I left the museum that day without declaring the stirring of my loins but deciding to loosen my sense of decorum, which was outmoded and too old for my age anyway. Art was vital—I knew that—but in more ways than I had allowed.
It was during rare moments like these, with Jenna guiding me toward new pools of knowledge, that I was deliriously happy to be in Paris. I never wanted to leave. Despite the bitter taste of some of the medicine being forced down my throat, I felt that the experience was good for me, good for my post-adolescent soul in its quest for new sensations. That was the fantasy. Reality inevitably followed.
Jenna and Nigel had conspiratorially befriended Luc, unbeknownst to me. He was now sitting with us at the dinner table, talking with them, ignoring me. One day he invited the family to accompany him on a day trip to the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, near the village of Maincy in the region Seine-et-Marne, less than an hour’s drive from Paris. As the children were included, I had to come along. There, on Luc’s gill-gray skin, I noted a sudden blush of excitement brought on by the aristocratic grandeur of the 17th-century architecture. Or was it the middle-aged coquette holding onto his arm with all the put-on frail charm of a Marie Antoinette?
The largest château of its time—Vaux-le-Vicomte was the precursor to Versailles—the house that Nicolas Fouquet built was so daringly opulent that it drew the ire of Louis XIV and sealed his former finance minister’s fate. The King himself was at Vaux-le-Vicomte on August 17, 1661, the night Fouquet hosted the debut of Molière’s ironically named Les Fâcheux (The Angry).
Once the curtain had fallen on the play, Fouquet lit up the night sky with a spectacular fireworks display that shone unnatural light over his stately gardens with their cone-shaped trees and spiralling hedges that looked as if traced by a giant Spirograph. It was his final moment of glory.
Louis, suspecting that Fouquet had stolen public money to fund such a home and furious to have been upstaged by a member of his own staff, immediately had Fouquet arrested and eventually jailed him for life in the fortress at Pignerol. Fouquet died there twenty years later.
It was one of those stories of Paris’s past that made my skin crawl. Violence lies always just below the city’s surface beauty; betrayals, beheadings, blood running like water down the cobbled streets. That brutality was palpable still in the texture of everyday Parisian life—the aggressive driving, the bumper-car parking practices, the general rudeness of strangers when you, a tourist, asked for a direction. “Là-bas,” over there. Anything you were ever looking for in Paris was always, coldly, “over there.”
Luc took us on a tour of the château, since restored to Fouquet’s splendorous taste by the present owners, who actually lived on the premises but were far from sight, at least on that day. We strolled through rooms with chandeliers hanging from ceilings that were covered with painted images in gilt frames. We marvelled at the black-and-white marble floor and at the tall, arched windows that once shone light on the moral philosopher Voltaire as he lectured Fouquet’s illustrious guests (no doubt on the folly of hubris) while leaning, perhaps, on the rose-red quartz table mounted by a massive bronze statue depicting hounds savaging a stag.
Afterward, Luc led us deep down into the dungeon, where I imagined Fouquet had probably been first imprisoned, still in his party clothes. The lighting was dim. The stone walls felt damp and cold. We were feeling our way into the gloom, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the blanketing darkness. At that moment Jenna tripped over a stone in the floor and fell. Luc dove at her feet.
He bent to pick her up. He was almost as scrawny as she was, but he was ready to carry her, Prince Charming– like, into the sunshine, to revive her among the roses. The scene made me want to puke.
Back at the Paris apartment, the intimacy thickened at dinner. The meal consisted largely of a single boiled artichoke naked on a large white plate with a small bowl of melted butter at the side. The four of us sat at the dinner table that could easily have accommodated sixteen. We were spread out around the table, with large spaces between us, like points on a compass. I had never eaten an artichoke before. Jenna, Nigel, and Luc were connoisseurs, and almost in unison they each plucked a leaf from atop the topiary-shaped vegetable and, after delicately dipping it in the sauce, clenched down with gritted teeth to scrape off a sliver of flesh.
I watched carefully. I would have to follow their lead if I wanted any dinner, and I would have to make sure I didn’t commit some kind of faux pas lest they mock me some more. I took a leaf and put it in my mouth. It was spiky. I made a face. Jenna pretended not to notice. Luc smothered a laugh. Oh. I see. I am not supposed to eat the whole thing. I spat it out. Shrugged, self-deprecatingly. Soldiered on. We were all of us doing the artichoke striptease, one leaf at a time, round and round the rotund body, penetrating to the heart.
“How sensuous,” Jenna said. Luc moaned in agreement. I looked at Nigel. Shouldn’t he do something? He seemed to be locked inside some kind of inner monologue concerning an obscure philosophy. I was startled to find inside the plant a bearded center protecting the delicacy within. I commented that it looked like a walrus. Jenna said, “It’s a vagina, darling. It’s why the artichoke is the most glorious of aphrodisiacs.” She looked at Luc, a captive audience of one. He applauded her wit. Jenna delighted in being outré, especially at my expense. I plucked at the grizzled bush until I exposed the heart. With one bite I discovered what all the fuss was about. It was tender as a petal, velvety soft and delicate, a taste like spring rain. Jenna was delighted.
“You see, Luc, she isn’t without promise.”
“But Zhennah,” said Luc. “She ez too thin.”
They were speaking as if I weren’t there.
“In Frahnce we like our women not to be too thin. But you, Zhennah, you are pur-fect.”
That was it. I threw my napkin onto the table and stormed off to sulk inside the laundry room, the only place I could have some privacy, but not before—and it even shocked me—I uttered the word “assholes” under my breath but loud enough for all to hear. I was sick of being humiliated because someone else needed to feel superior. It was my one moment of rebellion.
Jenna demanded that I return to the table, and in the most galling way told me to apologize to Luc for my rudeness. I was seething now. I wanted to run away. But I had no money of my own and nowhere to go. I was the au pair, indentured for the rest of my stay in Paris, forced to eat not artichoke anymore, but crow.
I returned, anger making my backbone ramrod straight, and in imitation of Zhennah, proclaimed in a flowery voice dripping with sarcasm, Je m’excuse.
Luc loved it. A few days later he asked for me to go out with him, without Jenna or Nigel. It was a luncheon date in the country with a married couple, friends of his, Mireille and Claude. The destination was Chantilly, the town renowned for its lace, where many great feasts had been consumed at the behest of General Condé, chief courtier of Louis XIV. What was it with Luc and the Sun King?
Condé’s legacy had inspired the establishment of a five-star restaurant that on Sunday afternoons attracted Parisians in search of the religion of food.
Called the Table des Lions and located inside the old fourrière, a walled compound where carriages used to be housed, it was close to the Chantilly forest and château, a hunting retreat at the time of Louis XIV. It attracted a well-heeled crowd. Everyone was dressed in country chic—silk scarves tied just so and well-cut blazers worn with tight but impeccably pressed jeans. As in most French dining establishments I had so far visited that summer, the talk was as thick as the cloud of blue cigarette smoke that hung in the air. The dark wood interior was offset by white linen tablecloths that supported settings of silverware that to me seemed dauntingly French—four forks and an equal number of knives, several differently sized spoons including one as big as a gourd. I observed quietly, wondering how I would tackle it all. I decided to let Luc lead the way. I discovered that day that he was something of a connoisseur, which surprised me, considering tha
t he always looked underfed.
I thought that by taking me there he was offering me a peace pipe of sorts, and I probably tried a little too hard to show that I was grateful. I laughed at his pale jokes. I took a cigarette when he offered one. I looked enraptured by a conversation involving truffles. Luc’s friends—she a pharmacist, he a banker—were enthusiastic gourmands who wanted to identify every ingredient of every mouthful of food. I remember thinking how boring they were, how silly. Still, I played along. I drank the wine appreciatively and, when asked to describe the flavors dancing on my tongue, I said, a little whimsically, that I could taste chocolate and pale blue robin’s eggs. Everyone at the table laughed. It felt good to be away from my keepers.
But even away from Paris, I wasn’t free of its oppressive influence.
There had been several courses—herrings marinated in oil followed by a rabbit in white wine and a veal marengo served with stuffed baked potatoes, peas with bacon, and lettuce. There was strawberry charlotte for dessert and an upside-down apple cake served with eau de vie and black coffee. I thought it was over. Five hours had passed. And then the cheese trolley rolled our way, boasting dozens of choices—Camembert, Gruyère, Roquefort, Brie. Luc lifted a spoonful of a creamed cheese with berries that he wanted to put in my mouth. I guessed that all the rules had changed. He said, “You must eat.” I declined, saying innocently enough, “I am full.”
Zut! Catastrophe!
Luc put down the spoon, the smallest one. He leaned in to me and whispered, “In Frahnce it is impoli to say that, I’m full. It is une gaucherie. You understand?” I understood.
“You never say, I am full. You say non, merci. You politely decline.”
He left the table, ostensibly to wash his hands. His words had smarted.
Later, when we went to the château where Condé had feted legions of guests, I heard the story of his chef who had committed suicide when the fish arrived late at a banquet. I felt his pain. I would have liked to kill myself then and there for being a social embarrassment. In Paris it seemed I would always be on the outside looking in. No matter how much I wanted the city to embrace me, it would always keep me at arm’s length while wagging a finger in my face. I had rarely felt that I fit in—at home, at school, among my peers. But in Paris that feeling of alienation intensified. I didn’t belong there, either. I shuffled back into my life as the au pair, taking the children to the park to play on the swings, playing hide-and-seek amid the statuary of gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, dukes, duchesses, playwrights, painters, and other assorted heroes and heroines dotting the Paris landscape.
A WEEK LATER, we moved away from the Rue de l’Université apartment with its inner courtyard and ever-vigilant concierge, its arched and gated entranceway and elegant stone facade. Luc’s parents were due back from the sunny south, and we had to move to less spacious and less central digs.
We had been faux aristocrats in that rented eight-room apartment. Overnight we reentered the ranks of the proletariat, with four dingy rooms walled in by the rude noise of the incessant street traffic. The new apartment was across town in the nondescript 10th Arondissement, on the Right Bank, no less, far from anything beautiful or historically edifying, a district so blandly practical it was home to two railway stations—Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est.
The assault on our sensibilities was almost too much.
Nigel, for one, responded by slapping one of his energetic and lively boys across the face so hard it made the boy’s nose bleed. Such a sudden decline in standards made Paris seem even more brutal than before.
Luc should have stayed with the apartment we’d left, but there he was, helping the fragile Jenna carry her books up the new stairs. “It’s just for a while, cher Luc. Until we get properly settled.”
He understood reversals of fortune. It was why, I soon discovered, he was still part of our nomadic scene. I also understood the surge of interest in us, in me. He was crafting a connection to North America, a bridge of opportunity.
Unbeknownst to me, Jenna had been talking up her brother-in-law, Colin, proprietor of a successful auction house in Toronto that had a cache of rich clients attached to it. The rooms of Ross Galleries were stacked with fine furniture and objets d’art, exactly the kind of place in which an unemployed Parisian with a sense of entitlement could feel at home. When Luc heard “auction house,” he doubtless thought Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Ross was nowhere in that league. But it was an in, of sorts, and a way to explore the New World in a manner Luc had grown accustomed to—surrounded by beauty and sensual charm.
To make sure that I might be of some use to him in the near future, toward my final days in Paris, Luc, out of nowhere, proposed to show me Paris by night on the back of a motorbike. Since Chantilly I had been keeping my distance. But this sounded like fun. And I didn’t have to talk to him, risk embarrassing myself again. I just had to hold on and enjoy the ride.
He knew the city, knew where the crowds were and weren’t on this late summer night. We roared down main boulevards, almost wiping out whole families, and then bumped down cobblestone streets where there was hardly a person. Paris was mesmerizing at midnight. The lights shone bright through the darkness, velvet lozenges of blurred color, and because I was sitting and watching the scenery whiz by, I got a sense of the city as a panoramic spectacle, dramatic even without the interaction of people. The city’s monumentality was the main event.
I clung to Luc, held tightly to his waist as he whipped around corners and the wind licked my hair. It didn’t matter that it was dishevelled now. I was, belatedly, enjoying myself.
We motored past a café that looked as if it had been painted by Van Gogh. I felt a wave of nostalgia in anticipation of the moment, a few days hence, when I would have to leave this place and all its memories, victories, and defeats. Luc put his foot to the gas. We lurched ahead. I wanted to linger over my reverie, but he stopped in front of a building and said, “Let’s go up.”
It was a friend’s apartment, but the friend wasn’t there. Luc had a key, however. I supposed this was the communal sex pad, where young French aristos came when they wanted to get laid and their parents were at home. A gar-çonnière. Luc sat on the floor in his faded designer jeans, the toes of his cowboy boots worn and dirty, and rolled a joint. He asked did I want some? It just wasn’t my thing. But I knew to say, “Non, merci.” He smiled. Then he inhaled.
He closed his eyes. In a moment he was asleep, and there I was in a strange apartment with an even stranger young man. Who had bad manners now? I let him sleep for about thirty minutes. Then I woke him with a gentle kick. “On y va,” I said. Let’s go. He smiled sheepishly. I helped him up. We didn’t speak on the way back. Couldn’t. The wind was in our ears and our mouths. Then again, there was nothing more to say.
I FOLLOWED A different flight path home. I stopped first in Newfoundland and then changed planes for a direct flight to Toronto. After two months in Paris, city of chic, I gazed despondently at the assembly of my fellow Canadians—a dowdy lot, dressed in cutoffs and T-shirts, without any discernible sense of style. I was reminded of how uninspiring I found my native land.
My mother was waiting for me at the airport. We embraced. I was happy to see her, yet sad too. I had returned with books and postcards and stories of all that I had seen and done, silk scarves and perfumes as presents, and emboldened ambition.
She spoke to me about the neighbor’s dog barking through the night, the fact that my brother was in trouble again, that it had rained and then it had been hot. All the flowers had died. I had returned home to a lunar landscape. I sat next to her in the car in silence. Nothing had changed. Except for me.
I realized in that moment that I had grown even more determined to transcend the narrow confines of my life in southern Ontario. I would return to Paris—but next time on my own terms and better prepared for the challenge. I was about to start my university education and saw it as a means to an end, the goal being freedom and happiness in the most beautiful
city on earth.
Although I had secured an entrance scholarship to the university, I still needed some money to help me get by. Within a few days of my return I went from the glory of the Arc de Triomphe to the whitewashed arches of Toronto’s Princess Gates, entryway to the Canadian National Exhibition, a horse-and-cow event stinking of sweat, candy floss, and manure. I landed a last-minute job on the midway, convincing passersby to divest themselves of seventy-five cents to toss beanbags into a boxed set of squares in order to win a stuffed animal. “Don’t walk by until you’ve given it a try.”
This was my cri de coeur in the final days of the summer of 1979, my last days as an adolescent. My last days at home.
TWO
Wannabe
· 1983 ·
I BOUGHT MY plane ticket with some of the money I had won for making the principal’s list in my final weeks as an undergrad. The funds were earmarked for graduate school, Plan B in case my dream of becoming a writer in Paris didn’t pan out. I had been accepted to start the master’s program in the fall, which was my mother’s idea. She had originally wanted me to be a lawyer. A more practical and rewarding career than writing. But for the last four years I had been writing for the student newspapers, and when my mother saw my name in print, she started to come around to liking the idea of me becoming a journalist. When I took her along with me to some of the shows I was then reviewing as a fledgling dance critic, we’d sit in the best seats and be fawned upon at intermission by publicists and impresarios. She liked that, the idea of me getting attention, as she imagined some of it reflecting on her. But since I was to be a writer, she wanted me to stand head and shoulders above the pack. It’s why she insisted I get the postgraduate degree. “To show that you are a cut above, which you are,” she said. “We both are.”
Paris Times Eight Page 4