by Dave Eggers
Eventually I gave in to this man's embrace, leaning into his musk. I had watched him brace against his walker and receive Communion, and now I was encircled by the arms of a person who had eaten Jesus. There was something admirable about this way of thinking, something attractive about the sure leap into the invisible. An unadulterated bag of crazy? Yes. But admirable. No matter what your own beliefs may be, the mental fortitude required to think that your saliva has Rumpelstiltskinesque powers is something to be respected. Which is why I didn't want Emily fucking with it.
"I don't know if That's a good idea," I said, pointing at the palm of my hand and nodding toward a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Have you ever covered a flashlight with your fingers just to watch your blood light up? That's how Emily looked at me—right through my skin and into my soul. Her eyes filled with hope.
In all likelihood, they were just irritated from the hotel sheets and watering because we misread the label on contact solution and bought mouthwash instead. But standing there in a cool stone corridor in Notre Dame, I knew we wouldn't be leaving unless she confessed. The power of Christ compelled her. Of course, confessing in Notre Dame is not quite the same thing as confessing in your standard red velvet phone booth to the Almighty. This sin-purging line was fifteen people deep and at least half an hour long. And what it led to was not a curtain but a tres large and tres see-through glass office between two of the ancient pillars. From the outside, you could make out the backs of sinners' heads, bowing through a checklist of bad habits. It reminded me of the open cubicles of street-level bank branches in Manhattan, financial pet store windows. I am consistently impressed by their inhabitants' ability to keep their attention focused on their clients and their staplers so neatly aligned with their tape dispensers. Perhaps priests were able to do the same with God, lay him out on the desk and staple him into each wayward soul. Also like a bank branch, we lined up between slack velvet ropes. Up front was a paper sign slid into a metal frame. It read FRENCH/ENGLISH.
"Where do I start?" Emily was giddy with intimidation.
I hadn't thought of this—if you are nineteen and have never confessed, do you begin with the cigarette inhaled before noon this morning or the time you stole a package of sparkly pipe cleaners from your second-grade art class and kept them in the bottom of your closet for two years, eventually throwing them out because you felt so guilty? Do you mention the lying, the drinking, the cheating, the gambling, the masturbation, the schadenfreude, the disrespecting of your parents, the disrespecting of other people's parents, the doing of the drugs, the shoplifting of the gum, the coveting of worldly goods, the advantage-taking, the responsibility-foisting, the tone you use with food delivery people when you're alone and they're foreign, that time you had a hangnail on your toe so you stuck your foot in your mouth and you bit it off like a monkey? Or is that all kind of a given by now?
As we moved up the line, Emily kicking her giant backpack ahead of her, visitors solemnly but efficiently wove their way between the pews. They seemed disproportionately thrilled to be in a place that allowed flash photography. I feared for my friend's soul. If the End of Days came and it turns out the Catholics were right, would her soul come out like a deformed baby because she confessed only once? Was that not like getting half a piercing? We inched forward, ineffectively attempting to speed time by closing the space between us and the buxom Brit in front of us. She glared back at me, judge-y and annoyed. I took a step back and looked away. There was tourism and there was religion. Since when was it a good idea to cross the streams?
"Hey." Emily took me gently by the shoulder. "This is what churches are here for. To take people in and redeem them. It's on the Statue of Liberty."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Yes, it does. The Statue of Liberty was a gift ... from France."
It was Emily's turn. She stepped up, leaving me to fidget on the smooth stone floor. I looked around at the frozen pageantry of it all. My feet ached from traipsing from God's house to God's house all day. This man slept around more than George Washington. Similarly, one got the sense that God didn't actually Uve in all of these places. Sainte Chapelle was breathtaking, but Sainte Chapelle was a pied-à-terre. Notre Dame was home base.
"Are you waiting for your friend?" a man behind me asked in a heavy Italian accent. I was wearing very American shoes.
He was hoping I'd go sit in one of the pews. It wouldn't speed up his wait time, but at least it would provide the physical illusion. Which, it dawned on me, is all any of this was about, anyway. Give me your tired, your poor, your Godless masses. It was then that I made a decision that I'm sure had my grandmother rolling into the fetal position in her grave. I peeked through the glass to see Emily gesticulating wildly across from the priest.
"No, I'm actually waiting."
Ten minutes later, Emily opened the door. And the priest followed. Oh, lord, I thought. What does one have to say to warrant being escorted out of confession? I told her not to mention the toe biting. But while Emily met me in line, boasting the gratified look of the blessed, the priest put a new sign into the metal frame behind her. This one read FRENCH/JAPANESE.
Even God's servants need to change shifts.
A new priest appeared. Avoiding eye contact like a bartender on a Saturday night, he shut the glass door behind him and commenced readjusting the swivel chair behind the desk. I felt that internal conflict, that eternal struggle: Do I stay in this line now that I've waited this long or cut my losses and leave the building/movie theater/subway platform? I find It's better to stay and be frustrated than to leave and wonder. I brushed past Emily and sat across from Priest 2.0. Deducing that I was not Japanese, he rattled off something priestly in French. I smiled at him. Don't wink don't wink don't wink don't wink.
"Je suis unejuden!" I blurted out.
This is what comes from seeing too many Holocaust films.
"But," I explained—my two favorite words in any foreign language are "buf and "because," the universal time-buyers—"but I think that it is true that we have the same God."
The priest put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, studying my face. Was this a prank? Why else would I willingly enter into a situation in which I couldn't function unless it was to mock God? I wanted to explain to him that I willingly enter into situations in which I can't function all the time, and it rarely has anything to do with God.
"English?"
"American!" I said, far too proudly. This was during a time when it was common to glue a Canadian flag patch on your backpack so that the natives would be thrown off your Yankee scent. Never mind the fact that anyone with a flag patch glued to their bag should probably have the crap beat out of them. I had been in utero the last time this priest had uttered a coherent string of English, which he explained to me in words that were not only broken but utterly shattered. Like Helen-Keller-and-Jodie-Foster-in-NeU-had-a-love-childshattered. What a rare combination of languages lived in his godly head. What if it turns out that It's not an issue of beliefs but linguistics, and Saint Peter speaks only French and Japanese? Bummer.
The priest cleared his throat. We then proceeded to have the most awkward conversation of my life, potentially of his as well. Through the stilted silences, the rough combination of languages, and the pesky little fact that I did not believe in Jesus or wallpaper in kitchens came the following conclusions.
A.) Paris was so beautiful because it made you look up at the sky. God; B.) If God had meant the French people to make sushi, he wouldn't have given them cows; C.) Little things in life can produce a smile on your face, like the pen he mindlessly clicked in his right hand, which he also let me click.
I could sense that our time was running out. I could also sense his feeling self-conscious about chucking me out, afraid I'd think it was because I was Jewish. He encouraged me to come back the next week when he was sure there would be an English-speaking priest manning God's fort.
"Ah, oui"—I looked at the clock—"but the wee
k that is after this week I will not be here. I will be home."
At which point he got up from the desk and came over to my chair. I stood, and he took my hand.
"God is always home," he said, grinning.
I felt good, relieved, which is pretty much the equivalent of feeling good in organized religion. Relief. You're alive. God doesn't hate you. Your livestock is healthy. No one gave you boils today. Plus, the priest complimented my French.
"For how long have you it learned?"
The truth was, my French was atrocious for how long I it had learned. After a lifetime of flash cards and poetry recitation, I should have graduated from my bicyclette rouge French. I should have been speaking sound-barrier-breaking Concord Rouge French. Out of my mouth came:
"Deux ans." Two years.
The priest looked at me long and hard.
"Vraiment? Deux ans?"
I gulped and pried my hand away from his. Yup. Uh-huh. Two years.
" Merveilleux."
"Oh ... Mercy."
"You're welcome."
I flew out of the glass chamber and found Emily, who was standing beneath a large bloody cross. I pulled Emily's arm as if I were her toddler child and she wanted to go lingerie shopping. I had to get out of there immediately. I was a Jew, and I'd just lied to a priest in confession. In Notre Dame. I was going to get the shit smote out of me.
I had incurred God's permanent wrath and purchased myself a one-way ticket to hell. They only sell round-trips to zombies. At the very least, I was going wherever they send Jews who confess to priests and then lie to them. Oklahoma, maybe. But Emily was reluctant to leave. Apparently, her priest was multitalented. Not only was he a fluent English speaker but in her brief meeting with him, he had caused Emily to question her entire religious purpose on this earth, giving her a whole lot more to chew on than a wafer. She wanted to light candles and read pamphlets.
"Are you kidding me?" I said, eyeing the vaulted ceilings for signs of imminent collapse.
A security guard came over and tapped me on the shoulder. He asked me to keep it down.
"I'm sorry," I said, walking back toward the arches of sunlight coming from the main entrance. But when I turned around, I saw that Emily was still standing at the end of a pew. I whistled, the sound echoing in her direction.
Roused from her religious reverie, she picked up her giant backpack and made her way toward me. But not before one of her straps brushed against the table of prayer candles, knocking a corner one to the ground. Emily froze. The mess did not look dissimilar from, say, a jar of French mystery spread dropped out a window. I shut my eyes and exhaled. Surely, I thought, this happens all the time. Who puts a candle so close to the edge of a table? Who is so careless with other people's prayers?
The security guard glared at me. Between the two of us, I had been the first to get in trouble and was thus responsible for all subsequent offenses, even Emily's.
"I do not think you should come to this place again," he said, ushering us out with his eyes.
When we got outside, Emily unfolded her map, running her finger along the fold to find the next X. But I couldn't bring myself to go to another cathedral. We had seen the crown jewel. And I had gotten us escorted away from it.
Wasn't the whole idea of a tapas vacation to partake of a little of everything, anyway? I don't think God would want me to overdo it. I think he would want me to have a crêpe. So Emily and I compromised. No more cathedrals with low-lying fire, but we had to check something off the list. We went to the Luxembourg Gardens, where I stumbled upon my fountain. I stood in front of it while Emily checked out the sculpture garden, growing frustrated not with her map but with the actual sculptures if they weren't where they were meant to be. And because fountains are inanimate, and thus polylingual, I took the opportunity to use this particular fountain as my church. I apologized to God for everything I had ever done. Except for the stuff that was kind of a given.
The rain had stopped, so Louise snapped the umbrella shut. The fountain water was calm once more. Louise peered into it, her reflection blotched by the texture of the water. One woman's stagnant is another woman's still.
The remainder of our trip was spent in a less morbid fashion, imbibing the holy trinity of vacation beverages: coffee, wine, and liquor. For all its faults, tapas vacation had worked, and during round two, I felt no pressure to catalog every single Impressionist painter in one day. Instead, I discovered what I had slept through the first time: French nightlife. We accidentally found ourselves in a French strip club, where a Thai stripper named Cali kept touching Louise's hair. We went to bars, where I did the same thing in French as I do in English when people are shouting at me at close range but I still can't understand what they're saying. I shout back in extremely animated gibberish, which invariably results in much nodding and moving along of the conversation. Except I did this in an exaggerated French accent. It's better than the alternative—bellowing " What?" at thirty-second intervals, in which case everybody loses.
The last day of my visit, we went to a giant French flea market. I was determined to take a real piece of Paris back with me. For a long time, if people asked if they could bring me anything from their travels, I used to request a rock or a pebble. You shouldn't spend your time obligation shopping when you're on vacation. Plus, picking up a rock from the street was more legitimate than bringing back a snow globe not even manufactured in the corresponding country. I stopped making this request when a friend came back from South America and handed me a cloth sack with a rock—and a stowaway in the form of a dead insect serious enough to have an inch-thick exoskeleton.
At the flea market, I attempted to purchase a giant ostrich egg. I was bolstered by my ability to say I'ouef but ultimately thwarted by the uber mal prospect of packing a forty-euro egg that was sure to break in my suitcase. In sixth grade, we conducted a science experiment in which all the students in the class had to drop an egg from the top of the school's building, protecting it from breaking using homemade devices. What brand of "science" this fell under, I couldn't say. Some kids cradled their egg in cotton-ball nests, some suspended it with rubber bands between sticks like a canopy bed. I squeezed an industrial-sized bottle of Palmolive into a large plastic bag, adding the egg halfway. Palmolive, as it turns out, is not as viscous as you'd think. Not only did the egg break but the bag exploded. It looked like someone had aborted a green chicken in the parking lot.
Louise and I were on our way out of the flea market, me resigned to allowing my bicyclette rouge French to deflate in the decade ahead, when I spotted a large antique wall thermometer. The dials were many and crafted; the glass was unbroken. How much could one, in good conscience, charge for a questionably functional wall thermometer? Five ostrich eggs' worth, apparently. It was a very nice-looking thermometer.
"Two hundred euro," the antiques dealer repeated as if it were a fact, a number measured using the object in question.
I bristled at the price, again employing " mal," but this time it was exactly what I meant. After enough time in Paris my French had actually improved. But I was done talking. The first rule of any negotiation is be prepared to walk away. Or maybe that's the first rule of eating blowfish. Either way, it was a rule and it was out there and it was time to employ it. And then something happened. For the first time since Paris and I had gotten to know each other, one of its citizens asked me to return.
"One hundred seventy-five euro," said the antiques dealer.
Actually, he didn't say this, he wrote it down, employing the long French 1. My French had gotten better but not that better. Large numbers were on the same ring of vocabulary as nutritional information. Once he gave in a little, it was all the bolstering I needed to negotiate down, until it was only two ostrich eggs' worth. There is a bittersweet capitalist tingle when one gets too good a bargain. The glee of separating yourself from the idiot who pays full price is quickly replaced by the fact that someone was trying to rip you off in the first place. Everyone's the idio
t eventually.
On the crowded metro back to the center of town, I attempted to protect the thermometer. It was wrapped in layers of newspaper and bubble wrap, but I was dubious about its prospects for staying in one piece. I didn't even have any dish soap.
"S'il vous plait," I'd say when jostled, melodramatically cradling the thermometer. " C'est un violon."
Louise whipped around to look at me. " Ceci n'est pas un violon," she whisper-shouted.
"Shut it, Magritte. It is now."
Though "thermometer" surely falls under the ten-letter translation rule, I have no idea how to say "valuable antique wall thermomè-teuuur" in French. Even if I did, I assume the average person's ability to conjure an image of such a thing is on par with my ability to produce the words to describe it. Plus, there are benefits to lying about such things. If you are over the age of ten and in possession of a classical musical instrument, people think you are a genius. They think you have an innate gift that you have harnessed into a tangible life skill. They look admiringly at your hands.
Back in the sublet, the thermometer leaned a good foot beyond my suitcase despite my generous angling of it. This is not a problem! said my laid-back self, recalling the time it had run through the Miami airport with two carry-ons and an oversized lamp made out of a lawn flamingo and still made the flight.
Shut up and eat your Ding Dongs, I thought, and left the room.
My flight was the first one out of Paris. Louise and I stayed up all night, eating cheese and drinking the last of the wine. I left for the airport while it was still dark outside, making sure to leave time to call a taxi and then for the taxi not to come. I hailed a cab on the street and loaded my suitcase in the trunk but held the thermometer close to my chest. The streets of Paris were utterly abandoned as the taxi darted through them. I lowered my window to take in my last moments of Parisian air. Then I put it back up as we drove past a garbage dump and a gas station.
I tore open the bubble wrap on the thermometer. I just wanted to touch it. Finally, something pertaining to Paris had worked out in my favor. Back when his ostrich-egg count was still at four, the antiques dealer said he purchased the thermometer at an estate sale. I imagined the original owners and hoped that they would not be too upset to see it go home with an American. I felt a seam of some sort on the back of it. Curious, I tore a little further to feel a sliding brass hook. I looked up at the cabdriver through the rearview mirror. I put the thermometer on my lap and pushed the hook, opening the back panel like a grandfather clock. I thought I might find a treasure map. The Goonies was a movie, sure, but a very realistic one. Or perhaps I'd discover a copy of the French Declaration of Independence. Certainly not our Declaration of Independence. Copies of that thing turn up only behind maps of West Virginia and velvet Elvis paintings. We are the least classy treasure hunters on the planet.