Bastille Day, page 26
I do not tire of the Seine, and I do not believe it is tired of me.
And now I stand here looking down at it from this place where I have stood so many times, and first, I am amazed that I ever jumped from this bridge into that water far below. That I ever could jump from it.
Because, honestly, this is way too high for anyone to even consider such a thing. It is terrifying. I don’t think I could do it now if President Macron himself were to topple over.
But second, I am soothed and touched that at one magical moment in my life, I stepped off this bridge as naturally as stepping off a curb.
I did it without thought, without regret, and without fear.
I have lived most of my life afraid to stride into the river. I was afraid it would sweep me off and carry me away, because, truly, I have lost more things than I wanted, watched them carried away downstream for good, which seemed to me to be a very great tragedy. And so, I thought, maybe it was safest to sit on the bank, safest even on the hottest day of the year just to dip a toe into the current.
But the river remains the river, whether I jump in or not.
And it turns out that there are greater tragedies than losing something you love.
There is the tragedy of not loving enough, of being so afraid you will lose everything that you refuse to care about anything.
I will never commit that sin again, Inshallah.
Now I stand here and watch, but I have known the river, and the river has known me, and I can never fear it again.
The waters surge away toward the sea, ripples and rivulets that touch the land and change it and leave it behind.
But the memory of every touch remains.
Those we loved and lost are not gone. Not really. They are just—elsewhere.
And someday we may walk into Harry’s Bar, let’s say, and find them sitting there, smiling.
They already may have ordered a drink for us.
That, at least, is my fervent hope.
This is Calvin Jones, reporting from Paris.
Au revoir.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Over the course of the years I worked on this book, I spent a lot of time alone reading, thinking, traveling, and writing, but so many people were a part of this project that it would be criminal not to name and acclaim them for their important contributions. Sometimes I’ve simplified or changed real things to improve the story; I do use actual places and institutions fictionally in this novel. And sometimes it’s entirely possible that despite my care, I just screwed up. Any mistakes, errors, or misspelled French words, of course, are my responsibility entirely.
I owe my firsthand knowledge and love of Paris to the American Cathedral in Paris, a fictional version of which appears in these pages. The Most Rev. Lucinda Laird, the past Dean of the Cathedral, invited me to stay in the cathedral’s tower apartment during a European speaking tour in the Fall of 2013. In 2014, my wife Jeanie and I honeymooned in the tower, and I’ve returned every year since except during the Pandemic. I could not have written this novel without my many months at the Cathedral. I am grateful for the chance to serve now as the Cathedral’s Canon Theologian, and to regularly read, write, teach, and preach in Paris. And it is one of my greatest honors to have preached a version of Clarice’s sermon at the Cathedral on the Sunday following the Bastille Day attack in Nice for the National Day of Remembrance in 2016. I also wrote and read at the American Library in Paris, a great writer’s institution for the past century, ate at every single restaurant mentioned in these pages, and made numerous visits to Harry’s Bar. I think Frederick would know me on sight and start making a Manhattan. With Bulleit rye, of course.
One of the reasons I write is that I want to know things. To that end, I read widely and asked lots of questions to try to find out about a war correspondent’s life, to understand what it was like to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2000s. NPR journalist John Burnett talked with me about his time in Iraq, as did former military chaplain the Rev. David W. Peters. Both men wrote fine books about their experience, which I read, as well as combat memoirs and war studies by Matthew Gallagher, Thomas E. Ricks, Mark Owen, Dexter Filkins, and others. David Peters offered me his thoughts on what my fictional Father Cam might offer as a pastoral response to the terror attack in Nice, and I used them almost verbatim. They were that good. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough, The History of the American Pro-Cathedral, by Cameron Allen, This Side of Paradise by Scott Fitzgerald, and The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast by Mr. Hemingway offered background and atmosphere about Paris and the Riviera.
My teaching home for thirty-plus years, Baylor University, offered me time to write, including a research leave which I spent partly in Paris, and a summer sabbatical during which I finished the first draft of this novel. I am grateful also for travel funding which took me to Paris in the pursuit of other research, and acknowledge the University Research Committee and the Dr. Benjamin Brown IV Fund for Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Scholarship for those further chances to immerse myself in French life, and the Baugh Family Foundation for the grant which saw me completing the final revisions of the book in Switzerland. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of friends and colleagues at Baylor, including my dean, Lee Nordt, my department chair, Kevin Gardner, and colleagues Tom Hanks, Hulitt Gloer, Richard Russell, Joe Fulton, Dianna Vitanza, Deanna Toten Beard, and my students, past and present. I love Baylor and serve her gladly.
My wife, Jeanie, has shared many of my adventures in Paris, has made my life better than any story, and is the one woman for whom I’d willingly jump off a bridge. I’ve actually done it before. But Jeanie also offered me insights from her ten-year career as a TV journalist, saved me from needless mistakes (again, any you discover are my own), and helped me create time and space to write this and every other book, the greatest gift a writer can receive. Thank you, my love.
Terry Nathan, of Blessed Memory, offered me his lake house in the Texas Hill Country to write, and much of this book was drafted or revised there. I cannot fully express my gratitude to Terry and his daughter Alison Nathan Huxel for the opportunity to work without interruption. This book became possible because of that gift.
Toward the end of this process, Amal Wilemon read the book to consider how I had represented her Muslim faith and culture. I am grateful for her engagement and her encouragement. It was important for me to accurately and fairly depict all of this rainbow cast of characters, especially in a book that wrestles with the spectre of religious violence. I’m also grateful for Beth Malcolm and Amanda Vaughn who read with a thoughtful female critical sensibility and offered suggestions.
I listened to Mumford and Sons, Imagine Dragons, Travis Meadows, Matthew Perryman Jones, Jeremy Messersmith, U2, Bruce Hornsby, Phoebe Bridgers, Fauré, Duruflé, and the soundtrack to La La Land as I worked. This music took me directly to a deep emotional place as I wrote and edited, and would be a proper soundtrack for this work—along with Mr. Sinatra, of course.
We stand on the shoulders of giants. I owe practical storytelling debts to the writers of Casablanca, to Damien Chazelle, who wrote and directed La La Land, and to Rolin B. Jones, who talked with me about writing the funeral scene in my favorite episode of Friday Night Lights, “The Son,” as well as to James Baldwin, Richard Ford, Walker Percy, Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, Anne Tyler, Phil Clay, Tim O’Brien, and Ben Fountain. Brownie points will be awarded if you can tell me what those debts might be. That’s the teacher in me.
I also give thanks for engagement with my friends who tell stories, with my friends who love stories, and for all of you who have read this story. I could not do this work without you.
Thank you.
Greg Garrett
Leukerbad, Switzerland
Easter, 2022
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Garrett is the author of five novels, two books of memoir, and more than twenty works of nonfiction. His first novel, Free Bird, was a Publishers Weekly First Fiction selection and a Best First Work of Fiction from the Rocky Mountain News. The Prodigal, cowritten with the legendary Brennan Manning, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch editions. His other novels are Cycling and Shame; all have been critically acclaimed. In his life as a nonfiction writer, Greg writes about race, faith, politics, and culture. He serves as the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture at Baylor University, and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Jeanie, and their daughters, Lily and Sophia.
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Greg Garrett, Bastille Day
