A good friend of mine is going into Fribourg's Cantonal Hospital tonight. None of us would wish such a thing upon him, but quietly, we have been watching him chain-smoke for years and wondered just how long he was going to hold out. One can only say that he has done rather well, under the circumstances.
Born in a large working-class family and raised on his butcher-dad's best cuts and tastiest hams, Marcel acquired a liking for the finer things in life early on. I am not sure how old he was when he took up smoking, adding lung smoke to his smoked-and-cured-meat diet, but I don't doubt that he's probably been inhaling tobacco for the better part of fifty years. Since then, his body has seen an awful lot of smoke, of many different kinds.
Until recently, he was never sick. To be honest, you would not guess that he'd fallen ill now either, since his face has remained the same, except maybe for a certain look of worry in his eye. He drinks the same, smokes the same, and can still be seen roaming noisily around the neighborhood between the various cafes on one of his three motorcycles. His favorite is not the chrome and large-piston Harley-looking Japanese bike, as many would falsely guess, but his microscopic 50cc Honda from the 1960s, survivor machinery not unlike his own. That little machine can climb his street with threw grown men astride and still not miss a beat. Like Marcel, some would say, or like he used to.
Marcel has seen a lot, much of it in the good sense. To his relatively economical early school training, he added a truly brilliant spark of intelligence and business acumen, to build himself what most imagine is likely a solid fortune. He still works, on occasion, mostly because the people he sold his factories to are not as caring toward his old employees as he thinks they should be. He stays involved to keep the new bosses in line. Otherwise, he spends most of his days now, at age (I am only guessing) 65 or so, entertaining, or flying between the Dominican Republic, Thailand or Southern France, when it's not somewhere else. Behind his main three-storey house in the old quarter, he has renovated what once was some kind of stable or pigsty, into a wonderful, small secondary residence where his friends visit, make music and drink until the wee hours, a place over which he and his wife have a tacit agreement that she not set foot. She can enjoy the three-storey house, have any number of her own friends come over for a blast or an epicurean event, but she knows that Marcel's so-called "cabana" is out of bounds when the accordions, red wine and beers start singing.
It was predictable that Marcel would invite the surgeon who is about to operate him -- tomorrow in fact, to his "cabana" to get to know him a bit. I got nervous just hearing about it when he told me, because I figured his doctor had no doubt witnessed the extent of Marcel's smoking habit, and that they had had a few drinks up there. It's hard not to when you get near the place; it's just part of the aura.
"What did you tell your doctor?" I asked him.
"I told him the truth," he replied dryly. "I told him that I drank upwards of three liters of beer everyday, smoked three packs and if friends came over, probably polished away a liter of good red wine on top of all that and maybe a bit of white too."
The kind doctor had apparently smiled a little sideways and said that he and his friends would "do their best."
Marcel has always been a guy for laying it out clean on the table. He probably cannot imagine life without its habits, comforting gestures and precious flavors, and who can judge him? He has lived quite well, he has brought sunshine and good humor to more people than most folks will call friends in a lifetime, and he doesn't want to compromise. I see nothing wrong with that. Those are his values and he stands by them.
I have no idea what time he'll be on the operating table tomorrow, and I guess I prefer not to know. One thing is for sure though, a lot of us are going to be thinking about him in the coming days. And when we get a little sad wondering if he'll pull through, the memory of his doctor's visit and the face he must have made, will bring another free smile to all our faces. Indeed, it's going to be hard not to think of the man, for tonight, on this otherwise uneventful and run-of-the-mill day, there are massive fireworks outside reaching up over the city, colorful blasts of exactly the kind he most liked to organize, annually and illegally on a date of his own whimsical choosing. You never know when or for what, but when untimely fireworks blast off from the old quarter, most people know it's coming from Marcel's cabana. Let's hope that these fireworks won't be his last, if indeed they are coming from his place. We still need the color down here.