by Joanna Walsh
‘There is a house,’ B says, ‘that was cut in half to allow a new road to pass through. The house wasn’t destroyed, and the people live there just the same as before. They just have to cross the road sometimes.’
Hôtels particuliers. Particular spaces.
‘I suppose it’s because, in Paris, everyone lives in flats.’
We are walking B’s dog to the park at the centre of St Germain-en-Laye where, beyond the squared ranks of trees, a sudden drop telescopes a valley so the park flows boundaryless towards Paris.
We lean out over the edge.
B says, ‘Can you see the Eiffel Tower?’
I look through the pale, bright cloud that is still brighter than any sky in England. I look, but I can’t.
B says, ‘I go into Paris every day I can, though I don’t have to, for work. You meet people (women I mean) who never go out of St Germain.’
A forest begins at the edge of the park – like that! – so different from the park’s marshalled trees and raked gravel. It’s dark but has wide chalk paths. They look straight. We let B’s dog off the leash. It’s a big black dog. I don’t know what kind, can’t remember its name. At her house I heard its claws rain on the parquet floor all night amongst her piles of heavy art books.
‘The forest is big,’ says B. ‘You can actually get lost.’
I say, ‘But do you get lost?’
B says, ‘My husband did once. It’s quite common. You get men who show up late for dinner.’
(How do they find their way home? Breadcrumbs? Stones? White stones?)
I say, ‘I have a good sense of direction.’
It is not yet spring enough for the leaves to have thickened, so the forest never closes entirely into darkness. It ends in a parking lot of 4×4s. I could see them through the trees all the time, white pebbles. It wasn’t so difficult to find our way out, but maybe we took the easy way.
Back at B’s house we try another mirrored sitting room, shaded: cane chairs – a network of gaps – more art books, white stones in the fireplace, floating white shelves: a box of air.
B says, ‘You have to make a list of what you want, and divide the necessary things from the things you can compromise on.’
B says, ‘Any relationship is a physical space.’
I say, ‘I already moved house. Emotionally.’ (a joke)
B says, ‘I have lots of friends online I’ve never met in the flesh. My husband doesn’t get it. He doesn’t like my…’
‘What?’
‘…my… proliferation.’
B says, ‘Do you want to stay an extra night?’
I say, ‘I said I’d go to Belleville. I have to pick up the key from N. He’s going on holiday. I think I have to go.’
B says, ‘Belleville: whenever I go with the kids they say, why can’t we live there, in Paris?’
‘It’s Paris here,’ I say.
I walk to the station to catch the train back to Paris.
The train arrives at an overground stop, like a tram, like a toy train; no platform, just the rails sitting on top of the road. In the back gardens along the track there is no one, just things so someone could do something there: dark wood garden tables, white ironwork chairs, empty swings.
There are limits to everything. There are limits to how much coffee you’d want to drink, even if you sat around drinking it all morning, there’d be a point you’d stop. There’d be a point at which you’d feel you’d had too much. Everything’s easier once you realise you have limits. There are borders between the back gardens of St Germainen-Laye, which I can see from the train, then, suddenly, we’re in Paris, and there aren’t back gardens any more.
Belleville, Paris
22 April
Paris is an access of light, a glance. Suddenly, there it is. And, just as soon, it’s not. I walk up the hill on the rue de Belleville where Paris is grey, not white. French dissolves into Arabic, Chinese. Between the shops’ vajazzled entries only the pharmacies are white: illuminated boxes stacked with ranged objects that look exactly like any other pharmacy in the city. The rue de Belleville is not ‘Paris’ Paris, or at least it’s a different Paris from where I was last night. I am going to buy oranges, or orange juice: I need the vitamins. But, as I walk up the hill, I can’t decide: there are small shops, not big supermarkets and sometimes I go into them and I look and look, and sometimes I pick up the fruit and look some more but I put it down again and I do not choose. How do I choose?
Where am I going? I don’t know. Up and up through the streets into the Parc de Belleville. I walk up some more on paths through avenues of sinister bushes, short enough to see over, tall enough to conceal almost everything else. Square, white basins of water cascade into each other, the lower channels not functioning, stagnant, the ghosts of last year’s leaves eating their body negatives into the green underwater paint. At the top of the Parc, a municipal museum: a white-winged ocean liner, La Maison de l’Air, designed in the 1980s by an architect who surely read Tintin as a child. A sign: Parmi les meilleurs vues de Paris – one of the best views of Paris. Can I see the Eiffel Tower from here? Of course I can. You can see the Eiffel Tower from everywhere in Paris… almost. On the front of La Maison a sign: L’air n’a pas de frontières/air has no borders.
I am still wondering whether to send you that photo I took, that postcard.
To replay your emails I must scroll further and further down my inbox. The instances of your name are less frequent; a few months ago it was papered with them. I opened your final email last night to add a message. I could think of nothing to say to you, but still I wanted to say it. How could I write nothing? Type a space into the keyboard, press send, launch a breath of absence into thin air, an empty envelope unfolding into the paper on which the message is written (they used to make airmail paper like that: Un air de rien, the French say: ‘seems like nothing’). I wanted to send it anyway: I wanted you to get the ping in the inbox, the click, the noise of nothing arriving; the message is the envelope: and I wanted you to get it. To send it is to say, weighted only by the postmark’s ink, what? ‘Wish you were here?’ No, not really. Perhaps, ‘I have moved. I am at liberty. See me (don’t see me). But I exist. Still.’
On the side of the Maison de l’Air, a poster: Touchez, sentez, ecoutez l’air! (touch it, feel it, hear it!)
On the front of the Maison de l’Air, an ad for the permanent exhibition: A ne pas manquer! (Don’t miss it!)
And beyond the Maison, in a dip behind the Parc de Belleville, I walk down steps into the Place Henri Krasucki, named for the resistance fighter and trade unionist, where a woman is selling the Communist paper L’Humanité. Others are in polite discussion. On a wall in the neighbouring rue Levert, graffiti: Peuple de France, prends ta liberté! (people of France, claim your freedom!)
Liberty? Freedom! To walk where we choose, to choose where we walk. Freedom to cross the hexagonal crossroads in the Place Henri Krasucki which, like most Parisian junctions, offers six, not four, alternatives: the rue Levert, the rue de la Mare, the rue des Cascades, rue des Couronnes, rue de la Mare again, continuing on the other side, the rue des Envierges. Or freedom not to cross, to stay. But freedom is movement, isn’t it: L’air n’a pas de frontières. Online neither.
Isn’t she lovely?
Is that you, your voice, that’s now part of my head? You said before you went away, I’ll see you in Prague, if we’re still writing. But we’re not writing. How can you be talking to me?
Isn’t she lovely?
Do you mean L’Humanité vendor?
Every Parisienne is a street walker. In a city of tiny flats, women dress to be seen from the pavement. The L’Humanité vendor walks into the Place Henri Krasucki, like me, from the rue des Envierges (the street of the be-virgined; alternative meanings: the street of the be-cleaned, be-emptied, be-unsullied). The clothes she wears are street clothes: not a Chanel jacket (I never saw a Parisienne in a Chanel jacket) but, in Belleville, jeans, a black perfecto, unzipped, a floral sca
rf.
‘Isn’t she lovely?’
Of course she is. I see it now. I saw women for the first time through your eyes, the way men see them: a flash of leg, a curve of breast, never the full woman. You saw them from the side, from behind, always walking away, a flick of scarf, a toss of hair, a glance. You saw the finish, the edge, as it drops boundaryless into nothing, from the corner of your eye. In Paris, where the crossroads are hexagonal not four-pronged, there are more corners, and you had an eye for them. Isn’t she lovely? Even if she’s not, some part of her always is. Choose and you’ll never be satisfied. The one with the legs won’t be the one with the breasts and so on and etcetera. Isn’t she lovely? How can I tell, lost in a forest of a hundred breasts, a hundred legs. Isn’t she lovely? Of course she are.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse/Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse/Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet.
Baudelaire, A Une Passante
They are crossing the road in front of me, the Parisiennes in the Place Henri Krasucki. They choose their directions at the crossroads. It is an illusion: their choice of streets is no wider than mine. They cannot choose to be older, less lovely, just as I cannot choose to be younger, or more so. They may have more time, but they have no more control over their time than I do. They are at a point along the line. They can choose only to move forwards. They cannot choose to skip in time, though they (presumably) have more of it to come. They cannot choose not to move, or to go back. For each pedestrian, there’s no more than one way out. I cross the road to the rond-point of the Place Henri Krasucki.
Tell me who you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are, demands André Breton on the first page of Nadja, his memoir of amour fou. But I always translate it wrong, mixing the living with the dead: hanter (to haunt) with suivre (to follow). Je suis (I follow) = je suis (I am): an old chestnut. Je suis comme je suis, sang Juliette Greco, Parisienne, torch singer: I am how I am. Je suis comme je suis suivi (I am how I am followed) wrote Sophie Calle, artist, Parisienne, employing a detective to trail her for a day, to photograph her in order to prove her existence to herself. What her detective didn’t know is that she knew she was his subject. She followed his following. And she has his photos to prove not only her, but his own existence. M’as tu vue? (Did you see me?), she called the project: I see, I am seen, therefore I am. I see you looking – therefore you are.
Suis-moi jeune homme, says the Parisienne, the street walker: follow me (a whore’s invitation).
Follow me (be me?).
Isn’t she lovely?
Is that you again?
Pourquoi me questionner? Juliet Greco sings, in ‘Je Suis Comme Je Suis’, words by poet Prévert. Why ask me? Wait!
Why is it always you who asks and I who answer? Tell me something. That woman on the street is a prostitute.
How can you tell?
Because, underneath her clothes, she’s naked.
I’ve posed nude for artists.
Did you sleep with them?
No! I posed for money. Stripping is nothing to me. Anyway, how can you tell if she’s selling it or giving it away for free?
I mean L’Humanité vendor: how can you tell just by looking?
Is it because my figure’s too curved/ma taille trop cambrée, sings Juliette Greco (white-faced, kohl-rimmed, all angles, not one woman but a cubist’s model: faceted, a hundred breasts, a hundred legs.) Is it my fault?/Est-ce ma faute? Or is it because the vendor is loitering, not street-walking, because she does not move, does not cross the Place Henri Krasucki? Is it because she does not have the freedom to cross – unless, that is, she finds someone to follow her, to be her?
You’re lovely, you said. And I was one of your street walkers. If only for a moment.
Lovely? Why?
I love… your eyes.
What do you love about them?
I don’t know. I… just… love your eyes.
When you put on your specs (which you needed only for reading) I came into focus. To see the whole woman is to see less than the sum of her parts, which can be counted, multiplied – yet in fragmentation, she lacks something. Manquer (fr), trans: to lack, to miss e.g. I miss someone, I lack something. Tu me manques, trans: you are missing to me, not, I miss you. French flips the perspective from the misser to the missed. The subject changes place with the object. To see the whole woman is to see too little. And at the same time, (too curved?) to see too much.
Je suis comme je suis, Greco sings – or rather talks – over the soundtrack.
I am how I am…
Pourquoi me questionner?
Je suis là pour vous plaire
Et n’y puis rien changer…
Why ask me?
I’m here to please you.
I can change nothing
Que voulez-vous de plus?
Que voulez-vous de moi?
What more do you want? Greco asks. What more do you want of me?
I want you!
The week after we met I broke open a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant: Accept the next proposal you are offered.
Can I make you a proposal? you asked.
Which direction, I thought, if only for a moment, should I choose?
The decision is always instinctive. Think about the way you walk in the city. How some days you take one route; other days, another. Why do you change? Why take one street at the crossroads rather than the next? Boredom, the weather, chance?
Sadness is the girl-equivalent to chance.
Kraus, Aliens & Anorexia
On the Place Henri Krasucki I stoop to pick up a playing card, discarded: the King of Hearts. Chance, you couldn’t make it up, objects find us only when we are ready for them.
So, which direction?
I pick the rue Levert.
I walk up the white stone steps from the rue Levert to the rue du Jourdain, and on until it meets the rue de Belleville in the Place Jourdain at the top of Belleville hill where another sign tells me I have one of les meilleurs vues de Paris. Even higher than the Pyrenees (the rue de Pyrénées, that is, one block down), there is a white church, and there’s the café by Jourdain metro – I used to go there when I lived off the rue des Lilas. Outside the metro, the street is full of noises, people talking to themselves: the bear-voiced woman begging by the café, shoo’d off by the owner, the white-bearded man sitting outside the bakery on an upturned crate, talking, talking, telling a story to thin air.
Real objects do not exist just as they are: looking at the lines that make up the most common among them, you see surging forth – without even having to blink – a remarkable riddle-image which is identical with it and which speaks to us, without any possible mistake, of the only real object, the actual one of our desire.
Breton, Mad Love
Walking back down the hill, I take a different route. The Parisiennes flow by, up and down the rue de Belleville. And they’re lovely. An artwork on the Place Marguerite Boulc’h dite (trans: aka) Fréhel, says Il faut se méfier des mots (be wary of words), art graffiti on the wall by the Aux Folies bar: Fuck you/my love.
Where do I go from here? Which route to follow? How will I choose: boredom, chance, the weather?
I will feel it.
•••
Back at N’s flat in Belleville. Back to my laptop. WiFi: my computer remembers another network, another home page. Connectivity is my resting-place, where freedom is crossing from node to node – the rond-points of the net, each of which has, not four, not six, but a billion connections, and no borders. Everything else is an illusion of movement. Where I am connected I am at home, but the net renders me foreign, is always talking about something going on elsewhere, outside its limits. And each click displaces me further down its routes and branches.
Where was I?
I was finding my trail back through the forest. What should I use to remember my path? Breadcrumbs, stones? White stones?
Oh yes, I’m on the rue de Belleville. Googlemapping so I c
an recall the names of the roads radiating from the Place Henri Krasucki. Now I can name the streets, follow them even, just like In Real Life, though on the virtual rue des Envierges it’s winter, while on the virtual rue du Jourdain it’s already late spring and the trees are in full leaf, transparent, green.
The last time we met, it was winter (would you melt in warm weather?). I never thought spring would come, didn’t want it to. I thought the seasons had stopped dead the last time I saw you. My hair grows too quickly, and my nails. Can I stop, stop, stop them? And if I can’t go back, can I flatten time so it does not slide into memory, so I can see it all the same instant, laid out like a map?
On my screen, the map gives flat information – names and directions: rue Levert, rue de la Mare, rue des Cascades, rue des Couronnes, rue de la Mare again continuing at the other side, rue des Envierges. Or, if you prefer, the street of the Green, the street of the Pond, the street of the Waterfalls, the Coronets, the Pond again, the street of the Be-virgined. I remember when all this was trees… A royal forest with maiden princesses in Belle Ville, the beautiful town. Il faut se méfier des mots, says the sign in the Place Marguerite Boulc’h, named for the Parisian actress who re-christened herself three times, chipping Fréhel, her final handle, from a cliff in Brittany. Be wary of words. Be wary of towns that tell you they are beautiful. If all you can see is the words, the map and the territory look like the same place.
It is the map that engenders the territory.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Looking up from my laptop at the dusky table in the long narrow flat with the long flat window onto the low flat street, I can see no trees, no ponds. The buildings, lower than anywhere else in Paris, frighten me. So much has been done here, at such a low level. Belleville: an outbreak of plague in the 1920s – would you believe it? – families crowded in rooms with fruit-box furniture: the delivery of a piano caused excitement in the street. The area’s turning hip now: the building opposite’s a facade, behind its windows a wrecking ball working over the interior. It’s still a turning point for immigrants – turn in or turn back – tonight it’s the turn of the Chinese prostitutes on the concrete Boulevard de la Villette that knifes through the stunted streets. Belle Ville, a beautiful city, lost. Lives have been lost here; the lives of others have been lost, and survivors have been left to remember. Henri Krasucki, of a 1943 transport of 1,001 Jews to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, one of 86 who lived to tell the tale.