Six in the morning, quai Suffren. Jean-Marc unloads his crates of mullet while the port still sleeps. It's his last week. After 47 years behind the counter at Place aux Herbes, he hangs up his apron on Friday. "My voice is gone," he says, laughing. But everyone knows it's the sea that tires you out, and the rules that tighten the noose.
Local fish doesn't move the wholesalers anymore. Line-caught mullet at 38 euros a kilo, they bring it in from Spain at 22. Try explaining that to a kid learning the trade. Jean-Marc isn't teaching anyone. He's handing over to his niece Clarisse, who already runs Chez Madeleine next door, and yes, she'll sell fish, but silently. No one cries out at the Saint-Tropez market anymore.
It's a small thing, a detail. A man bellowing "Come on beauties, straight from the water!" across the square. But it's also the last voice of a village caught between its past as fishermen and its present of contactless credit cards. Stop by to say goodbye to Jean-Marc this week. He might slip you a mackerel, he gave me two this morning, "for your cats."
