Paris Times Eight

by Deirdre Kelly

  Nureyev had called me “Giselle.” But in those days I felt more like Cinderella, happy as long as I was quietly toiling away. For a long time he remained my secret. I told no one, least of all my mother, what the legendary dancer had done for me. I didn’t want her to spoil the magic of that time in Paris with some flippant remark about how I needed to stop, once and for all, mooning over the ballet. She had never understood what she called my “obsession.”

  Nureyev died of AIDS on January 6, 1993, almost exactly two years after my cherished encounter with him. I watched his funeral on a scratchy television in my new, threadbare Toronto digs. He lay in state in the very place to which he had once taken me, hand in hand.

  As I watched the international dignitaries streaming past his body, I recalled how Nureyev had put me in a seat reserved for luminaries, how he had granted me a rare glimpse into his world of hard work and beauty. I remembered also the warmth and strength of his hand as he led me through Paris in search of a mutually cherished dream—the transcendent power of art. I cried for the loss of him, the loss of my dream.

  But, and I guess this is the happily ever after part, I won. I got my job back, my reputation restored. A thirteen-word technical term describing a skating maneuver did not constitute plagiarism, an arbitrator ruled in a precedent-setting, sixty-eight-page judgment. As for the merits of the previous charge, the article involving arts medicine used by management to establish a pattern of behavior, it was considered so weak that it was thrown out of court.

  I was, to my surprise, awarded almost four years of back pay, then equivalent to the cost of a decent downtown Toronto house. The Globe had early on offered me a small cash settlement, likely hoping I would go away quietly. But I wasn’t fighting for the money. All I had ever wanted was what I prayed for that night in Paris—my job and, through it, my connection to the world of art left intact.

  This was a huge win, a trailblazing case that made national headlines. But the accusations had turned some colleagues against me, perhaps because they were frightened that they could be next. There was one notable exception. One colleague had early on volunteered to assist in fighting the charge against me. He said that what I was being accused of, lifting a description of a fact from a press kit, was par for the course in daily journalism. “If this charge is allowed to stand,” he had said, first in a passionate letter announcing his interest in defending me and later on the stand, “then all journalists stand on a gallows trapdoor.” It is said that it takes just one good man in a room of a hundred to make a difference. He was my one good man.

  But there was another accomplice: my mother. While she was, through most of my tear-stained battle, struggling with her own financial ups and downs, and was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy herself (like mother, like daughter), her advice to me to document events at work proved invaluable. My prodigious memory combined with my equally prodigious note-taking had the opposition so tongue-tied that at one point the company’s counsel, trying to discredit me, accused me of having doctored my notes after the fact, inserting self-serving lies in them. To which I replied that it had been my mother who had advised me, my mother who had smelled the rat, my mother who had properly instructed me as to what to do. “And,” I said, my voice rising with genuine feeling for the first time in the trial (I was meant to seem cool and unflustered, at a remove from the maelstrom raging around me), “my mother is always right!” As soon as I said it, I knew I would probably never live it down.

  The evening of my win, though, the first call I made was to her. I was sobbing and hyperventilating as if I had just been told of the death of a loved one (and in a way it was a death: the death of the old me, the end of my life on trial, the demise of my sullied reputation). To celebrate the news, she spent the last money in her purse on a large bouquet of roses and a bottle of champagne, which we drank that night in my tiny apartment. I hadn’t any champagne glasses, so we drank from coffee mugs.

  I got through that long, cold, isolating period by reflecting often on Nureyev. His lesson to me was to have faith in deliverance. It had worked for him, leading him out of the darkness of Communism and into the brightness of the world’s stage. He seemed instinctively to know that it would work for me, too. I took that as his undying gift to me, his power to restore in me the belief that the creative life is the route to self-liberty.

  And so I had been right all along to believe that Paris would come to my rescue. “You have a talent and it dictates your life. It possesses…”

  SIX

  Fiancée

  · 1995 ·

  “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction

  that we are loved.”

  VICTOR HUGO, LES MISÉRABLES

  I RETURNED TO Paris five years later with the man I would marry. Bringing him there just weeks after we were engaged had been a test. I knew instinctively that I loved him, but I still needed assurance that he was the One. In Paris I was looking for proof that we were truly compatible. Would he love the city as I loved it? Would he find in it a manifestation of all his dreams, hopes, fears, and desires? If so, I believed, we would live happily ever after.

  The entire flight over, I had been apprehensive. But as soon as we arrived in Paris, after an eight-hour flight, I realized I needn’t worry. Victor sat on the seat next to me inside an airport bus. We snuggled up close to each other the entire ride in, oblivious to the wall of standing passengers bumping along next to us. The windows were large as movie screens, and we delighted in what to us were unseasonably green fields rolling past us as we sped along the A1 motorway. As the fields turned into cement blocks, signalling our approach into the city, Victor craned his neck to see for the first time the massive bulge of Paris rising beguilingly from the banks of the Seine. The golden letters on café awnings seemed at once to catch his ever-widening eyes. I watched as he devoured the wrought-iron railings on second-floor balconies, the bright-hued advertisements adorning buildings with larger-than-life images of sultry women clasping bottles of amber perfume. He observed the corrugated metal covers on shop windows not yet open for the day, and an equine effigy overhanging one where horse meat was sold. Water from the street cleaners’ parade at dawn still lay heavily on city streets, making them sparkle beneath the sun. I heard Victor say out loud Saint-Raphaël, the name of a local aperitif that he saw painted onto the side of an old brick building. And then he said “beautiful,” declaring out loud that to him, at least, this riot of urban color and detail was a thing of art.

  The bus had come to a stop near Place de la Concorde. The doors opened and we both leapt out, and then Victor started laughing. The sun was so bright he needed his sunglasses. Before he put them on, I could see his chocolate brown eyes wrinkling at the corners as he fought the glare. He slipped on his shades and, looking at me, smiled in wonder. His entire being radiated pleasure. “Feel that energy,” he said, inhaling deeply, filling his lungs with this vision of Paris as life force. Horns blared and exhaust spewed as we bent to pick up our luggage, which the driver had hurled out from under the belly of the bus. Victor laughed some more. I started laughing with him, swept up by his unbridled enthusiasm. It was February. Toronto, which we had just left behind, was blanketed by winter, its skies low and putty-gray. But in Paris birds sang loudly from the branches of trees while daffodils, rising brilliantly from their frosty beds, danced freely with the wind. A pathetic fallacy, perhaps. But I can say for certain that Paris was resplendent on the day of my long-awaited return, and I shall never forget how in that instant I felt that I had done the right thing in coming back. My world was indeed beautiful again.

  Victor held my hand as we hailed a taxi that first morning together in Paris. It was an uphill ride to Montmartre, and our tiny hotel was located next door to the Sacré-Coeur basilica. We would spend the next week perched high above Paris, lovers floating on clouds. The taxi pushed through streets so narrow I thought it would scrape up against the other cars tightly parked on both sides. We held on tight to each other
as the driver advanced at a fevered speed. Victor leaned in to me and said how his older brother, who had come to Paris for his honeymoon fifteen years earlier, had warned him about the city’s drivers. “He told me I was crazy to want to rent a car,” Victor whispered. “He said I wouldn’t get out of Paris alive.”

  The Ermitage Hôtel sat on its own at the top of the hill, tucked into the shadow of the church whose white dome sits above the Paris cityscape like a baker’s hat. I had discovered it inside a cheap-sleeps guide to Paris, listed under the category of small romantic hotels. In all my years of coming to Paris, it was one of the few times I was staying in a hotel. I no longer had any friends in Paris with whom to stay, but I thought of that visit as a new beginning, just as my impending marriage was a new beginning, as the taxi came to a halt on the Rue Lamarck. The street was named for the 18th-century French naturalist who originated an early theory about evolution. I thought that appropriate. This trip was about my own evolution, about my growing independence and how painful that process sometimes felt.

  There was another coincidence, unnoticed until I saw the brass plate on the outside wall embossed with the hotel’s name. “Ermitage” was the French word for hermitage, or place of seclusion. I hadn’t thought of that when choosing the hotel, but I loved the idea of it being a refuge. During the next seven days, this was where Victor and I would lock ourselves away, exiled against the world, fortressed inside our newfound society of two. I pushed open the big wooden door and walked in, Victor behind me.

  Standing just over six feet tall, Victor came into the family-run hotel carrying three bags at once in his large hands, which seemed to inflate his otherwise lean girth. When he entered the small reception area, he looked like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. The furniture was small and delicate, topped by vases and other assorted knickknacks. He swerved to avoid hitting his head on the low-hanging crystal chandelier. I watched, admiring his dexterity. He was like one of those lumbering basketball players who gracefully pirouette around obstacles to make a slam dunk, against all odds. I was thinking I had netted myself quite the catch and was feeling very pleased, even smug. A man who was capable.

  The proprietress, Maggie Canipel, stood behind the counter, tidying her maps of Paris into neat little piles. I approached and confirmed our reservation. We were early, having come off a transatlantic flight. I was hoping she could accommodate us before the official check-in time. “Oui Madame!” She was of the cheery French variety, short, with red apples for cheeks. Everything I said, she answered with a melodious singsong of a voice. “Bien sûr Madame! Tout de suite Madame!” I wasn’t really sure that she wasn’t mocking me.

  She gave me the key to our room, located on the top floor of the two-storey building. There wasn’t an elevator. Victor led the way up the narrow staircase wound tight as a snail’s shell. Framed portraits of dukes, duchesses, queens, and kings lined walls that were painted peacock blue. With his fisherman’s cap lying low on his brow, Victor nearly knocked down a few. He stopped to catch his breath. Beads of perspiration were forming on his brow, but he soldiered onward and upward, not once complaining.

  It being morning, the chambermaid was changing the sheets in most of the bedrooms. She had left some of the doors open. All the rooms were festooned with floral wallpaper and matching drapes. Our room was no exception. Everything was florid. A double bed dominated the postage-stamp-sized floor. Its fuzzy coverlet was curiously gray, perhaps to offset the flaming passion of all the lovers who had ever lain there, I thought, locking the door behind me.

  The bed was pushed up against a far wall, under the shuttered window with a garden view. There wasn’t a closet. We had to hang our winter coats on hooks on the roseate walls. To reach the washroom, equipped with a bath, we had to navigate a slender swath of carpet that stretched between the bed and our pile of belongings.

  Having a bed for a room seemed to suit Victor just fine. He flopped down upon it, unleashing a cacophony of squeaks and groans from the protesting box spring below. I had been admiring the view out our window. Paris lay at our feet. Victor motioned for me to lie next to him. “Let me get a look at you,” he said.

  He gave me that look again, that all-encompassing gaze that made me feel as if I was the only other person alive on this earth, that made me feel magnificently adored. It’s what had first made me stop in my tracks, really take notice of him.

  But when I thought of it, I realized that our first encounter could have gone entirely the other way. I had come to the party where I had met him, our meeting having been arranged by mutual friends, wearing a hairpiece that was the same dark color as my own hair but boasted a cascade of curls that fell nearly to my waist. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought the hair made me look alluring, though in truth I probably looked more like an over-the-top actress from a Fellini film. I had cut my hair short when fighting my employer, and the fake hair symbolized my return to some kind of place of power. It fed my Rapunzel complex. But it was also camouflage: I still wasn’t sure of my resurrection. I wanted to hide behind this hair and mask the real me. I still thought I was flawed. Each time Victor touched me that night, I was afraid the hair would fall off into his hands and he would see me as a pretender.

  After he dropped me off that first night, I fell asleep worrying about what he’d think when he came to see me again, as promised, two nights later. I thought he’d be disappointed.

  “Surprise!”

  I had opened my apartment door, sans hairpiece, to the sound of his cheery knock, and waited to see what he’d say. I thought that maybe it would be a short date.

  He stood on the threshold scrutinizing me. “You are even more beautiful than I remembered,” he grinned.

  I opened my door wider, and he swooped in, grabbing me by the waist and twirling me in the air. He ran his fingers through my hair, my real hair, and then he kissed me.

  He was kissing me again as I lay there on the hotel bed beside him. The chambermaid knocking at our door brought us groggily back to reality. She had brought us clean towels. I was unsure as to how long we had slept. It was still light outside. An hour? Maybe more? I reached for my watch. Nine in the morning Toronto time, three in the afternoon Paris time. I went into the bathroom and threw cold water on my face. Victor was already lacing up his leather boots when I came back out. “Ready to show me Paris?” he said.

  I had never stayed in Montmartre before. It was off the beaten track, at the summit of a hill Parisians call the “butte.” It had formerly been a country village, the last to be incorporated into the city’s fabric, and it still had vine-yards and the odd windmill. I had toured the district during my neophyte visits to Paris, drawn by the area’s reputation as a former creative hot spot. Picasso and Utrillo and Satie and Berlioz and countless other famous people had had their studios in Montmartre around the turn of the 19th century, when the rents had been cheap and the morals, reportedly, just as low. It had been exotic and debauched, at least in comparison to the rest of Paris, which was ordered and gentrified by Baron Haussmann’s grand plan executed on the boulevards below, close to the Seine. In many ways Montmartre remained a geographic outcast. Certainly it was off the beaten track. If ever I went there in the past, it was only to visit Sacré-Coeur.

  I exited our hotel and stood dazedly outside, wondering which way to turn.

  “Left,” said Victor, grabbing my hand. “Let’s just see where the road takes us.”

  His instinct had been right. We found ourselves walking in the direction of Place du Tertre, the main square. We continued holding hands as we traversed winding streets lined by buildings so narrow they resembled a deck of cards teetering precariously on the thin edges of their foundations. Black wrought-iron lanterns pushed out from the facades on brackets with a curlicue design. Under our feet the ground was cobblestone. There were no sidewalks, so we walked in the middle of a road built originally for horses, not cars. It felt mildly subversive.

  A faint buzzing drew us on ahead
to where a crowd had gathered on the plaza. Trees ringed the square, and their naked branches formed a kind of overhead web, ensnaring the dreams of artists and tourists alike assembled on the square, where art was the main spectacle. Dozens of artists were there, sketching or painting work displayed for sale. On this day there was also a juggler. A small crowd had gathered around him, applauding as he threw his colored pins in the air. But Victor wasn’t looking at him. He was intently watching a painter working on the portrait of a woman perched in profile on a stool before him. The artist wore a beret and a smock. He had long white hair and smoked while he worked.

  A swarm of geriatric shutterbugs, released from one of the big tour buses parked nearby, closed in with their cameras. A man with an accordion played a breathy French tune. The atmosphere was noisy, silly, teeming with clichés. But Victor looked full of wonder. The dramatic character of the place had enchanted him. “I understand why my father had wanted to be here,” he said.