I am casual, carefree, letting my jacket flap open to the elements because winter is well and truly done, done, done. She is wearing a blousy scarf, all silky and floral printed. Effortless chic. I still have not attained it – perhaps it comes with age.
Before I came to Paris a part of me felt it was a bit touristy and cliché to go to a brasserie. Of course I still wanted to do it, desperately, and it filled at least one corner of my daydreams. But I love that the reality of life in France is that you do go to brasseries – you can stand at the bar and quickly drink your café express, or you can sit on one of the chairs (yes, wicker, cane, whatever they’re made of – probably some kind of plastic these days) and spend time watching the world go by.
Except this morning is different. Véronique and I don’t go to any old brasserie. We go to the Deux Magots. Véronique takes me to the Deux Magots!
‘Voila,’ she says, as we sit down on wicker chairs at one of the outside tables. ‘On est bien là. Everyone should go to the most famous brasserie in Paris at least once in their life.’
‘Do you know who used to come here?’ I ask, trying to keep a wondrous, disbelieving tone out of my voice.
‘But of course. Sartre. Simone de Beauvoir.’ She is matter-of-fact.
A waiter in a full black suit with a crisp white shirt and apron takes our order.
Once he’s walked away, I say excitedly, ‘Yes, exactly! Hemingway!’
‘Julia Child.’
That one makes me laugh.
Our coffees come carried on a tray and are set down with a flourish. Each one comes with a little chocolate with the café’s logo on it, which I like very much and immediately put in my pocket as a souvenir.
‘Tu veux une cigarette?’ asks Véronique, while we wait for our food. She pulls a very fancy pack of slim cigarettes out of her pocket.
‘I don’t usually smoke,’ I say.
There’s a little pack of matches sitting on our table – again, emblazoned with the logo – as though if you strike a match at the Deux Magots you might just strike Jean-Paul Sartre back into being (although what would he know?).
‘But I would quite like to try,’ I explain. ‘Is that okay?’
She lights the match and puts it to the cigarette. Inhales. ‘But of course.’
She pushes the packet across to me, then turns her head to exhale, the smoke wafting away. She taps the ash into the ashtray.
I reach over and take a cigarette, rolling it between my fingers. Then I bring the cigarette to my mouth and already I hate the way it feels and tastes on my lip. I strike the match. As I light the cigarette and wave the match quickly back and forth to extinguish it – for this brief moment – I exist across time. I am a painting, I am fiction, I am a brief flash of light.
I inhale, cough the smoke back out. ‘That’s really very disgusting.’
We both start laughing. I like Véronique’s gravelly deep laugh.
I rest the cigarette in the ashtray. I know I won’t go back to it.
‘Are you looking forward to going home in Australia?’ she asks, in English.
I smile inside at her little mistake – or, rather, quirk of translation; we have never spoken English together before and maybe I thought she didn’t know how. It’s nice to be surprised.
‘Sort of,’ I say, and it’s the closest to the truth I can get for now. ‘I miss my family.’ Again, truth. ‘But I am going to miss my life here. I feel like I’ve changed a lot. Inside.’
She doesn’t say anything, and I’m not really sure what I expect or want her to say. She hasn’t yet touched her coffee.
‘Were you happy with the exhibition?’ Véronique asks, and all the emotions from the day rush through me again: pride, anxiety, gratitude.
‘It was more than I had hoped for,’ I say. ‘It felt very special. Thank you for everything.’
‘I am impressed, Sofie, with the way you have developed your work since you arrived. You’re producing more confident pieces, and exploring different methods and styles. I received very positive comments from friends and colleagues on your pieces.’
My heart leaps with ego and possibility. Very positive comments! Maybe there is a future for me. Maybe there is a future for my art.
‘Keep challenging yourself. Keep experimenting – you cannot fail if you work hard. You do want to come back to Paris to study?’ she asks, staring down at me through her half-moon glasses with red plastic frames. ‘Is that something you have been thinking about?’
I don’t reply straight away, but I nod my head. My fingers dart across my lap, nervous. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, that is something I want to do.’
We share a look. It feels important. I feel like I’m becoming someone new.
Véronique stubs her cigarette out. ‘Good.’
But we don’t discuss it further.
She says nothing about the cigarette I left to smoke itself out in the ashtray. A good reminder to let people try new things with no expectations.
‘Goodbye, Sofie,’ Véronique says, and we give les bises. ‘Until next time.’
Delphine and I meet to take a walk through the Cimitière du Montparnasse. The cemetery is not a gloomy place to be. It’s filled with respect and flowers and trees.
I don’t make a map of this cemetery today because there’s one right here with everything I need. A map to show you where Serge Gainsbourg is (singer – his grave covered in metro stubs and flowers and cigarette butts), Marguerite Duras (writer – her grave is decorated with pens!), Alfred Dreyfus (‘J’accuse!’ says Delphine, and I vow to look it up later), or Charles Baudelaire.
Delphine wants to show me the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. ‘They’re buried together. It’s sickeningly romantic. You’ll love it.’
The gravestone is plain, though there are flowers and trinkets on it.
‘It is romantic,’ I say slowly. ‘But maybe I’m not drawn to romance as much as I once was.’ It’s dazzling to think how much I’ve changed after five months, one doomed relationship, one political awakening and fifty million croissants.
We sit on a park bench, surrounded by the past and so many lives lived – lived well, lived poorly, lived short and long – and the day is so beautiful and so perfect, and if I were still a romantic I’d want to kiss someone in this cemetery under the springtime trees. I will find someone to kiss, sometime, probably. I don’t know who they are yet, and I’m not in a hurry.
‘What should we do now?’ Delphine asks. ‘It’s your last day in Paris.’
‘And on such a beautiful day, let’s just sit here a little longer.’ I don’t get my phone out. My fingers don’t draw patterns on my knee. I just sit back on the bench, with birdsong and sunlight.
But although Delphine and I sit quietly, our sitting with each other is important. She pulls a paperback book out of her jacket pocket – like a character in a movie, I kid you not – and she bumps my shoulder softly and I bump her back, then she settles in to read.
I watch the new green leaves on the trees wink and wave in the light, listen to the faint chatter of tourists searching for the particular headstone they have come to find, watch a city worker dressed all in green replace the bag in a nearby bin. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before now but a lot of public bins in Paris are just short basketball hoops with transparent green bin bags attached. Am I ruining this moment by thinking about garbage? No. Garbage can be beautiful too.
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, I am so happy to be in this beautiful city, and even happier I know how to appreciate and accept its complexities of beauty. And I’m happy to be with Delphine, this new friend who has, over five short months, become so important to me.
This moment is magnificent. It is fireworks and soaring orchestral music. It is like looking at the Winged Victory for hours and it is beating my own wings to fly.
I hope we will know each other forever.
I am ready to go home now.
I am ready to work hard.
I am ready to have my voice heard.
Sofie
I think my phone is listening to me.
Crow
Yes, it is. I’ve told you this.
D and I visited JP Sartre’s grave yesterday
and now I keep getting recommended quotes.
I don’t think that’s your biggest issue.
How’s this: ‘There may be more beautiful
times, but this one is ours.’
…
Crow?
Yeah. I feel that one.
– Overnight chats with Crow
Then, suddenly, it is my last morning in Paris. The view from my bedroom window is just as grey as the day I arrived, but I glory at the sight. I fly out at 2 pm.
When I landed in France those few months ago, I felt so grown up, like I was a child who had been turned out into the world. Now, after everything that’s happened, it is as though I’ve lived a thousand lives. I’ve forgotten everything, learned it again, and then realised I was wrong.
I feel part of the world in a way I don’t think I have before. In fact I know I haven’t.
The famille Durant take me out. We go to the top of the Tour Montparnasse because I haven’t gone before. More than one person has said I should go to the top of the Montparnasse tower because you get the best view of Paris – purely because the ugly tower isn’t in that view! The lift is ear-popping and we’re surrounded by tourists – and I don’t feel like a tourist.
We take a photo of us all together using an automatic postcard stand that costs two euros a go. You can choose a frame and other decoration. Léon thinks it is hilarious and digs around in his pocket for more coins. ‘One for you, and one for us,’ he says.
I can see the Parc de Belleville.
I can see the Sacré Cœur.
Everywhere I turn there is something new to see as well.
I panic a bit when I realise how much of Paris I haven’t seen yet – let alone the rest of the country, the world, the universe.
‘I should have gone for a walk through the Bois de Boulogne,’ I say to Delphine.
‘When you come back we can run through it,’ she says.
When I come back. I wonder if coming back to Europe is a possibility. I have been thinking a lot about my giant climate footprint.
‘Maybe I won’t ever come back,’ I say. ‘Maybe when the climate revolution comes, they’ll ground all aeroplanes. International travel will be something we just talk about, like, “Remember when …?” as we walk and ride and train our grandchildren around.’
‘Maybe.’ Delphine leans against the railing, the Eiffel Tower behind and below her. ‘I don’t think I will even have children, let alone grandchildren. But if I do, what will their lives be like?’
It is easy to be incredibly frightened when thinking about the world.
I circle the viewing deck many times, taking in all the angles of the city.
Over there is the Panthéon. There the Gare du Nord. Les Invalides.
I think about Haussmann and the way he redesigned Paris to give it form and function, but how in order to do so he had to destroy homes and cemeteries and disrupt life. It must have been terrible for everyone living here at that time. They would have felt like their world was ending.
This city is like an onion with its layers of human joy and misery and if you wander with an open mind and open eyes, you’ll see them.
Maybe the whole world is like that.
I take photos. I think about posting some. I don’t. I might later because my Insta has become a place to record my history; it’s become a map of its own, marking the way I’ve moved through the world and the way I’ve looked at it.
Faces, places, wide open spaces.
So now. Now I’m going to take my open mind and open eyes home. I can’t wait to see home with this new vision.
I have something to say, and I’m starting to learn what that is.
Delphine puts her whole self into what she believes in, channelling her worry and energy into music and activism.
Léon allows himself to dream (by bringing nightmares to life).
Claudette sees the best way to get through reality to make dreams happen.
Crow and I have plans.
Poster plans and talking plans and action plans.
I see more beauty than ever – in people, places, things – and I see beauty in the broken and the dirty and the lost. It’s a revelation. I glory in the messy and the uncomfortable. It’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s easy to be overwhelmed, but I trust my feet, my arms, my heart and my mind.
At least I think I do.
I feel like I’m at the start of something frightening and exciting.
The world might be ending, but we’re only just beginning.
Author’s Note
The title of this book comes from a quote attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre. I have searched in English and French but haven’t, at the time of printing, been able to pin down the source. But it was so perfect and rang around my head as I wrote, so I want it to be real. Allegedly, it goes like this:
My dear
There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.
Look back, look forth, look close, there may be more prosperous times, more intelligent times, more spiritual times, more magical times, and more happy times, but this one, this small moment in the history of the universe, this is ours.
And let’s do everything with it. Everything.
Falsely yours,
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre
See what I mean? And there were four books that I used most in the writing and the rewriting of this book: Guy Debord’s 1967 La Société du spectacle – though I also read it in English as The Society of the Spectacle, where it was only slightly less difficult to understand; Greta Thunberg’s book of speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference; Asger Jorn and Guy Debord’s artists’ book, Mémoires; and Beauty is in the Street: A visual uprising of the May 68 uprising by Johan Kugelberg with Philippe Vermès (ed).
I couldn’t have written the book without The Art Assignment, Paul Taylor’s videos for French language hilarities, Jay Swanson’s YouTube channel for seeing what the weather was doing in Paris on any given day, and Paris 68 Redux on Insta for framing the posters of the Atelier Populaire in a modern context.
Though I have been back since, my experience living in France was village life in the Lot region circa 2006. My days were spent driving three children around in a Renault station wagon, singing Louise Attaque and the Magic Numbers. I attended zero protests, unless you count the kids protesting against eating one savoury crêpe for dinner before moving on to Nutella.
This book is set in the months between January and May 2019. I have gleefully spliced real events with made-up ones, and real places with made-up or misremembered ones. All errors are my own.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Kristina Schulz, Clair Hume and Cathy Vallance at UQP, for being so patient and supportive as I took so much time to finish this book. I feel very lucky to have had Melissa Keil work on the copyedit – thank you for getting it, and for making it better. Thank you, Vanessa Lanaway, for the proofread. Thank you, Astred Hicks, for another kickarse cover.
Thank you, Beck Bergin, for leaping with me when you or I thought: Why not move to France and get jobs? Thank you to Emmanuelle Vauché, and Katline, Tony and Kevin Demeulemeester, to whom this book is dedicated, for giving me a home in Martel. I feel very lucky to know you all, and to have watched you three grow up to be such politically engaged, socially conscious global citizens.
How can I repay you, Beth Herwood, for always opening your house, and your Montmartre bars, to me? Or Aurélie and Vince
nt, and Baptiste and Émilie, who take time for me, feed me, and expand my vocab whenever I visit?
Thank you to Lena O’Donnell, Hannah Cartmel and Lauren Maserow for sharing your experiences of going on foreign-language exchange trips. I wish I could have used more of your anecdotes and mistakes, but your truths are too strange for fiction.
Thank you to Kate Russell and Clare Humphries for helping me land on a title when I circled around it for ages, and for reminding me that singing together makes everything good again, even when you’re on a deadline.
I am so grateful to Lili Wilkinson and Vikki Wakefield for the ego-boosting endorsements.
And dear Sun Bookshop, and The Younger Sun, I love you – and all who work and have worked in you. As I write this, things are very strange, and I hope by the time this book comes out, our doors are open again, and we’re ready for a party.
Pandemics aside, our times are still strange, with our planet in peril and our futures uncertain. But while we’re here, in our ‘small moment in the history of the universe’, let’s make noise, make art, and make change.
Also by Kate O’Donnell
UNTIDY TOWNS
Shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards Shortlisted for the Readings Young Adult Book Prize
Seventeen-year-old Adelaide is sick of being expected to succeed on other people’s terms. She knows she just has to stick it out at school for one more year and then she’ll be free. Instead, she runs away from her fancy boarding school back to her sleepy hometown to read and dream.
But there are no free rides. When Addie’s grandad gets her a job at the local historical society, she soon finds out that it’s dusty and dull, just like her new life. Things change when she starts hanging out with Jarrod, a boy who seems full of possibilities. But it turns out he’s as stuck as she is. And Addie realises that when you want something in life, you’ve actually got to do something about it.
Written with heart and humour, this gorgeous tale will leave you smiling. – Fiona Wood
This One is Ours Page 19