Farewell My French Love

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by Nadine Williams


  ‘Princesse Diana.’

  Suddenly, French is such fun!

  At dusk, I sit once more at my Happy Hour local, Le Jockey, a bar which flows out on to the pavement at the corner of Raspail and Boulevard Edgar Quinet. From here I can see my apartment building towering over the park opposite.

  Le Jockey has a closed-in terrace facing Raspail, filled with students. But I’m outside, with the smokers, facing the Montparnasse Cemetery, bordered by Edgar Quinet. On the other side of the door, just out of reach, is an older Parisian matron who wears a blonde wig. She has her back to me and stares at the vine-clad cemetery wall. At her feet sits a golden Labrador, his head resting on his paws, eyes shut. This is his evening ritual because I have seen him before with his mistress. She always positions herself at the only table on the other side of the restaurant entrance with her face turned away from everyone. It’s impossible to strike up a conversation. She smokes alone and pays no attention to the dog.

  I wonder about her long life and whether she has been a part of the colourful history of the street, Edgar Quinet. Somewhere further along, the famous jazz queen, American-born Joséphine Baker, made her first sensational debut performance in Paris. And also on Edgar Quinet, there were famous nightclubs and salons for courtesans, including Le Sphinx, an upmarket brothel at number 31, which was closed in 1946 along with all the brothels in Paris. It crosses my mind that this ageing Parisienne could have been a courtesan when she was young and beautiful, or a madame perhaps, or one of the 10 000 filles de nuit whose prolific sex work was outlawed back then.

  In his book The Secret Paris of the 30’s, the Paris photographer Brassai describes how in the sinful ’30s, men ‘could bring their wives and children’ to the brothel Le Sphinx: ‘The little boys would stare wide-eyed at the Sylphs offering their charms, weaving stark naked in and out among the tables.’ No wonder the poet Max Jacob is quoted as saying he came to Montparnasse to ‘sin disgracefully’, and the epicentre of lust was right here, ironically nudging the land of the dead, Montparnasse Cemetery.

  I follow her line of vision to the cemetery, renowned as the last resting place for many famous French authors, artists and entertainers who so richly characterised life in Montparnasse during the early twentieth century.

  The most famous literary couple buried here are Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. They are buried together just inside the gate to the cemetery about fifty metres down Edgar Quinet.

  Isabelle has told me of their life in Montparnasse: ‘De Beauvoir and Sartre began their café life here, at Le Dôme, but became the royalty of Saint-Germain-des-Prés during the war years. But they both moved on to Montparnasse and they lived in apartments at opposite ends of the cemetery for the rest of their lives.’

  The other night I decided to walk the 100 metres down Raspail into Rue Victor Schoelcher where de Beauvoir lived at number 11. I found a wall plaque on the plain exterior: Simone de Beauvoir Auteur du Deuxième Sexe, écrivain, philosophe, vécut dans cette maison de 1955 à 1986.

  What intrigued me is that unless her apartment was at the rear of the building she would have overlooked the cemetery. She would have lived with her own sense of mortality.

  I should be brave now and visit their graves, but I’m still too vulnerable to face avenues of monuments and gravestones.

  All around me the young people are very much alive, reading books, playing with their phones or tablets and a romantic couple are leaning across the table towards each other, drinking their second glass of champagne. Life is so precious over the road from so many dead.

  In her book The Prime of Life, Simone de Beauvoir recalled coming here when she was young and enjoying the social whirl. Now I have taken her place as a regular and I order an Acapulco, a gin-based cocktail, like I do each night because it’s half price after 5 pm. From my vantage point, village life in Paris hums as streams of people, fresh from work, file out of or into the metro. Most disperse, but some stop at Le Jockey, and I soak up the atmosphere until I’m filled with the spirit of my quartier.

  At 6 pm I put on my trench coat. Two young mothers wait at the lights, each with a child in hand. How quickly life runs along from where I would shop with a little girl attached to each hand to where I am now—trying to feel whole again and to learn to enjoy my aloneness. Sitting here at Le Jockey, a poem by Longfellow springs to mind. I recited it daily years ago following my major road accident:

  Let us then be up and doing

  With a Heart for Any Fate,

  Still achieve, still pursuing,

  Learn to labour, learn to wait.

  But those words no longer fit my life. I need a new mantra for the dire circumstances I have faced with Olivier.

  I found an ode from William Wordsworth in ‘Intimations of Immortality’ which I tried to memorise in my darkest mourning.

  What though the radiance, which was once so bright

  Be now forever taken from my sight,

  Though nothing can bring back the hour

  Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

  We will grieve not, rather find

  Strength in what remains behind.

  But now, as my five weeks away from home draw to a close, it encapsulates my state of mind.

  Then I remember an interview published in The Paris Review, when de Beauvoir said: ‘I don’t envy anyone … I’m perfectly satisfied with what my life has been … insofar as what I wanted to do was to write.’

  I didn’t come looking for de Beauvoir, yet here I am. I sense she is handing me a new mantra to internalise.

  De Beauvoir’s most famous book, the classic treatise of feminist literature Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), was originally published in June 1949. She built her reputation on novels, which thinly disguised the people in her life. Yet, Simone became the foremost feminist of France’s women’s liberation movement and as she aged, she wrote long essays about ageing. She remained an independent being. She never married and did not set up a joint household with Sartre. Instead of seeking motherhood, she spent her life as a teacher, a writer, joining political causes, and devoting her emotional energies to Sartre. Importantly, she was a prolific writer.

  Their story intrigued me at many levels, yet it shattered my high regard for de Beauvoir, because she deceived and lied to people close to her. But I put all this aside because she has voiced what I feel about myself. For most of my professional life all I wanted to do was to write.

  This is the message I needed to find for myself here on de Beauvoir’s street. She is the role model I need to cling to because to be able to write is a gift, and I must pick up that gift once more. It will be the measure of my recovery to claim, again, the writing skills of the woman I was before Olivier’s demise. But Simone has much more to offer because I also need to embrace that freedom she spoke about, so meaningless when Olivier died. To relish the chance to live many years in the driver’s seat of my own life. It’s a scary thought, but I have done it before in the twenty years before I took those sacred vows with Olivier.

  It also interests me that she, too, wrote to Sartre publishing her thoughts in Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, telling him of her love for him and her sorrow when he died.

  Could this be my cue to do the same?

  As I turn towards Boulevard Raspail, the most poignant words of de Beauvoir ring in my ears: ‘La vie est belle profiter.’ Life is beautiful, profit from it.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE STRANGER AT LE BAR À HUÎTRES

  ‘L’amour est l’histoire de la vie des femmes; c’est un épisode dans celle des hommes.’ (Love is the story of the life of a woman; it’s a chapter in that of men.) Madame de Staël

  It’s Thursday evening and I sit in Le Bar à Huîtres, the chic seafood restaurant in Montparnasse, where I shared my last meal in Paris with Oli in 2010. I am awaiting the arrival of an extraordinary dinner companion—Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu manager of resources, Kaye Baudinette.

  Australian-born Kaye has lived in P
aris for thirty years and I was lucky enough to meet her in 2010 when I was invited to give a lecture on the evolution of Australian food culture at Le Cordon Bleu’s school in Paris.

  But now she is late and I fear she will not appear. I’m about to check outside when Kaye rushes in, a tall streak of a light-haired lady, her high heels clacking quickly across the floor. She wears a hip-hugging black skirt and it’s hard not to notice her long, lean legs.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she says breathlessly. ‘The metro timetable didn’t get me here at 7.30 pm. I got off at Vavin, so it’s quite close, but I still had to walk a bit.’

  When there’s a lull in the conversation, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

  ‘I couldn’t go before you arrived, as I worried you wouldn’t find me and might leave.’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t do that. Le Bar à Huîtres is a famous oyster bar and seafood restaurant and I’m looking forward to a fabulous meal.’

  There is a French man sitting at a table a mere three steps from me, and I catch a glimpse of him as I walk past. He is dark eyed, with thinning grey hair. He is dining with a woman friend who appears to be older than him, and were Kaye to reach over, she could touch her back. I couldn’t see him from my chair at the window. It’s a miracle that I keep walking past the empty table jammed against his own. Every fibre of my body wants to stop, to be rooted to the spot. Sitting before me is a French fellow who is the image of my Olivier. Not just a resemblance: a carbon copy. Those black eyes fix themselves on me and shoot me back into my past and I’m fascinated at the mere sight of him. But I continue across the restaurant floor and down the stairs on my right to the bathroom. My whole body is tingling like I’m a human bumblebee, and I grab hold of the handrail to steady myself.

  When I return, I stare to soak him up into my mind’s eye. He must have felt my intense gaze because he looks casually my way. I can hardly contain my composure and a weak Mona Lisa smile slips from my lips. Yet I hurry past this stranger like a giddy teenager, eyes cast downwards.

  My heart is pounding and I collapse into my chair for my legs are like jelly. It’s as if I have seen a friendly ghost. The face I have been relentlessly searching for is here in our restaurant; this is far beyond coincidence or happenstance. It’s a heavenly gift!

  You need to get a grip here, I tell myself.

  Kaye casts a quizzical glance in my direction, across the top of her glasses, which she has put on in my absence.

  ‘Kaye, look to your right,’ I say. ‘That man facing you … don’t you think he is so much like Olivier?’

  I’m eager for her response and she glances discreetly at him.

  ‘Yes, he is very much like Olivier, but perhaps five years younger.’

  ‘Absolutely, but that’s the exciting thing!’ And my voice is rapid and rising in pitch. ‘That’s exactly what Olivier looked like when I met him.’

  ‘I agree. There is a striking likeness.’

  I’m satisfied; I’m not imagining things. ‘I feel all tingly seeing him.’

  And Kaye casts another furtive look in his direction.

  I try to put him out of my mind and study the exciting menu on the iPad with its beautifully photographed meals.

  ‘Last year, this was judged the best seafood and fish restaurant by La Fourchette,’ says Kaye. ‘And number one seafood and fish restaurant in Paris by CityVox. I need to know these winning places. We can choose from twenty-four types of oysters and they are all named varieties.’

  I’m so engrossed in scrolling through the menu that I simply murmur approval.

  ‘What wine would you prefer?’ she asks.

  ‘We have a much better chance of having an exceptional wine if you choose,’ I reply.

  ‘A riesling from Alsace will be great with seafood,’ she says. ‘Can we drink a bottle of Alsace Riesling Maison Dopff et Irion, 2012?’

  ‘Why not? You take the metro home.’

  Kaye senses that I’m struggling with the French menu.

  ‘You could ask for an English translation.’

  ‘Absolument pas!’ I retort. Absolutely not.

  Then le garçon is upon us draped like a priest in his long apron. I have seen the sardine trawlers off Belle-Ile-en-Mer hauling in their heaving nets off the Bretagne coast. So, naturally, I order the large skewered wild sardines for entrée. ‘La grande brochette de sardines sauvages, s’il vous plaît,’ I say. Fluently, in French. I’m so proud of my improved accent.

  I choose the only main dish I fully understand. Les petite soles de l’île d’Oléron. This island is directly below Belle-Ile-en-Mer in the Atlantic and it’s exhilarating to embrace this fetish of Frenchness to know the origin of produce.

  The menu suggests an accompanying vegetable dish, l’artichaut poivrade de Paimpol. A-ha! Danièle took me to the tiny fishing port of Paimpol, the village next to Binic, in north-west Brittany.

  ‘Why don’t we share the sardines, just for the taste,’ suggests Kaye.

  ‘And the sole cooked in burnt butter sounds delicious. I will have the same for main course,’ says Kaye.

  The waiter glides across with our bottle of wine, pops the cork noisily, pours us each a glass of riesling and discreetly slides away. Kaye lifts the cup-shaped crystal glass and toasts: ‘To renewed acquaintances in Paris,’ she says, her gentle face breaking easily into a soft smile. Her short, wavy hair has a ginger tinge and it kicks towards her lively eyes, which are the light grey of dusk. They are further accentuated with her thinly pencilled, immaculately arched eyebrows.

  The skewer of sardines, slid onto its bed of pearly rice, is indeed enough for three mouthfuls each. I eat tinned sardines from time to time, but I have never tasted such meaty petit poisson. And I am pleased to realise that I am continuing Olivier’s mantra: ‘Choose something you haven’t tried before, Nahdeen.’

  A salty aroma of burnt butter heralds our main meals, placed before us with a minimum of fuss. The pair of sole are superbly cooked, and the flesh lifts easily off the slender backbones. I douse the morsels in the butter sauce. Every mouthful is a moist tasty delight.

  ‘What do you think?’ enquires Kaye, staring up from her plate.

  ‘I should be asking you, Kaye. To me it’s perfectly cooked.’

  ‘You are so right,’ she says.

  Kaye has chosen a wonderful wine and it soon spins its magic, loosening our tongues and we talk into the night—about food and friendship, her family in Victoria and her fellow French tenants in her apartment.

  ‘I have lived in the same apartment for twenty years and I can tell you that I didn’t have a proper conversation with the tenant on the same landing for thirteen years,’ she says. ‘And the funny thing is, the first real conversation we had was in the middle of the night!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I had locked myself out—and this also reflects the silences, the way people who live in the same building are actually poles apart. What happened would never happen in Australia,’ she says, taking a sip of wine.

  ‘I came home too late and didn’t have my key, and I called and called out from the pavement, but no one came. And then I telephoned Madame, the tenant across from my doorway, but she gave me the number of the concierge, which I had anyway, who didn’t answer her telephone. So I rang Madame back and this time she gave me the telephone number of the woman who lives above me, whom I did not know except to nod to. Naturally, she said she couldn’t come down.’

  She shakes her head in memory.

  ‘By this time I’m hysterical and luckily the man on the ground floor got sick of the hullabaloo and opened his window, took pity on me and let me in. The irony is, when I got to my floor, Madame across the hallway invited me in and talked and talked and talked to me for an hour—and of course I was dog-tired and could hardly keep my eyes open.’

  She grins. ‘I’ve now lived there for twenty years and we do speak more often. She is an old woman in her eighties now.’

  I’m intrigued to ask if she still
feels Australian.

  ‘I was in my very early twenties and I told Mum I would stay a year in Paris and then I’d be home,’ she recalls. ‘But after thirty years, now I have been here more than I have lived in Australia. I’m an expat. I’m neither Australian, nor French.’

  Of course, it’s the obvious question given that I have had a French husband. Had she met any charming French men?

  ‘Yes, of course. I lived with one French man for nine years. He would cook meals for us every night, which was wonderful because I cooked all day,’ she explains.

  There seems to be no bitterness behind her eyes, no bristling body language. ‘I was with him throughout my thirties, but the relationship ran its course.’

  ‘No marriage? No children?’

  ‘No. But now I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake not to have children.’

  Her response surprises me. This amazingly gifted woman, who has Paris as her oyster, is beginning to suffer regrets. Are we women ever satisfied with our lot in life?

  ‘Is there any downside to living in Paris?’ I ask, reflecting on my original dream, before Olivier, of living six months every year in France when I retired.

  ‘I miss the lack of sun and nice bright blue skies,’ she says wistfully. ‘It’s the effect the dull weather has on people in winter, in December, January. They are really gloomy, grumpy. It’s bitterly cold and there’s no sun, and every year I yearn to go home to Australia for good. Some of my French friends have just returned from Australia and they were bowled over by the colour of the sky in Sydney.’

  I tell her it’s a marvellous story transforming herself from an au pair—the mundane beginning for thousands of Australian hopefuls in Paris—to chef at the Austrian and then Australian embassies, to administrative powerhouse at the pinnacle of French high cuisine.

  ‘When I arrived here without a word of French, my first impression was oh-la-la! This is terribly expensive.’ She tells how when she got a job as an au pair, the couple also needed a cook. Kaye had a food and food service diploma from the Gordon Institute of Technology in Geelong. ‘So I became a cook as well. The children taught me French and I lived with them in Tours for two years.’

 

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