THE NEW YORKER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87T00126R000100010018-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 23, 2008
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: October 22, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Approved For Release 2008/12/23: CIA-RDP87T00126R000100010018-9
"You used to be a lot more fun, Paco. Now all you ever want
to talk about is rescheduling the foreign debt."
were a Meursault and a Cote de
Beaune.
I T had rained in the night, and Sun-
day morning was wet and cool and
overcast. The rosebud in my cabin had
passed from bloom to overblown. My
croissant at breakfast turned out to
have a chocolate filling. There was
an unresolved argument at a table be-
hind me about melons. ("The Persian
is the king of melons." "We've al-
ways preferred the Colorado Rocky
Ford." "Have you ever tasted a San-
ta Claus?") One of the Texans had
found a copy of the International Her-
ald Tribune in town the evening be-
fore, but by the time it was handed
down to me someone had done the
crossword puzzle and someone had
solved the jumble word game, and the
book review (from the New York
Times) was one that I had read a
week before I left home. And the
Saone had changed its character. It
looked darker and narrower, and its
banks were heavily wooded. It began
to drizzle. It seemed a good time to go
back to "Maigret Meets a Milord,"
but the weather had also changed
along the Canal de l'Aisne a la
Marne. The sun was shining there.
The consensus at noon, when Berna-
dette opened the bar, was that the ice
was again hot ice.
We put in at around two o'clock at
a village called Seurre, and a group led
by Kirsty debarked for a visit to the
ancient fortress of Chateauneuf-en-
Auxois and the somewhat less ancient
Chateau de Commarin, somewhere
north of Beaune. I was one of several
who chose to stay on the boat. We
watched the others climb a crumbling
ramp to a waiting bus and drive off
past a ramshackle building with a
sign: "BAR DE L'ESPERANCE." But the
place was more than just ramshackle. I
looked again: it was boarded up. So
much for hope.
Angie cast off, and we were back on
the river. We would spend the night
at Saint-Jean-de-Losne, at the en-
trance to the Canal de Bourgogne, and
the excursionists would rejoin us
there. I stayed on deck. The drizzle
had stopped, and the sky had begun to
brighten. Geert came out on deck in
his white coat and lighted a cigarette.
It was a Marlboro, the cowboy ciga-
rette of Europe. We exchanged a nod,
and I said I had much enjoyed our
Burgundian dinner last night.
"Ah," he said. "I am happy. Did
you know the beef, the Charolais?
Good meat. But, you know, it has no
fat, no marbling. I lard it to give juice
and flavor. This country here is so
good for eating. You have heard of the
Bresse chicken. It is the best. It comes
from near Macon. The river has good
fish. Fish and crayfish. Burgundy has
so much. You have seen the sheep.
The goats. Even game. Woodcock."
I was getting hungry again. I asked
him about dinner tonight.
"I will tell you," he said. "We start
with a pate-foie de canard. Salad
with walnut oil. Very delicate, very
good. Then lamb. What you would
call chops. With a bouquet of turnips
and green cabbage and sauteed pota-
toes. The finish is sorbet. A variety."
I looked at my watch. It wasn't even
three o'clock yet.
The excursionists arrived in Saint-
Jean-de-Losne at a little past six. We
had been there since five, tied comfort-
ably up below the Cafe de la Saone,
with a view of a dozen freight barges
moored two deep along the opposite
quay. I asked one of the excursion-
ists about the excursion. He reported
that the Chateauneuf-en-Auxois was
perched on a great, rocky hill and the
Chateau de Commarin was sinking
into a swamp. Talleyrand's mother, he
added, had spent her girlhood at the
Chateau de Commarin.
W E started early on Monday
morning. We were already un-
der way when I came up on deck. We
slipped under a bridge, we swung
sharply to the right. A narrow canyon
loomed: the dark stone mouth of a
lock. We had come through half a
dozen locks on the Saone, but they
were modern locks, of generous size,
lined with steel and equipped with
great steel sluice gates that were
opened and closed by a lockkeeper at a
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chairs on the sidewalk,
and a sheltering awning
overhead. We were sit-
ting there in ease and
comfort, listening to a
bedlam of starlings hid-
den in the trees, when
the Janine, tricolor fly-
ing and horn howling,
finally came poking un-
der the bridge.
T HERE was some
feeling that night
that the ice was a bit
colder than the ice of the
night before. Dinner,
Kirsty told us, would
be a simple buffet. She
hoped that after our big
Burgundian lunch a buf-
fet would be sufficient.
We sat down to a coun-
try pate en croute, to
sliced country sausages,
to celeri remoulade, to a
salad of tomatoes and
cucumbers and corn, to
59
cheese from the Cistercian abbey at was our next port of call, our mooring erything looks like those wonderful
Citeaux, to baked Alaska (or omelette for the night. I sat on the bow with Impressionist paintings you've seen in
a la norvegienne), to Chablis and "Maigret Meets a Milord," but I some museum." It was not, perhaps, a
Beaujolais. I heard no complaints of didn't do much reading. It was dif- stunning observation. But it was the
unsatisfied hunger. ficult here on the sunny Saone to keep simple truth.
THERE is an outdoor market
.every Saturday morning in
Tournus, on a narrow street behind
the Cafe de la Marine. The Janine
was not scheduled to cast off until
around ten-thirty. I and several others
went ashore for a look at the mar-
ket. It was mostly a farmers' market,
of fish and meat and fresh produce
and cheeses and breads and pastries.
There were one or two surprises and
pleasures. The different varieties of
fish were separated from one another
by sprays of what looked like laurel
leaves. I saw shallots the size of lem-
ons, and an onion that looked like a
thick red banana (oignon banane
rouge), and rabbits skinned and gutted
and with the feet removed but other-
wise intact, including the head, and
even the eyes. One of my companions
managed to ask the seller the reason
for that. The man shrugged. "Comme
ca, vous sauriez que ce n'est pas un
chat," he said. We took that to mean
that there are unscrupulous types who
will try to pass off a cat as a rabbit.
T HE Saone between Tournus and
Chalon-sur-Saone is wide and
wandering, and there is no prettier
stretch on the river. Chalon-sur-Saone
my mind on the dismal Canal de
l'Aisne a la Marne. There was a feel THE approach to Chalon-sur-
of deep and peaceful country, but it Saone from the south is domi-
was country ordered by man. The nated by an island with a climbing,
rows of plane trees, the poplar allees, prowlike headland. I watched it near-
even the patches of woods and the ing and rising. The headland became
meadows of grazing sheep, had a look an acre or two of garden, of red and
of arrangement, of traditional design. white and yellow and orange and pur-
There were swans floating here and ple flowers, set off by lawns and sur-
there along the riverbanks, geese graz- mounted by a colonnade of poplars.
ing in the sheep meadows. A heron We came closer: the garden became a
flapped from shore to shore. A flock of great floral bunch of grapes, flanked by
some cootlike ducks dived under our a floral wineglass and a floral barrel of
bow. A couple on horseback-a man wine. Chalon-sur-Saone is a gateway to
and a woman in immaculate riding good eating. "In Chalon-sur-Saone,"
clothes-appeared on the left bank and Alexis Lichine writes in his classic
cantered away on a path among the "Wines of France," "begins the fa-
poplars. A village appeared on the mous food and fabulous eating for
right: thirteen stone houses, some long which Burgundy was always famed.
and low, some tall and thin, but all of :.. Just to the south is Charolles,
them the color of yellowy autumn. from whose deep green pastures comes
leaves, all of them with faded blue the famous Charollis beef ... snails
shutters, all of them roofed with rusty- from the vineyard hills." We tied
black tiles-strung out in a tight little up at the Quai Gambetta, and I went
row behind a column of shapely plane for a walk before dinner. I walked
trees, above a long stone quay. One no more than a dozen blocks, but I
building had a sign along its facade: passed half a dozen restaurants that
"CAFE DE LA MARINE." One of the looked to be of some quality. Din-
New York couples had joined me at ner on board that night was an afl r-
the bow. The woman gave a little mation of M. Lichine. The entree was
sigh. "Those houses," she said. escargots de Bourgogne, and the main
"Those trees. Everything looks as if it course was an entrecote de Charo-
ought to have a frame around it. Ev- lais in a sauce bearnaise. The wines
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Approved For Release 2008/12/23: CIA-RDP87T00126R000100010018-9