Jean Paul Sartre Is In My Cornflakes

JD Salinger once wrote that probably for every man there is at least one city that eventually turns into a girl, but I think the opposite is also true, that a girl can just as easily turn into a city. For me at least, when I think of the girl in question, my mind can’t help but be drawn to one place and one place only; Paris.

I have Paris on the brain. The Eiffel Tower pokes out of the top of my desk drawer. Arthur Rimbaud is hiding in my medicine cupboard. Thierry Henry sits on top of my text books. Emile Zola paces back and forth, hands folded behind his back as he strides in stiff-legged bounds across my bedroom floor. Perhaps most disconcerting of all, Jean Paul Sartre stares up at me from the depths of my cereal bowl, a barrier to the consumption of a healthy breakfast if ever I saw one. That’s right; Jean Paul Sartre is in my cornflakes.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not going crazy, at least I don’t think I am. I just can’t stop thinking about the girl, which means in turn I can’t stop thinking about France. Paris je t’aime. It’s a vicious cycle really.

After weeks of trying to summon the courage to ask out Camille, the girl, I finally did and she agreed, which should, in theory, have been the hard part over. But ever since she said yes I’ve been worrying constantly about our date; what I should wear, where I should take her, what I should talk about. And ever since then I’ve started to see characters from French history, hanging around inexplicably in the most unusual of places.

As I pour the remains of my unfinished breakfast into the sink and stroll into the bathroom to brush my teeth I am startled to find Paul Verlaine leaning casually against my toothbrush as if waiting for a bus on a hot summer’s day.

‘Nothing says I love you like flowers’

‘Wasn’t that Baudelaire? No offence Paul but you don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to romance, and besides, Arthur is around here somewhere, you don’t want to break the conditions of the restraining order and end up in la geôle now do you…’.

‘Where?’ Verlaine shouted, and with a whimper he ducked his head out of the way and retreated behind the shower curtain.

After stepping out of the shower, I walk into my bedroom to see Eric Cantona and Zinedine Zidane emerge from the bottom of my closet, mumbling to each other quietly in enigmatic whispers.

‘Eric, you must have some advice for me, how am I going to impress Camille?’

Cantona looked at me for a moment, knitting his eyebrow together as if contemplating a matter of supreme philosophical importance, before pushing his chest out and offering a few words of carefully considered Gallic wisdom.

‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’

Faintly startled at this response I stand open mouthed for a minute, before gathering my senses and delivering my own carefully considered reply.

‘What’s that got to do with anything? How’s that gonna help me get the girl? Zinedine, any clues?’

Zidane shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows in a single, unhelpful gesture of casual nonchalance before turning and walking hand in hand with Cantona back into the closet.

‘Mon ami, maybe I can be of service?’

I turn to find Jean Paul Sartre stroking his chin and staring up at me from the dim light of the desk.

‘Sorry Jean Paul but you’ve already put me off my breakfast and I don’t think I can handle a lecture on Being and Nothingness right now if it’s all the same to you’

‘Non non my young stallion, I have come to give you advice for getting the girl, eh?’ he whispered elegantly, with a sly wink and a friendly nudge.

‘Why are you whispering?’

‘Never mind that my young apprentice, just listen…with a woman you must be confident…you must give the impression that you have had a thousand women in your time…above all you must be arrogant, les femmes, they adore arrogance. Voulez vous couchez avec moi? Par example…’

‘Jean Paul! What kind of advice is that to give to the boy? Have you no respect for the second sex?’

I was stunned to see Simone De Beauvoir stood next to my laptop, with a face that, if looks could kill, would have laid out both me and Jean Paul right there and then.

‘Of course I have respect for the second sex my darling Simone, but it is true non, the women, they love the arrogance, n’est pas?’

‘Of course not! A woman wants to be treated with love and respect as an intellectual equal, we have not gone through centuries of repression only to have to put up with the inane chat up lines of chauvinistic cavemen!’

‘But my dear, it worked on you non? Don’t you remember…?’

At this Simone blushed suddenly and turned her head inwards onto her shoulder like an embarrassed school girl.

‘Oui, of course I remember, but that was different, that was…’

‘Hush’ Jean Paul whispered, placing his finger delicately to her lips and joining her hand to his before embarking on a slow and tender waltz, the strained chorus of Edith Piaf ringing gorgeously in the background.

‘Non, rien de rien…non, je ne regrette rien…’

I guess existentialists really do make love in Paris.

But still that isn’t much help to me and as I get changed and check my hair in the mirror, the sound of the doorbell is enough to give me a heart attack. Composing myself I look back at the mirror one last time before marching down the stairs and opening the front door.

‘Hello Christian, are you ready?’

Stood at the door in that oh-so-French pose of hers, looking beautiful in every single way, I am almost at a loss for words. And then, as if from nowhere, I suddenly know exactly what to say.

‘Oui madame’ I reply, extending my hands towards her in an elaborate mock bow. Simone rolls her eyes in the background. Jean Paul shakes his head. But Camille, she smiles. I figure it’s a start.

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Runner-up in the undergraduate category of the 2008 Franco-British Council Short Story Prize, in association with Prospect magazine. See www.francobritishcouncil.org.uk/schoolprize.htm for more details, or visit the June archive of Prospect magazine at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/vis_index.php?select_issue=626.