Paris Dreaming

by Katrina Lawrence

  Our celebratory dinner was at La Tour d’Argent, where I had marked my twenty-first birthday half-a-life before. In some ways, it was like stepping back in time: again, we were greeted by a dapper doorman and escorted into a lavish waiting salon, before being whisked up to the top-level dining room, with its mirrored ceiling that creates the impression you’re floating beneath a shimmering sky; and once more, we were led to the corner window table, looking out towards the elaborately trussed-up and buttressed Notre-Dame, that eternal symbol of a timeless city; and Dad spent twenty minutes perusing the wine list, which is about as thick as a bible, and as revered; and I ordered a plate of vegetables in a restaurant world-renowned for its duck (they were, needless to say, not your garden-variety steamed veggies).

  ‘Plus ça change . . .’ said Mum with a smile.

  ‘Well, I’ve collected a few wrinkles and grey hairs since then,’ remarked Dad.

  ‘Kat has collected a few boys since then,’ said Andy. Fortunately, the two littlest ones were back at the apartment with a babysitter, safely out of embarrassment’s way.

  ‘My French is nowhere near what it was then,’ I said, sighing.

  ‘It’s so hard to practise it anymore,’ noted Mum. ‘Everyone wants to speak English.’

  ‘Maybe they’re more open to globalisation than we think,’ suggested Dad.

  ‘Or maybe they don’t need Anglo-Saxons to be the enemy anymore,’ countered Mum.

  We all fell silent for a while.

  ‘It’s definitely a fraught time for France,’ said Dad. ‘But you have to remember that this city, more than most, has had its tough times and got through them. It needs to work out how to adapt to globalisation but keep its French way of life, and how to integrate subcultures into that way of life. I think what the French are really good at is thinking something through, philosophising it, finding the right language to move forwards. Just think of the Enlightenment.’

  ‘There’s a definite malaise that you feel at the moment, more than the usual French style of pessimism,’ said Mum. ‘But they’re also great at joie de vivre, and you have to hope this will win out in the end.’

  ‘For years after you first brought me here, Paris was a fairyland to me,’ I said to my parents. ‘As I’ve got to know it over the years, I’ve realised that it has its faults, like any big city, but I still don’t think there’s anywhere like it on earth. I love its commitment to a good life even in the face of adversity. It’s like a reality check for me. It reminds me to live in the moment, as well as to live for moments just like this.’

  Our last day in Paris was Bastille Day, France’s official Fête de la Fédération. Andy and I had stayed on so the boys could see the French soldiers in all their regalia. They are, as you can imagine, some of the most fancily dressed troops on the planet, proud descendants of those spiffy medieval knights. The morning’s military parade marches down the Champs-Élysées and, rookies as we were, we arrived too late to secure a spot, so ended up back in our apartment, in front of the television with champagne, cheese and macarons.

  Une parade was originally an assembly of troops for inspection, and as much as there is the grand procession down from the Arc de Triomphe, the Bastille Day ceremony is ultimately one big show-off to the president, who sits front and centre on a stand on Place de la Concorde. ‘He’s the boss of France?’ asked Noah, as we watched François Hollande take his seat. ‘I thought he’d wear something a bit more exciting.’ To Noah’s relief, the following procession of uniforms made up for the president’s rather dull dark suit and tie. First came the Republican Guards, dressed in gold-embellished navy liveries and red-feathered hats, like the little wooden soldiers we’d bought in Les Drapeaux de France, the old Palais-Royal store famous for its miniature military figures. The guards performed a choreographed drill show as intricate and graceful as any ballet, crisscrossing one another with the same immaculate neatness and precision as their expertly cut tailoring; ‘Only in France could soldiers practically break out into a dance show and not look ridiculous,’ observed Andy.

  Next came a succession of infantries, marching down the avenue in foot-stomping, arm-swinging synergy, tall and upright like the clipped plane trees that line the sides of the famous street, and the poles bearing tricolour flags. Today marks the day that triggered the beginning of the French Revolution, when Parisians took to the streets in anger and hunger, and stormed the Bastille prison, a symbol of autocracy and injustice. So how ironic that it’s now the day when the boulevards and avenues are the domain of the officers of law and order, those figures the Parisians love to hate, perhaps because they remind them of the city’s shadowy flipside. Because, as any French parent knows, without order there’s chaos.

  ‘I think I want to be a French officer when I grow up,’ declared Noah, who has long loved the trappings of formal uniforms, requesting jackets with brass buttons and braided trim. We proceeded to ooh, and sometimes chuckle, over what doubled as an hour-long fashion parade: the tasselled red and yellow epaulettes, the brightly hued bursts of neckerchiefs, an array of hats from slanted berets to metallic helmets to Napoleonic bicorns, the shiny shoes worn with white spats (spats!), the hipster-like leather aprons and long fuzzy beards of the Foreign Legion.

  After the parade, we headed outside and back to the Champs-Élysées, the arc up top fluttering an enormous tricolour flag. ‘It’s funny how Parisians don’t seem to wear their national colours, or drape themselves in flags like you see back home,’ Andy observed. He was right; perhaps nationalism was taking hold more slowly in the capital. It certainly didn’t feel like the moment for a political statement. For many, it was the first day of summer holidays, and there was a lovely light-hearted feel to the atmosphere, as though the air had been diffused with lavender. Parisians, usually so contained and orderly in the way they walk around their city, had softened into relaxed mode, even smiling at strangers. They could be found drinking wine with friends on chequered picnic rugs, playing pétanque with family in the city’s parks and squares, slouching on rattan chairs en terrasse and turning life into playful satire.

  The Eiffel Tower lit up with its famous Bastille Day show of fireworks long after the boys’ bedtime, so Andy and I were again by the television, champagne in hand. We soon drifted off to dreamland, too, after a holiday that itself seemed a reverie. And then, the nightmare news of the morning jolted us back to the reality of the world: in Nice, a disaffected delivery man had run his lorry through a crowd of beachside revellers, killing scores of people, including children. In this new war of terrorism, not only have the uniforms changed, so have the weapons and the rules.

  We left Paris with heavy hearts. The city felt changed, but so did the world. It’s far, far from Disneyland, but even there the beloved ride, It’s a Small World, acknowledges a planet of laughter as well as tears, hope along with fears. And that’s especially so in a world that’s getting even smaller, more crowded, making life on earth even more complex.

  We have to learn to live with different sensibilities, to respect various opinions, but also realise that words are simply a sometimes-random succession of letters. And yet, conversation matters, because it’s how we come to comprehend one another and the universe. And if anyone can create a new lingua franca of understanding, it should surely be the eloquent French, the people who gave the world the official language of diplomacy, after all. We need their intellectuals to speak up and out against hatred, to remind us why we once fell in love with the minds of France, as much as the fashions and fragrances. Few nationalities know how to build such a grand framework for life, how to establish and buttress the big ideas. Because as the French well appreciate, the grandiose notions aren’t important in themselves — they’re there to shield and protect the little things, the small pleasures. With order, for instance, come the simple delights of sailing old boats in park ponds, or eating Nutella crêpes while sitting by the Seine. France has long been adept at building a world within which its citizens can live calm, contented l
ives. Their children have le cadre, the frame in which to grow; as adults, there are also boundaries, guidelines for a civilised existence. Rules might be made to be broken from time to time, but mostly Parisians prefer harmony — lounging in parks eating pastel macarons rather than chanting angrily in the streets.

  And maybe, as with Notre-Dame, the foundation structure of France, the liberté, égalité, fraternité, is one that needs to be restored or reformed from time to time. Is that really a big deal? The history of Paris demonstrates that cities, as much as citizens, continually evolve for the times. And never have we needed the French to do that more than now. ‘Does the latest attack make you want to come back a little less?’ asked Andy later that day. ‘Are you crazy?’ I responded. This is precisely the time we need to remember the importance of the little moments, the simple joys. So no, nothing will keep me away from Paris, keep me from sharing my love of this city with anyone who will listen to me — and, most of all, with my sons. When my parents introduced me to Paris, my world suddenly became all the more wonderful for it. It’s only fair that I should pass on the emotional heirloom.

  ‘I’d actually rather be a French chef than a French soldier,’ Noah informed me soon after we arrived home, dressed in a white apron and toque he’d bought from a souvenir stand; this from a child who until recently only ate nine items of food. ‘I’m not going to cook snails though,’ he added, nose screwed up.

  ‘I want to build huge towers right up to the sky,’ declared Otto.

  ‘Then maybe Daddy and I will have to move to Paris with you one day so you can study,’ I said, adding hopefully: ‘And perhaps you’ll end up marrying nice French girls.’

  ‘Eww, girl germs!’ they both shrieked, with a grimace.

  Hélas . . . it might be a while before we make it to that particular Parisian chapter.

  EPILOGUE

  GRANDE DAME

  grande adj great; dame nf lady; respected, usually elderly woman

  What’s the opposite of déjà vu? As in, something you can picture even though you know it has yet to play out in reality. Presque vu means ‘almost seen’ although it’s usually defined as an unfulfilled experience, an ephemeral mental picture that frustratingly, teasingly evaporates in the harsh glare of reality. A vision, perhaps? No, that has the chimerical about it, too. Premonition? No again: too foreboding. Perhaps there’s no true antithesis of the relived sensation. Maybe all we have when it comes to the future is, simply, wishful thinking.

  I sometimes see a flash of myself as I hope to be one day. I’m in my sixties, maybe seventies. My hair is a halo of silvery strands, which I wear twirled into a French twist, at the risk of exposing the love heart inked on my nape, a mark of both youthful frivolity and artlessness. I’ve finally bought my own Chanel jacket: collarless, cream bouclé, with black trim. And I’ve convincingly mastered the art of scarf tying (it’s Hermès, by the way — vintage), which conveniently camouflages my tattoo transgression of the past.

  Now, let’s set the scene: Paris (I know, quelle surprise). We’re living there several months of the year. Andy has softened his sharp, minimalist interior stance and our apartment is a treasure-trove of gilt-trimmed chairs, twinkling chandeliers and floral rugs, sourced from the city’s flea markets. The boys come and go, with their Parisian girlfriends (I can dream, okay). We often have long Sunday lunches, complete with Poilâne bread, an array of pungently perfumed cheese, and a rainbow of macarons. Needless to say, I’m still relying on cleverly tailored dresses to keep various gastronomic indulgences in fashionable check.

  It’s springtime, and I’ve just spent a couple of midday hours in the Tuileries, reading in the shade of a budding grove of horse chestnut trees. I’m finally close to finishing the epic that is Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, an exercise that has indeed lost me months of my life. One of the most linguistically intricate works of literary art, it’s the kind of book that reveals its full glory seductively slowly. Tackling Proust requires a concentration we’re not used to exercising in this fast-paced age, a total commitment to living in the moment. You often find yourself reading Proust’s sentences twice, maybe three or four times, to fully immerse yourself in their mesmerising flow, to appreciate the masterful metaphors and evocative adjectives, or to simply make sense of all the words. This is, after all, the book that boasts the longest sentence in French literature: a whopping 847 words. That’s practically a novella in itself.

  I look up at the chestnut trees, the white floral cones incandescent against the lush leaves, like candles dotted around a chandelier. Somehow, I find myself noticing the latest burst of flowers more with each season, which is curious, as I theoretically have less time than ever for the proverbial roses. But then, I think, that’s what Paris has taught me: to stop and look, smell and taste, live with all senses. Friends sometimes ask why I never tire of this city; the answer is that the experience has been richer each time. Paris, like Proust, teaches you to slow down and savour life. The author wrote that a true journey is not about travelling to new places, but about looking at life with new eyes. You can be anywhere on earth — you might have never left home — but you still have the power to see the world afresh, by searching for new details.

  After tossing the almost-finished brick of a book into my Vanessa Bruno tote, I amble along Rue de Castiglione towards Place Vendôme, guided by Napoléon atop his verdigris column. I swerve left, and head into the Ritz, which was beautifully renovated back in 2016, following in the footsteps of Marcel (I’m going to switch to a first-name basis, okay? — him being basically family and all). Here, I take a seat in Salon Proust, a cosy wood-panelled alcove where the author himself once whiled away many hours in thoughtful observation of society life, and order afternoon tea. The feast served up is inspired by the madeleine, the cake that Marcel made famous for the way that it, when dipped in lime-blossom tisane, sent him whirling back into a world of childhood memories.

  The petite shell-shaped delicacy, for me, is little more than a pretty treat, but I have many figurative madeleines in Paris. There’s the aroma of roasted chestnuts that ignites a vision of fairy-lit Christmas markets. The flavour of salted cocoa is bittersweet, recalling the time I cried heartbroken tears into chocolate ice cream, newly single and alone in a romantic floral-wallpapered hotel room. On my first sip of a pale, dry rosé, I’m once again celebrating my third-of-a-century, dancing under a pastel-ombré Parisian sky as the light summer rain shimmers down. And the thick hot chocolate at Angelina smells and tastes like glorious freedom; it was what I gorged myself on in celebration of finishing high school, and in liberation from a period of starving and striving for perfection.

  I order a flute of champagne to accompany my tea and tiered trays of cakes. It doesn’t, however, send any particular bubble of memory to the surface of my mind. I’ve evidently drunk too much sparkling wine in my lifetime for it to have fermented into any specific significance.

  Marcel loved his champagne, too. Before breaking out as one of history’s greatest authors, he was a committed party boy, a regular of the city’s aristocratic salons and swankiest soirées, such as the 1898 grand opening of this very hotel, which would quickly become a favourite hang. But Marcel tired of high society, the frothy Belle Époque that was dissolving into gossamer memory as a bold, brash modernity loomed. Not that this nervous old-fashioned soul was excited by the prospect of the new century. Writing was, in large part, his mechanism for coping with an uncertain reality, of slowing down the relentless pace of the march of time, and exerting some measure of control over his own storyline. In Search of Lost Time helped him to confront his future — and he did so by looking at how his past fused with his present, which is why his sentences often weave together tenses and times, acknowledging the fluid, interconnected nature of a life we try to neatly segment and order, like chronological chapters in a biography.

  Marcel was perhaps also searching for his lost happiness. When you’re young, you gleefully exist in the present, with its part
ies and its shopping and its here-and-now hedonism. But comes a time when you realise that’s a very one-dimensional definition of pleasure. You sense that real joy — the kind that makes you want to get up every morning — is about having a purpose to life, something that links your past with your future.

  So Marcel, tiring of the shallow glamour of society life, got to work on his thinly veiled autobiography, taking on the future by looking to the past. He no longer lived just day-to-day, but in all dimensions of tense, just like his book. The long nights holed up in that cork-lined room, scrawling feverishly, were most likely not fun in the usual sense — they doubtless triggered hours of angst amid the soul-searching and memory-mining — but these were surely also some of the most satisfying moments of the author’s life.

  The French, obviously, love their pleasures. This is the country, after all, that invented high fashion and fine dining. It was their Age of Enlightenment that taught the world we all have the right to happiness — and in this life, not just the one after. The French constitution, originally inked out in the years of the Revolution, even proclaims the concept of ‘bonheur de tous’. But the French also know that happiness is complex. Often derided for their reticence to smile, they simply shrug their Gallic shoulders and say, bah, why grin like an idiot for no reason? For them, happiness is elusive in nature, and most sweetly, satisfyingly enjoyed when attained and earned by a certain struggle. I mean, it took a bloody revolution for happiness to become a universal entitlement in the first place. French history shows that life has its ups and downs, which is perhaps why the French accept the melancholy sorrows and turbulent angsts of life, and put happiness in perspective, just as Realism counterbalances Romanticism.