" Promenade des Innocents " - Série COMMOTIONS n•6 (2016) Painting by Grégory Dreyfus

A Niçoise promenade. I used, at certain times of childhood or adolescence when I came to spend a few holidays and even later ... to go down with my mother from the heights of Nice to Cimiez, to the sea for our ritual walk. I often accompanied her on trips - ... She was born in 27. It was extremely beautiful, dry and cold that year - It was during the winter period 2006. We had taken a few days shortly before Christmas to come. , for this last time, just before going to join the family in the hinterland - My mother liked to find her foothold in Nice, she was resting there. We arrived on the Promenade, reserved our table in this feast restaurant where my father and she had had their memories ... - their marriage between them two, and which was especially celebrated on the sly just between friends; my father's cousins from Nice - ... Ah, I had learned some things from this restaurant. It took a few minutes for the hugs and the chef and the boss to come out of the kitchen in full swing to come and greet the baroness - as soon as we did, we went facing the sea ... land ... always in the same place, always a little before noon. I was setting the chairs in this little jar of junk on the ground. Alone on the windy promenade, we took in the sunshine that we lacked. Examining life on our horizon, bundled up in our chairs, legs outstretched, smiling at the beauty. We were good ... - We were smiling! I still see her smirking, with that beautiful dentin precipitate that illuminates a face, red and prickly lips. Without indulging too much in the cold under his hat. And then we would talk to each other ... We would tell each other, we would listen to each other. And we laughed a lot. ... Of my jokes and those of others who stayed in our minds or who reminded us of their nonsense and other little follies. Like a repetitive additive that came back in solstice to compress this sweet laughter ... which would explode again into laughter, always very dignified, at home, even more beautiful. We were having fun. She told me about her life ... the little things, the big things - the serious things ... always came back at the end. A good smell came to tickle our nostrils, I knew that we had left anyway to feast afterwards, because my mother also had a good appetite. We immediately let go of our problems. And we got up. And strangely ... from as far back as I can remember, I always told myself that it was strange for me to feel anyway, this high heart that took me and that I tried to deviate all the time, crossing the boulevard. Yes - I had had vagal discomfort all my life but this disorder was not that sucked sensation of dying, when all your energy leaks or runs away. No, that one was much less unsettling. For he was keenly aware of the surgescence of something hard, distant and serious. So distant that it was not understandable or recognizable and that it had to do only with you in this incompressible plate, but then ... instead? - Something serious or serious, and heavy ... which certainly comes to embrace you, like a feared thought that does not confess to itself - or to people because unthinkable, unthought, foolish if not on the ground science fiction. It was time to cross over and land ... a stone's throw from the restaurant. I opened the door for my mother. And did not think about it any more. Until ... Until. © Grégory Dreyfus-2016

Related themes

Série CommotionsAttentat De Nice14 Juillet 2016Promenade Des AnglaisLa Peur