As I click it, Mum’s reply comes through: Explosion in Paris near Eiffel Tower.
I sit very still, but a strange feeling floods through me. It is fear, as though any second now this street, this building, this room, this me could be blown to smithereens. But it is also a kind of excitement, which makes me feel terrible.
I quickly text Mum back: I’m fine. With my Art class.
Then I message Crow: I’m fine! We didn’t even know!
I wait for her link to load, look around at the group – heads bowed over drawings, noses almost pressed to paper to capture details. Olivier rubs his thumb along a line of charcoal, smudging it just a touch.
Just a touch. Of his thumb.
But – the message. The disaster. The fear …
The news article is short. Reports of an explosion in the Paris metro. All trains stopped.
‘Something exploded,’ I say out loud, and somehow it comes out in French. I don’t quite believe it myself. I don’t feel qualified to share this news.
A few people raise their heads and look at me. I hold up my phone, as if presenting evidence, and the class begins to murmur. One by one, each person picks up their phone.
‘Mais jen’y crois pas …’
‘Oh là là …’
Véronique is stern. ‘Please feel free to go home. If for any reason you can’t get home, come back here until it’s safe to do so.’
Home – both Melbourne home and Belleville home – feels very far away and if I could teleport to either one of them right now I would.
Extra museum security guards have appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and are silently waving people towards the exits. Everyone feeds each other with little bits of information as we gather our things and leave:
It was a car bomb. They’d shot a suspect dead.
Actually, there was an accidental fire.
No, it really was a bomb.
It’s so hard to know what’s real news.
What is real is the metro is closed down. No trains home.
I try to call Claudette, but the coverage seems to be jammed. I can’t connect.
Now it isn’t a bomb at all, but the threat of gas released in the metro.
It is the yellow vests, it is just a train strike, it is terrorists.
I want to panic. But I also want to keep my shit together. This is just another test in the series of tests as part of the rather big experiment of Sofie Visits Another Country All On Her Own.
‘Can I walk you home?’ asks Olivier.
His offer feels entirely overwhelming. But I play it cool. I wave a hand at him, doing my best Hana. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ He looks concerned, peering at me from behind his curly brown hair that is falling artfully across his face. I’m not so scared that I am beyond noticing things like this. I draw a lock of his hair in my mind.
‘I can get a Vélib,’ I explain. The Vélib is the street bike thing I’ve not actually used before, but it doesn’t look too hard to work out. You just have to have a credit card, and Mum gave me one to use in emergencies. And if this isn’t an emergency, then I don’t know what is!
But there are no bikes left when we get there. I feel wobbly. Please stay with me, I think. Please offer again to walk me home.
‘Come on,’ Olivier says. ‘I’ll walk you home.’
My heart! It smashes against my breastbone.
We walk along streets and people hurry alongside us. No-one really looks at each other. A few people seem alarmed, but most are just getting on with their walk home. I wonder if we are in this together or if everyone is suspicious of one other.
It seems strange to have a normal conversation in such an abnormal situation. But what else is there to do? Conversation will keep us anchored in reality.
‘Are you enjoying your exchange?’ Olivier asks.
‘I am. I’ve dreamed about coming to Paris for a long time.’ He nods, smiles, and so I go on. ‘I miss home though. My family. They’re all going to our holiday house this weekend. It’s my grandfather’s house, really. They’ll take him down there to give him a break from the nursing home. It’s a good place for drawing – lots of trees and details for landscapes.’
‘Véronique says trees are good practice for learning to draw with flow,’ he says. ‘There are no straight lines in nature.’
‘That’s true. I hadn’t thought about it like that. I’ve always found it hard to capture nature in my drawings. It’s a constant challenge for me.’
‘I like the beach,’ says Olivier. ‘But not really the countryside. My—’
He is interrupted by a loud bang. My stomach lurches with instant fear. I don’t even have time to react before he grabs my arm and we stumble away from the side of the road.
When we look around, unblown-up, we figure out the bang was from a car driving over a plastic bag, causing it to pop. That was all it was. Relief comes out of me in the form of one big breath.
‘This isn’t right,’ Olivier says. ‘We aren’t supposed to live like this.’
‘But there’s nothing we can do.’ (There is definitely nothing I can do. He is still holding my arm. I’m amazed my feet are still on the ground.)
I can tell that the bang frightened him. Not just surprised him, but frightened him. Seeing Olivier scared makes him less dream, more human person, and this is where I pinpoint my crush blowing out into Real Feelings. I hug his arm and it feels appropriate, and not out of the ordinary.
We walk along the Rue Vieille du Temple with our arms linked – cars and taxis are banked up along it, their headlights and tail-lights illuminating the narrow road and the brown-grey stone buildings – and we talk. And we step up and down and on and off the curb to dodge worried-looking people.
‘Putain de merde, I am so angry.’
Olivier makes me think of Crow. She would be angry too.
‘But what can you do about it?’ I ask him again.
Olivier bristles. ‘I can’t do anything about it. Nobody can. We have a weak government. They need to protect people, make decisions for peace. That is democracy.’ He speaks so fiercely I get a fright. I haven’t heard him talk like this before. I haven’t heard him care so much. ‘That is our right.’
I care too. When we talk about privilege and war and climate change, I feel fear and worry and hope and confusion … but it’s all so much I don’t know what to do about it or even what to say.
When Crow is angry, she knows exactly what she wants to say. ‘And you know it’s America’s capitalist greed that’s caused all this unrest in the Middle East and inflamed racial and religious tensions all around the world. We’re victims!’ she’d said once. And she wrote an essay that won two prizes and delivered a speech with a snarl on her face. Even the teachers are frightened of her.
The thing is, if a sixteen-year-old girl like Crow can see these things, then surely the people in charge can see them too? I get that power is complicated, but I can’t do anything about anything. Someone in charge has to though.
At least Olivier still has his arm entwined with mine. We walk in silence for a little bit as the neat stone buildings give way to the slightly grubby shopfronts that mark the 11th and then the 20th arrondissements.
‘Did you know that when World War II broke out, they closed the museums in Paris and took the art to safe places for storage?’ I say.
‘But of course,’ he replies.
I try to think of something else interesting. ‘It’s a cold night to walk the streets of Paris. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ And just like that, he lets go of my arm. But before I can even feel disappointed, his fingers curl into mine and we are holding hands.
I can’t bear to look at him because the smile on my face is too large.
From a horrible situation – we still don’t know what h
as happened – I can’t help but feel a most incredible thing is blossoming.
The morning after the metro closure and the long walk home, some people from school ask me to go to the movies with them. Well, Léa does: ‘We’re going to the cinema on Friday. Do you want to come?’
Claudette seems a bit annoyed when I ask her permission to go. ‘Bah, oui, bien sûr.’ Then, as an afterthought: ‘But come home by eleven. And take the metro. Don’t walk. Delphine says you walk everywhere.’
‘I like walking.’ I also like the expression bah, oui. It makes me think of Crow rolling her eyes, going well, derrrrr.
‘Are you afraid of the metro since … what happened?’ Claudette asks.
I shake my head, trying to suppress a smile as I remember my walk with Olivier. ‘No.’
‘Good.’
I’d noticed little, curious things about the city as we’d walked home that night – even with the distraction of the hand-holding. Tiny fragments. Tiny beautifuls.
After I’d made it home that night, I’d made notes for a Panic Map, with landmarks showing where the plastic bag had popped; where I heard a dog bark; and where I saw two homeless people lying over the metro grates that would usually offer warmth because of the trains running underneath, but which would remain cold that night.
As I sketched, the group message chat with the other exchange students who lived outside of Paris lit up with messages ping ping ping ping. They wanted to know what it had been like when the trains went down and the city was in momentary panic. I didn’t tell them about the hand-holding (even though I haven’t stopped thinking about it and have taken to entwining my fingers to remind me how it had felt when Olivier’s fingers had fitted in with mine) – but I did tell them about the walk across the city.
That night, when we were a bit more than halfway home, the network must have unjammed because our phones came alive again, messages pinging through – Olivier and I had to drop each other’s hands to check our phones – and within a minute Claudette had called me.
‘Sofie, where are you?’ she asked in English, her voice worried.
I told her I was with a friend and we were coming up the Rue de Belleville, and she made Delphine run down and meet us.
‘Are you all right?’ Delphine asked me, the reflective panels on her running shoes glinting in the streetlight. ‘Bonsoir,’ she said politely to Olivier, and they gave les bises.
‘Salut, Delphine,’ Oliver said, and I hadn’t realised they knew each other. But neither of their tones were super warm. I glanced from one to the other, trying to work them out.
Back at the house, Claudette and Léon were surprised to see Olivier with me, but greeted him warmly and explained they were friends with his parents. Small world. Claudette offered for Olivier to stay and have dinner with us because it was getting late and who knew how long it would take him to get home.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said politely. ‘My father has already sent a car.’
I felt like a tightly strung harp. Like I was taking up all the room or, at least, my feelings were. I felt like everyone could see me, could hear my heartstrings go plink plink plink plink plink plink plink thrummmmmmmmmmmm.
Also – his father was sending a car? Even my harp-self realised this wasn’t an ordinary thing. Who was he?
Olivier hadn’t seemed fazed or different as he chatted with Claudette and Léon. There wasn’t a skerrick of the frightened Olivier I’d glimpsed on our walk home, and soon he had a message to say his car was waiting. We all said bonsoir politely, and I waved him goodbye in the hall. His return wave from the elevator had me smiling to myself as I closed the door.
Back in the apartment, Claudette and Léon looked at me with relief. I guess it would be quite terrible if I were damaged while I was in their care.
‘I’ll make us a tisane,’ said Delphine, and we all sat around the television in the living room, the news on while we murmured theories to each other. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I still found space to be amused at how all French news hosts seem to look exactly the same.
‘Ah, an update,’ said Léon, and he jumped up to stand closer to the television, to hear better.
I felt drained, but I leaned forwards to concentrate. The French speak so fast.
‘What a relief,’ said Claudette.
Delphine repeated the news, for my benefit. It turned out it wasn’t a bomb, but a mechanical failure resulting in an explosion in the metro. They are redoing a bunch of stations, and it had just been one of those unfortunate workplace accidents.
Bonne nuit.
I had hoped Olivier might be in the group going to the movies on Friday, but it seems like this is more the music crowd.
As well as Léa and Amandine, there’s Victor-with-the-shaved-head and a girl called Maleeka I haven’t met before. We go to see a Hollywood blockbuster and they buy my ticket for me. Even though the cinema could be a Hoyts back home, with the same posters and the smell of popcorn, it does feel different. Special, in a way, though I feel a bit silly for thinking so. The others all chatter in fast French as we find our seats. I catch phrases here and there.
The movie starts and a Big Hollywood Star delivers his first line … and it’s not him! It’s an entirely different voice and it’s entirely in French. It’s so weird!
‘Eh!’ Léa, sitting next to me, notices my surprise and laughs. ‘In France you can choose VO, which is version originale—’
‘This is dubbed,’ explains Amandine in a whisper, sitting on my other side. ‘But it’s better like this for us. Does it bother you?’
‘Je m’en fiche,’ I say. It is a new phrase I’ve learned: ‘I don’t give a damn.’ I even attempt a little shrug.
They laugh, which was my intention. I suppose I am basically French now. And my confidence pushes me to steal a handful of popcorn right out of Léa’s bag without asking. She just tilts it in my direction for easier access.
‘Merci.’ I’m starting to feel comfortable and I can’t believe how happy it makes me.
I understand about half of the film, but can fill in the blanks by the Very Dramatic acting and explosions. It’s not really my kind of thing. Je m’en fiche. I am just happy to be included. It is nice to sit in the dark with new friends and handfuls of popcorn taken in turn.
Out on the street, it has snowed! And it’s still snowing. The footpath is wet and slushy, but snow is piling up around trees and shrubs in the park opposite in a picturesque way.
My friends all light up cigarettes and casually blow smoke, while I try to act cool about it. Back home I know only a handful of people my age who smoke. Some people would have a ciggie at parties but it isn’t like this.
I learn a new word: une clope. It means cigarette, but in slang! Like a ciggie. I still don’t want to smoke them, but I am happy to know the word.
I look it up later on the internet and apparently 40 per cent of French teenagers smoke. That’s unreal! C’est dingue!
‘You don’t smoke?’ asks Victor, who I’ve figured out now is the petit-ami of Amandine.
I shake my head.
‘I’ll probably stop when I’m thirty,’ explains Maleeka. ‘Maybe.’
Even though I am basically French now – with my French friends and my French-dubbed movie – the slang, like the smoking, is still impossible to understand. Impossible!
‘Allez! On va faire un MacDo,’ says Victor.
And lo, I am inducted into what I learn is a popular pastime of French teenagers. It’s basically French for ‘Let’s go on a Macca’s run’.
Parts of the footpath are slick with ice, and I tread carefully. As we walk, Maleeka tells a dramatic story, at such a speed I decide to just enjoy the sound of her voice and the expression on her face. The others laugh, gasp and add shocked ‘Mais, non!’ from time to time.
‘… un truc d’ouf!’ she finishes.
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This is one expression Delphine had explained to me: ‘Truc equals thing. You can use this when you’ve forgotten the word for something or if you’re not being specific. But ouf’ – she laughed – ‘it’s fou, the word for crazy, in reverse. You swap the syllables, so the word goes upside down. In a sense.’
That’s when I finally understood verlan, the slang word for French slang. It’s the word l’envers – meaning back to front – but the word itself is turned upside down and inverted. Ver-lan. L’en-vers.
While my brain is buzzing, I try to tell the group – in my little French, my broken Franglais – about how I am going to be an artist. Je voudrais être artiste. At first I’m not sure whether I should reveal my Instagram account (130 new followers since I arrived in France!) but I cross my fingers and my toes that they like me and the stuff I’ve been posting.
We follow each other online.
At McDonald’s, over un Big Mac avec des frites, I learn a little more about their home lives, their backgrounds. They all live around me – some within the périphérique and some just on the other side. They are dance students, musicians, writers in training.
‘My cousin takes piano with Delphine Durant,’ says Hassim. ‘He said she’s hyper-intelligent, but a bit of a rabbit joy.’
‘A what?’ I ask.
Un rabat-joie. We google it. Buzzkill.
I kind of agree, but also not really. Delphine is always so busy and rushing around. I don’t think someone so interested in something can be a buzzkill. Delphine is always neat, in spite of her hurry, so put together. I can easily imagine her at home in a designer house, playing a piano.
It is 10 pm when we head home. If it was just me, I would walk, but we’re all going in pretty much the same direction, so I get the metro with them.
I feel part of things. It is as if I could see us all from above. A group of youths, jeunes, ados. All swiping our Navigos, boop boop, and Maleeka jumping casually over the turnstile. Farewelling each other with, ‘À la prochaine!’ and ‘Salut!’ ‘Salut!’
Back at the apartment I remember to shake the snow off my coat before I go inside. Imagine being the kind of person who has to shake snow off their clothes! Funny how it’s these small things that really remind me I am in another country. I send Crow a message: I am having a grand adventure.
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