Bistro Evening

Green Plums

Tonight we got on our bikes and rode through the park as the sun was setting. It was the first dry, partially sunny day for a long time, and people were out, looking happy: an elderly woman, red-haired and smiling at nothing but the beauty of the day, drove her motorized wheelchair down the bikepath, and a young couple strolled along the lake, the man attentive and ahndsome, the woman cheerful and very pregnant, wearing a tight black top with a wide bright green band around her round belly. We headed down Duluth all the way to the Portugese section, near St. Laurent, and stopped at a favorite bistro, where we ordered a half carafe of red wine which came with warm bread and a small bowl of tapas: glistening little black olives and succulent marinated fava beans. After that, a bowl of tomato-y seafood soup, with pieces of mussels and clams; then seafood penne for me and fried calamari for him. By the time we ordered coffee and a piece of apple strudel, we had struck up a conversation with our waiter, who told us he had lived in Florida for five years while he played baseball in the American minor leagues, but then had come back to Montreal, tired of having knee operations  -- and also of the racism he had encountered in the south. "Toronto is more like that, frankly," he said. "More like a big American city. But in Montréal, and especially in this area here," -- he gestured toward the window -- "you have French, English, Portugese, Asians, Moroccans...everybody...and they all make an attempt to speak the language and to get along together." he shrugged and grinned. "I like it,"he said, simply. We lingered over the last of the wine, watching the other diners and the large platters of seafood and chicken coming out of the kitchen with its big charcoal grill. Across the street, blooming pink and orange bougainvilla trailed across the window of a small store selling plants and horticulture supplies. Two women near us talked non-stop, and polished off a delicious-looking plate of caramel custard, and we offered to take a photograph of a family of four at the next table when we saw the father struggling with a new camera: the parents and sister had come over from the U.K. to visit their son, who was a student at McGill. "Can you do it , really?" they asked. "It's a new camera and we don't even know how to work it." J. said he'd try to figure it out. He took a picture and handed it back to them. "This is wonderful!" they exclaimed in surprise. "You might have a new career!" J. raised his eyebrows at me and laughed.

After we paid our bill we walked to the end of Duluth, where it runs into Park Mont-Royal, and looked out over the city, alight, before heading back to our bikes. A friperie (used clothing shop) displayed knotted scarves in all the colors of the rainbow, and In the window of one of the Portugese bakeries rectangular white wedding cakes slept like snowfields next to round layer cakes with dolls set in the middles, the cakes frosted to look like the doll's skirts.It was still cool, but in some of the restaurants the windows were open and people sat on the terraces, their tables lit by candles. Voices drifted from the apartments above; a young man sat on the sill of an upstairs window, using his laptop;  I looked around, a little wistfully. "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to relax enough to really and truly be a Montréaler," I said. "Oh, I think you have a better chance than I do," said J. He took my hand. "We'll try."

Comments

[Jean]

This is so lovely. Made me smile so widely on this wet, cold morning. The story of the photo is just too utterly delicious.

[language hat]

Not only is that a thorougly enjoyable post (and one that makes me want to move to Montreal), it taught me something: I was not familiar with friperie 'used clothing shop' and wondered if there was any connection with English frippery, so I looked up the latter in the OED and discovered the obsolete meanings:
1. Old clothes; cast-off garments.
3. A place where cast-off clothes are sold.
5. Trade or traffic in cast-off clothes.

The French word is from frepe, ferpe, felpe 'rag,' in case you were wondering.

[On preview: Dammit, I sure wish your comment box allowed italics.]

[beth]

Thanks! I didn't know the word until I moved here, either, and then only from context - I didn't know about "frepe, ferpe, felpe." (And I agree, I'm sorry about the lack of HTML tags...it makes language references quite cumbersome.)

[douglas]

Please, no more posts like this. If you don't stop my wife is going to come home to find me packing a U-Haul bound for Montreal.

Your post captured everything I love about Montreal. We have visited Montreal the last two summers and are trying to get there again this year. The evening you describe is so difficult to reproduce in most US cities. My beloved Chicago has been overtaken by condos and New York becomes more sanitized every year. I really hope Montreal maintains its unique character. Gourmet recently devoted an entire issue to the city and it worries me that this bit of well deserved praise was the beginning of Montreal becoming the next it place. Please, more posts about the horrible winter and the increasingly bad exchange rate.

[St Antonym]

Your photograph of green plums is beyond delicious, Beth.

Maybe *you* might have a new career.

[dale]

Yellow. I'm sorry, Beth, but those plums are yellow. They just are.

:-)

Royal Mountain, here I come!

[beth]

The joys of tungstem light. I managed to make the bowl the correct blue in Photoshop, but I couldn't get the plums to become their true green!

And Douglas, i couldn't agree more. Forthwith, I will only talk about the icy sidewalks, the arctic wind, and how everybody is sick all winter long!

[zuleme]

Makes me think of our last visit to Montreal. We saw a wonderful performance of Les Mmiserables and strolled around the old part of town and had dinner in an outdoor cafe with a jazz band playing and flowers everywhere. It was on the second floor and you entered around the corner and up a flight of stairs.
I lived in Montreal for two years when I was in my teens but didn't have the money to do any of those things at the time. It is a lovely city, partly because it is still pretty small as cities go. I still remember Sundays in the park.

[Natalie]

Damn, the word delicious has already been taken - it's the one I wanted to use for your word-painting and the photo of those definitely yellow yellow plums. It all makes the mouth and the eyes water. I can see you writing a book about Montreal some day, illustrated with your and Jon's photos.