released September 4, 2020

Written and played by Robert Sunday

Bass on tracks 4, 5, 6 & 8 by Matthew Jones


Photography by Toby Deans



1.Andreas, a vagrant who sleeps beneath bridges by the Seine, meets an elderly stranger, who out of christian charity gives him 200 francs. Andreas accepts the money on the proviso that he's allowed to pay back the money at some later date. The stranger tells him to go to the Chapelle de St Marie des Batignolles, which houses a beloved statue of St Thérese de Lisieux, and give the money to the priest there.

2.Andreas, with money in his pocket, goes to a restaurant and eats and drinks plentifully. The following morning he goes to a fancy café, but after becoming alarmed by his disheveled appearance in a mirror, goes to a nearby barber. Smartened up ,and rejuvenated, he returns to the café, some self-esteem restored. A gentleman sitting nearby offers him a job helping him and his wife move home. After two days work he is paid 200 francs.He spends a little on drink, and too much on a hotel room.
There's a scene in Olmi's film that isn't in the book, where Andreas has a vision of his long dead parents sitting at a table in the restaurant/café where he is slowly drinking himself into oblivion.It's that scene that informs the chorus of this song.

3.I've taken some licence here. Although Andreas does visit a Montmartre brothel (after being reminded of his desires by the sales girl he buys a secondhand wallet from), it's not named in either the book or the film. I just liked the name La Lanterne Verte, an actual Parisian brothel in the Goutte d'Or district. It had no rooms, but was one large hall, where patrons would get it on in full view of each other.
The abattoirs or 'maisons d'abattages' were cheap brothels where customers took numbered tickets and lined up for their turn.

4.Sunday morning Andreas goes to pay his debt to St Thérese. Waiting for the mass to finish he gets slowly drunk in a bistro across the street. When mass has finished he heads for the church but hears a woman calling his name. He recognises her as Caroline, a former lover. They spend the day together.First at a fancy restaurant where Andreas ends up footing the expensive bill, then the cinema and a dance hall before going back to her place. It felt 'just like the old times again'. In the light of morning he sees her grown older, and realises that time has changed many things, not least in his heart. He leaves without waking her, angry that he has spent money so recklessly on a phantom.

5.Reminded of his past, Andreas checks his papers and realises he has no residence permit after having been officially expelled from France. He remembers how he had come from Polish Silesia to work in the mines, subletting a room from a Polish couple, and falling in love with the wife. Defending her from a murderous assault by her husband he commits murder himself and is imprisoned for two years. The wife was Caroline.
Thereafter, believing his recent good luck is at an end and no more miracles due, he submits to the bottle, returns to the bridges.

6.The age of miracles has not passed. After a vision of Thérese during the night, exhorting him to come pay his debt on Sunday, Andreas finds a thousand franc note in the secondhand wallet he had bought just a week before, and which he had forgotten about and never used. He goes to a café where he sees a portrait of Kanjak, a childhood friend turned famous boxer, on the wall. (In the book Kanjak is a footballer. In the film a boxer). Discovering that Kanjak is residing in Paris he goes to meet him. After spending a day of drinking and catching up together, Kanjak rents a hotel room for his dissolute friend.
Whilst in the hotel Andreas starts a brief liaison with a dancer called Gabby.They spend Friday night through to Sunday morning together.That Sunday Andreas has to return to Batignolles to try and repay his debt to St Thérese. Gabby misunderstands and believes Thérese to be a rival and so attacks Andreas before storming out of the room. Later in the bistro Andreas discovers Gabby has taken most of his money, and he has just 250 francs left. He is philosophical about it, reasoning that he had enjoyed himself and that enjoyment must be paid for.

7.One of the strange things about Ermanno Olmi's film is that while the interiors and costumes are generally faithful to the book's 1934 setting, all the exterior scenes take place in 1980s Paris, which gives a strange disconnect to proceedings. I don't know if this was deliberate or just because of budgetary constraints. Whatever, it renders the characters as ghosts still haunting the streets of Paris fifty years on, and that accords with a certain interpretation of the story, that all these people that Andreas meets, particularly those from his past, are phantoms that haunt him in his present state. Or perhaps Andreas is already dying, and these characters, events, miracles, are what he envisages in his dying state.
After the liaison with Gabby he makes another attempt to pay his debt, but meets an old friend from the mines called Wojtech, who says he needs some money to keep him out of jail. It's a lie, he just wants some money to get drunk, but a lie Andreas seems happy to go along with. They spend the next couple of days drinking and whoring. Broke again Andreas heads for the Seine, but meets once more the old man from the start of the story, who doesn't recognise him, and gives him another 200 francs. With this money Andreas holes up in a favourite restaurant for four days, eating and drinking too much. When Sunday comes he doesn't have enough money to pay Thérese, but he heads to the bistro opposite the church anyway to meet up again with Wojtech.

8.On his way to the bistro opposite the church, Andreas is stopped by a policeman and fears the worst. But the policeman hands him a wallet that he believes Andreas has dropped. He heads to the bistro where Wojtech is waiting and checks the wallet.There is exactly 200 francs inside.Now he can finally pay his debt. His friend persuades him to stay for a couple of drinks first, when a young girl comes into the bistro to wait for her parents to come out of mass. She tells Andreas that her name is Thérese, and in his beleaguered state he takes her for St Thérese. Then he collapses, and is taken to the church across the road, accompanied by the little girl Thérese. He reaches for the 200 francs, says "MIss Thérese",sighs once and then dies.
The chorus of this song refers to the author Joseph Roth's own demise. At the end of May 1939 he collapsed in the Café Tournon in Paris and died several days later. He was 44. Odon Von Horvath died the year before in Paris. German playwright Ernst Toller hanged himself in New York on May 22. Both were friends and contemporaries of Roth. Toller ,like Roth, was jewish. June of the following year Nazi tanks rolled into Paris.