by Lynne Martin
We scurried away a day early. Even the grandeur of Apollo couldn’t compel us to endure another night of torture.
Besides, we were anxious to get to Marmaris, a magical place Tim had touted since we first rekindled our romantic flame.
“Honey, Marmaris is the perfect place for us to relax for a few days before we move on to Paris. I’m telling you, that bay is something. Two mountain ranges come together at the Aegean and it’s spectacular…” Tim raved at every mention of the place.
“I’m crazy about the hotel,” he gushed. “It’s magnificent—a beautiful setting where the trees come down to the water, lovely rooms, great food and service, and cheap! That’s a good thing because we know Paris is going to cost like hell. We’ll have a wonderful time! We can read and swim and be pampered. It’s quiet and peaceful. The Israelis used to come here, so you know everything will be first class. The food is fantastic. You’re gonna love it.”
Even though I had heard it all before—Tim couldn’t help but repeat himself, he was so excited about this place—I responded with enthusiasm each time and pretended it was the first time he’d told me about it. After all, it did sound great—especially after our last accommodations.
The building and setting were as advertised. Gorgeous. A snappy uniformed bellman took our luggage, the desk clerks were efficient and helpful, and the enormous lobby and bar impressively designed and populated with inviting furniture groupings. This was going to be great!
Mr. Uniform drove us down a tree-lined cobblestone path in a golf cart, and we admired cute four-plexes with balconies and attractive façades. When we entered our room, we looked right past our little balcony to the sea and mountains beyond the bay. Perfection. Tim was elated with his excellent choice.
As we settled on our balcony, gleefully making photos of our unobstructed view, I heard a boom, then a boom-boom, then a chukka-chukka-boom. The sound settled into a solid boom-chukka-boom-chukka-boom-boom-boom. The Euro-trash music had followed us! It became our constant companion for four very long days.
It seems that in Tim’s absence, the Israelis had been replaced with the Russians, for whom it was a quick, cheap three-hour flight from Moscow. Over-muscled KGB types with shaved heads and tattooed biceps dragged their spouses and gaggles of children south for a week at the beach. Everyone wore resort clothes right out of a nineties disco movie; it was a sea of double-knit polyester and enormous sunglasses. They occupied every inch of public space, sprawling in the lobby, by the pool on every available surface, and encouraging their children to exercise their bodies and vocal cords as much as possible. Since food and booze were part of the all-inclusive package, imbibing began early and continued into the small hours, always accompanied by the much-appreciated boom-chukka-boom-boom soundtrack.
I’m not sure that the small print would have saved us in this instance. However, the car did. We fled the scene for most of the day, dined elsewhere, and used our rattling air conditioner at night to tune out the boom-chukka-chukka-boom. We did catch some sun, great views, and a delightful seafood dinner—for an extra charge, of course. It was served on a floating pier at sunset, far from the rhythm section. But in this case, the extra charges were worth every penny.
That last evening provided a fitting farewell to Turkey. During dinner, we raised our glasses to the new friends we had made and the archaeological wonders we had seen. Turkey had been such a rich experience for us and I remember thinking that if the rest of our journeys could be that much fun and that interesting, rainstorms and locked doors notwithstanding, I would never doubt our decision to live home free.
However, to this day, the boom-chukka-chukka-boom sound makes me smile. After all, embracing and conquering challenges were what we had longed for!
Chapter 7
Paris
The woman across the way reached through her polished French doors to trim the bright red geraniums in her wrought-iron window box. Below the box, a froth of blue and white blossoms drifted down three stories to the pavement. Her stylish stone town house looked like something in Architectural Digest. The owner was equally picture-perfect. A string of pearls set off her pale beige cashmere sweater set, which matched the color of her perfectly coifed hair.
I hated her.
Her sin? She lived in Paris full time, while I would be here for just one month.
As I watched her, the elevator across the hall in our three-story building opened and I let Tim into the apartment. He was grinning and chuckling. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve seen just about everything now, and I need to go clothes shopping.”
“What are you talking about?” Tim’s thought process is a little hard to follow because his brain works so much faster than most people’s. I chalk it up to being part of his charm…most of the time.
“I went down to the corner just to get the lay of the land, and there, sitting on a bench in the sun, was a great big black guy wearing a long gold caftan and matching fez.”
“So? I’ve seen lots of African men in outfits like that,” I replied.
“I bet none of them were reading something so conservative as the Wall Street Journal. It just struck me as so Parisian!”
As the bizarreness of this juxtaposition—such a flashily dressed man reading such a buttoned-up newspaper—dawned on me, we dissolved into laughter. When we recovered, he repeated, “I’ve gotta go shopping. I’m much too tame for this burg. Anything goes in Paris.”
Later, we found a man’s pastel floral scarf. When Tim wore that scarf thrown casually around his neck, his beret from a previous visit, and his Viva La Resistance T-shirt, he looked hilariously French.
***
When we had arrived in Paris the day before, and Andie, the apartment owner, opened the door to greet us, we knew right away that we were going to be happy. She was an ebullient, pretty, pint-size Brooklynite who owned an English language school and had lived in Paris for thirty-five years. Generous, amusing, and energetic, she took wonderful care of us. We could tell instantly that she was destined to become our very good friend.
Our one-bedroom apartment was small but very clean and well decorated. It possessed an excellent Internet connection (hurrah!) and big windows that splashed the main room and open kitchen with light. Across the street, next to the elegant cashmere lady’s gorgeous establishment, stood a classic French three-story house with a jarringly modern twist. Andie told us that some big-name avant-garde architect had persuaded the owners to make a statement by slapping a glass box around the whole structure. Strange, but wonderful. We puzzled over the designer’s intention every day, and nosily watched the occupants’ coming and goings inside from the safety of our apartment across the street. A movie-star good-looking French family with big cars inhabited the apartment, which they kept surprisingly messy. Once more, we found ourselves viewing other people’s lives, just as we had in Buenos Aires.
We lived in the fifteenth arrondissement, a homey neighborhood that offered just what we wanted: bistros, cheese, wine and meat shops, newsagents and flower stalls, tiny shoe stores and clothing boutiques, subway stops nearby, a twice-a-week farmers’ market six blocks long, and the chance to live with local people rather than tourists who tend to stay in the fancier sections of town. We could hardly sleep because we were so thrilled with our luck to have found such a place!
Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements, with the first arrondissement in the center, and the rest spiraling outward in a clockwise direction. We were in the second geographical circle, from the center, several subway stops away from the action. Our neighbors treated us kindly, even though we were linguistically challenged.
Many people in France speak English, but since some are reluctant to use it, we learned to say, “Pardonnez-moi, Je ne parle pas français” (Pardon me, I don’t speak French). An apology for our ignorance, accompanied by a sincere smile, would usually disarm the other person. In turn, he or she would smile sympathetically at our ignorance and then make a tru
e effort to communicate either in English or the old standby, international charade language. I’d be willing to bet that what they thought we should say is, “Pardon me, I can’t speak French, because I come from a linguistically challenged country where we only learn our own language.” It made me even more grateful to the people who did try to help us.
We shared the building with just one other tenant, Mme. Fanny Acquart Gensollen, a ceramicist whose kiln sat in the basement next to the laundry room. The hallway leading to it had one of those timer lights Europeans favor in hallways and public bathrooms to save energy. It reminded us of the same diabolical setup in our Buenos Aires hallway. You could turn on a light when you stepped out of the elevator in the basement, but if you didn’t reach the laundry room in time to flip the light switch, you were plunged into total darkness, stumbling around dropping dirty socks and underwear all while trying not to fall into the large hole in the floor next to the kiln. It was a challenge.
The automatic light situation was not our only flashback to Argentina, since Buenos Aires truly is the Paris of South America. The cities resemble one another so much that, for several days after we arrived, we kept thinking we had somehow wound up back in the Southern Hemisphere. I turned a corner and looked down a beautiful leafy street lined with gorgeous French town houses and stopped short, horrified. “Oh God,” I said to Tim. “Look at this street…for a second I thought I was back in Buenos Aires.”
“Happens to me all the time. I keep waiting for everyone to answer every question with a ‘No!’” he joked.
But after a few days of people treating us courteously, the feeling dissipated. We knew we were in the true Paris.
***
After Andie departed that first morning with promises to keep in touch, we started our regular move-in routine with a stroll down the avenue a block away. We read menus, which are always posted outside, and were delighted to discover so many culinary choices close to us. We salivated as we peered into windows stacked with exquisite chocolates and pastries, gorgeous as gems in a jewelry store. We spotted a branch of Carrefour, the international supermarket chain that seems to have locations everywhere, and found several good drugstores. We also located the Metro station. We were in business.
“Ah!” we sighed in unison when we found a small cineplex just a few blocks from home. It thrilled us to pass a shop that sold duck in every form imaginable, and goose liver pâté, fresh, canned, and jarred with every nuance you could dream up. It stood right next to a world-class cheese store, and beside that a patisserie that pumped out celestial bread aromas all day. Life was going to be wonderful, even though we knew we would need to walk forty miles a day just to stay even on the scales.
For our first dining experience, we chose an utterly French corner bistro. It featured dark mahogany walls, a bar top traditionally wrapped in zinc metal, waiters in long aprons, and tables filled with people lingering in quiet conversation over two-hour lunches. The place was to become one of our favorites, in part because I received the distinct pleasure of witnessing Tim, an adamant avoider of anything liver, convert. It was like watching a person fall in love. Of course, this wasn’t your generic grocery store chopped liver. This was the real deal: handmade, homemade, authentic French goose liver pâté—smooth, creamy, irresistibly complex, and buttery, accompanied by perfectly prepared pieces of crunchy toast. Impossible to resist. Tim would need a twelve-step program if he ever hoped to rid himself of his new addiction. Sure enough, several days later, as we were heading home after a satisfying day of ogling art, he said, while crunching off the top of the hot baguette we had just bought, “Honey, are you sure we have enough pâté at home for the cocktail hour, or should we stop at the duck store?”
That week, keeping to our moving-in plan wasn’t easy, but we knew it would make life simpler if we followed our own rules. We wanted badly to dash over to the Champs-Élysées or stroll the Luxembourg Gardens that second morning, but we knew that unpacking and stocking our kitchen properly would allow us more leisure later to enjoy the city.
On our second day, we passed our African friend, and I could see firsthand what Tim had been referring to our first day. He strolled down the street in a bright red outfit, clutching the latest WSJ and looking quite regal and elegant. I struggled to maintain my decorum because he might have misunderstood my giggles—I certainly wasn’t laughing at him but rather at the drab, sorry-looking paper in his hand. It didn’t stand a chance against his beautiful silk pants and flowing robe, topped with a matching fez, whose extra inches made him look about seven feet tall.
That day, we bought a nifty waterproof two-wheel rolling cart to drag our groceries to our apartment, just like the one we left behind in Argentina. We now buy one everywhere we go, and we have left a trail of them in apartments from Florence to Mexico. They are necessary in big cities, if you don’t mind looking like someone’s grandmother. (Trust me, after you’ve lugged thirty pounds of groceries in plastic bags up a cobblestone street a couple of times, you won’t care if you look like a burro.) Which brings me to a curious realization: the longer we live home free in foreign places, the less it concerns us to look foolish or naive in front of other people. Our egos—whatever they originally were—have shrunk.
I think that older people can find it more difficult to be out of their depth, especially when people around them know exactly what to do while they flounder around, trying to figure it out. As members of the older (or I prefer the word “mature”) crowd, we believe there is some expectation that we know what we’re doing all the time. This is simply not the case. For instance, that afternoon in Paris, we suffered through a terrible time buying our first Metro (subway) tickets. The dispensing machine didn’t like our credit card, and it even spat our euros back at us when we tried to use cash instead. The people behind us grew impatient in that singularly French way—small sighs and foot tapping, edging just a little too close behind the offender, to tell them subtly to hurry up! Finally, an attendant called us over to his cage and sold us the tickets himself. Rather than risk being embarrassed again, we decided to always seek out a booth to top up our passes. Of course, since attendants weren’t always present, we finally bit the bullet and tried again, risking foot tapping and sighing—and our corresponding frustration. Eventually we got the hang of it and enjoyed the satisfaction of feeling empowered and independent.
That said, now that we’ve been on the road for a while, we have learned to stand our ground and ignore muttering and dirty looks from others. We just soldier on until we have completed our task and don’t mind looking as if we don’t know what we’re doing…because, well, we don’t! We eventually learn the system, and it gives us an enormous sense of accomplishment and confidence to master it, like learning a new skill.
Our first market visit took well over an hour as we pored over the culinary riches available to us. Most French markets are treasure troves for deprived Americans. The cheese cases artfully display offerings of five or six kinds of veiny blues, goat cheese rolled in everything from herbs to ashes, and those stinky cheeses (the true cheese lover’s religious experience) that smell so awful and are like heaven on the tongue. It took us a long while to contemplate walnut, rapeseed, olive, and nut oils, vinegars wrought from fruits, wines, and mysterious origins that we couldn’t read, plus condiments from exotic international locales. When Tim spied the huge section devoted to all forms of prepared liver and duck, he grew misty-eyed. We discovered cans of duck cassoulet (beans and duck in a rich sauce that would take days to prepare from scratch); once we tried it, our pantry was never without it. The pickle and olive section held us in rapture for quite a few minutes, and even the grocery store bread section gave us more thrills.
The fresh vegetable department featured peaches just perfectly ripe, glistening fresh candy-sweet berries, tiny potatoes with translucent skin, and haricot vert as thin as toothpicks. We were so delighted with the fruits and vegetables that we forgot our lesson about observing others first and began greed
ily scooping delicacies into small plastic bags.
When we arrived at the checkout stand wearing big grins at all of our discoveries, the clerk looked at the produce quizzically. Uh-oh. While smiling at us, she spoke to the bag boy, who grabbed the produce and trotted off while she continued ringing up the rest of our purchases.
Only later did we learn that, in France, the shopper is supposed to place fresh produce in a plastic bag and then wait his or her turn at the weighing machine, where she/he pushes the button with the picture of the item. A sticker with the price spits out, and the shopper slaps it on the bag. We were so busy stuffing our bags with produce that we had missed that whole procedure! But neither the checker nor other customers groused at us. Being forgiven politely for our first faux pas in France gave us yet another reason to fall in love with the country.
***
We hurried back to our apartment, put away our bounty, and finished unpacking. We deserved a reward. So we left, popped up out of the Metro near Notre Dame, and began to search for one of our favorite places, Au Bougnat, an old bistro in one of the little streets that surround the great church. We had dined there on a past trip years ago. Although considered a tourist establishment by some, we found the food to be consistently delicious and the service very pleasant.