Paris and Other Disappointments

by Adam Rozenbachs

  ‘He’s good. I fed him and put him down about fifteen minutes ago.’

  Then I was overcome with guilt. This was one of my best friends, and my godson was stuck inside. So I blurted out, through peak levels of embarrassment, ‘And now I’m in the backyard and I’ve locked myself out.’

  She paused briefly before answering, just long enough to send me through six or seven shame spirals. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a mum for only five minutes, you instantly gain the ability to leave a silence that can cut through anyone.

  ‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘There’s a key in the backyard.’

  And that was it. She directed me to the key, staying on the phone while I got myself back in the house and checked on her (still sleeping) son. Basically she looked after him via idiot proxy.

  Not surprisingly, no one ever asked me to babysit again. Not just within my friendship group – even people who have never heard the story have the smarts to not trust me with their newborns.

  But in difficult circumstances in Paris, I found myself with an oldborn, and I had to take care of him.

  So I stepped up. Instead of telling Dad to ‘stop sooking’, which is what fathers of his era would have done, I played it delicately. Name calling wasn’t going to help us, having about as much effect as telling an angry person to calm down. I needed to be firm but fair.

  ‘We’re not leaving, so get over yourself!’

  Am I a hero for taking command? Probably not to the general public, but within my family, I had a public holiday dedicated to me.

  Dad didn’t like my course of action but there was little he could do. Every time he pushed back he could see I wasn’t going to budge, so he surrendered, for the good of our relationship. It wasn’t worth getting into an argument about it every five minutes. And he wasn’t a worldly enough traveller to just say, ‘Meet you in London,’ and head out on his own, so he had to begrudgingly stick it out with me. Though this came at a cost, because now Dad was gloomy, hardly talking and not much fun to hang out with.

  Seeing Dad as vulnerable for the first time was the perfect moment for our first ever hug. I didn’t risk it though; even though he was miserable, I was still fairly sure he had the strength to push me into the Seine.

  I could tell how much events were weighing on Dad, because in all the commotion we’d forgotten to eat. A nuclear fallout cloud could have been raining down on Melbourne and Dad would still have found time to reheat last night’s roast lamb (using the radiation from the nuclear bomb).

  We hadn’t eaten because from Berlin to Paris we’d flown with easyJet. For the first-time flyer, the lack of frills with budget airlines can prove a bit of a shock. Free checked baggage, people to assist you with check-in, allocated seating – these are luxuries for those who can afford the fancy airlines. If you want a good seat on a cheap flight in Europe, it’s first in, best dressed, and get the fuck out of my way old lady.

  When the hosties walked the aisle with the food and drinks trolley, Dad was stunned he would have to pay for the cheese and crackers he’d just been handed. As a man of principle, he refused, ‘I’m not bloody paying for them!’, figuring his ticket should have been his right to at least a small amount of processed cheese and three tiny crackers. Reluctantly he handed back the snack, leaving him with the feeling that everyone in Europe was handing out items only in order to rip people off.

  It also meant by the time evening came around, he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Snack Disorder. I suggested we go to a restaurant and sort the situation out. But even though we were both hungry, Dad didn’t want to stay on the streets of Paris any longer. We had travelled less than 150 metres from our accommodation, but he already disliked Paris so much he preferred going back to our cell. It didn’t matter that we were surrounded by so much culture and history, nothing made a difference to Dad. Having already had to talk him into staying in the city at all, I realised dinner wasn’t a battle worth fighting; Paris would have to wait.

  As we entered the flat, I nearly electrocuted myself on an exposed wire on the light switch. I knew then that we’d be leaving this apartment early, either by choice or by death.

  I turned the television on and told Dad not to touch anything. I strolled up the street to the supermarket and grabbed some beers, salami, cheese and bread rolls – the backpackers’ banquet – while praying that Dad wouldn’t be impaled on an exposed couch spring while I was gone.

  As I shopped, I couldn’t work out how I’d booked that property. We’ve all seen misleading photos when looking at properties online, using wide-angle lenses to make a room look bigger or having someone with dwarfism stand next to a bar fridge to give a false sense of size. But I’d never been deceived like I had with that Airbnb apartment. Either the photos had been severely photoshopped or I’d booked it after getting home at 4 am one night.

  While Dad cooked (cutting rolls and adding cheese and salami), I started an online chat with Airbnb, to let them know our issues and hopefully get us a refund. Amazingly, amongst all the problems, poor wi-fi was not one of them. It was so strong and fast I could’ve downloaded all of the world’s television in about half an hour.

  Dad had been miserable, but once I started listing the apartment’s faults, he sprang to life. Now it was game on, Dad relishing the opportunity to find more defects than the ones we’d unearthed right away.

  ‘That’s not a bloody dryer,’ he cried, as I listed the clothes horse that was advertised as a ‘dryer’.

  Forensically combing every centimetre of the apartment searching for faults, Dad even pried up a loose tile from the floor, insisting I photograph it. The anonymous person at Airbnb was exceptionally helpful and as Dad headed into the bathroom to find more evidence I told him I was already fairly confident we’d be getting our money back.

  ‘Adam! Look at this!’ he yelled, letting me know there was something amiss with the toilet. As I stood up to walk in and have a look, he was getting more excited. ‘The water’s coming right to the edge of the bowl!’

  I reached the door to see him standing precariously on tiptoe, transfixed by whether or not the water would go over the edge. It didn’t, but he demanded I add it to the list.

  It’s a well-worn expression to be careful what you wish for, and from the moment we’d agreed to this trip I’d wished Dad would show some passion for anything we did. I could not have guessed it would be this apartment that would ignite something within him. Berlin Wall? It’s a wall, sure, whatever. Clothes horse listed as a dryer? HE’S ALIVE!

  The apartment was so bad, it probably didn’t even have the hinges Dad liked. We didn’t check, too scared to open the window in case it fell out of the wall and crushed someone in the courtyard four storeys below. No way Dad was going down that many flights of stairs to check on someone’s health.

  Having compiled a comprehensive list of the apartment’s failings, I thought there’d probably be one more to add – I wasn’t overly hopeful the fresh linen we were waiting on would be delivered by the time we were ready for bed (it wasn’t). This wasn’t hell, but if there was a place just outside of hell where Satan let his friends stay during the holidays, this was it.

  The shambolic dealings with pre-host Jose and Key Man set the tone of Paris for Dad. He wasn’t about to get fooled by anyone again. Those two untrustworthy men were why he didn’t carry a wallet (unless it was a passport wallet). This was why he lived in suburban Melbourne and didn’t venture beyond it. Anything could happen, and was probably about to. Paris had burned him and he wasn’t about to forget.

  I knew what I was up against. It’s hard enough reversing your own opinion, let alone someone else’s. Sometimes we not only judge a book by its cover, but buy a thousand copies of the book so we can burn it on a huge pile. But I had faith that if any city in the world could bring Dad around, it would be Paris. Why else would so many millions of people, including the Romans, go there and romanticise it? It must be doing something right.

  By the time we finally
ventured further than 150 metres from the apartment the next morning, Dad had seen enough to sum up the city of love. ‘Smells like cat piss.’

  The odour was just the beginning of his dislike for the city. Everything Dad saw reaffirmed his prejudices.

  Dogs in shops.

  Dogs shitting in the streets, with no one bothering to pick it up.

  People shitting in the streets. Probably.

  This was exactly the type of city he’d read about, or seen in the documentary Paris Will Knife You in the Back and Dump Your Body in the Seine.

  I felt bad that he hated it so much, but his desire to leave was overridden by me not having been to Paris before. I wanted to actually see some of the sights. I took Dad’s feelings into consideration, considerably trimming down the list of places we were planning to go.

  First stop: the pièce de résistance of Paris’s tourist attractions – if not the world’s – the Eiffel Tower. I had faith it would win him over.

  ‘Thought it would be bigger.’

  Those were his words as we rounded a corner and the Eiffel Tower came into view.

  I can’t imagine what he was expecting. The Eureka Tower, Melbourne’s tallest building, is 297 metres tall. On a worldwide scale, it’s splashing around in the shallow end of the pool compared to some of the buildings in China or the Middle East, but it’s a standout on the Melbourne skyline and Dad’s not seen anything bigger in person.

  The Eiffel Tower is the same height, even though it was built over a century earlier. I didn’t know how he couldn’t think it was impressive. Sure, it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever built, but it’s not like Dad had travelled the world comparing grand structures. Though he had seen a lot of things on television, so perhaps by his standards he had.

  For some reason he was itching to move on, but considering I was his tour guide he was stuck until I said we could leave. Not that I was planning on milking it, but I wanted to stick around a bit longer than a single derogatory comment.

  One of the activities available at the Eiffel Tower is to climb it. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen – for a very good reason.

  During summer holidays our family always ended up at the carnival in the seaside suburb of Dromana. Carnivals are supposed to be fun places for kids. Being young means you’re blind to the fact that the rides are being assembled and operated by carnies, people who can barely look after their own teeth, let alone the safety of hundreds of people.

  We’d hit the carnival with family friends, and there was always a split into two factions: one group of children wanted to go on all the rides, the other group wanted to remain on terra firma. I say the other group – it was only me and our friends’ daughter, Rennae. Mum and Dad knew I was terrified of heights and wouldn’t let me go on anything, for fear of the consequences. And as much as she wanted to be in the cool group, Rennae was only four years old, so she was relegated to Group Lame-o for safety reasons (by the parents – for the right price, the carnies would have let her operate the rides).

  The fun group took off quickly, trying to get through as many rides as possible before closing. Rennae and I were left with the rides that were deemed safe. We quickly discovered what can only be described as the baby ferris wheel. Rennae was all for it, and Mum, after much consideration and convincing from me, decided it was small enough that I would be comfortable riding it.

  We boarded, all smiles and excitement, which lasted approximately twelve seconds before I lost what can only be described as ‘my shit’.

  I’ve since learned to cope with heights – planes don’t bother me, I’ve even sucked it up and nervously flown in helicopters – but on that day, any semblance of being brave in front of a four-year-old went out the window. It was pure, unadulterated hysteria, so full on it set Rennae off too. Now it was two screaming children aboard the Ferris Wheel of Death.

  Credit where it’s due, the carnies flew into action, stopping the ride immediately and beginning the rescue mission. On a normal ferris wheel, they’d have to wait for the ride to complete a full rotation to get someone off. Fortunately this one was so small, the carnie basically reached across and lifted me out, like taking a kid out of a particularly tall high chair, ending the most traumatic moment of my young life.

  Deep down, I know that horrific (for me) and embarrassing (for Dad) memory was the reason neither of us wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower. We happily settled on the mutually agreed excuse that the line was way too long.

  Dad remained eager to move on. He must have thought that if we got through the tourist attractions quickly, we’d be able to leave Paris earlier. He couldn’t have been more wrong. My motto for the whole trip was fast becoming, ‘We’re only here once, so . . .’

  That was one of those moments. I didn’t want him to glance at the Eiffel Tower, say something dismissive, and then walk away within two minutes. I wanted him to stand there, taking everything in. Admiring it. Appreciating that when it was built it was a great feat of engineering and construction. As touristy as it had become, I imagine as a Parisian it would have been pretty cool at an earlier, less busy time to be able to sit on the grass that surrounds it and look down to the river or read a book under one of the world’s most iconic structures. Now it’s anything but, with thousands of people trying to do that ‘look like you’re holding the Eiffel Tower between two fingers’ picture or the hundreds of peddlers trying to sell dinky, cheap souvenirs.

  I kept trying to draw his attention to the tower, but his mind was elsewhere. Standing at this beacon of hope for the occupied Parisians during World War II, Dad fired off a bunch of questions within a minute. I answered them as rapidly as they came. ‘Yeah, there are a lot of those guys selling the miniature Eiffel Towers.’ ‘They probably are a rip-off. Who cares?’ ‘I don’t know where they’d get that many.’ ‘Why should they be arrested?’ ‘How about you forget about them and look at the actual-sized tower right there?’

  Eventually I managed to get his focus back to the tower and, as he stood there finally taking it in, Dad managed to give it some praise.

  ‘That’s good steel that.’

  All of a sudden I was travelling with the head of Rio Tinto.

  The Eiffel Tower summarily shut down by Dad, as though he was on an engineering Tinder date and would only accept 400-metre-plus structures, I wanted to give other famous Paris sites equal opportunity to disappoint him.

  As we made our way up the stairs to the Sacré-Cœur church, I heard Dad mumbling to himself. I figured he was urging himself to go on, the pain of the climb becoming too much for him but refusing to quit.

  I asked what he was saying, curious as to what mantra was helping him push through. By now, I should’ve known this was a dangerous strategy; I didn’t really want to go back inside that head of his, but by this stage of the trip I was concerned about his welfare. Perhaps he genuinely was in we’d-better-stop-for-his-long-term-health kind of pain. His safe return to Mum weighed heavily on me, so I didn’t really think of the consequences when I asked.

  ‘I’m counting all the stairs we’re going up.’

  Sacré-Cœur will always stay with me for its look-at-me value. I could tell its architects had gone all out to impress, building it out of white stone, loading it up with five domes, a huge bell tower and massive columns on the portico leading to the entrance. On the top of a hill overlooking Paris. This church wanted to be noticed and they nailed it. The interior was just as impressive, incredible stained-glass windows casting people in various colours as a mural of Jesus watched over everyone.

  For Dad, it will live on only as the number of steps he had to climb to get there.

  To this day, Dad could still give a stair count for each of the major tourist attractions we went to. The numbers have never changed, filed away in the vault within his brain alongside the beggar who stood up out of his wheelchair and the great fish and chips he later ate in London.

  He justified counting steps as helping take his mind off them, the constant up a
nd down causing him angst. I completely understood. We’ve all been in a position where we need to dig deep to carry on, struggling through a run, mid-winter at work or season three of Orange Is the New Black. What couldn’t be justified was his need to turn to me and say, ‘twenty-seven,’ every time we ascended a flight.

  Or discussing it with me later. ‘A hundred and eighty-two stairs! Bloody hell, that’s a lot, isn’t it?’ is not the gateway to meaningful conversation. It’s the gateway to the room in hell you never want to end up in: the Meaningless Dad Conversation Room. Where on a loop you’ll hear about the weather, your brother’s car, how footy’s not as good as it used to be and the weather.

  Even when I asked him directly, he still wasn’t saying anything about the pain I knew he’d been in since Munich. Short of telling him I’d eavesdropped on his conversation with Mum, and that I knew for a fact that the walking was hurting him, I didn’t know what I could do to help him if he wouldn’t admit it. Frustrating as his silence may have been, at the same time I was impressed by his not quitting. As a kid I was exceptionally prone to a good old-fashioned quit.

  After a few schoolyard scuffles, Dad and I agreed (95/5 split his way) that I should take up some form of self-defence. He decided to teach me boxing, but this ended quickly, after he attempted to make a floor-to-ceiling speedball.

  This consisted of a netball wrapped in a cloth masking tape attached to two occy straps, one rising to the ceiling and the other secured to a spare tyre on the ground. It almost worked, aside from the exceptionally rough tape used to secure the occy straps to the ball, which shredded my knuckles and cause them to bleed in an instant. If my bloodied and weeping hands weren’t enough of a hindrance, the occy straps would regularly come away from the tape, or work their way off the tyre, the loose end snapping back at a speed that almost took my eye out. Although that taught me mongoose-like quickness, I gave up boxing because I didn’t need the extra attention an eyepatch would bring me in the schoolyard.