Paris, Part 2

We slept until 9:30 am after returning from Amiens. Breakfast was taken at a leisurely pace, in stark contrast to the steady stream of haste we weathered the day before.

The morning was warm, the day and the city already in motion, the prior dawn was cool, dim and devoid of activity except for the city sweeping up what leaves and dirt had settled since the last time they’d tackled the task. Rivulets flowed down the curbs to gutters and drains at that early hour, pressure washers sweeping left and right behind it, their hoses snaking back to the water trucks that followed them in their turn. The public toilets on the streets were being scrubbed out. Long handled brooms brushed up the bits, their green bristles reminding me of curling. But that late in the morning, those industrious masses were only a memory, the gutters once again filling with butts.

What followed was a day reminiscent of the Linklater film “Before Sunset,” similar if not an authentic recreation a year after the film was released.

Our feux film began in Shakespeare and Co., the English language bookstore that Sylvia Beech began, distinguished by its having been the first to publish Joyce’s “Ulysses,” and encouraging and the publication and being the first to sell Hemingway’s first book of short stories, “Three Stories and Ten Poems.” But where Jesse was on the last leg of a book tour, I was just browsing the chaotic jumble of stacked shelves and piled books. It was musty. It smelled of old books. There were beds tucked in among the shelves and stacks, testament to its reputation as a flop house for writers in Paris. A painted passage graced the wall above the lintel of an interior door on the second floor, declaring: Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.

We had lunch on the terrace of La Petite Grill. It was not Le Pure Café. But it might as well have been. Corner lot, red wainscoted exterior, wooden bistro sets spilling out onto the sidewalk and hugging its flanks, storied limestone above. I liked to think we were in the café of question while we ate there, even though we weren’t.

An America family paused outside by the chalkboard sign by the entrance as I contemplated the plate of frogs’ legs I’d ordered and had yet to try. I’d asked the waiter a series of foolish questions when ordering. “Are they good? What do they taste like?”

He said, “They are frogs’ legs,” tossing his arm and shrugging, probably thinking, “Stupid tourist, why are you asking me such stupid questions.”

The Americans were even more the tourist than I. Knee length shorts, knee-high socks, Hawaiian shirts, matching Tilly hats. Yes, they had cameras around their necks. I was the definition of cool compared to them.

“Look, Dad,” the mother said, “they’ve got cheeseburgers.”

“Really?” he said.

“I don’t think you’ll like them, though,” she continued.

“Oh?” he said.

“Remember? They’re not like the cheeseburgers at home. They put them on toast and any serve them with mayonnaise and catsup.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, crestfallen at the prospect of not getting America while not in America.
Once they’d passed by, the only entertainment to be had was our watching people park. How they managed to fit into such tight spaces was a wonder. At least until we watched them. A driver would sneak into or leave a spot no longer than his car, inching forward and back until pressing up against and pushing the cars fore and aft until they were snuggly in or free of the space. All cars in Paris had scratches and dents, regardless how expensive. Most cars weren’t, though. They were small, economical, light, no more than 1.3 litres, usually diesel things, not the cherished phallic symbols they are in North America.

We walked along the Seine, inching past the little green mews that perch open along the walls, the bouquinistes, not buying anything except a few vintage erotic postcards since all the books we saw were French. I don’t read French. Why did I buy vintage erotic postcards? Research. I was writing a novel set in the Great War and I’d read more than once that the soldiers would buy them, something to linger over while stagnating in the trenches, so I had to have a few to describe in my own book. If not books and postcards, the vendors sold prints and tacky tourist stuff, the same postcards you could get everywhere as well as the hundred-year-old pornography—Kiki and Josephine Baker, too, if you were a mind to—old movie posters, tattered comic books and magazines. I saw one peddling original artwork. This wildly eclectic mix didn’t seem at all out of place.

We took a moment to take in the fountain at the corner of St. Michel station, one we walked past a few times without giving it a second glance until then. It was beautiful, the angel, his wings spread and aloft, his sword held high, vanquishing a devil, the water flowing out from beneath them, cascading over rocks and dais, the base green with algae.

We walked to the Louvre, but it was closed, so we rode the Metro to the Champs-Elysées and the Arc d’ Triomphe. We climb its claustrophobically tight spiral stair to the top to take in the city from its height, then had supper out on the street, watching the world go by, the people, the bustle and haste.
We did not haste. Bev was slowing down, telling me that her cold had grown worse, that she was tired and growing feverish.

We returned to the Latin Quarter. Bev went back to the room to rest. I went to La Petite du Periguirdine, the little restaurant pub down the street where I met a woman from Washington State who was in the city for a convention. We chatted for a while until her friends arrived and dragged her across the street for a late-night pizza.

I ordered a second beer and read for a while, glancing up on occasion as the people strolled by, taking note how Parisians and tourist dressed, the differences in their posture and poise, and how easy it was to tell one from the other.