‘What’s the daughter like?’ asks Dad, changing the subject.
I pull my knees up and balance my phone on one of them. ‘Delphine? I’m not really sure. I’ve hardly seen her. She’s always on her phone or she’s off running. She’s in a running club. I don’t think she wants to hang around with me.’
I talk to my parents for long enough to remember that they ask a million ridiculous questions and they talk over the top of each other all the time. It’s really freakin’ annoying, so I tell them I have to go. I love them, I do, but it is getting rapidly easier being away from them!
Belleville is a very hilly part of the city, unlike the centre ville of Paris you see in the pictures, so as well as crisscrossing I am all up and down.
Crow is back online.
Isn’t it all je ne sais quoi and frou frou with a croissant on top? she messages.
No! I text back. I actually think you’d like this area more than I do. It’s grungy and dirty and covered in graffiti.
And what about the people at school? Anyone not awful and pompous?
They seem nice. The teachers make them look after me and they speak better English than I do.
Stop worrying, she texts back. You’re going to be fine.
Who is this person? Back at home, sometimes Crow wouldn’t be around at lunchtime because she’d go to the library or somewhere else where there weren’t many people, and she’d despair on her own. She’d read the news and follow Reddit threads all the way to their murky bottoms; she’d sympathise with conspiracy theorists, and she’d fret.
Found the love of your life yet?
Maybe.
TELL!
There’s nothing to tell. He’s in my art class and I told him I thought his pear was very pear-like.
I can’t believe you didn’t say it was pear-fect, writes Crow.
WE WERE SPEAKING IN FRENCH!
I walk without thinking and before I know it, I’ve walked halfway across the city.
I stand on the Pont des Arts, where students wrapped in coats linger like lovers (they surely are lovers, some of them). They are leaning on the railings, embracing on the bench seats dotted along this bridge, and I feel super alone. But we are all also watching the bateaux mouches, the boats that carry tourists along the Seine, and we are all surrounded by the wintry afternoon light. I’m watching the bateaux and the light, but I am also mostly people-watching, of course.
My fingers, gloved in wool, curl around the railing of the bridge. The other hand is entwined nervously in the strap of my handbag, a small corner of my thoughts on pickpockets still.
Though it’s only four o’clock in the afternoon the sky is darkening, the sun descending towards the horizon. In the distance there is a cluster of skyscrapers. They’re so not in keeping with the rest of the city’s aesthetic, and I wonder how the French can bear their ugliness.
I’ve read about this bridge. Lovers used to put padlocks on it as symbols of their love, especially near Valentine’s Day – le jour de la Saint Valentin.
Perhaps I’ll have met someone by Valentine’s Day? Perhaps I will have found someone amazing.
You can’t put locks on the bridge anymore – there are big perspex sheets all along the sides.
The weight of people’s love was threatening to topple the bridge into the Seine.
Sofie
Did you know that snowflakes are fluffy?
Crow
Are you really talking to me
about snowflakes?
What else do you want to know?
Can you take some more photos of the
graffiti for me? Maybe I’ll take up tagging.
Are you looking at my Insta???
… so what if I am?
– Overnight chats with Crow
I have now been in France for two weeks. Fourteen days. I have Instagrammed the following things:
Selfie, with view out of my new bedroom window.
Les Champs-Élysées (and Insta stories of our day).
Jaunty Eiffel Tower shot.
Selfie, post first-day-of-school, me posing cross-eyed.
Croissant, close up, laid on a thin tissue paper – direct from the boulangerie (purchased on the walk to school).
Hot chocolate on a green table at a café near school.
The Louvre! The Mona Lisa!
More photos from the Louvre.
Selfie, with snowflakes falling.
Time-lapse video as I walk from the Moulin Rouge to the Sacré Cœur.
My feet in a puddle of dirty, melted snow on the streets.
Street cleaner, in his green outfit and with his funny green sweeper.
Scungy graffiti.
Dog poop on the footpath.
You could be fooled into thinking everything was croissants and bonheur (well, apart from the poop), but it felt good to post beautiful, funny things on my feed. Things that people would expect. Maybe I can also fool myself into believing I’m not flailing here.
I’m struggling in my Arts Plastiques class. First of all, having school on a Saturday morning seems very rude. ‘This is not bad work, Sofie,’ Véronique says, tracing the lines on my paper with a manicured fingernail. ‘But you can do better, I think. Stop thinking so much.’
I’m not sure how to stop thinking. I just look down at my work. Our task is to draw a human face. We have a mix of magazines, photographs, facsimiles of paintings and drawings and cartoons to take inspiration from.
‘You seem to worry about making mistakes. Just let the pencil sketch freely.’ Véronique gives a sweep of her arm, and repeats the action, saying, ‘Free. Loose. Let yourself fail.’
I’m struggling to make friends. After school I walk out of the gates and, in the café across the road, I spy Olivier. I look again and realise I’m spying Olivier and all of the other people from our Arts Plastiques class. Why wasn’t I invited too? Then at the same time, Léa turns to me and says, ‘I’m sorry, I am late to meet my brother.’ And she runs off.
I stand there feeling rejected and dejected and decidedly square-peggish. I could go over and sit with my class, but I just can’t push my feet that way.
Go and do something beautiful, Crow had said. I mentally check through my Paris must-dos. We are studying la Révolution francaise at school (well, the rest of my class is, and I try to follow as best I can), so the next port of call in my on-foot discoveries of Paris has to be the Bastille.
Upon arriving, I can’t deny I am disappointed to find it merely a large roundabout with a tall column stretching skyward. This is all that’s left to signify the great prison and commemorate the day that the commoners (the Third Estate) committed an act (storming the prison) that would snowball into revolution and overthrow the monarchy?
I sit on the concrete ledge of the Bassin de l’Arsenal, eat the croissant I bought on the way and stare at the cars tootling around.
There’s an iconic painting of the storming of the Bastille – the artist Jean-Pierre Houël depicted it in watercolours of gloomy grey and blues. It’s epic. But also, I know from Wikipedia there were only seven prisoners in the Bastille prison when it was stormed by the partisans.
My croissant finished, I jump down from the ledge and, at random, pick a road running off from the Place de la Bastille and start wandering. On a lightbox bus stop advertisement there’s some scrawled graffiti in sharp black lettering: Macron démission! Stop aux pillages du peuple. Resign Macron! Stop stealing from the people.
In my mind I see President Emmanuel Macron dressed as King Louis XVI. He was the Louis with Marie Antoinette for a wife, and the one the revolution was brought against, the same revolution that saw this mighty monarchy brought to its knees (brought to its knees on the guillotine!).
Crow always talks about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, but thi
nking about the French Revolution in the context of today’s issues makes it seem more real. Even here, in this place where history seems to have been replaced by a column. In the whole time we’ve studied the revolution, I’ve never thought about it this way. It’s easy to be distracted by the wigs and the dresses and the two hundred and thirty years.
The graffiti (I think left by the gilets jaunes) makes me think of Crow and, suddenly, I miss her terribly.
I send her a message: What are you doing today? I am forcing myself to do some sightseeing and I just want to speak some English!
We’ve been texting each other every day, but I’m a little surprised when a reply message bips through almost right away.
You poor thing stuck in Paris. How awful.
Isn’t it one in the morning there? I write.
I can’t sleep. Too hot.
Meanwhile I’m wearing tights under my jeans again, and my cheeks are numb.
It’s freezing here. I feel miserable.
I see a sign that says: ‘Promenade Plantée/Coulée verte René-Dumont’. I have heard about this. I walk up the steps and onto a boardwalk. It’s an old elevated train line that’s been converted into a long stretch of garden and pathway. There aren’t many people out on the coulée. Not many plants either.
And then my phone rings and it’s Crow calling. What the heck? I answer, almost nervously. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she says, like I’m an idiot. I’ve missed her croaky voice. ‘But what about you?’
My heart swamps with self-pity. ‘Crow, it’s really hard. I’m exhausted. My host family is nice, but they’re not my family. And … Oh, I dunno.’
I am glad we are speaking on the phone. It feels easier to speak honestly and directly from my heart to hers.
‘I get it.’ We are silent together for a moment. She doesn’t say, But you wanted to go. She doesn’t say anything. I look out from the promenade, through the bare spindly arms of a tree to an intersection and some cars with their headlights on in the dimming afternoon light.
‘How’s the gorgeous art boy?’
I can’t be too miserable at the way my body reacts to the thought of Olivier.
‘He’s so gorgeous, Crow. Today we talked about how Vermeer painted in a camera obscura to get his paintings to have that photorealistic effect.’
‘That means nothing to me.’ Crow’s bluntness hasn’t bothered me since I was six.
‘I know. But Crow, when I leaned in a spot of oil paint, he went and got a cloth to help me clean it off.’
‘Dreamboat,’ she says, dryly but with kindness.
‘But I just feel like … everyone in my art class is so incredibly talented, and I’m worried I won’t be able to, like, match them or live up to expectations. I’m scared I’m no good. And’ – because now I’m on a roll – ‘why am I even here if I’m no good?’
I miss home, suddenly, intensely. I wonder what Crow is looking at. ‘Where are you? What’s it like there?’
‘It’s one in the morning. I’m in my bedroom. Where do you think I am? It’s so hot here.’ She is quiet for a minute and I try to think of something to say, but then she goes on. ‘What’s it like where you are?’
‘I’ve just found the Promenade Plantée, even though I wasn’t even looking for it. To be honest, for a “green path” it’s not very green. Everything looks dead,’ I say with a bitter kind of ironic laugh because I am truly a little disappointed.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ she asks.
‘I’m just going to walk along this alleged green path – Coulée verte – until I get tired.’
‘Where does it come out?’
‘I have no idea.’ I genuinely don’t. I figure finding out is part of today’s adventure.
‘Well, don’t get lost,’ she says.
I’m glad she can’t see my face because I am grinning and I wouldn’t want her to think I was laughing at her. ‘If I don’t know where I’m going or if I’m going nowhere in particular, how can I be lost?’
‘I’m joking,’ she adds. ‘I’m looking at a map online and I know exactly where you are.’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘I won’t.’
‘I saw some good graffiti. I’ll send it to you.’ I’ve been taking photos of all the political scrawls on walls and bus stops. It’s been good for learning new vocab as I translate them into English. ‘The yellow vests have been out most weekends.’
‘Sounds like my kind of place.’
‘Thank you for calling me,’ I say.
‘Bye, Sof.’
‘Bye, Crow.’
I am doing okay, I think to myself. The plants along this path may look dead, but I’ve read The Secret Garden enough times to know they’re just waiting for the spring.
The late-afternoon sunshine lights up the buildings, with their cream and white sides and their tiny wrought-iron balconies and their dainty tiled roofs, and I’m mostly walking in shadow, the cold almost freezing my nose off. But those buildings and that light! What dreams they must contain.
Shadow and light. The bad illuminated by the good. No, that’s not quite right – the good warming and illuminating things. It makes my heart happy. The fear I’m not where I’m supposed to be dissipates.
There are a million more galleries to look at, streets to walk down, people to meet, secrets to find, and maybe even the possibility of boys (one boy in particular) to kiss. I feel my confidence and the part of me that believes in dreams start to bolster.
And then it starts snowing. Actual snow falls, and flakes land on my hands and my coat. I will never get enough of this.
I take the time to film snowflakes falling, on bare branches, on leaves, on my sleeves. This might cool Crow down. Then I post it to Instagram too because you never know who might need to see snow falling at any given time.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ Delphine asks when I get back to the apartment from my long saunter down the Coulée verte. Delphine is lying on the sofa, her feet up on the armrest. She’s working on her laptop, typing while she talks. She always speaks English with me and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to respond in English or French.
English obviously wins out. ‘I’m not sure. It’s really cold.’ I perch on the edge of one of the couches, unsure if I should settle in or if I’m interrupting her.
‘Maybe you could go to the Musée d’Orsay? It’s free entry.’
I nod, not sure whether I will have the energy to leave the house again tomorrow if I don’t have to. I rub my hands together, not sure if my fingers will ever heat up again. I can’t believe I’m being blasé about the Musée d’Orsay! But then again, I’ve never had the chance to say, ‘Oh well, I’ll go another day.’
‘You really should go to the museum. I think you’ll love it. I could come with you,’ she says.
I sit back against the cushions and tuck my feet up underneath me, feeling warmer already. ‘That sounds really good.’
So Delphine and I take the metro together, and it’s the first time I’ve caught the metro with someone else since that first day when Claudette pushed me from the train like she believed in my independence.
Delphine doesn’t talk much while we’re on the metro. But it’s not an awkward silence at all; when our arms bump as the train rattles through the dark, Delphine’s amused smile is friendly, and I feel like I’ve made another big step in befriending Paris, another step towards making it my home. If I don’t open my mouth, maybe the other passengers will just assume I have always lived here. Today I pass as a local – a local with a friend! – and it is so much more exciting than I could have hoped.
The Musée d’Orsay is right near the river Seine, on the left bank. We must have walked past it on our orientation, but I think I had been too distracted by the river and the jet-lagged-newness. Toby surely wou
ld have pointed it out.
It’s on my list of essential places to visit: an old train station transformed into an art gallery of (mostly) French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Crow would say (in a monotone): Well, I’m very impressed-ionist right now.
We come back up to street level, and the buildings around here are postcard-perfect, I swear. We’re not in Belleville anymore.
We line up to enter the museum and, while we wait, Delphine asks, ‘So you never finished telling me why you decided to do this exchange?’
Here’s how it happened.
Hana had come over for dinner to do her washing (like I said, it is a common occurrence). I was rinsing my paintbrushes in the kitchen sink.
‘So,’ said Hana, ‘I was reading about this foreign exchange program for Australian high school students, and I thought Sof might be interested in doing a five-month exchange in France.’
France. In a split second I was there! The Eiffel Tower! The Mona Lisa! Dark jazz clubs. Baguettes. Croissants. Striped t-shirts.
Okay, so all the images flicking through my head were from movies and songs and ideas of France. Because how could France be possible? It was so far out of reality’s reach I actually couldn’t properly imagine it.
Dad didn’t even put his book down. ‘Sounds great, Han.’
I’d heard about people’s hearts leaping in their chest and always thought it was metaphorical, but had I been in an MRI machine the doctor would have seen my genuine anatomical heart take a quick jump towards my chin.
‘Are you okay with not eating for a year or so, Annie?’ he asked, peering over the top of the pages.
‘We could stop paying our bills too, Pete,’ Mum replied, her voice sharp with sarcasm. ‘Why not? France is worth it.’
‘Well, fortunately, I’m bringing it up because I’m offering to help pay for her to go,’ said Hana.
There was silence around the lounge room. Mum and Dad looked at Hana. Hana looked at me. I looked from each one to the other.
I didn’t even care they were talking about me in front of me. For once, I didn’t feel the need to shout, ‘Hey! I’m here, you know!’ I think I realised at that point that this could actually truly happen if the next few minutes went well.
This One is Ours Page 6