by Pat Rosier
The hostel is full of cheerful, young, noisy Europeans. In her desolate room Ann gets into bed, clothed, pulls the covers over her and feels darkness permeate through her. At 2.30am she wakes, urgently needing to pee, and the rest of the night seems to go on forever, though she knows she slept again because people talking in the corridor wake her and it’s almost daylight. After failing to not-think about Suzanna or remember her own shaming foolishness, she gets up, showers and dresses, only just in time for the coffee and rolls.
I will follow my plan for the day, she asserts to herself and sets off for the Louvre. Two hours concentrating on “Rivals in Renaisssance Venice: Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese” is an act of determination. After a break for lunch she sits in Cezanne's Card Players briefly, as the player without the pipe, feeling gratefully still and blank for a few moments.
Being able to stand in front of the Mona Lisa with just a few people around, instead of a twenty-deep crowd, is a pleasure. Ann tries out the famous smile and finds it more of a knowing look, allowing herself to think of Suzanna and what she might make of it. Some people stay only long enough to click their camera at this most famous of paintings, or have a companion snap them with the painting in the background.
Veronese's The Wedding Feast at Cana takes up the whole of the huge wall opposite. The bride and groom, Ann reads, are relegated to opposite ends of the table, Jesus sits in the centre, surrounded by the virgin and others, including Venetian noblemen and orientals in turbans. The painting has 130 feast-goers, biblical figures mixed up with men and women of the period when Veronese painted the work. Ann steps backwards to get it all in her sight. A few people in front of the vast canvas are almost indistinguishable from its crowd, who are taking as little notice of the halo'd Jesus as the passers-by are of the huge painting itself. This is where Jesus turned water into wine. Ann looks for a long time, her eyes travelling over the canvas. That must be the virgin, the figure with a halo, much paler than Jesus's halo, and what were those people on the balcony doing, slaughtering an animal? She moves forward, looking at detail, and back, for the overall picture again. Then she has a sense of stepping over the bottom of the painting's elaborate frame and there she is, crouched behind the man in white playing the lute, the one who is supposed to be a self-portrait of the artist. She is looking out at the gallery, over the shoulder of the lute player, in the midst of jumbly noise—is that the squeal of an animal?—human smells, straw maybe, a bit of gentle jostling, feeling curiously at ease, at play, enjoying. A sudden sharp noise from outside the room, like something falling, bounces her back into the gallery, a couple of metres from the painting. She is still looking, but at the painting again, not quite able to see the eyes of the figure at Veronese's right shoulder. Her knees flex, as though she has just landed from some height, her shoulder bag is slipping and needs hitching up, she feels oddly disconnected, though she could not say from what.
Wandering off, turning this way and that through rooms and corridors, Ann comes upon the Winged Victory with her wind-blown marble draperies, at the prow of a marble ship grounded in a stairway. Stopping, she feels her head go floppy, feels that it could fall right off. When her elbows tingle and lift slightly behind her, she hurries on down the stairs.
The coldness doesn't surprise her any more. Allowing herself to think of Suzanna, remember her, wonder how she would react to this or that, makes it easier to not dwell on her own denial of their agreement. Not that it was actually an agreement, she thinks, I was passive, instructed.
From the Louvre she sets off through the Marais district towards the hostel, remembering how determined she was, planning this trip, that there would be nothing in it to do with her Romantics. Wordsworth, Coleridge and all the rest were to stay back with the job she no longer had. Even Helen Maria Williams, francophile Englishwoman who had spent time in the Bastille; these were not her people any more, she would forget their lines, their vicarious revolution in France, their brotherhood and their landscapes. Suzanna may well have seen her as a Romantic, her outrage at injustice in the world mediated from a comfortable, safe position, and she certainly behaved like a Romantic, or at least in the spirit of, yesterday, selfishly, from her own need. Odd, really that no line from any of those poets has popped into her head since “Farewell …”.
She stops at a falafel shop and sits at a table in a corner. The falafel and accompaniments are delicious. She wishes her thoughts were as fresh and digs in her backpack for D is for Deadbeat which she finishes while she eats. By the time she gets back to the hostel her feet hurt and she’s tired.
“Hey, Nouvelle Zélande,” a voice calls from the lounge, “come and join in.” Five or six people are playing a game that looks like Pictionary with great hilarity. She shakes her head, points at her shoes and says “sore feet,” and scarpers to her room without a replacement detective novel. As she takes off her outdoor layers she throws them in a corner. Bloody clothes, she mutters, bloody scarves and bloody, bloody gloves; as she yanks them off, the fingers go inside out and she can't be bothered poking them back into place. Into the corner they go. No Chloe to tidy them up, or look at the pile in a way that would have her putting them away. No email unless she goes out, and she isn't heading back into the freezing air.
She lies on the bed and squeezes out a few tears. Very soon she sits up and looks among her trip notes until she finds a blank page.
“Dear Paula,” she writes, “You left me for our friend Julie and I lost my job disappeared. I had lost so much I had to change everything, that's why I sold the house so quickly. Then I left, I left you and the house and the job behind. And I will not go back. to any of them. I have no wish to go back. I got over you. Quickly, as it happens. It's none of your business what I did or did not do in London. Going to see my parents was very, very mean, I'm more angry with you about that than about anything else you have done.
We have too many friends in common to be not speaking to each other, so I suggest we do. Superficially. I will do my very best to be polite, even pleasant, and I hope you will too.”
She looks at what she has written. Will she send it? To what had been her own address? She'll decide tomorrow. Send it (have to buy an envelope first) or tear it up. Tomorrow. She will not, will not, write to Suzanna; if she wrote the woman would probably move. She won’t give in to bereft misery. She won’t.
With D is for Deadbeat in her hand, Ann goes back down to the lounge. They’re still playing the game, laughing at someone's attempt to draw something. She holds up the book, points at the shelf and swaps it for a battered Raymond Chandler omnibus that will last her longer than one evening. In bed, glove fingers turned right side out, gloves themselves neatly side by side, all the other outdoor clothes settled on a hook, she begins The Big Sleep and reads until the weight of her eyelids forces her to stop .
Taking advantage of a slightly less cold day, Ann decides in the morning on the short walk to Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre, a Metro to Notre-Dame, and that will do for cathedrals. After that, where-ever her feet take her. To keep moving is the thing, tire herself out.
You have to acknowledge, she would say to a companion if she had one as she reached the top of the steps up Montmartre hill, it’s a great site. Any one of her friends would do, she insists to herself. She looks across the pale grey stone of Paris stretching away before her, the Eiffel tower making its unmistakable visual statement in the near distance. A weak sun bounces light off pale rooftops. When she turns towards Sacre-Coeur it looms against the sky, vibrant in the angled sunlight.
Awe is the only possible response to the cathedral's monumentality once she’s inside. The statues, the saints, the open-armed Jesus of the mosaic emanate their own light, as does the intense stained glass of the windows. Archways soar. In the main body of the cathedral people pray. Ann watches a woman sobbing quietly, crossing herself often, wondering about the cause of her grief until her stares feel intrusive and she turns towards the exit.
The panorama is like no other, could b
e of no other city. She almost takes a photograph, but the image she wants to keep is the one in her mind, the whole sweep of it, the small warmth from the sun, the group of young people trotting down the steps, getting smaller by the moment, the few hawkers. It was Athena who had said once, “Photographs steal your memories, you only remember what's in them.” She believes her for the first time, and still regrets not having a single picture of Suzanna.
Ann gets off the Metro a stop early so she can walk across Pont Neuf to the Ile de la Cité, to Notre Dame. You can hardly tell it’s an island with the river flowing on either side unless you’re right here, but that doesn’t stop it being romantic; the whole idea of an island in the city is romantic. So is the fact that Pont Neuf, which means new bridge, is the oldest surviving bridge across the Seine in Paris. History again.
What Notre-Dame has, looking at it from the bridge, is magnificently solid mass. Sacre-Coeur soars, this cathedral stands there. The three portals—door was nothing like a grand enough word—and the large rose window both relieve and emphasise the solid statements of horizontals and verticals. Inside, this cathedral soars too. Every-where Ann turns, it seems, there is another virgin and child statue. The colours of the glass in the South Rose window astound her, she can guess enough about the subject matter. She's done and it's only lunchtime.
Walking around the Ile de la Cité, it looks as though the buildings are mainly used as apartments or small hotels. Heavy raindrops startle her, where did they come from, what happened to the sun? Is that a small café up ahead? She runs for it, the rain heavier, more solid, by the second, bucketing down and bouncing up from the footpath.
“Bonjour.” The man at the counter is small, balding, moustached.
“Bonjour.” She shakes rain off her shoulders. “Il pleut,” she says, and feels embarrassed at stating the obvious. Rain is coming down in solid sheets, making rivers on the footpath.
The man smiles. “Anglais?” She makes her usual reply about coming from New Zealand, speaking English and a little French.
“Le café?”
She nods vigorously. Shivers a little. The man comes around from behind the counter, turns on a two-bar heater and gestures to her to sit.
“Déjeuner?” she asks.
He indicates a counter of pastries and cakes and hands her a menu with startling prices. She orders maigre du jour. Vegetable soup suits the day. A man bursts in, talking too fast in French for her to follow, gesticulating at the man behind the counter. They engage in a rapid conversation, as far as Ann can tell about the weather and somebody's wife being caught out somewhere. Counter man passes wet man some keys and he rushes out. Counter man shrugs and, Ann hopes, goes back to providing her coffee and soup. The rain has eased to a steady downpour, she's not leaving here until it stops; she hopes it will stop, that's what's supposed to happen in Paris in January, a downpour for an hour or so then all over. Opening The Big Sleep at the point where she left it the night before, she reads,
I drove down the boulevard and parked in the lot next to my building and came out of there with my raincoat collar up and my hat brim low and the raindrops tapping icily at my face in between.
Should she be reading Proust, or at least something French? There were, no doubt, Proust tours of the city that took one in a bus around his locations. No thank you. The coffee when it arrives is good, the soup excellent. Ann finishes The Big Sleep and starts Farewell, My Lovely. The rain stops.
The sky has become a looming, lowering presence, trending towards twilight, that makes walking along the river unappealing, so she crosses Pont D'Arcole, heading for the Pompidou Centre and another hit of twentieth century art.
There's plenty that strikes her: some Mondrians, Picasso, Arp and particularly Matisse. He's her favourite of this visit for his colours and how he portrays women, they aren’t there just for the looking at, but there to be there. Present in themselves. She nearly skips the special exhibitions, but the Jim Hodge’s work is called Love, etc. and that entices her in. Hearts, chocolate-box shapes outlined in chains, with cobwebs; these hold her attention for a while. And the broken mirrors, sheet of gold leaf with fold marks, beautiful drawings of flowers. He gives as much attention, says a printed placard, to beauty and joie de vivre as he does to sickness and death. Ann hasn't been seeing sickness and death—the cobwebs, she supposes, and the broken mirrors—but she has found Hodges' work more uplifting than a brace of cathedrals.
A crèpe from a woman at a stall in the square out the front of the Pompidou drips cheese, and is so good she goes back for another. The rain has gone, but a blustery wind means walking is still unpleasant and it’s all but dark, so she walks fast rather than heading down into the rush-hour Metro.
Back at the hostel, a group in the lounge, young Norwegians from their language, wave her in to join them by the fire. They have discovered the best market they tell her in accented but excellent English, out a ways on the Metro. They insist on showing her where on her map. The company of strangers doesn't seem to suit her at the moment, so she’s soon off to her room for a date with Raymond Chandler.
Oh shit! She’d meant to call in at the internet café along the road. Stopping on the stairs, she considers going out again, but only for a moment. Four days since ET has phoned home, so to speak, another twelve hours won't matter.
Raymond Chandler doesn't do his job, even though his short, dry sentences are good, very good. It’s midnight, and she’s wide awake, hating the ending of Farewell, My Country. Smart-arse Philip Marlowe is getting on her nerves but she goes straight into The High Window. Every story begins the same, with PM describing a place where he is about to meet a client. She reads until her eyes won’t stay open, and barely has the energy to make the trip across the room turn out the light. It’s a long night. She tries thinking about Susanna, remembering them together—skating—sex—walking to the fireworks—had S. already made up her mind? No, don’t think about that—on the underground S.’s head on her shoulder—sex—S. wolfing down focaccia—
“It won’t do!” She’s sitting up, yelling into the dark room. The heating is off. She retreats under the covers.
“Time for your old friend, distraction,” she says quietly into the gap made by her body under the covers. “Think about the rest of your life.” Ann is imagining herself in a bach on the Kapiti Coast, surrounded by children’s books and reading Lorna Sage on Angela Carter and folk tales, when she falls alseep.
Waking late and missing breakfast drives her out into the morning. The chill is the worst yet, and the footpath has slippery patches where yesterday's rain has frozen. With email on her mind, and a need for hot coffee, Ann walks tentatively until she is sure she can spot the dangerous shiny patches. She’s in the Moulin Rouge district before she knows it, dealing to a café au lait and two pain au chocolat over the Observer. Impressive; a London Sunday paper from a newstand in Paris at ten in the morning. Probably comes on the Eurostar. People come into the cafe with fresh produce, there must be a market around here.
She doesn't buy anything unless she can eat it as she goes. If she had a kitchen handy, it would be different; cheeses, meats, more kinds of olives than she believes possible, fruit and vegetables. And cheap junk. One edge of the market is full of the stuff she would find in the two dollar shops at home. She can tell where the real bargains are; people four or five deep are turning over the goods. A huge bin of women's knickers is particularly popular with women in headscarves, a few in full chador. She sees a child's hand dart into a rummager's handbag, get caught and flung away empty, with what is no doubt abuse from the woman and those near her. The child scuttles off, but not far. Ann thinks of giving him some money, and doesn’t.
Once she is looking, there are internet cafes everywhere. Twenty-six new emails, only two of them spam, and three from her parents. Those first. All well, looking forward to her coming home, seeing more photos. Oops, Mum, not many. “Not much of a summer here, never seems to get going. Dad wants to go on a bit of a trip up north
, about the end of January, for two or three weeks he says, he wants to see Cape Reinga again. If you've seen it once, you've seen it in my book, but I'll go along, I do like the Bay of Islands. He's checking out those big camper vans. Fine, I told him, as long as I don't have to drive it.”
Scanning down the subject lines, Ann spots “One baby!” from a pleased and relieved Chloe. The twins still ask when Au’-Ann is coming back, and she and Joshua are doing lots more reading to them from those wonderful books Ann left, so she’s been a Good Influence. How's Gay Paree? Any librarians?
“Definitely no librarians,” says Ann in her reply, “but lots of splendid art museums. It is good, warming, to have a new family of relations, and to have a niece and nephew, and in due course two of one, if you get what I mean. I'll send books for their birthdays.” She doesn't care that she’s rabbiting on, she wants them to feel her affection, to know how glad she is to be in their lives.
There are fewer emails from her friends than she expects. Must be time to go home, I can't be dropping off my friends' radars. Remembering the season, the demands of family and summer holidays, she relaxes.
Mo, dear reliable Mo, sends her news of most of their mutual friends. She herself is staying off the roads, “redoing my garden, re-reading all my poetry books to see which I'll keep. I'm culling my books generally but promise not to give away or sell (I wish!) anything until you've had a chance to look at my rejects. This is my brilliant solution to running out of shelf space.”
The other Julie, Mo reports, is in love again, with a woman from her work, never a good idea. Julie (the one) has moved to Auckland. That’s a relief. Snippets about other mutual friends include news that Frances' seven-year clearance following her breast cancer is over, no more details yet. Ann stops reading Mo's message long enough to send one to Frances. It takes ages to write, a notice flashes on the screen to say she has spent four euros on the connection does she want to continue? She clicks “oui.”