Travelers' Tales Paris

by James O'Reilly

  Lawrence Osborne is the author of The Poisoned Embrace: A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism, The Angelic Game, Ania Malina, and Paris Dreambook: An Unconventional Guide to the Splendor and Squalor of the City, from which this story was excerpted. He lives in New York.

  My thighs ached and I strained to breathe as I ground slowly up the hill, leaving the Seine River below. The cool Foret de Meudon was only a short distance away, if I could only keep running. With close to twelve thousand other runners, I was following the course from the Eiffel Tower to Versailles. Approximately eleven miles long, the run is one of the most popular races in Paris. Each year in September, thousands of Parisians and foreigners gather at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Groups of runners are started minute by minute, each contestant’s number individually electronically scanned. By the time those of us near the end of the line begin running, the winners of the race have already been announced over the loudspeaker. But we are not running as competitors, rather for the pleasure of running from the Eiffel Tower along the banks of the Seine as far as Chaville, where the route leaves the river and takes us up the hill, through the Foret de Meudon and down the other side, to the grand boulevard leading to Louis the XIV’s palace at Versailles. Local bands enthusiastically play popular songs, classical music, or rock at strategic points along the route. In September the weather is still warm—downright hot two of the three times I ran it—and the shade of the forest provides a welcome relief. Descending the hill towards Versailles, runners relax in the fern-filled woods, feeling as though they have left Paris and city streets a vast distance behind. Entering the town of Versailles, runners make their way up the tree-lined boulevard, approaching one of the most extravagant palaces ever built. We succumb to the illusion of grandeur, even tired and sweating as we are.

  —Barbara J. Euser, “Running in Paris”

  GEORGE VINCENT WRIGHT

  Wounded and Healed

  Father and son enjoy a final trip together.

  IT WAS LATE NOVEMBER AND I WAS IN PARIS WITH MY FATHER who was 93 years old. We had been in France for almost three weeks. It had been a delightful, elegiac and harrowing trip. Delightful in that people were charmed by this sturdy old man with frailty at the edges and a crinkly sense of humor. Elegiac in that there was more truth between us than ever before in our lives, and although his health was good, I think we both knew, somewhere, that this was the last trip, and everything came roaring out of the woodwork: high intelligence, perception, poetry, insight, and that which made it harrowing: deep green bile anger and under-handedness on both our parts, and envy and out-of-normal mental states: at times he thought I had brought him to France to kill him, that the hotel we were staying at was a mental hospital (he was right, some of them did look like mental hospitals) and that I was the doctor keeping him locked up. Other times he would see what he called “zombies”: groups of six figures dressed in black, with black veils over their faces; they would disappear when he got closer to them than twenty or thirty feet. He was to die seven weeks later, peacefully without illness, in his sleep.

  It was a cold, damp, gray, grainy day. We had just had breakfast at our hotel in the Left Bank and we were in a taxi going to the Louvre. We got out in front of the Louvre and there was an unusually high granite curb, about ten inches from the cobblestone street to the sidewalk. As my father mounted the curb, he faltered and his left shin struck the hard granite.

  He cried out in pain and I helped him sit down. I lifted up his pant leg and through the white support stocking I could see blood pouring into his shoe.

  I was scared and light-headed with fear. I felt slow and sleepy, and it seemed as though I could not react and make things happen fast enough. There was a security guard 100 feet away, so I signaled him and he came over and called for help on his walkie-talkie. Very quickly two more security guards came over and gave my father a coat to put over his legs to keep him warm. He sat on the sidewalk shivering with the cold. I was holding a handkerchief over his wound; my father was drawn into his physical self, concentrating on enduring. I was making conversation with the security guards and help arrived with the typical French siren “aah-uuh, aah-uuh”—high sound on the “aah” and low sound on the “uuh.”

  They were the Pompiers/Sapeurs—the combination of firemen and ambulance medics. They were take-charge, fast, efficient. And cute. I just don’t know where to begin in describing these beings....They were shortish, mid-twenties, dark hair, beard-grain on the face and a jauntiness only the French have. Lithe and slender, they had the clean-limbed and intimate physicality that comes from a well-practiced team performing tasks together. And their uniforms! Navy blue with a clerical-type collar without the white, all of the same material, perfectly proportioned. The restraint and elegance in this envelope of clothing gave such contained power to the occupants, who had the bearing of those who are constrained from bursting into backflips. They had that Parisian fine bubble and spritz in everything they did, and although individuals, they had the simplicity of we-are-men-working-together, the gruff sweetness of toy soldiers. I could see them breaking into song and dance but with more Schoenberg in it than music hall to mirror their boyish gravity. After weeks of sleeping in hot rooms with my father (his age required great warmth) and washing his dirty underwear, this energy before me was...I couldn’t believe my eyes.... How did I wake up here?... I wanted to take it all in and pour it all over me but I couldn’t find the method to do so.

  They took us to the emergency room of the Hôtel Dieu, a hospital built in the 1600s and recently renovated. My father was put on a wheeled gurney and we waited while more pressing cases were taken care of. Looking down the corridor I saw a tall young man, beatitudes coming out of him. I said to myself, “I want that guy to work on my Dad.” As fate would have it, he’s the guy we got.

  He was good-looking and had élan gentled by intelligence with loft, just like his height. He had big friendly ears, an inquisitive smile and a sympathetic connection which was clear in the way he used his hands in examining my father. Through all this my father was quiet and content and making an occasional comment. X-rays were taken, everything was fine. The doctor directed the young aide to stitch the wound, which he accomplished with a syncopated grace. He was quick and deft in his motions but then he would have brief, hesitant stops in midstream where he would check upstairs, mentally speaking, and then continue.

  It was all so subtle, my neurons were a-tingle. I could sense that the connection between this young aide and my father was strong. No anesthetic was given to my father, yet he was tranquil and alert. The aide would revert to accented English and ask my father: “It’s all right? It’s all right? Good?” My father would nod and say yes and the aide would stick his thumb up and nod in approval. He checked in with my father this way every twenty or thirty seconds and gave the same thumbs-up. This energetic tenderness continued throughout the sewing-up process during which time he told me how my father reminded him of his grandfather whom he loved very much and who was also 93 years old. Sewn up, doctor approved, bill paid (only $50!) we left the Hôtel Dieu. What a flip-flop day. From worry and fear to the most sublime experience of human beings. This was the most amazing day of our trip, and it led us to experience a whole different side of Paris.

  Two hours later we took a taxi back to the Louvre, mounted the high curb correctly, smiled at the same security guard, who was obviously surprised at our re-entry and obtained a wheelchair for Dad. Just as he was getting into the wheelchair, my father bumped his other shin into some protrusion of the device. Momentary heartskip for me and string of curses from Dad, but just a blood blister and we wheeled away into fields of art.

  Seen close up, the Sun King was less radiant than one would think. He had two teeth when he was born, but when he was a little over twenty he had to have all his teeth extracted by the court surgeon, because of an illness. There are various accounts of this matter: some say all, some say many, some one. (His father, Louis XIII, on the other hand, had forty-eight t
eeth instead of the usual thirty-two.) In any case, the operation was not a success; the King lost a piece of this palate, and during meals bits of food often came out of his nose, which etiquette did not permit his fellow diners to notice. The King, for his part, would have liked to eat alone, but not even he could escape the etiquette that prescribed his presence at the table.

  —Aldo Buzzi, Journey to the Land of the Flies and Other Travels, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

  That evening we were near St-Germain-des-Prés sniffing around for a good restaurant. We finally chose one on a little street, a cozy restaurant in Art Nouveaux style.

  We went inside and were greeted by a charming and pretty woman who was passing into early middle age ripeness and maternal warmth but still with the air of the world about her; she had a knowing look, lasciviousness with grace, the special character of which seems to be the domain of lower middle-class French women. I don’t mean this to be a supercilious put-down, but to identify it as a quality.

  She was charmed by my 93-year-old father and escorted him down the stairs to our table. He, of course, relished this lovely female attention.

  When we were seated at the table, the charm of the place sank into me. There were all these nooks and crannies and built-in cabinets with specially made handles and curving lines. There was an upper level by the street which had little tables that had the coziness of an old railroad dining carriage. The area where we sat was the larger dining area, about three feet lower than the other level. But it wasn’t like looking up or down at people. It seemed more that you were looking at people from a different angle. This subtlety, and sense of floating in space was promulgated by the lilt of the design. The only straight lines were the four exterior walls. Everything else was curved and tendrilled—like some enchanted little beings from Walt Disney’s Fantasia had put on ice skates to mark out the design.

  The curves were not smooth and continuous but were partial and interrupted as if the curve maker was always getting a better idea and so would stop the curve he was making in favor of another. Everything was curved: the platform, the stairs, the recess in the ceiling, the railings, the windows. The place abounded with little places where something delightful and surprising could be hidden, popping out at any moment. And, oh the lamps, ten to twelve inches high, also of a tendrilled design, with amber parchment shades with long vermicelli fringe hanging down from the edge, one lamp on each table. With people huddled over the tables deep in conversation, lamps glowing in the middle, it looked like a scene of forest beings gathered around their many individual fires. Urban fauns and leprechauns could call this home.

  I ordered a Sauterne, actually it was a Cadillac, which was a town across the river from the Sauterne region. It was some Cadillac, very golden in color and with spritz in it! I had never had a Cadillac with spritz in it. And it was great—the little spritz cut the oily sweetness of the Cadillac. Then came the pâté—it was thick and rich with essence of fowl taste. Like the essence of Thanksgiving turkey gravy velveted into the silk of divine fat. What was a big surprise was how good the oily Cadillac tasted with pâté of fat goose. I enjoyed a supernal OPEC dinner.

  I don’t remember the rest of the dinner very well except that there was some kind of soup, some kind of meat and potatoes, some kind of dessert. But just as we were finishing the pâté, two women came in and sat down at a small, round table across the aisle from us. An older one and a younger one. In her 40s and in her 30s. They were aloof and engaged. Striking, but not bizarre. Angular, but not hard. There was a special spaciousness and intimacy to their relationship. Were they lovers or good friends? It was hard to tell.

  The older one was much more intriguing. She was long and drawn out, but the maker knew just where to stop before distortion. She had some of that Princess Di quality of a sumptuous thoroughbred, the equine quality shining through human form most clearly as when exiting from the rear seat of a limousine, legs together as in a canter, the high heels going down elegant, hoof-like. I turned my head and looked at her; she slowly turned her head and looked at me. A gaze of several moments—and then back to our eating. The whole dinner was like that, back and forth. It was as if we were both busy typing, and when we went to the left to draw the carriage back to the right of the typewriter, we would pause and look at each other for a few seconds.

  I kept coming back because I was fascinated with her and I had never quite had an experience like this before. I had recently read a story on flirting in Paris so I was prepped that it was common, light-hearted, and playful—and that it could happen. But here it was. And actually, although there was flirting going on, there was so much more going on at the same time. It felt as if we were two computers downloading data into one another with the organization and meaning yet to be done. Her skin was pale and healthy, her eyes were hazel. Her physical envelope had a dullness like the plumage of female birds. But the dullness was not unhealthy or uninteresting. It concealed a gleaming which I could sense behind the cells. The orbits around her eyes were large; the eyebrows spaciously arched. A wide mouth, slender lips with just a bit of puff in them. A long neck. Hipped but not full. She had the intrigue of a woman on the edge of the homely.

  There was a sense of a smile-in-formation with us but we never smiled the whole evening. While there were sophisticated levels as well, we were looking at each other the way small children look—with unvalued and undetermined curiosity. Something delphic and wise in her, like an oracle. I could feel her cruelty, her judgment, her long nose, her disdain, her contempt, her hardness, her snobbism, her cold good taste, her putting someone to the sword, her enjoyment of blood, the witch in her. What was so deeply satisfying in this encounter was that I had all of those same qualities in me, showing as were hers, but under wraps in a way that kept curiosity and a squeak of tenderness going between us. I felt that I had met an equal and that I could let out all of my DNA without arranging it into acceptable forms.

  But their dinner was over and they took their long legs out into the night. And I continued to read selections of poetry to my father from the Oxford Book of English Verse.

  George Vincent Wright grew up in Bayside, Queens (New York) and graduated from the Yale School of Architecture. In addition to designing, renovating, and building houses for more than twenty years in Maine, San Francisco, and the Bay Area, he’s traveled the world, ever curious about water culture, bathing, history, music, and cuisine sauvage. He has also harbored a long interest in being president. He returned to Bayside in 1994 to spend time with his father and now lives in the family home where he writes and gardens.

  In the time of the Sun King, the souper à sonnette was invented—the “bell dinner,” during which the ladies sat at the table dressed only in powder, perfume, and jewels. On the backs of their chairs hung loose robes, to put on whenever the servants, summoned by the bell, entered to perform their duties. No servant of the time has left a memoir that might enable us to understand what thoughts passed through his mind while he was serving. Perhaps the most aphrodisiac effect was reserved precisely for the servants; and perhaps in the silvery sound of the bell one can discern the first signs of the future revolution.

  —Aldo Buzzi, Journey to the Land of the Flies and Other Travels, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

  DAVID APPLEFIELD

  Montreuil-sous-Bois

  An updated version of Paris thrives in the city’s suburbs.

  IN AN INTERVIEW FOR HIS COLUMN “POSTCARD FROM PARIS” IN the Washington Post the American journalist Mort Rosenblum once quoted me as labeling Montreuil “the Montparnasse of the fin-de-siècle.” To anyone familiar with both bohemian Montparnasse of the twenties and thirties and this large workingclass town of 100,000 at the eastern edge of Paris, jammed with Malian and Moroccan immigrants and teeming with all sorts of creative and marginal types, the comparison at first rings with irony. But on second thought, the somewhat stretched metaphor begins to leak some truth. The Paris of vibrant intellectual exchang
e, of lively debate in the cafes, of blissful artistic decadence in the artistic circles—at pittance prices—today belongs to tired folklore. Present-day Paris, frankly, is way too expensive for all but a few expatriate artists and writers to endure open-endedly. Legal immigration restrictions have grown far too stringent to encourage the once-privileged American literati to come in flocks and stay. Even the word “expatriate” has lost its original sense of protest: AT&T, for one, uses the term to label its permanent resident accounts, most of which belong to rather patriotic people who work for IBM, Citibank, Disney, or one of the other large corporate citizens with international outreach, and enjoy the ubiquitous presence of such iconic Goliaths as Haagen Daz, Nike, and Pizza Hut.

  To understand Paris today, one has to be willing to suspend many of the cliches that nonetheless continue to drive the city’s international reputation, and venture out beyond the sacrosanct 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th arrondissements. This is hard for visitors, tourists, and much of Paris’s mass of migratory addicts who aren’t so willing to update their fix or readjust their sights. Psychic resistence is powerful. Francophiles and general tourists alike need a certain gilded Paris as their symbolic capital of love, art, and style. They need this “let them eat cake” place in the world where things are beautiful, women are slim, and poodles are welcomed in chi-chi restaurants. Touching these icons is a bit taboo because writers and readers alike need a celestial French capital—a real and imaginary place outside of the confining ropes of anglo-saxon puritanism, American mall culture, historically-void notions of the past and contemporary functional aesthetics. As one aging American literary publisher who had spent lots of glorious weeks in Paris in the fifties and sixties crudely whispered to me at a book fair recently, “It’s always been easier getting laid in Paris.” Others would put it differently: “In Paris you feel more alive.”