Paris Was the Place

by Susan Conley

“Well, it’s not quite so exotic inside the mayor’s office. We may get to talk to Chirac in this famous building, but we still don’t agree with his immigration numbers.” He points to the river. “Shall we walk?” A small rectangular blue sign on the metal post at the corner reads QUAI DE GESVRES. We cross the Pont d’Arcole, a narrow two-laned bridge with black railings and slatted green benches. We say nothing. My mind can’t stop circling us. And looking down at us from above as we make it on to Île de la Cité. We appear to be a man and woman with a small enough space between our bodies—our shoulders and arms—for one of us to reach out and touch the other easily. The water is the color of slate and frothy from the rains. We turn left on a small lane that follows the river.

  “How is your teaching on Rue de Metz going? How are the girls holding up?”

  Work. He’s talking work. That’s what we’ll do. Of course. It’s why we’re here. “I see them for such a short time. They’re amazing. Formidable. When I was their age, I was being driven to swim practice by my mom.”

  “Gita trusts you. If she tells me where her family lives here in Paris then we can push for reunification.”

  “Oh, she won’t tell you or the court where the family lives.” I look at his face to read him.

  “They almost always tell.” He stares down at the cobblestones.

  “You know her better, but I don’t think she’ll tell. Have you forgotten the brother-in-law? The one who raped her in the hallway? You want to reunify her with him?” Two white birds land on the water—French geese? This isn’t the walk I thought. This isn’t about anything else but getting information out of me. Upon closer inspection the birds are seagulls, and more follow, squawking. “Sophie said Gita was dropped off at the hospital by a taxi with no one to help her, and that this man in Jaipur, Daaruk, will abduct her to the south.”

  “Gita has filled you in on many details. She is treating you more like a lawyer.” He laughs. “I need these details. This is how I build a case. I wonder why she trusts you so much. I wonder what her plan is.”

  “What do you mean, ‘plan’? She’s my student. I’m her teacher.”

  He picks up a stone on the sidewalk and tosses it into the water. “But Gita is one step ahead of you. At least one. She’s very likely going to be sent back to India, Willie. So she’s more desperate than you think. She will try to influence things. This is how I will say it. She will try to manipulate the situation, because you are kind and she is at a great disadvantage. You need to understand. She is in a corner, and I am going to try to get her out. Reunification here would be a way to have her legally remain in Paris—that is, if any of her family is legal, which I doubt.”

  “I think she’s a young girl and that she and I really connect.”

  He laughs. Not unkindly, I think. But a real laugh. “Of course you connect. That’s because you’re good at your job and she is anxious for someone to help her. Don’t blame her for doing what you would do. It’s survival. She’s going to ask you for things. You’ll have to decide how much to give.”

  “I’d give her everything I could.”

  “But the classroom isn’t real life. Be careful. You can control things to some extent in the classroom, but not on the streets. Often I lose at court, but every now and then I win, and my wins feel very good and restore hope.”

  “I’ll help her in any way I can.” We walk side by side so our arms brush against each other. “Why have you chosen to work in Paris?”

  He moves behind me so a group of joggers can pass and places his hand on my lower back. I have a difficult time concentrating after this—can’t focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Blood rushes to my head because of his hand. He’s got this confidence that’s palpable but not remote. “It is my genetic makeup. My family history. We were the traveling Jews you hear about—generations moving around within Russia. Then my grandfather took the family from Estonia to Toronto. I’ve inherited a complex understanding of what gets lost in exile.”

  More runners gain on us. Macon stops and puts his hand on my left hip this time. He’s going to speak, but then he doesn’t. He keeps his hand on me after the runners fly by, and we solidify something. At least I think we do. I’ve just met him, really, but a part of me feels like I’ve known him all my life. We haven’t used words to describe what we’re doing. It’s hard for me not to give it a name, but his hand is on my hip. We walk another hour to the tip of the island, and the street is quieter, the water glints in the sun. He doesn’t touch me again, but the memory of his hand—the warm feel of it stays with me. An imprint. So it’s as if he’s still doing it, walking with his hand on my hip. Then we’re behind Notre Dame, next to a courtyard thick with trees whose buds are all turning green. The cathedral looks like an ancient, intergalactic spaceship from here. Almost pretend. As if the whole ornate edifice might take off soon and ascend straight into the heavens. There’s a conical spire made of black metal that also ascends toward some decisive point high in the sky. Macon and I stand and crane our necks looking up.

  “It’s like the church is calling to God,” I say. “The spire’s a radio tower. Dialing-in God’s frequency.”

  “It is quite incredible, no? Talking to God here in the middle of Paris.”

  “My father’s heard the message. He is one of the people listening.”

  “And you?” Macon puts his hand on my shoulder and casually, gently redirects me toward the sidewalk.

  “I’m not sure I can hear the message. I’m not sure I’m able to listen.”

  We turn toward the bridge. Should I invite him to dinner at my apartment? He’s Gita’s lawyer. We cross to the Hôtel de Ville and take Rue de Rivoli until we get to the metro. “Thank you,” I say disingenuously. I want him to reach for me again. “That was helpful—the walk and the information you shared.”

  He takes my hand. “Au revoir. I needed to see you. Do you understand? I couldn’t tell if you were real inside the rooms on Rue de Metz.” He tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Yes. Real.”

  I turn toward the station, blushing, and he continues on Rue de Rivoli toward the legal center near Les Halles. If he stops and waves, then I’ll know for certain he’s a good lawyer for Gita—and a good man. But he doesn’t. Just before I take the stairs down into the underground, I hear my name. “Willie. Of the willow tree.” I look back toward Rue de Rivoli and he’s standing there smiling at me, hands in his pockets. Then he turns and keeps walking.

  11

  Refugee: a person who flees for safety, especially to a foreign country

  For the field trip I have to submit a detailed itinerary of how I’ll take Gita from Rue de Metz to the Rodin Museum on Rue de Varenne. We’re going to get her out of the primary school. We’re going to see some sculptures.

  Gita’s early for our class each week, and punctual for her meetings with Macon and Sophie. She completes all of her kitchen work—prepping vegetables and the cleanup—and she keeps her own room clean. Because of her good behavior, I’m able to obtain the permissions necessary to escort the detainee out of the asylum center from ten o’clock in the morning on Friday, March 31, 1989, to four o’clock in the afternoon the same day. This gives us more than enough time to get to Rue de Varenne, see the sculptures, and hustle back.

  Gita’s been living on Rue de Metz for two and a half months. Much longer than any French government official would like. It’s taking its toll. Today she looks pale and thin. Sophie stands at the front door with us and buttons the top of Gita’s coat. Then Truffaut buzzes us out. It’s as if we’ve stepped through time. Catapulted back to the future. She’s out. And it was so easy. Here’s Paris having its Friday morning just like it always does, while Gita’s been waiting inside. There’s so much cruelty involved in the mechanisms of being actually locked up that I don’t think either of us can process it out here in the bright sunshine. We walk down Rue de Metz past the wall of graffiti and turn on Boulevard de Strasbourg past the pharmacie and the Chinese restaurant and the beauty
salons. At first we’re both very quiet. She studies the city—mothers pushing strollers, businessmen in dark suits, teenage boys outside the tabac.

  There’s a line at the ticket booth at St. Denis. I have to resist the strong urge to hold her hand down here. I don’t want to lose her. It’s like another city inside the station—warmer and louder, with so many people calling out to one another and speed-walking and jogging and waiting in the chaos of getting from one place to another. I decide we’ll take the No. 8 train to a stop I’ve never been to called La Tour—Marbourg. Then it’s only a five-minute walk through the Place des Invalides to the museum. This way we won’t have to change trains. This way it won’t be quite as overwhelming for Gita. The platform is packed with mothers with toddlers in their arms and men carrying briefcases and rolled newspapers. Teenagers, too, of all skin colors, and why aren’t they in school at ten-thirty on Friday?

  Most of us get on the No. 8. The train’s hot and crowded, but we find seats in the middle that face the aisle. Two trench coats rub our knees. The men in the coats don’t look down and don’t see us. We don’t speak. I don’t want to ruin the spell I think she’s in—free from the asylum center. I don’t know how to access what she might be feeling. What she’s translating in her mind. The asylum center’s like a netherworld now that we’re riding away from it on the metro. It’s not a bad place, because of Sophie. And because it’s so small. Its size means everything. I think nighttime has to be the hardest. How does Gita quell the longing and fear? I think she must have to turn off. The ride takes thirty minutes. Then we climb a set of long, dirty stairs.

  The Place des Invalides is more imposing than I thought it would be—a hive of military museums and monuments. Napoleon’s body is consecrated somewhere here. Gaird and Luke are fascinated with Bonaparte. They’ve waited in line at his tomb. White tour buses—lots of them—turn through the stone gates up ahead like big, round-nosed belugas. Gita and I walk along Rue de Grenelle until I have to get out the map. Then we stop and I study it.

  We make it to the actual Boulevard des Invalides, teeming with cars and motorcycles. “We’re almost there.” I fold the map up and she nods. Older, well-coiffed men and women pass us on the sidewalk in fur coats and leather shoes. “The museum is just down this street.” The scope of the buildings at Invalides is just so big. I’m sweating. Why did I think it was a good idea to bring her here? We turn left on Varenne and walk inside an iron gate cut into a stone wall. Then things get very quiet.

  There’s the contrast between the buzz on the street and this green, landscaped oasis. We’re on the grounds of the mansion where Auguste Rodin lived—a golden-colored stone building called the Hôtel Biron, with the world’s most famous sculpture garden that unfolds in front.

  Two gravel paths lead from the stairs toward a tall, wide green hedge. The sculptures seem as though they’ve always lived here. Among the rose gardens and all kinds of different shrubbery shaved into perfect cylinders and domes. We stand at the start of the path on the left, and I hand Gita a small black notebook and a pencil from my bag. “If you want to write about anything you see here, please go ahead. Or if you want to make sketches. Or ideas of sketches. Because the day is yours, and now you have a notepad to do the drawing in.” I hope she doesn’t balk or think I’m nuts for bringing her here. She has only six hours outside the center.

  “Thank you, Willow.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the sculptures. People walk past us, circling the paths, murmuring to one another as they study the bronzes.

  “Your drawing is coming along so nicely, Gita.” For the last two weeks, she’s been making drawings in her room of men and women from her village in India. Sophie has showed them to me. The faces come alive on the page—haunting sketches of women and men standing outside the shapes of houses.

  “It is not anything. It is silly for Sophie to be showing you.” She puts her head down as if she’s shy. I haven’t seen this side of her in several weeks—young and uncertain.

  “How do you feel in here?”

  “Feel? I am feeling small here. These statues are so big.” She looks around uneasily again. Hordes of tourists now—a tour bus must have unloaded. A group mills at the entrance, and smaller trios and duos move around the paths. Gita walks toward the statue of the man resting his chin on his hand. She stands under the man’s knee. “This artist is faithful to the nature of people’s bodies. What I am meaning to say is that the bodies to me look very alive.”

  “Rodin is famous for that. This one is called The Thinker. It’s incredibly well known.” The stone has sinew and muscle and tendon. How can it be so realistic? The man’s left arm sits on his left knee, right arm propping up his chin. Gita walks around him and comes back to her starting place. She opens the first page of the notepad and stops and puts her hand over her mouth and laughs. I don’t laugh. It’s okay to be serious and for her to feel something strange.

  “There are so many people in here. So many in one place.”

  We walk up to each sculpture and she circles them on foot—The Gates of Hell and Balzac and all the others. There’s a strong March wind and Gita’s raincoat is thin, pulled from the boxes of donated clothes, with a braided belt and gold buckle. It stops short of her knees, so her sari hangs below the coat. After we’ve seen the garden, we walk inside the museum, where it’s warmer. More sculptures here, including The Kiss, which a small group congregates around—two naked lovers, but the man and woman’s lips don’t actually touch. Somehow the marble is able to hold the tension of the kiss that hasn’t come yet.

  There’s a room of the works of Rodin’s student and lover, Camille Claudel. They had an affair for many years. She was abandoned by him in the end and institutionalized. She died alone. But here is her work, pulsing with life. Here is her famous Bronze Waltz—a couple holding each other tightly, delicately, as they dance. Gita and I walk through the building, and I’m haunted by Claudel’s madness. The parquet floors seem to absorb the sounds of our shoes and hushed voices, but Gita and I hardly talk. She doesn’t seem tired. But the museum feeling settles over me, and I get very sleepy.

  There are the sculptures—the naked bodies so well-defined—and all of Rodin’s passion and conviction and stubbornness that must have gone into making them. I can’t reconcile the enormity of what Rodin was trying to do with the stone—capturing a life. I stay there for a while, in between those two worlds. The outside and the inside.

  “They are being almost like real people,” Gita says. “I am forgetting they will not be talking to us.”

  “Are you hungry?” Even though she shakes her head no, we walk back outside and down the path to a glass-enclosed café in the garden. I order milk tea and grilled cheeses for both of us from a young Middle Eastern girl. It turns out we’re starving, because the food is gone in seconds. Then the girl offers us chocolate cake or flan for dessert.

  “If there is chocolate,” Gita says with a smile, “I would like to try it.”

  I wanted Gita to see the sculptures, but there’s another reason I asked her to the museum. I never know who’s listening to us at the center. I feel an urgency to connect with her. I’m afraid that I’m going to let her down—that I’m not going to be able to help her the way she wants me to. I have this uneasy feeling—like we’ve entered into an unspoken partnership where I’m culpable.

  “Do you have any other family here, Gita?” I lean toward her at the table. Have we gone over every option? “In Paris? Do you have other family you could claim in your asylum application? Or in India? Do you have a grandmother? You’re fifteen, Gita. So young. They won’t expel you from France on your own, but they won’t let you stay on your own either, so we have to find a solution.”

  She takes a small bite of the chocolate cake and chews very slowly. “My maa does not know where I am at the center. She thinks I left her. She thinks I wanted to leave her. This is what I cannot fix. Morone and Pradeep are like my arms and legs. My brother and sister, who I would die for.”

&n
bsp; “I am so very sorry.” Does she have a grandmother in India or not?

  “Maa cannot help me. I know this. Only you can help me. I will never go back to that apartment.”

  She’s proud and she can talk in circles, but does she know that less than two percent of asylum applications are approved in France? I don’t use numbers. “You may be asked to return to India, Gita. We both know that, yes?” She doesn’t look at me. She stares down at what’s left of the cake and the small dollop of fresh whipped cream and sprig of mint. Sun shines through the long panes of floor-to-ceiling windows and lights up the blue bowls of salt in the middle of each table.

  “We don’t know about your hearing, Gita. If the judge decides you should go back to Jaipur, then we will make that okay for you.” There are also tables outside in the garden, where people have claimed spring by taking their coffees outside and sitting.

  “I do not want that life.” She looks up. “We were living on nothing. It is hard for you to understand. Now we will be having even less. My baap is dead. No one leaves our village. That is your whole life, there in the yard. Manju’s brother will come for me, and we will be married the day I return. Then I will be taken to his land farther south.”

  “Gita, I am trying to tell you that the courts may send you back and you will have no choice.”

  “There are ways to get away from the center. What if with you there are ways?” She looks away and becomes shy again.

  What have I done? I’ve brought her to a French museum filled with manicured men and women who can afford to pass an afternoon in the sunlit atrium café. There’s a mother in a plum-colored wool skirt and matching jacket who sits with her legs crossed and listens to a younger version of herself—a twenty-something daughter in dark jeans and low-heeled boots, one of which she taps impatiently on the leg of the table. To our left are three more French women with lustrous blond hair and thick, ropy gold jewelry on their necks. They laugh and smoke cigarettes and call for more espresso.