Over the years, the postcards took on another role: they became a form of travel memoir, preserving and recapturing the feelings of certain moments during a trip. When I see such a postcard, the handwriting oddly familiar, it startles me and, like Proust’s madeleine, has the power to plunge me back into the past.
Until recently I was convinced—quite smugly so—that I’d invented this form of travel writing. But about four months ago, while going through a box of papers collected from my mother’s apartment after her death, I came across a postcard she’d written to herself from Dublin. The picture is a charming view of O’Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel. She writes:
We stayed here for eight days. A lovely, comfortable hotel, with Irish poetry readings in the evenings. The food was very good. And Dublin has the loveliest zoo in all of Europe.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I read these simple words in a handwriting as familiar as my own. It is the handwriting that signed my grade-school report cards; the handwriting that scribbled out the lists I carried to the corner grocery store; the handwriting that, over the years, in countless letters, supported and encouraged me in good times and bad.
Holding the postcard in my hands, I thought of my sons and of the future. Would they someday read my postcards, I wondered, and think of me, as I do now of my mother?
If so, I hope they see me soaring like a bright kite into a big blue sky; happy and adventurous, going wherever the wind takes me.
—Baltimore,
January 1999
1
THE NOVICE
Dear Alice,
Each morning I am awakened by the sound of a tinkling bell. A cheerful sound, it reminds me of the bells that shopkeepers attach to their doors at Christmastime. In this case, the bell marks the opening of the hotel door. From my room, which is just off the winding staircase, I can hear it clearly. It reminds me of the bell that calls to worship the novice embarking on a new life. In a way I too am a novice, leaving, temporarily, one life for another.
Love, Alice
For weeks I had imagined my first day in Paris: I could see myself sipping a citron pressé at the Flore, a famous Saint-Germain café that was once the haunt of Picasso, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus; then darting in and out of the shops on the rue du Bac or browsing the bookstores in the historic rue Jacob. Always in this fantasy I saw myself responding with curiosity and excitement to the pulsing street life of Paris.
I had night dreams, too, along with the daydreams. In one particularly appealing dream, I bumped into Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who once lived on the Left Bank in a hotel just blocks from where I would be staying. I accepted their invitation to Sunday breakfast at their favorite café, the Deux Magots. Waking from this dream, I scribbled a note to myself: Must have Sunday brunch at Deux Magots.
In another dream I entered an unnamed passageway on the Left Bank and, after a short walk, emerged on the Right Bank in the Marais district. Both during the dream and after, I felt quite pleased with myself at having made this historic discovery, one that eliminated the need to cross the Seine by bridge.
I liked these dreams, both the day and night versions. They seemed to signal a willingness on my part to go where the moment took me and to trust it would take me to an interesting place. They also reminded me of how it felt to approach every day as I once had, guided less by expectations than by curiosity.
On the day I left for Paris, I drank champagne with a friend in the Air France lounge at Dulles airport. “Here’s to a successful trip,” said my friend, raising her glass. I raised mine in reply, saying, “And to an interesting one.”
What I didn’t say was that “success” was not something I was seeking from this venture. In fact, I was determined not to judge this trip, or its outcome, in terms of success or failure. Too much of life—my life, anyway—seemed to be aimed at achieving success and avoiding failure. I was determined not to carry that baggage with me on this trip.
“You must be excited,” my friend said. “I know I would be.”
I laughed. “That’s an understatement. I’m probably the most excited person in this airport,” It was true. I felt the way I did at twenty when, on the spur of the moment, I threw some clothes into a suitcase, bought a ticket at the airport, and left for Turkey.
But later, while waiting to board the plane, another feeling crept in, one I couldn’t quite identify. Was it apprehension? Or just too much champagne? Such thoughts were swept aside, however, once I felt the plane lift off the runway, headed for Paris. This is it, I thought, tightening my seat belt, the beginning of the next part of my life.
To my dismay, I arrived in Paris not an excited woman but an anxious one. Without warning, halfway through the flight, my sense of excitement deserted me and a new, less welcome companion arrived: a complete failure of nerve. What am I doing on this plane? I asked myself. Panic was lurking beneath the question. What had seemed a wonderful idea—une grande aventure, as my friends put it—began to feel like an ill-conceived fantasy that should have provided fifteen minutes of amusement before being discarded.
By the time my plane landed in Paris I had considered every bad outcome—from loss of livelihood to loss of life—that was likely to result from my incredible mistake in judgment. It was a little before eight in the morning and the air terminal was chilly and deserted. A tiring wait to get through customs was followed by a longer and more tiring vigil at the luggage carousel. By the time I had retrieved my bags and made the long trek to the public transportation area, my mood was dangerously low. I decided to cheer myself up by taking a taxi to my hotel instead of the bus that dropped passengers off at some central location.
“Rue de l’Université,” I told the driver, directing him to my hotel. He’d never heard of it. “On the Left Bank,” I said. “Rue de l’Université. Off the quai Voltaire.” He shook his head and sighed wearily, as if to say, It’s no use trying to understand these Americans. Then suddenly he lurched into gear and abruptly hurled his taxi into the traffic headed for Paris.
It is a long drive from the airport into the city, one that offers little in the way of scenic diversion. The truth is, there is no difference between the morning rush-hour traffic in Paris and that of any big American city: bumper-to-bumper cars and lots of ugly industrial parks separated by the occasional cluster of sterile high-rise buildings. The hour-long trip did nothing to bolster my morale.
Just as I was wondering whether it was madness or stupidity that had landed me in the back of this taxi, something happened: we entered the city of Paris and the Seine came into view. Silvery and serpentine, it moved like mercury through the center of the city, a mesmerizing force. From the taxi window I could see the tree-lined quais along the river. A few more minutes and we were on the quai Voltaire, driving past ancient buildings, their stone façades tinted a rosy pink by the morning sun.
Here it was that Voltaire had lived and died, I thought, looking at the silent buildings, each one with a story to tell. As I allowed myself to be drawn into the net of beauty and history that hangs like a bridal veil over Paris, my excitement grew.
We drove along the Seine, turning finally into the heart of the Left Bank, into the narrow, picturesque streets lined with bookshops and galleries and cafés. Ernest Hemingway once lived in this neighborhood, and so did Edna St. Vincent Millay. The thought buoyed my mood even more.
By this time the sun had burned through the early mist, leaving the air fresh and damp, as fragrant as the ocean. I felt elated; it was the same feeling I’d had as a child when, headed for the beach with my parents, the first whiff of sea and salt air would blow through the open windows of our trusty green Plymouth.
The taxi made another turn and then stopped in front of a small old building that from the outside bore little resemblance to a hotel. I was more or less dumped out into the middle of the narrow street, and with the traffic piling up behind us, horns blaring, I counted out seventy dollars’ worth of francs. The driver pocketed the money, unloaded my bel
ongings, and immediately drove off, leaving me and my suitcase—a large black number about the size of a baby hippopotamus—at the curb in front of the hotel.
I peered through the glass door, looking for someone to assist me. The place appeared deserted. Draping my raincoat around my neck, I slung my tote-sized handbag over one shoulder, a small duffel bag over the other, propped open the door with my left foot, and proceeded into the lobby, dragging my suitcase behind me.
It was my first look at the small hotel, once a private residence dating back to the seventeenth century. I’d decided to stay there on the advice of friends who knew and liked it. Immediately upon entering, something about the small reception area put me at ease. The furniture, under the original vaulted ceilings, was old and beautiful; the winding wooden staircase was polished and gleaming; and in one corner a young woman was arranging long-stemmed, fresh-cut flowers in large Chinese porcelain vases. There was a sense of history here. And, just as important to me, a sense of order.
It was also, I might add, the hotel’s first look at me; at the rumpled, tired, luggage-intensive figure slouching toward the small reception desk. But those who work in hotels are not unused to seeing people at their worst. After all, the word “travel” comes from the Latin “trepalium.” Which, loosely translated, means “instrument of torture.” So whatever judgmental thoughts may have passed through the mind of the receptionist, she tactfully kept them from appearing on her face.
It was still early, a little before nine, and my room, she informed me, would not be ready until 12:30. She suggested I take a walk.
Outside, the shopkeepers were washing down the narrow sidewalks. In the air I could smell bread baking. I headed for a café I’d seen on the rue Bonaparte. I stopped on the way to buy a Herald-Tribune at a newsstand where a large gray cat sat grooming himself on a stack of Le Monde newspapers. Timidly, I touched the cat’s head. “His name is Jacques,” said the elderly proprietor proudly, “and he is very friendly.” I scratched Jacques under the chin; he immediately began drooling. After that, my first stop every morning was to see Jacques and, as I came to call his owner, “Monsieur Jacques.”
By 10:30 I was seated in a neighborhood café near the rue Saint-Benoît, reading the paper, sipping café-au-lait and wondering, Is this really happening? Am I really in Paris? Do I really not have to go to the office or write a column or go to the supermarket?
As if to answer my questions, a tall man wearing a tuxedo and a beret walked by, pushing before him a perambulator. In it I could see an accordion, and behind that a puppy and a cat. I turned to my waiter who answered my question before I asked it. “Madame, he is on his way to the place Saint-Germain-des-Prés to perform for the tourists.”
Yes, I thought, I really am in Paris.
I left the café and walked along the rue Bonaparte, scanning the numbers above the doors. When I came to Number 36, I stopped. The sign outside said: HÔTEL SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS. It was the small hotel where Janet Flanner lived in her early days in Paris, and I had come to pay my respects to her. Of course, she was no longer around—she died in 1978—but it’s my belief that you can remain as close in feeling to the dead as you can to the living. Sometimes even closer.
I entered the lobby, an elegant, refined space that in all probability bore no resemblance to the modest surroundings in which Flanner lived in the 1920s. At that time it was a hotel where young American expatriates with talent but little money rented rooms. Still, it was from this hotel that Flanner began filing her fortnightly articles, signed with her nom de correspondance, Genêt.
“May I help you, madame?” asked the receptionist.
“No, I am here to meet a friend,” I said, walking the few steps to the breakfast room at the rear of the lobby. Breakfast was over and the room was empty. It seemed as good a place as any to deliver my respects to Madame Flanner:
Well, I finally made it here to thank you, my thinking voice said. So thanks for sharing with me your fifty years in Paris. I couldn’t have asked for a better guide.
After leaving the hotel I walked along the tiny rue Jacob, a charming street that seems to surface suddenly at a little garden near the rue de Seine and then, several blocks later, disappear into the rue de l’Université. Now this is more like it, I thought happily, as I popped in and out of the bookshops and antiques galleries along the street. It was at this point that, high on a combination of strong coffee, excitement, and jet lag, I found myself actually skipping.
Later, of course, when the first exhilaration lost its edge, another question would present itself: how does one structure a life that has no responsibilities or set routines? Such an existence, I came to see, had the potential to deteriorate into idle wandering.
But on this particular day I was open to wandering, to idleness, to losing myself in the glorious ether of Paris. I wandered through the narrow streets, my mind spinning, going over all the things I wanted from this trip.
A list began forming itself in my head: I wanted to take chances. To have adventures. To learn the art of talking less and listening more. To see if I could still hack it on my own, away from the security of work, friends, and an established identity.
Of course, I also wanted to lose ten pounds, find the perfect haircut, pick up an Armani suit at 70 percent off, and meet Yves Montand’s twin, who would fall deeply, madly, in love with me.
My first chance to get my self-improvement plan rolling presented itself in the form of a cosmetics shop I passed on the rue de Beaune. I stepped inside. It was an elegant shop, staffed by beautiful young Parisiennes with perfect skin, perfect hair, and perfect bodies. Dressed like doctors in crisp white jackets with name tags, they moved like models through the aisles of glass shelves piled high with eye balm, corrective facial masques, and salmon mousse hair balm. I was approached by Françoise, who, in addition to her lab coat, wore a Hermès scarf and Chanel earrings.
Françoise asked if I would like an analysis of my skin. It struck me as a wonderful idea. “What are your problem areas, madame?” Françoise asked, her concerned voice suggesting there might be many of them.
Within minutes I was like an analysand on the couch, blurting out my long list of problems to Françoise. She listened, jotting down notes on a white pad with a Mont Blanc pen. Undaunted by the challenge I presented, she proceeded to fill a white wicker basket with items from various parts of the shop. She then explained the purpose of each product and the miracles that would result from using it. Always, she ended with “I myself use this product, madame.”
That was good enough for me. In less than twenty minutes I blew almost half a week’s food budget on creams, balms, and restoratives. What better way to celebrate the New Me than by sprucing up the façade of the Old Me? Besides, I told myself, I’d make up for it by eating in cheaper places. Still, I worried a bit. Between the taxi from the airport and my foray into the world of French cosmetics, I’d already spent a lot more than I’d planned.
But what the heck, I thought, heading for the hotel and my first look at the room where I would spend at least the next month. I was excited, but also a little nervous about seeing it. Although I knew many travelers think of a hotel as “just a place to sleep,” it was important to me to feel at home in this room.
A young chambermaid proceeded me up the winding staircase, stopping in the middle of it. Pulling out a key, she opened a door I hadn’t noticed, one situated between the reception area and the second floor. It was the door to my room. I stepped inside. What I saw disappointed me.
After passing through a narrow entry hall, I entered a long narrow room. It seemed to tilt to one side, the side occupied by a huge, dark armoire. At the far end of the room was the bed; or, to be precise, two twin beds that had been pushed together. In the middle of the room was a round table covered with a fresh linen cloth and flanked by two straight-backed chairs; it served as both desk and dining space. Opposite the bed, near the small entry hall, was a slightly worn loveseat, its wine-velvet arms and back risin
g and falling in classic Art Deco fashion. All in all, it was not what I had hoped for.
But the room had two big, beautiful French windows that opened out over a small green courtyard. There was one in the large, well-appointed bathroom too, situated in such a way that it could be left open without any lack of privacy. Brushing my teeth in the morning while looking out over the courtyard became one of my real pleasures.
Still, at first glance, I couldn’t imagine living in this room for several weeks. Later, when the room became home to me—when I had learned to appreciate how comfortable the bed was and how elegant the linens that covered it, how spotlessly clean the room was kept and how well it actually functioned—I realized that first impressions about hotel rooms are like first loves: neither is based on the concept of how, over time, one can come to appreciate the pleasures of durability over infatuation.
At a little before five in the afternoon I left the hotel and headed for the Café de Flore. It was early, but I was quite hungry and, in fact, almost ready to retire. The Flore, which was only a short distance from my hotel, was a great place to sit and take in Paris while eating the perfect omelette.
It was a mild evening, so I chose a seat on the terrace and ordered wine. This was the best time to come to the Flore, I thought, looking around. Lunchtime here always seemed hectic, a time when people came to see and be seen, to make deals and use their cellular phones. Late afternoon at the Flore, on the other hand, had a relaxed ambience; people laughed a lot and gossiped and seemed not to be in a hurry to go somewhere else.
It was a lesson I hoped to learn in the months ahead: how to stop rushing from place to place, always looking ahead to the next thing while the moment in front of me slipped away unnoticed.
I knew it once, of course—the feeling of connection that comes from seizing the actual world. When I was a child, very little that happened in the real world escaped my attention. Not the brightly colored ice in small paper boats we bought at Mr. Dawson’s snowball stand; or the orange-and-white pattern that formed a map of Africa on my cat’s back; or the way Mother sat at her dressing table, powdering her beautiful face to a pale ivory color. It used to surprise me, the intensity with which I still remembered these distant memories. But when I entered my fifties—the Age of Enlightenment, as I came to call it—I understood their enduring clarity. By then I’d knocked around enough to know that, in the end, what adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.
Without Reservations Page 2