Travelers' Tales Paris

by James O'Reilly

  —Violette Leduc, La Folie en tête, 1970

  Existentialism was a hard philosophy to live by, as it put the responsibility of life squarely on man’s own shoulders, offering him no alibis and no comfort. Amazingly, Sartre himself found it too hard to bear: he tried to reconcile Existentialism with Marxism—an attempted “squaring of the circle” which led him to compromise and to personal “inauthenticity.” He and Simone de Beauvoir aligned themselves with the Communist Party and became staunch fellow-travellers. They established a kind of intellectual terrorism by declaring “all anti-communists are swine,” broke with their friends—Camus, Aron, Koestler, even the suave Merleau-Ponty—and surrounded themselves with younger cronies, many their ex-students. By 1957, after the Hungarian uprising and the Khrushchev Report, most Communist intellectuals had left the Party or been expelled, but Sartre continued to “believe.” Later, when asked why he had concealed the existence of concentration camps in Russia, about which he had known for a long time, he replied: “One should not drive Billancourt [i.e. the Renault car workers] to despair”—a quote that has become famous since as a supreme example of “treason of the clerks.” Towards the end of his life, when he was ill and almost blind, and history—to which he had sacrificed truth—had moved on and left him behind, he declared: “I’m not a Marxist.”

  Sartre was not alone in this political trajectory; countless other Left-wing intellectuals and fellow-travellers followed it. Disillusioned with Russia, they kept finding promised lands, in China, Cuba.... “Something in them aspires to slavery” is how Camus described their attitude.

  A Sunday morning full of wind and sunlight. Over the large pool the wind splatters the waters of the fountain; the tiny sailboats on the windswept water and the swallows around the huge trees. Two youths discussing: “You who believe in human dignity.”

  —Albert Camus,

  Notebooks 1942–1951

  By contrast Camus remained honourable and true to himself till the end of his life. He and Sartre had quarrelled after the publication of Camus’ The Rebel in the early 50s—a dispute chronicled in numerous volumes since. Suffice it to say that Camus contrasted man’s continuing metaphysical and political revolt with the banality of “revolution:” the one a refusal of injustice and an affirmation of human dignity, the other a suspension of human values for the sake of a “programme,” a hypothetical better future. “I rebel, therefore we are” against “the end justifies the means,” which sanctions violence, deceit and terrorism.

  More than a decade before it became a commonplace, he understood the nature of totalitarianism and denounced it—the irrational totalitarianism of Fascism as well as the rational totalitarianism of Communism. Not wishing to align himself with either the Left or the Right, he became increasingly isolated, a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Stoically, he stood his ground, won the Nobel Prize in 1958, and died in a car crash in January 1960. And then, what posthumous triumph over his persecutors! All his predications came true and by the time that Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989-90 not a single intellectual of note was left in the French Communist Party.

  Camus embodied a temperament both rebellious and mystical, but always on the side of life and joy. Unable to endorse a philosophy which says that moral principles have to be sacrificed until they can be resurrected in a “better future,” I found myself more and more drawn to his position.

  Although married with two children, Camus was known to have extramarital love-affairs. His two marriages and major relationships have been chronicled in his biographies as well as in contemporary romans à clef—notably in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins, published in 1954. At that time Camus’s main “companion” was an ex-pupil of Tania’s, a celebrated actress, whom I had met and admired greatly. But so many beautiful women came into his orbit: young aspiring actresses, would-be writers, society-hostesses. Clearly, he had no trouble making new conquests, and in this he was no different from countless other writers and artists; St-Germain was always rife with gossip about love-affairs among intellectuals.

  “There are absolute loves and contingent loves,” Sartre had told Simone de Beauvoir, assuring her that theirs was of the first variety while his and her other affairs were of the second. The formula had become famous and provided a model for their followers. The American writer Nelson Elgren, with whom de Beauvoir had a long affair, commented: “How can love be contingent? Contingent upon what?” I agreed with him: this was surely promiscuity dressed up in philosophical garb? And it was not for me: I was truly innocent, and I did not see any reason to change my behaviour—it would be inauthentic!

  One of Camus’s conquests was Antonella, a student at Tania’s who was among the first to befriend me. She was of Italian origin and very attractive—tall, slim, with a dark complexion and grey-green eyes which seemed to be always moist with tears. She had studied Italian at the university, then married a fellow student and produced a son, while writing short-stories and fairy-tales, a couple of which had been published. One day she had written a fan-letter to Camus, which had led to their meeting and later to an affair. For Camus it was evidently a short, inconsequential encounter, like grabbing a chocolate bar on your way home to dinner, but for Antonella it was serious. She had fallen hopelessly in love with him. She had left her husband and taken her little son to live with a schoolteacher girlfriend, hoping that Camus would make a commitment to her.

  Instead, gently and politely he had made it clear to her that he had no intention of doing any such thing, telling her that he was incapable of love in her sense, and that he would always be her friend, as he was with many other women. But no more. Antonella was heart-broken. She was now 25, and had built a whole emotional edifice on very little, certainly no pledge. She lived for the rare occasions when she saw him—taking up acting was one of the ways in which she sought to remain in his life.

  In Paris, one never sees the look of defeat, no ancient sense of being crushed or, rather, of life’s crushingness. In Paris, in France generally, everyone is all right, No Thank You! They’re in control. They’ve got it covered or, at the least, they can and are taking care of themselves. Their lives, whether intellectual, executive, punk kid with a motorcycle, waiter, all are made to seem intact. You’re supposed to think that no one has called for help in France since Olivier sounded his horn at Rouncevalles.

  —Stuart Miller,

  Understanding Europeans

  She confided in me, and wept profusely, and I was sad not to be able to do anything about it. Despite being so influenced by his thought, I resented Camus for being the cause of her suffering. Then Tania, my drama teacher, cast me as Olga, the revolutionary heroine of his play The Just, and later when he came to see The House of Bernarda Alba I was introduced. He was courteous and charming, paid me the usual compliments, adding some specific remarks that made me believe them. He hoped to set up his own company, he said, and suggested I audition for him. To be part of a group of actors under his direction was to acquire a family security in doing worthwhile work while earning a modest living—it was a dream! But because of my feelings about what he had done to Antonella I never took up his offer to audition, and eventually left Paris a few days before he died. It was one of those “missed appointments” with which life is pock-marked, part of that mass of regrets that we accumulate.

  Not that we did not meet again—once. One day I bumped into him on the Boulevard St-Germain, coming out of a café near his publishers’ offices, and we stopped for a chat. He said he had an appointment, but would see me the next evening at six o’clock in the same place.

  I believed that we would talk about the theatre, his plans, ideas and books, but when I told Pierre he laughed: “How can you survive with such naïveté? Is it not possible that he might like you as an actress and an adventure?” and he gave me a lecture about Camus’s philosophy and how it tallied with his way of life—joie de vivre, multiplicity of experience, Mediterranean equilibrium and clarity—all as remedies against the angst and
feeling of the absurd. So I did not go to my appointment, and never saw Camus again, but instead wrote and told him honestly that I was afraid of him, and had been warned against him. He sent me a gentle, kind letter, and we exchanged a couple more. I threw away most of my letters, diaries and notes when I left Paris, but his are among the few I have kept.

  I was told that when he died, apart from his widow and the actress who was his acknowledged companion, many other unknown “widows” appeared in Paris, all claiming to have been great loves of his. Antonella was one of them.

  Shusha Guppy is a journalist, singer, and author of Looking Back, a collection of ten in-depth interviews with women writers, and the memoirs The Blindfold Horse and A Girl in Paris, from which this story was taken.

  As Marie-Sylvie took the microphone at the Café des Phares in Paris one recent Sunday, an angry murmur ran around the room. There was one chair left and several people wanted it.

  How would the protagonists decide who should sit? Would existentialism help? Or utilitarianism? Or religion perhaps? Not exactly.

  “Get lost,” said a middle-aged man with curly gray hair. “I was here first and I’m keeping this place for my girlfriend. Find somewhere else.”

  His intervention may have lacked courtesy but at least it settled the issue beyond doubt—a rare achievement for a follower of the popular philosophy movement that started here in the Café des Phares on the Place de la Bastille.

  Its founder, Marc Sautet, opened France’s first philosophy practice, where patients can shed their metaphysical angst rather as they might try to shed more mundane forms of angst at the psychiatrist’s.

  What is the purpose of human existence? What is existence? Does existence exist? For a fee, Sautet will discuss all this and more in a one-to-one conversation in his office at the end of a dark corridor in the Marais district.

  —Adam Sage, “French Revolutionaries Chew the Fat in Cafés,”

  The London Observer

  EDMUND WHITE

  The Concierge

  A fond look at a Parisian tradition.

  THE CONCIERGE IS A DISAPPEARING INSTITUTION, THOUGH THE memory of this domestic Cerberus and spy remains potent for most Parisians. If someone becomes really detailed, spiteful, and petty in his gossip, he’s likely to be upbraided with the rhetorical question “What are you, a concierge?” For the French protect their privacy with a sacred fury and prefer the permissiveness of sophisticated silence to the pleasure of spicy gossip (or “crusty,” as they say—croustillant).

  We have a concierge, Madame Denise, who is sweet, funny, and, above all, discreet. She lives in her little loge at the rear of the courtyard. Her windows are bedecked with impeccably white lace curtains in which swans and swains are picked out in eyelets.

  Everyone in the neighborhood likes her. The Indian restaurant a block away gives her curries too strong for her stomach—but not for Fred’s [the author’s dog]. The nearby funeral parlor gives her slightly faded flower arrangements; on some days our narrow, rainy courtyard is carpeted with anthuriums or gladioli or mountains of chrysanthemums denuded of their satin sashes spelling out the name of the deceased. At Christmas time she receives a prematurely browning and shedding pine tree, which she decorates with a string of lights she runs on a cord out from under her door into the part of the courtyard sheltered from the rain.

  Madame Denise takes in packages for us but also shipments for the bookstore on the street level, cleverly named Mona Lisait (“Mona was reading,” not a bad name for a store selling art books); the boys who work there in return trundle out the garbage can for her every night. But Madame Denise’s greatest admirer is the coiffeuse in the shop next to Mona Lisait, a stunning young beur (a French-born Arab) who tries out all the latest hairstyles on Madame Denise. One day our concierge will look like a Roman matron, the next like a Neapolitan tart, then a week later she’ll become a Tonkinese princess or a cabaret singer of the 1940s, startlingly resembling the imposing, throaty, lesbian chanteuse Suzy Solidor. Of course constant variety is the very source of the parisienne’s power to bewitch us, but it’s somewhat disconcerting to see your motherly (and normally brunette) concierge coiffed with a bright red punk’s coxcomb at eight in the morning (or—to be more honest—at ten).

  Madame Denise lives with her son, who looks so solid, so ageless that at first I mistook him for her husband. In fact he looks a bit like the cowardly criminal in a Jean Gabin gangster film, with his pencil-thin mustache, sleeveless yoke-necked t-shirt and surprisingly silent way of walking (or rolling by), as if on casters. To be sure, he’s not at all a gangster; on the contrary, he has a medal for 25 years of faithful service sweeping up at the town hall, the gleaming white Hôtel de Ville just two blocks away, and his mother showed it to me proudly. We’ve never seen him with another human being except his mother. “I’ve tried to persuade him to marry,” she says with the cooing regret and feigned annoyance of the Triumphant Mom, “but he’s a quiet boy, a real loner, and he’s comfortable here.”

  One of his relations, or “contacts,” at the Hôtel de Ville is a strange little burn victim with a molting wig and a crablike gait, an old monsieur who works as a bookkeeper for the mayor; he comes once a year to the loge to sort out Madame Denise’s taxes, and she in turn prepares for him skate and capers in black butter.

  Loge is the word not only for a concierge’s apartment but also for an actor’s dressing room, and Madame Denise, in her modest, smiling way, has a flair for the theatrical. An excitable French photographer, sent over by British Vogue, wanted to set up a shot in which Madame Denise would open her door slightly and with a smile hand me my morning mail while Fred looked on approvingly. We had to repeat this little scene twenty times but each time Madame Denise was just as natural, unaffected, gay—a born star. One day she showed me a glossy German photographic study of the concierges of Paris in which she figures prominently as the genuine French article (most of the few remaining concierges are Portuguese, which means their entryways smell of salted cod, their national dish, instead of raie au beurre noir).

  Even better, Madame Denise is from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, considered the best breeding ground for conscientious, hardworking concierges. She was born in Lille and brought up there, in a boisterous, sentimental, accordion-playing café, and she “descended on” Paris 28 years ago with her husband, who promptly died. Luckily she found her position as a concierge and has held on to it tenaciously ever since. She has never traveled and doesn’t seem to approve of it; she shakes her head tragically whenever we take off for Italy or Nice or London or the States. “Never a moment of repose,” she laments. Of course she does her own traveling, through stamp-collecting, and she has my permission to cut out with a big pair of scissors the canceled stamps on my mail from Greece, Austria, Thailand, and other exotic places (she loves the Porgy and Bess commemorative stamps from the States).

  In the afternoon she begins to socialize. She’ll stand at the bar of Les Piétons just next door with the whores, all of whom she knows by name. If she’s not at Piétons, she’s at the other corner bar, the Royal St-Martin. Sometimes, when we catch her coming back from the bar, she tells us of the famous movie star who used to live in our apartment, and of her many loves. We exchange stories about some of the gallant adventures of our handsome landlord and new “crusty” details about his cheapness; like all French he fancies himself a bricoleur, a weekend Mr. Fix-it, and would rather attempt five times in a row to repair our leaking hot-water heater than call in a proper plumber.

  She knows we’re gay and says nothing, but does not resort to the polite fiction used by the restaurateur on the corner of referring to Hubert as my “son” (votre fiston), a particularly difficult lie to sustain given my American accent. She also knows Hubert is ill, and when he’s in a bad way she’ll offer to shop or cook for us; she asked only once what was wrong with him, and I, in my best French way, became evasive, giving her her cue to retreat into her usual discretion.

  She has seen everyt
hing in her work and has a name for most of her observations. One day she was washing up some human merde left in the entryway, by one of the local bums no doubt. Bright-eyed and uncomprehending, I said, “What’s that you’re cleaning up, Madame Denise?”

  “Une sentinelle, Monsieur” (a sentry).

  “What’s a sentinelle, Madame Denise? I don’t know that word.”

  She turned on me a weary, faintly superior and terminally sophisticated face: “Just think about it another little moment, Monsieur White.”

  Edmund White has taught literature and creative writing at several universities including Yale and Johns Hopkins. He is the author of several books including Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, and the award-winning Genet: A Biography. This story was excerpted from his book, Our Paris: Sketches from Memory, which was illustrated by Hubert Sorin who died of AIDS in 1994. He currently teaches at Princeton and lives in New York.

  More and more landlords are deciding to eliminate the concierge. The escalating cost of construction provides an excellent argument for the termination of an ongoing contract. Selling the ground floor apartment to finance renovation makes perfect sense—on paper. Won’t a maintenance crew be more efficient in keeping the building clean? Why not install a row of mailboxes, instead of having letters hand-delivered? And a digicode? Is it really necessary to pay a concierge to keep watch when modernization has transformed the apartment building into a fortress with locks and security systems?

  The concierge appears to be an anachronism as we approach the 21st century. Well, perhaps. But, she remains that extra dimension that makes urban life more pleasant. It is the concierge who gives each building its soul. Once she is eliminated, the human factor will be lost forever.