My Dear Clochard (Hardcover)

MON CHER CLOCHARD Adapted from a novel by Elio Borme Paris, in winter. Nicole Beauvier de la Chapelle is a sixtyish lady, still beautiful and very spirited. She is single and lives the prosperous life of a successful business woman, president of her own music production company. One evening, as she was watching television, she recognized an old friend, Pierre Barbisson, the great love of her life while they both were students at the Sorbonne. The reportage was a documentary on the life of the clochards in the city, and she discovered in shock that Pierre lives now in the Trocadero together with other street people without shelter. Still overwhelmed with emotion, she is later visited by her friend Michelle and they muse over the past. Nicole's love affair with this particular student had been both beautiful and unique. Pierre's thinking was free and unusual and the other students thought him a strange fellow. In truth, he was a visionary and often misunderstood for anticipating events and social changes that would completely transform the world. It was a difficult love, to be sure, that would not last, given the philosophical conflicts that left little room for romance. He insisted that she could have changed her life, but she was too young then to see the importance of his message. She simply wanted to be happy, like most young girls her age. No, she was not mature enough for Pierre. FLASHBACK on a few sequences of university life. Nicole at first believes Pierre is masquerading as a clochard for some eccentric reason. On the following day she decides to go and visit him at his old Paris address and talk with him. Indeed, she had many questions to ask. At Pierre's house, the concierge tells her that Mr. Barbisson presently lives in the United States. When Nicole talks with her about the television program on the clochards, the concierge shows no interest. Nicole leaves the building, not knowing what to believe. She then decides to hang on and wait for Pierre. Later, he comes out of the building. She follows him without being seen. He is going to the Trocadero where he ends up lying on a bench. She decides to join him. Surprised, Pierre recognizes her, and they begin talking as they did in the old days - though many years have passed. Pierre is happy to see her again; she meets his friends the clochards. They look more like a group of starving artists than street people, each with his story, vices and virtues. Nicole, having met Pierre's somewhat eccentric new friends, makes a date for the next evening at a four-star restaurant and then returns home. When she awakened the following day she thought she had been dreaming. But no, it was all too real, she had found Pierre again. Now she was curious to know how it was possible that, as rich a man, he could spend his days with street people -- without shelter on icy cold park benches. At diner Pierre is ill at ease; he does not like the restaurant - it's the embodiment of all that he now despises. Nicole is captivated by her former lover's aggressive conversation and his revolutionary concept of life and society. Pierre is extremely forceful and intelligent; he is also a disappointed man who no longer believes in love, but is mindful and disparaging of what is happening around him. Nicole enjoys immensely the conversation with her friend, his profound culture and unique reasoning power. Hours are passing by, unnoticed by her. When they leave the restaurant, they take refuge from the bitter cold in a bar and continue their dialogue. Pierre himself and his ideas are equally fascinating. Nicole is both delighted and astonished by Pierre's decision to abandon his past for this, now -- a miserable existence without a future. So intelligent and well educated a man should aim much higher and teach his philosophy. As they were saying their goodbyes after a brief taxi ride, Nicole invites Pierre, with no success, to come up to her apartment. His declini