by Nicky Gentil
On that fateful night, the smoke drifted in a southwesterly direction towards the Eiffel Tower. Consequently, in addition to seeing the catastrophe unfurl before my eyes on the television, I was able to observe its very trace from our window, the grey hues slowly but surely − insidiously almost − forming an ugly scar across what would have otherwise been a beautiful spring sky, thereby obliterating the glorious scarlet tones of the sunset.
News reporters were keen to point out precisely why it was so very devastating to see this particular monument in flames. On top of its huge religious significance for the Catholic community, it was a major tourist attraction receiving a staggering thirteen million visitors every year. Then there were the numerous, irreplaceable works of art; people were saddened by the fact that anything destroyed would signify the disappearance of a tangible link with the past, forever.
For many, myself included, a further detail made this scene utterly gut wrenching. Notre Dame Cathedral happens to be the official, geographical centre of Paris; set in the paving stones in front of this majestic edifice is a plaque indicating what is known as ‘Le point zéro’ because it is from this precise spot that the distance from the capital to all other French towns is measured. So, you see, when the Cathedral began to burn down, it was in fact the city’s centre, its heart and soul, that was on fire.
To return to the subject of my taxi tale, Notre Dame’s ‘official city centre’ status makes the novice cabdriver’s questions all the more surprising. Obviously, our encounter occurred before the advent of the GPS. However, there was – and still is − a rather stringent test to pass in order to be able to take on the job of cabdriver in Paris, similar to that which requires would-be London cabdrivers to acquire ‘The Knowledge’. Yet here was a cabdriver who claimed not to know the location of a landmark as significant to Paris as Big Ben is to London.
Conclusion: we will never know how long this young man survived in his chosen profession but I suspect ‘not very’ would be the short answer to that!
The Cabdriver Who Surprised Me!
My sister once said:
‘I do wish someone would invent the equivalent of that music App Shazam for foreign languages.’
I know what she means because every time I hear a foreign language that is unfamiliar to me (in other words the vast majority given that our world boasts an impressive number of around seven thousand different languages!), I like to try to identify it, or at least place it on the appropriate continent. So much so that, over the years, this has turned into a guessing game that my husband and I will often play when we are in a public place. It is a game at which my better half appears to excel.
Recently, for example, we were in a restaurant where we found ourselves seated near a couple who were clearly speaking a Northern European language. While my husband was convinced it was Finnish, I was definitely going with Swedish.
By the end of the evening, our curiosity getting the better of us, we decided to put the question to them, only to discover that they had indeed been speaking Finnish. This caused me to say:
‘You know, it’s always my husband who wins! I was convinced you were speaking Swedish, but he got it right.’
To my surprise, however, the woman added:
‘Actually, you’re not entirely wrong. My husband is Swedish. And even though he talks to me in Finnish, he always uses a lot of Swedish words.’
So, in a way, we had in fact both been right; conjugal peace and harmony was thus preserved. Phew!
Having said that, my basic point here is the following: if there is one foreign language that I systematically fail to recognise, it generally turns out to be Portuguese…
*
The cabdriver had just spent a good ten minutes on the phone speaking a language of which every aspect – intonation, rhythm, and syllables alike – was completely and utterly unfamiliar to me. So logically, in the face of such a verbal mystery, my guess should have been that it was Portuguese. But here’s the thing: never before had I encountered a man with such jet-black skin. (Allow me, before I go any further, to be perfectly clear on this: my reference to the colour of the cabdriver’s skin is a purely objective observation and in no way a racist comment.) I therefore deduced − nothing gets past me (!) − that my cabdriver must hail from Africa, which incited me to put the following question to him:
‘Monsieur, I hope you don’t mind my asking but, just out of curiosity, what language were you speaking on the telephone?’
‘Ethiopian.’
‘Ah, thank you. You know it’s a funny thing but when literally every aspect of a language seems unfamiliar to me, when I don’t recognise anything at all, not so much as a single syllable or sound, then generally it turns out to be Portuguese. But there you go, I’ve just found a second language that has exactly the same effect on me.’
Imagine my surprise when the cabdriver replied:
‘Actually, Madame, you’re not far wrong. The Ethiopian language is in fact very similar to Portuguese.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. It’s all due to a war that took place, back in the sixteenth century, between the Sultanate of Adal and my country. After twenty years of fighting, Ethiopia won in 1543 but only because we had the support of what was then the Kingdom of Portugal. And this left a trace. The Portuguese troops had a major influence on our language that remains to this day.’
Well, who would have thought it?
The Singing Cabdriver
My husband and I were on our way to the airport and, since it was rush hour, looked set to be spending a rather long time in the taxi. This wasn’t a problem in itself – we’d left ourselves plenty of time to get there. But there was, nevertheless, a hitch: as he negotiated the dense traffic our cabdriver seemed bent on singing the same three bars of music, over and over again.
Rolling my eyes to heaven, I turned to my husband and whispered in English so the cabdriver wouldn’t understand: ‘Oh God, I sincerely hope we don’t have this on a loop all the way to Charles de Gaulle’, at which point, the cabdriver miraculously stopped and then, said to us:
‘You know, it’s a funny thing, I hardly ever pick up clients in this part of Paris but, a couple of days ago, last Saturday evening in fact, I picked up two girls from your very building who were going to a party at the Palais de Tokyo.
Grinning at my husband, I feigned ignorance as I asked the cabdriver:
‘Oh really. Is that so? And what were they like?’
‘Amazing. I had the two most beautiful girls you could wish to meet in my cab. They were so elegantly dressed and extremely polite, utterly charming too. Do you know them?’
‘We do.’
‘Are they neighbours of yours?’
‘Well, yes, in a manner of speaking you could say one of them is a neighbour, in the sense that she does indeed live in our building. In fact, she lives in our flat. You see, the thing is, she happens to be our daughter. The other one is her best friend.’
‘Well, you both have good reason to be proud. So do the parents of her best friend. The girls were lovely.’
By now we were indeed overflowing with parental pride. So much so that I immediately grabbed my phone and texted the mother of our daughter’s best friend so that she too could cherish the moment.
I then texted our daughter, to tell her that we had the very same cabdriver she’d had the previous Saturday, who mischievously wrote back:
‘Oh dear, is he singing?☺’
I was just about to reply: ‘No, thank God. He stopped to tell us all about you two,’ when bang on cue he started humming the same three bars of music again and continued to do so right up until the moment he dropped us off.
But, no matter, when you’re a proud parent you can put up with an awful lot from the person who has just reminded you precisely why you should be!
More Musical Tales…
‘Our role as parents is to teach our children to play the piano of life. After that it is up to them to live their lives in harmony, according to the melody of their choice.’
These highly poetic words were spoken by the cabdriver of the French classical pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay as he drove her to the Steinway factory in Hamburg where she was due to perform a recital on Mozart.
The cabdriver’s name was none other than Wolfgang!
*
Traditionally, the decade of our forties goes hand in hand with the term ‘mid-life crisis’. In my case, however, the word ‘explosion’ would be so much more appropriate…
For many years I had been quietly tootling along in life, slowly but surely ticking off the boxes of my ambitions – university, career, marriage, children – thereby reaching fairly standard, traditional milestones that were, nevertheless, terribly exciting to me. Consequently, I was happy, fulfilled, in search of nothing… at least not consciously.
Then, one day, boom!
I was indeed well into my forties when jazz literally ‘exploded’ into my life, rapidly going on to become a GREAT passion of mine; with the completely unexpected arrival of this most precious of treasures, my existence thus metamorphosed forever.
Today, music is so essential to my daily life that inevitably a large number of my conversations with cabdrivers revolve around this subject.
The two that follow are my favourites…
The Appreciative Cabdriver
On that particular 23rd December – the day I reached my half century on this planet − one word, and one word alone, would have sufficed to describe my state of mind: euphoric!
And yet, I spent a large part of this day in a bunker…
In celebration of this milestone birthday, my husband had found a great present for me: an afternoon of jazz lessons with my favourite French pianist of all time, that veritable genius of improvisation – Fabrice Eulry.
At the time, I did not know Fabrice personally; I had merely become familiar with his work through his shows. Be that as it may, my better half had taken it upon himself to contact Fabrice in secret and this exceptional, completely ‘off the chart’ (in terms of talent) pianist had immediately agreed to give me an afternoon of lessons. Hence my euphoria. What a privilege to be able to work with THE Fabrice Eulry! And what better example could there be of this truly great artist’s generosity than to have accepted me – a mere beginner in jazz – as his pupil?
It was early afternoon when I arrived at Fabrice’s home where his wife gave me a warm welcome before accompanying me to the basement.
From the back of a small, soundproofed room, in which a magnificent hundred-year-old Bechstein stood resplendent, the Maestro’s voice boomed:
‘Welcome to the bunker!’
This somewhat unusual, rather amusing way of greeting me set the tone for the truly amazing jazz session – quite unlike any other I had ever known – that I was about to experience. The highlight of my afternoon was when Fabrice agreed to record some pieces with the two of us improvising together on the piano. Consequently, once this session in the presence of my pianistic hero was over, I was able to leave with a magnificent souvenir for posterity and, more importantly, proof that this surreal, dream-like experience had actually taken place!
*
To round off the day in style, my husband and children had decided to prepare a special meal in my honour and were keen for me to return home as quickly as possible. With this in mind, I decided to take a taxi.
My decision turned out to be misguided; given the time of year, the city of Paris was just one massive traffic-jam. At one point, my taxi even ground to a complete standstill lasting a good twenty minutes.
Impatient to discover the fruits of my labour, I thus got out my little recording machine, plugged in my headphones and began to listen to the various improvisations I had performed with the Maestro.
Unfortunately, I could barely hear my music as it was being drowned out by the sound of the radio. I therefore asked the cabdriver if he would mind turning it off and allowing me to listen to my music without the headphones. Intrigued to discover that I had just emerged from a jazz session with a well-known pianist, he willingly obliged.
And so it was that, for the last ten minutes of my journey, the jazzy tones of my improvisations filled the car, producing, from what I could see, an increasingly large smile on the face of my young cabdriver.
Oh dear, I thought. Is my music really that bad?
When, finally, the car pulled up in front of our block of flats, to my great surprise the young cabdriver got out and walked all the way round to open the door for me. Next, he offered me his hand to shake mine! Then, he went one further in the surprise stakes by saying:
‘Madame, thank you. Thank you so much for your mini-concert. For the last week, my clients have been talking about nothing else but Christmas. That is all I hear about, all day long, from morning till night. But you, well, by sharing your music, you have just treated me to the most wonderful, bluesy reprieve. And thanks to you, my day is ending on a complete high.’
Thanks to him the same could also be said for me!
The Philosopher
As my telephone conversation drew to a close, I suddenly noticed a sign in the taxi indicating that the use of mobile phones was forbidden. Immediately, I offered my apologies to the cabdriver.
‘I’m so sorry. I don’t generally use my phone in taxis but this call happened to be really urgent so I had to take it.’
‘No problem, Madame. I can make an exception for an urgent call. That said, since I was party to your conversation, I’d like to ask you a question. Are you a pianist?’
‘Well… yes and no.’
The phone call had come from a piano hire service. Consequently, the cabdriver had heard me asking about the various types of piano available, the cost, whether it would be possible to book my personal piano tuner etc. − the reason for my enquiries being that I had recently been booked to play some piano jazz at a swanky Paris reception.
I pursued my reply to him with an explanation which, over time, has become fairly standard for me but which for some reason never fails to surprise the people to whom I give it.
‘Initially, I trained as a translator. That is actually the reason I came to live in Paris. I arrived here straight out of university to pursue a career in translation, with a view to staying for two, maybe three years. But, after just one year, I met my husband − with the result that I never went back to live in England. As for the whole piano thing, well that came much later when I took a career break to raise our children.’
It was at this precise moment that I noticed my daughter, seated next to me, rolling her eyes to heaven in the most exaggerated manner before going on to whisper in my ear: ‘T.M.I.’
Now, as anyone with children of her age will know, this is teenage speak for ‘Too Much Information’ which, in this particular case, could further be translated to mean: ‘Mother, I’m begging you, please shut up. The cabdriver does NOT need to know your entire life story!’
Our darling daughter had indeed just embarked upon her teenage years, that most ‘delicious’ phase during which the vast majority of parents fall off their superhero pedestal with a brutal thud and metamorphose − in the eyes of their offspring − into weird creatures who, by dint of their very existence, are horribly embarrassing!
In spite of the ‘T.M.I.’ thing, I was under the distinct impression that the cabdriver was genuinely interested, especially as he then asked a question that has also, over time, become fairly standard:
‘So, what sort of music do you like to play? Classical?’
‘No. I play jazz.’
‘Wow! What on earth made you want to take up jazz? Because, if you don’t mind my saying so, it’s really rare for a woman to play jazz.’
Well aware that I was about to provoke
yet more eye-rolling from my daughter, out of politeness towards the cabdriver I nevertheless pursued the subject by explaining to him:
‘Until very recently, I had a distinct feeling of frustration with music. As if I’d somehow missed the point. As a child, I loved the piano and clearly I had some ability because I used to play my favourite pieces by ear, long before I had even taken so much as a single lesson. Then, when finally I did start taking lessons at the age of nine, I progressed really quickly because I just loved it. However, after two years, for various reasons I had to give it up. My teacher retired and there weren’t any other piano teachers in the small town where we lived. Also, with four children, my parents couldn’t really afford extra-curricular activities. So after that, for many years, I continued by teaching myself. It was not until I reached my thirties that I was able to take piano lessons again. And when I did, I was delighted to discover that I still had the same ability in that every week I would easily learn to play whatever was thrown at me: Mozart, Chopin, Bach − you name it, I would learn it. On the other hand, classical piano no longer seemed to hold the same interest for me. You see, the thing is, once I could play these works, I would be at a loss as to what to do with them because I had absolutely no clue as to how to bring a personal touch to such great masterpieces. My feeling was, and still is, how could I − a mere mortal – possibly hope to add anything to works that for centuries have been immortalised as shining examples of musical perfection? To put it another way, taking up classical piano again made me realise that, in truth, I have a major failing when it comes to this type of music; the sad fact is I’m not actually very good at it at all because I simply do not know how to interpret the repertoire. All I can do is play the pieces. But my performance remains, at best, mechanical.’
‘Well, put like that, I can understand that you were frustrated. But, then, what on earth made you take up jazz? How did you know that jazz would satisfy you when classical piano had left you feeling so very dissatisfied?’