Rue des Rosiers

by Rhea Tregebov

  But she doesn’t have a room.

  She wants one. Her own room.

  They walk a few steps to an odd-shaped little building, a pavilion of some sort with mosaics running cheerily across the top of the façade. Palms in tubs flank the door, which is open. It’s musty and a bit dreary inside, a contrast to the exterior. Behind a battered table, there’s a man about their age. He rises, and he and Charles do the quick male double-kiss. So Charles can be French with the French... Then he and the man at the table start to chatter in such rapid French Sarah can’t follow. The key, la clé, she gets that much. The man is shrugging, being emphatic, but no, but yes, Charles isn’t sure, and now Charles is agreeing.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah,” Charles says as they leave the little pavilion. “You didn’t follow?”

  “It was too fast.”

  “André says we shouldn’t go into the enclosure itself. It’s unwise, ce n’est pas sage, as André says, because the hives have already been accessed today and the bees are more agitated than usual. And we haven’t any protective gear.”

  She wants in. She isn’t worried about the bees; in all her work at the Centre, she’s been stung only once. She wants in because she wants to be on the other side of the locked gate that Charles could have gotten the key for. Every lock in Paris has its key, but only for those with a right to them. Not for the clochards, the tramps with no place to live but the streets. Not for the panhandlers and not for the drunks and not for the downtrodden women with their sagging shopping bags. But Charles has the kind of life here where he has the keys to things. And because of the kind of life Michael has, Sarah knows Laura, who knows Charles, who can get into places where others are kept out.

  She wants in, but she won’t get in, not this time.

  They walk back into the sunlight. Little signs are placed in the grass: Ne pas marcher sur la pelouse. Danger abeilles. Do not walk on the lawn. Danger bees. Sarah and Charles circle on the path at a respectful distance. She watches the flecks of sunlight that are the bees as they swerve and flicker above the hives. Light is a wave and a particle and so are the bees. The arcs of their flight paths seem intense, more determined than anxious. The breeze has picked up a bit, and the leaves of the chestnuts shiver and pause. Charles is also watching silently as the bees perform their intricate arabesques of approach and departure, drawing corkscrews in the air above the hive.

  “When they get inside the hive, they do some sort of dance to let the other bees know where the flowers are. It’s called the ‘dance language’ of bees,” Charles says.

  Dance language. What would Rose say about that? Is that how Rose feels when she’s dancing, that she’s speaking in some way, that the body itself can be articulate? “My sister’s a dancer.”

  “Lovely. Can she make a living at it?”

  “Yes and no. It’s hard.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are the bees actually talking to each other when they dance?”

  “There’s controversy about exactly how they communicate. As they leave the hive, those bees that are new to foraging will start off flying in that spiral we’re watching. They aren’t yet using scent for direction, just whatever they learned from the returning bees’ dance –”

  “I’d like that.”

  “What?” Charles asks.

  “To speak with my body.”

  He laughs again, the same boisterous roar. “I’m pretty sure you do, at the appropriate moment.”

  She smiles. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

  “I understand that research has convincingly shown that men are almost always thinking about that.”

  She’s caught again by the spiral dance. The bees seem so businesslike. She wishes she knew with as much certainty what her day’s, her life’s work, was. They must know what they’re doing, to get done what they get done: the hives, the wax, the honey. That has to amount to knowledge.

  “Well, then, how about you?” Charles asks.

  “Me?” What does she know with her body? What does it tell her to do?

  “What are you keen on doing? This interest in gardens, where does it come in? You won’t get your hands dirty researching.”

  “I don’t know, Charles. Like I said, I’m kind of at a loss these days.” Loser at a loss.

  Charles studies her. “About time you find yourself, then, right?”

  She smiles. “One of the people whose garden I’ve worked on thinks I should start my own landscaping business when I get back home.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  She looks at her hands. “I’m afraid.” Afraid of failing. Afraid of trying.

  “Of course you’re afraid. I think the real question is, would your hands get dirty enough running a landscaping business? We’ve established that you need to get your hands dirty. Let’s say you weren’t afraid, or you got over that hump. Would landscaping suit you?”

  Would it suit her?

  “I don’t know.”

  Charles smiles again, checks his watch. He has to run, but he wants them to meet up again, wants to walk her through the Palais-Royal.

  They shake hands, he’s gone back into English mode. Is it subconscious, this switch from cheek-peck to handshake? It must be. She watches for a moment as he walks quickly off through the shaded paths and back towards the pond.

  She’ll walk home.

  On the central lawn, people are stretched out on the grass, behind a sign that reads: Pelouse autorisée. Sitting on the lawn permitted. This is a space where everyone is allowed. No locks, no keys. It belongs to everyone, a public terroir. Maybe that’s what makes Parisians so distinctive. Not the language, but the soil, maybe they pick up the scent and spice of the earth that’s around them. When they can, when it’s not covered with concrete or stone, or locked behind a grille. And not just the scent of the earth, the slant of light too, the winds that work their way among the buildings.

  How much of Toronto has she soaked up? Is Winnipeg still in her, after so many summers, winters, away?

  And can a Jew ever have their own terroir, or is every bit of land provisional? Every land but Israel, where she can’t imagine living. Not now.

  Laila

  Three nights a week Agnès waits for me at the shining entrance to the office building, its glass doors, bright lobby. I work here, clean offices, three nights a week. I don’t have a key but at 8:00 I meet Agnès at the entrance and she lets me in. She takes me into the ladies’ bathroom, we change into our uniforms, baggy grey dresses. I don’t know why we need uniforms, nobody is here to see us. She doesn’t bother much with me, Agnès, but she tells me what to do: where to clean, how to clean, where the bosses’ offices are, how they like things done. And when she saw how the bleach hurt my hands, she gave me rubber gloves, paid for them herself. Even with the gloves my hands are red and clean now, from scouring, from the cleansers and detergents. Their skin tight and pink like the scar across my cheek, they look like they don’t belong to me. When Agnès asked me about the scar, I didn’t say anything, shrugged.

  Because I have a job, I have 15 francs of my own in my jeans pocket. Fifteen francs. Agnès pays me cash. At the Marché d’Aligre market the piles of food set out in the stalls are bright, gleaming. It’s a long walk to the Marché d’Aligre from my room, but the prices are good here. I can buy anything: lettuce, grapes, cheese. Eggplant, lemons, garlic, mint. I could cook a meal, if I had a kitchen. I could make food I remember. I touch the bills in my pocket, the money I worked for, the dull feel of the paper.

  In the square in front of the market building is a table with cardboard boxes full of clothes, everything the same price, 10 francs. The women go through them, mauling the fabric, hunting for bargains. I want something for me. I want something pretty to wear in this ugly place, a fitted white blouse with a square collar, a striped t-shirt, boat-necked, French. Across from me a tired-looking woman, her plastic sho
pping bags at her feet, stops sorting through the clothes to stare. My hand goes to the scar on my cheek. But it’s not the scar she’s looking it, it’s me, dirty little Arab.

  My hands are clean.

  I don’t want her look. I don’t want to want what she wants, I don’t want anything in these boxes. I don’t want to want anything.

  I leave the market with nothing, no lemons or mint, the money still in my pocket. I’ll walk the crooked streets to meet you. You said it shouldn’t be more than a half-hour walk from the Marché d’Aligre to the Cité Métro station, if I’m not lazy. I’m supposed to look for you there, I’ll find you working, Khalil, I’ll find you foraging for cigarette butts so you can roll yourself a smoke from the leftover tobacco. Your fingers are dirty, your hands.

  I’m walking the crooked streets, watching these people and their pretty paper shopping bags. Shopping bags full of things they’ve bought, things they wanted and didn’t walk away from. Pretty things, pretty nothings because nothing is itself here. Clothes can't be clothes, food can't be food. Even the simplest thing isn’t what it is. My mother would set grapes in a wooden bowl on the tablecloth she’d embroidered, set cheese on a white plate, fresh bread beside it. Everything my mother served tasted real.

  Coming up the side of the cathedral, I can’t escape the gauntlet of music I don’t want to hear, each tune a slap: a duet on the sidewalk, violin and bass, the case open for coins. Then singing from inside the cathedral, so many voices, a choir. Then a round woman singing opera, her voice scratching at the sky. And finally the bells themselves, their song riding over the other voices, the music.

  As I cross the square, I feel a touch on my shoulder. I turn and jump to see my own spoiled face. The man who touched me bows, a real mouth smiles. No, he’s not like me, there’s nothing wrong with his face. It’s an ugly, twisted mask he’s wearing over his eyes and nose. He doesn’t say anything, tips his beret, waits a moment, is it money he wants? I can feel the light pressure of the bills in my pocket – they’re mine, not his.

  He bows to me again, goes off to a woman who’s snapping a picture. He poses just beside and behind her, he’s snapping a picture too. She turns and sees him and she startles as well, but now she’s bent over laughing, a heavy woman, German maybe. I can see now that the man is a mime, in his beret and tight trousers and striped sailor t-shirt, a t-shirt like the one I wanted to buy. He’s one of the entertainers in the cathedral square.

  The tour buses vomit out their swarms. More tourists in the famous square. They raise their cameras and take what they want to take home with them: themselves. Here’s me in front of Notre-Dame. Me in front of the Eiffel Tower. They want to be next to something they recognize, they want themselves to be the picture. They come here looking through the filter of themselves, looking only for themselves.

  Someone snaps a shutter and, by mistake, I’m in the frame. They don’t know I’m caught in their picture. The light of the day captured but also me, and a dozen, maybe twenty, other strangers, here, in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral, by mistake. And then, someone takes a picture of that photographer, by mistake, and takes his face home. Our lives bumping into one another, a brief collision, a moment’s mistake. The call – I was here, I was here – thinner and thinner in each repetition as the echoes of their images fade. None of them will see me, but I’m here.

  The clochards and the pickpockets, they see me. And the drunks. The clochards and panhandlers and pickpockets see me but they don’t bother with me, they don’t think I have anything for them. The drunks, the men, they make that sloppy chirping sound with their mouths, lips puckering, calling me like an animal, a pet. They think they can have me cheap, they think they can have me for the taking, already spoiled. And the women drunks, with their own spoiled faces, what do they see when they look at me, that brief collision? A warped reflection, like the mime with his ugly impersonations, something they recognize.

  I don’t recognize myself now, I don’t know where to look. What do you see when you look at me, Khalil, a spoiled face, spoiled woman? The one you took home, out of kindness or pity or honour, or a moment’s mistake? I don’t recognize you. I don’t know what business it is that keeps you busy. I don’t know where to look. I see the pictures on television, soldiers and their guns, how the city is hurt, its wounded buildings, walls gouged with bullets, the corpses of burned-out cars. I don’t understand why they don’t give us the faces of civilians, why we aren’t shown their wounds. All we’re given is a child’s hand dangling from her father’s hold, a man’s arm loose from a stretcher, blanket over his face, a leg hanging. A woman in a pink dress, balancing a bundle on her head, her face turned from the camera. I want to see their faces. I want to give them their names.

  ~

  Call

  saturday sun is slanting in on the table, giving even the crumbs on its surface their own long shadows. Sarah brushes the table clear, then picks up the penny, turns and turns its chill, light weight in her hand. A quick flip into her palm, then she switches the penny into the other palm, opens: yes.

  “Michael?” The penny closed in her fist. He’s walked into the room, freshly showered, towelling off his back. Sun haloing the damp blond curls on his head. He’ll want a trim soon. “I wanted to talk with you. I’ve been thinking about my plans – for when we get back to Toronto.” He reaches for his shirt, nods.

  “I have some ideas. Actually, not me so much. It was Mrs. Margolis who put me on to them. She thought –” Sarah worries the penny between her fingers, “she was talking about me taking some courses in landscape gardening. At Ryerson. Maybe even getting a certificate.”

  Michael sits down, buttoning up the shirt. “Ryerson.”

  “And once I’d taken the courses, she was saying – my designs are good, she was saying – she thought…I could start my own business. She figured I could make a go of it.” What Mrs. M. thought, she keeps talking about what Mrs. M. thought. What does she think? What will Michael think?

  Michael takes the penny from her, skates it back and forth in front of him along the table. She can see him measuring his words. “Really. A landscape business. You’d be good at that.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. And if it was your own business, you’d still be able to work a shovel whenever you felt like it,” Michael says. “But you’d have larger projects, ones that really grabbed you.”

  “That’s what Mrs. M. said.”

  He nods again. “You know how rare Mrs. M. is. Most of the time at the Centre, you’d be digging a pond for some god-awful plastic statue of a boy peeing or something. If you had your own business, you could develop a more sophisticated clientele, people like Mrs. M. You’re still in touch with her, right?”

  Sarah nods. She’d dropped by Mrs. M.’s before she left for Paris, sipped the requisite glasses of iced tea.

  “She might even be able to get you some customers, word of mouth. Her garden would be a showcase for you. You think she’d be okay with that?”

  “I think so.”

  “This is really something,” Michael says. “This is good.”

  “Up till now,” Sarah says, “I’d never thought that far beyond my job, making the rent. You know.” She takes the penny back from him. “But being here, seeing all these gardens, it’s got me thinking about what a garden is for.”

  He nods again.

  “I like the idea of designing spaces, backyards, gardens, anything. Then at least the work I do won’t just wash away after a season. I could start with the Ryerson courses, see how they go. See if I like or not, if I can do it.”

  “You can do it.”

  Michael so sure. But school never was hard for her, except that one course. “I need honest work –”

  “You’ve never done anything but honest work!”

  “– but I like the idea of making some sort of mark too.” Leaving some sort of a wake behind her, something to show she was here. Doing something that not only does no harm, but does some good
.

  He looks up at her, eyes cautious. Through the caution she can see how happy he is, the happy tension running through him. A solution. The solution to the problem of Sarah. The possibility of her half-life turning whole. “Sounds good, Sarah. Really good. Start with the classes. I can front you the money for school. If you’ll let me.” He slips his hand under her t-shirt, and she takes hold of it, presses it against her ribcage. “You should do this. You know you should.”

  ~

  Later that morning, Sarah and Michael and Laura are lingering over brunch at Laura’s apartment. She lives on a tiny street, rue Agar, in the 16th, the fanciest of all fancy arrondissements in Paris, where parfumeries surely out-number grocery stores. Laura has made them pissaladière, a flatbread with onion, olive and anchovy topping, and then a green salad which she’s served, French style, as a separate course after the main course. The pièce de résistance is dessert, a tarte Tatin, apple upside-down pie, which Laura has also made herself – she was just putting it in the oven when they came in. They’re squeezed around the table on her little rooftop patio, Laura and Michael delicately sharing a cigarette. He’s trying to quit. Sarah’s standing on tiptoe, looking across the river where she can just see the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  The view is part of the reason Laura rented the place. She confesses that she loves the romance of it, even if real Parisians don’t like the Eiffel Tower – or didn’t when it was first built. It was the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair and when it first went up, it stuck out like a tacky, vulgar, sore thumb. So says Laura’s friend Marie-Claire, who was born here. After almost a century, though, the Parisians are finally adjusting... Sacré Coeur too, the big white church at the top of Montmartre with the three elongated domes; even though construction on it started more than a century ago, lots of Parisians still think it’s hideous, a white elephant with those bloated, awkward domes.