid I would forget the formal tense, you see, and use the familiar and cause a big scandal. M. le President smiles just a little.

We all sit down. The room fills with television cameras and more white gloves bring drinks on a silver tray. I have a gin and tonic, forget about the smudge on my slacks and talk about Gandhi.

The president is polite. He is a soldier, he tells me.

Yes, I know, I tell him. So am I.

Danielle is smiling, but she always smiles. She is a pixie.

What about the black curtain? I ask.

Yes, you will have your black curtain.

I understand the police will not allow the design of a broken gun on the curtain . . .

Madame intercedes. No, really, my husband cannot allow that.

"The day after Bastille Day!" he reprimands me. I smile. There's no harm in trying.

The cameras go away but the formality remains.

I love the whiteness of the dining room and the exquisite bouquet of pastel flowers in the center of the huge table. Danielle is a mile away, the president on my left, and the Family Friend on my right. There's nobody else today except the translator.

The president tells stories and Madame leans on her elbows and gazes across the table at him. Her fingers push dents into her cheeks and sometimes cup together around her nose. She catches herself and shakes her head back abruptly. She asks him a question. I think she is in love with him.

The president asks me if I dream in French. Yes, I say, when I am in France. He likes me but doesn't know what to say to me. He is a cultured intellectual. I am a cultured gypsy.

Coffee in the fireplace room.

I sing one song for the president because he will not be at the concert. He looks pleased, and his wife smiles like a little girt pleased that he is pleased.

On the way out I kiss both of them on both cheeks. The penguin with the keys ushers me to a desk and asks, please, would I autograph an album for him. I do. Then I kiss him, too.

That night I go on national TV. They show the fireplace room and ask me what I talked about to the president.

"Gandhi," I say.

The president goes on the other channel. Among the many questions a head of state is asked before a national holiday, they ask him what we talked about at our lunch.

"Gandhi," he says. "Joan Baez is a serious artist and a serious fighter."

The next day Cher Ami and I walk the Champs Elysees. I am relieved when the ice-cream vendor says, "Vous etes Joan Bezz, n'est-ce pas?" and tells her friend that I am singing at the Place de la Concorde the following night.

The fourteenth of July. Early in the morning, the city rumbles with tanks. Cher Ami and I peer out of the hotel window in disbelief.

The fifteenth of July. I have terrible stomach cramps. Only five thousand people will come to the concert, I am sure. There was nothing in any of the papers.

Cher Ami laughs at me and bets there will be more than fifty thousand. He helps me to the bathroom, where I lie on the tile floor and soak in the coolness, but the cramps stay. I take a pain pill.

Fritz and Jose have flown in from Germany. They come to see me, but I am pale and half-dressed and have a blue hot water bottle on my stomach. They are German men and don't know what to say, so they leave and go to check the stage. I call the countess at the hospital where she works. She comes immediately with her squeaky bag.

"Oh, my poor Joanie. But of course, you must be ex-trrreme-ly nervous," she says, putting her hand on my forehead.

"I'm not nervous. I'm petrified. I have only five hours left."

She checks my appendix and then gives me a pill. She has been looking at my wrinkled slip, and suddenly sees it in a different way. Her eyes flick around the room. I can see the image of Cher Ami in the mirror of her thoughts. She never knew before today; she suspected, but she never knew.

"He has another room, Brigitte," I tell her.

"Yes, of course," she says, and calls him in and scolds him what to do.

"Oui, madame, oui, madame," he says, stubbing out his cigarette. She will check me in two hours, and tells me to take another pill if the pain persists.

Cher Ami walks me in and out of the bathroom. I lie back down on the tiles, and take another pill.

The nausea begins to fade. Cher Ami hints that the floor is too cold, and helps me to the bed like a hospital orderly. We speak only French.

"How can you love me when I look like an apple witch, pale as a potato?"

"I will love you when your teeth are all gone and you have only three hairs left on your head."

I begin to laugh.

"Like my grandmother, who sleeps with her mouth open and lets the flies buzz in." I laugh some more.

"Her head is empty now. When the wind blows in one ear leaves come out the other."

He slides down next to me and holds me. Feeling a tiny bit better, I listen to his heart beating back my hysteria, not to reason, but to sleep.

***

We drive to the monument at seven o'clock. There are already five thousand people there, sitting as close to the stage as possible.

The concert will be at nine. I shut my eyes and let out a whole chest of air through a whistle mouth.

Moving slowly from the pills I go up to test the microphone.

Tap, Tap.

A curious policeman, called to work from vacation in another province, ambles up to watch. I am ashamed when some kids jeer.

"Ne sois pas bete!" I say. "Don't be stupid! The police are here on their day off, three sweaty hours in a bus in the middle of summer, not by choice like you. And the concert is for them also." Later I sign their hats. Lots and lots of police hats.

People are coming in a steady flow from every street and sidewalk. They sit noisily or quietly and make a bobbing ocean around the monument. The moon is two thirds of a silver coin suspended at the blue edge of an orange sunset. The Arc de Triomphe, where I bicycled with my father when I was ten, in the mad circle of honks and angry elbows, is still in full sunlight, three kilometers away, quiet as a mouse, posted at the orange end.

I sit in a trailer trying to tune my guitar, but keep jumping up to look out the plastic door at the rivers of people: Japanese, German, American, English, Scandinavian, East Indian, Italian, and many others, who will soon be a family singing a joyous grace, and I will be America's answer to Edith Piaf. I am already halfway transplanted onto French soil, not a sparrow, but a mockingbird, which can, if you please, imitate all the languages of the birds. The evening will be a glorious song of the birds.

The moon rises into a darkening sky. Lights sparkle on the route to the Arc de Triomphe and my songs bounce from rooftop balconies and dissipate in the air.

There are no "incidents" with the police. Instead, the police listen and even clap. I sing songs to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Women on Greenham Common, the Mothers of the Disappeared, and even to the president of France for abolishing the death penalty.

I put on my white wings and fly up over the crowd, and when I look down, everything is shimmering on earth. I watch tens of thousands of people standing up to sing the encores. They are full of hope. Hope is contagious, like laughter. I see hope and song and laughter from my wings in the night sky.

Back at the hotel in the glow of success, I hold Cher Ami in my arms. He worked hard today. And he won his bet. The crowd estimate was one hundred and twenty thousand. I'll settle for an even hundred.

All the tiny muscle knots in Cher Ami's body are twitching as sleep undoes them, but there is no chance of sleep for me.

I go over to the ornate window and open the huge velvet curtains and tie them back with the fat gold braid and faded tassels. On the couch I prop up three pillows for my head and a fourth for my knees, and lie down deliciously in my good old crumpled slip to watch the streetlit leaves outside my window shudder in the night breeze, whispering for my attention against the grey building across the street. I sink into images of effortless thought, or unthought, while a thousand dawns yank me  ack with a jump, over and over again. Each time I come back I'm smiling, ecstatic to be awake for the first peep of the birds rising from the grey streets of Paris.

Marie Flore comes over in the late morning with her white skin and huge brown eyes, wearing scarves and gauze over her tiny frame, an undersized Titania in last summer's gown. Marie Flore was a small girl of ten whom I met in the south of France fifteen years ago. I am in a dream, staring at the wall and smiling. Marie Flore and Cher Ami and I sit in the morning sunlight, holding cups of steaming cafe au lait, framed by the massive red drapes.

We pack slowly and order croissants and strawberries and creme fraiche.

Today is free.

Absolutely free.

Cher Ami is driving us to the castle, but there is no rush. It is afternoon when we tumble giggling out into the hall.

"I could have danced all night," I sing suddenly in a high soprano, twirling down the hallway of the fourth floor, dropping my bags along the way. "And still have begged for more." My voice flutters in an arch on the word "for." Now we are at the top of the stairs. Two maids poke their heads out of the linen room and watch and cluck, and then just smile and lean. After all, I can do just about anything I want today.

I spin in a circle at the top of the banister.

"I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things." I am halfway down the first flight, with Marie Flore and Cher Ami just behind. And on I go, nodding and bowing to the guests at their doors, all the way to the main floor. In a run and a leap I am at the reception desk for the finale. "I could have dahnced, dahnced, dahnced ... All night!" One hand is in the air and the other wrapped around the brass banister post, as I lean out into an imagined crowd of passers-by.

The two people at reception clap. We pay our bill. And I start the song all over again because there is a huge bouquet of flowers at the end of the elegant hallway, and it needs singing to. And after that there is the street, and I don't stop until I have danced through the hairdressers next door and patted all the wet rats on their heads, and kissed all the homosexuals standing with their scissors in the air.

Outside it is a gorgeous day and we collapse in laughter on the curbside, my head flopping into Cher Ami's lap.

''I'm sorry about the nasty experience you had, Ms. Antoinette," I say to Marie Flore. "Personally, I had the time of my life at the Obelisque!"

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