Last Boat to Frioul

by Emma Burger

part 1

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.” — Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

There are a few people in the world for each of us whose faces are both deeply familiar and intoxicatingly new — magnetic even — from the moment we meet them. Something in their expressions reveals a unique pain, some unknowable shared past inextricably linking you to them. On meeting, you’re overcome with the intuition that even though you may never have met before, your paths had crossed somewhere in a past life. Once or twice in a lifetime. A city can feel like that, too.

That’s how it felt when I stepped off the train in Marseille. Standing at the top of the steps outside of Marseille Saint-Charles station, I took in the aerial view of the city. Its main artery to the port was crowded with commuters, vendors, and groups of women shrouded in black burqas. The air smelled fresh, clean and herbal, a slow breeze carried with it the faint briny scent of the sea. The balmy afternoon sun beat down on my skin, and I peeled off the sweater that I’d been wearing since I landed in France two weeks ago.

Leaning over the brass railing that circled the train station, I closed my eyes and inhaled, breathing in the smell of the city. Clearly, this was the place I’d been looking for. It didn’t feel anything like the other cities I’d stopped in on my train ride through France: Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse. To me, this felt more alive, more Haifa than Paris. Paris was Paris of course; its reputation preceded it. It was perfect, but it was expected to be. Everybody loved Paris. But Marseille and I, we were a pheromonic match.

I skipped down the stone steps, sensing the direction of the Old Port, where I was staying. So much of France was like that, I’d found: the city streets told you exactly where to go, without even looking at a map. My rental apartment was a sixth-floor walk-up overlooking the port. “You’re almost there, we’re all the way at the top!” A cheery voice called from up the last three flights of stairs, apparently sensing my need for encouragement as my heavy suitcase thudded gracelessly on the steps behind me.

Eric, a sharply dressed, rosy cheeked man sporting chunky tortoise shell glasses greeted me at the door. His Australian accent took me by surprise — I’d expected to stumble through the logistics of the apartment in broken French. “Welcome to Marseille,” he greeted me warmly, pushing open the balcony windows. A brilliant beam of late afternoon light illuminated the spacious living room.

The place was absolutely stunning. It had to be the best view in the entire city. Wandering out onto the balcony, I admired the perfect rows of white boats lining the port and the tall white ferris wheel just outside my window. Notre Dame de la Garde — the city’s main cathedral — sat proudly on the hill across the marina. The apartment’s French doors, the wrought-iron balcony, the low light of the waning Mediterranean sun, it was straight out of a painting. So picture-perfect, it almost hurt to look at.

“You’ll love it here,” said Eric, reminding me I wasn’t alone. “Marseille is the main port to North Africa, Corsica, the Middle East. I was back and forth working all over West Africa for years and ended up landing here, of all places.” He said, circling Le Panier and La Joliette neighborhoods on a printout map, places he’d recommended online before I’d arrived. “It was Greek, you know, Marseille. Massalia, they called it. It was Greek, then Roman, then French, then the Nazis captured it. Everyone seems to want it for their own. It’s French now of course, but it’s a bit of everything: Algerian, Armenian, Turkish. Anyway, you’ll love it here. You should go check out Frioul this evening, there should still be a couple last boats going out today.”

“Frioul?” I asked, admiring the enormous saffron colorblock canvas hanging from the living room wall.

“It’s a little chain of islands right off the coast. There are a couple of apartment buildings out there, but mostly it’s a nature reserve. Swimming holes, hiking and the like. It would be a really nice way to start off your visit: explore the islands, get a nice view of the city from the water. If nothing else, it’s a great excuse for a boat ride. There are some pricier tourist ferries that will take you out there, but you can take the commuter ferry too; it’s only about a twenty-minute ride.” He glanced down at his Rolex. “If you want to make it today though, you should go now. There should still be one or two more trips. I’ll walk out with you.”

Eric and I jogged down the six flights of stairs. He pointed me in the direction of the ticketing window at the base of the port. “Call me if you need anything at all!” he exclaimed, taking off in the opposite direction.

I walked to the box office, passing vendors selling rainbow sour gummy candies and whole fresh fish, just caught that day. A gray-haired woman sat behind the glass, slowly leafing through a dog-eared paperback. “Bonjour, madame, is one other more boat going to Frioul this day?” I asked tentatively, stumbling through in clunky French.

“Yes, there’s a boat leaving in fifteen minutes,” the cashier responded in perfect English. “It’ll be five euros, please.”

I handed her my credit card and she returned a ticket. “The boat docks right around the corner, to your left,” she gestured to where a white ferry branded LeBateau was docked. A uniformed, middle-aged man in a sailor’s cap stood out front — two ropes cordoned off where we were meant to wait for departure.

Evidently, I was early by French standards — the first passenger in line. “Bonjour, monsieur.” I nodded and gave the man a slight, close-mouthed smile. I considered it virtuous to avoid scrolling mindlessly on my phone, especially in an ancient city that I’d traveled 4,000 miles from home to experience.

Still, the mindless scroll was the most reliable way to avoid awkwardness when traveling alone. A solo American girl could be an unusual sight in some parts, and my phone provided a welcome cover. When scrolling, I was never alone. I was busy, even absorbed in another world. My frantic thumb was an excellent conversation-stopper.

Despite my best efforts to appear otherwise engaged, the sailor sidestepped toward me. He lifted his knees just slightly too high as he sidled in my direction, making it abundantly obvious that he wanted my attention for one reason or another. It was unclear what exactly he was trying to do though: check my ticket? Suss me out? Flirt? Maybe I was in trouble, standing in the wrong line or something.

“Springsteen,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

“Springsteen?” I laughed nervously, unsure where he was going.

He said nothing in response, still smiling, his eyes wide. “What do you think?” I asked. “Are you a Springsteen fan?”

“Of course — everybody loves the Boss. Born in the USA, baby! You have ever been to a Bruce show?”

“I haven’t, sadly,” I replied.

“How it is that you live in America and you have never been to a Bruce show?”

“How do you know I’m American?” I asked.

“Ha, how could I not? Everything about you is American,” he said, confirming my suspicion that even the briefest greeting in French was bungled in my East Coast accent. “What’s your name, brown-eyed girl?”

“Laura,” I responded. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Felix. Laura, Laura, Laura... Like Laura Dern? Where you from, Laura?” He asked, as I debated whether to go for the big reaction and say New York or explain an American city called Detroit, where I actually lived.

“New York City,” I replied, his eyes widening and rolling, all at once.

“Wowww, New York, New York. Michel Bloomberg, right? Bloomberg, he’s the mayor of New York.” He said, pronouncing his name the French way — more statement than question.

“At one point, yeah! Twenty years ago. We had Bloomberg, then De Blasio, and now we’re getting a new one — Eric Adams. Who’s the mayor of Marseille?”

“You know what’s funny? I don’t even know,” he laughed.

“You know who the mayor of New York City was in 2003 but not the mayor of your own town?” I teased, happy that I’d gone with New York and not Detroit. Sometimes it seemed like everyone in the world spoke English and everyone in the world could relate to something about New York. “Where are you from?” I asked.

Felix pointed toward the horizon where the hilly mainland disappeared into the sea, “Thirty minutes outside of Marseille. This is my big city. This is my New York,” he said. “I’ll be right back — I should go do my job for a few minutes. Check some tickets, make sure the ship hasn’t sunk.”

While Felix and I had been absorbed in mid-2000s city politics talk, a line of passengers had grown steadily behind me. A mother and her young daughter visiting from Paris had moved in behind us, first speaking in rapid-fire French to Felix, then switching to English once she heard him turn to me to say he had to go check tickets. “It’s our first time in Marseille, too!” she exclaimed. “Where else have you been traveling in France?”

I told her about my week in Paris and my train trip south. What recommendations did she have while I was here? Where should I eat the night before my flight out from Charles de Gaulle? She scribbled on a Post-It from her purse the names of three brasseries in Le Marais where I was staying.

As promised, Felix came back, this time lifting the chain guarding the boat to let us on. I filed quickly up the stairs, thankful I’d been first in line and wouldn’t need to squeeze in between two groups of people, my aloneness so plainly clear. Instead, I took my seat right by the railing on the upper deck, hoping to get the best view of the Mediterranean for my first sunset in Marseille.

As I stared out at the horizon, the seats around me on the upper deck filled up with families and couples, all chattering in a seamless blend of French and Arabic — mostly too fast for me to understand. Suddenly feeling a hand on my shoulder, I whipped around, curious. “Felix! Hey,” I said, surprised to see him hovering behind me.

“Come ride with us; my friends want to meet you. We can talk English,” he smiled, gesturing for me to follow him to the cabin, where the crew sat. It seemed a bit nicer to be out on the deck, feeling the sun on my face. Still, it could be cool to actually get to know some people in town. Besides, I didn’t want to seem rude. My home country had a reputation to repair, after all.

“Okay!” I shrugged, following Felix as he ducked under the rope separating the crew from the passengers and stepped into the cabin. Passengers glanced at us as I joined Felix and the other sailors. What was I, the weird lone American, doing with the crew?

Inside the cabin were two helm seats centered in front of a large steering wheel and a switchboard used for piloting the boat. Manual intervention must’ve been minimal, since the crew paid more attention to the music selection than the switchboard. Felix controlled the aux and played Velvet Underground and the Smiths. I wondered whether the English music was to make me comfortable or impress me, or if this was what they’d be listening to anyway. In any case, it put me at ease.

Twisting my silver cuff bracelet compulsively, as I often did when I didn’t know what to do with my hands, I scanned the length of the cabin, determining where to sit without displacing one of the crew or unwittingly causing a maritime disaster. The bench behind the captains’ chairs looked appropriately out of everyone’s way, so I took my perch.

“No, no, no, no, no — you sit here,” Felix said, tapping the seat that I’d decided was the co-captain’s. Felix wanted me there for sure, but it was unclear whether I was interrupting anyone else’s routine. Regardless, I sat down, hanging my purse around the handrest, unable to stop my foot from tapping.

“Relax!” Felix shouted, turning the volume knob down on the music. “You’re one of us now.” Felix left the cabin, leaving me alone inside as the setting sun started to cast a warm golden glow over the water. “This is Henri,” Felix filed back in, followed closely by another weathered, middle-aged Frenchman in a matching uniform. Henri slung his sailor’s cap on a hook by the door, sitting down in the captain’s chair and swinging his feet up on the switchboard.

“Bonjour, bonjour. You gonna teach me English? Look at this,” he smiled, flashing me a meme on his phone. In it, a cartoon Statue of Liberty crouched, cowering in fear behind her torch. “Is he gone yet?” the meme read.

“Ha” — I forced a laugh — “nice to meet you.” Felix turned the volume knob up on Tom Petty, both men suddenly breaking out into song in perfect sync as if they had a hundred times before, “Oh yeah, alright, take it easy baby, make it last all night... she was an American girl.” I laughed, swaying to the beat, deciding finally it was best to just roll with it. Whoever said the French didn’t take kindly to Americans clearly had never made it to Marseille.

“What’s that castle over there?” I asked Henri, noticing a stately walled fortress standing tall off to our left, the lone structure on a small rocky island.

“Oh, that is the Château d’If — it is a tourist attraction now, but it was a prison built in the sixteenth uhhh, Felix — how do you say?”

“Sixteenth century,” Felix interjected.

“Yeah, yeah, sixteenth century,” Henri confirmed. “It’s where they kept the political prisoners and the Huguenots. It’s actually the prison from The Count of Monte Cristo, if you have ever read that book.” I hadn’t, although I vaguely recalled seeing the movie when it came out. “In the book, the two prisoners manage to escape, but in real life it is said no one who was jailed there was ever seen off the island again. Oh! And by the way, that’s Frioul straight ahead of us.” Henri jumped up from his seat, expertly unwinding a line off the side of the cabin to prepare to dock.

“Laura, are you going to return with us or explore the island?” asked Felix. “If you’re asking me, I say you should explore. We’ll return here at 19:30 for the last trip of the day. We can take you back to the city then and give you some time to admire the view from out here.”

I paused, contemplating what I’d actually do on the island alone for an hour and a half — especially now that it was starting to get dark. Still, what else was I here for? I hadn’t come all this way just to turn around. “Yeah, I’ll do that then. I’ll meet you back at the dock at 19:15 or so.”

“Parfait, we’ll see you then. Just don’t miss the boat! Otherwise, it’s you and the birds sleeping here tonight,” Felix chuckled, holding the door and following me out. Out on the deck, Henri threw the line to another crew member standing on the Frioul dock. The floor of the ship lurched slightly beneath my feet as we slowed, reaching land.

“Thank you for letting me ride with you!” I waved goodbye over my shoulder to Felix and Henri as I walked down the plank, hopping onto the dock.

* * *

Proceed to part 2...