I was going through files on my computer and found this essay I wrote awhile ago. It seemed appropriate to post while Cannes is taking place and my old favorite, Godard has two films showing. So here it is, part of a series I called, "A Place in the World".
My
father nodded as he read; “Go”, he said, “see as much of Europe as you can.” I had his blessing and with it the
possibility to leave behind some of the pain. Here was a chance to go interrupt
it or trick it out of existance.
It
was the first time I ever took a plane.
I flew from Buffalo to Kennedy with endless hours to wait in the
airport. I felt very adult, having lunch
at the TWA terminal which looked like a place the Jetsons inhabited. Then somehow I made my way to a bar, met up
with a group on their way to Germany and proceeded to drink beer with
them. So much that how I got on the
plane remains a blur. I slept through
the meals and woke refreshed as the plane taxied into Gatwick. Then there were more trains and a boat until
I arrived at Gare du Nord in the evening.
From the taxi to the hotel I remember seeing the prostitutes in their
spike heeled boots near Strasbourg St. Denis.
The hotel I stayed in was a pleasure with
its patterned wallpaper, bidet in the closet, and breakfast brought to the
door, hot coffee, croissants, and tartines.
In those days even inexepensive hotels had room service and in the
morning there was a knock on the door with a tray.
Different,
Paris was different but also
familiar. My parents were from Latvia and
there were certain indelible habits that marked Europeans. One was the cloth shopping bag my father
always carried and his penchant for unusual juices and sweets. In Europe everyone seemed to carry their own
string market bag and shops were filled with just the same impractical
delicacies that my father always sought out.
What
can a person say about a city like Paris that doesn´t sound cliche? It belongs to everyone who has visited
it. Its momuments are almost too
familiar. The stereotypes border on
absurd. Before I arrived, I imagined the
city would resound with syrupy accordian music or the voice of Yves Montand,
hoarse with cigarette smoke. A French friend looking at my French textbook with
its requisite photos of a man on a motorcycle with a huge baguette tied to the
back or a pig on the street, exclaimed, “A pig in Paris. Impossible!”
But this
was how we believed the city would be.
An American friend coming to Europe had searched everywhere for a beret
before coming, wore it, and was truely disappointed that no one else was
wearing one. When I first arrived and
walked around the city I had the idea that everyone was paired off. It certainly looked that way.
So
then how is it possible to make sense of a place inside all of that
fantasy? Since this was the first large
city I ever inhabited, Paris became the measure of all cities. Even New York years later, fell short. Nothing else would do. The impressions it left on a twenty year old
would last forever.
Finding
myself in a place where there were actually things to see and do, I
sytematically set about doing them. I
visited every place I could, but not in the manner of a tourist who spends two
days and crams everything into a visit, but slowly, carefully. Of course I avoided the more obvious tourist
destinations like the Eiffel Tower. I
only saw it from the distance of a friend´s apartment or from the job board
that was located nearby and was where all the aspiring au pairs went to check
job listings.
I
prided myself on never visiting the Eiffel Tower until the 90´s when I was with
a Brazilian friend who insisted on seeing it.
By that time I was free of any prejudices of trying to be cool. Her visit to Europe was an attempt at
recovery. Not only had her fiance died
in a car crash but was dressed in drag when it happened. I don´t know how Paris was supposed to help
her get over that.
There
was never a shortage of places to see.
On Sundays the Louvre was free.
Saturdays I took long walks from my neighborhood, crossing the busy
traffic of the Place de la Concorde eventually making it to Odeon and St. Mich
where a girlfriend lived. There I often
took a bath since I lived in a maid´s room without a shower. She would make me
a cup of tea to drink ; it still brings back a sense of wellbeing, lying in a
bath sipping hot tea.
Her
apartment was her boyfriend´s; it made her seem daring. He took her to places like the Tour D´Argent
which in those days was the height of chic, and was convienently away on
business travel. Often enough so this
very centrally located apartment could be used for parties. At one, I lost my contact lens on the fur rug
and we all got down on our hands and knees to search for it. I was lucky, like in most things in Paris and
I found it intact though people had been walking around the apartment all
night.
Another
Paris cliche was cinema. I took a course
in film which entailed going to an endless number of movies and talking about
them. The professor had made a documentary about May 68 which we saw several
times to learn a sense of the political and a disdain for what was
American.
Usually
I went to tiny cinemas which weren´t heated sufficiently in winter so I
shivered through the first showing before the building had warmed up. On one ocassion I went to see a Tati film,
Mr. Hulot´s Vacation. Next to it, Cries
and Whispers was playing. Somehow I
walked into the wrong theater. The clock
ticking on the screen and all the red on the screen should have been a warning,
but thinking I was seeing a preview I sank into the seat to watch and before I
knew it I was watching the slow agonizing death of one of the sisters. At one point I could no longer contain myself
and just began to cry, which turned into a kind of gasping for air weeping. When the film ended, the person next to me
asked me if I was all right. What could
I say? I had gone in expecting a comedy
and walked right straight into my own mother´s death.
I
became a fan of Godard with his bloody Weekend and futuristic Alphaville. Truffault was even more entertaining. I loved the Bride who Wore Black since most
of the young women I knew, myself included, had to spend time fending off
advances from men we weren´t interested in.
This even happened on the metro.
One night an Italian man simply asked if he could go home with me and
followed me until I had to scream at him.
With some men I used my Latvian, by the time they could assimilate this
was a language they didn´t understand, I had time to make my escape. So this film was the perfect revenge, Jeanne
Moreau systematically killing off the men who were present in a nearby
apartment and by accident had shot her husband on their wedding day.
And
what would be Paris without Jules and Jim?
I saw it with an American man I met on the boat train from London. I was settling into my seat on the train, he
moved across from me so he could look at me he said. He was my temporary reward for having lost my
mother. We also saw Women in Love
together on one of our many outings during the two weeks he was in Paris; we
ate trout with grapes and almonds, went to the Place des Voges, stayed up and
talked endlessly.
We
travelled out to Versailles by mistake on a Monday when everything was closed. The gardeners were burning brush and we stood
with them and drank brandy from a flask they passed around. He was on his way to Greece and was looking
for a typewriter to buy. Everyone had
literary aspirations in those days. Our
encounters were fairly limited since he was sharing a hotel room with a friend,
and I was staying at a friend´s apartment.
There were hooves on the wall of his hotel which he assured me came from
a kosher animal.
His
mother had died of cancer when he was thirteen.
Mostly he remembered the screams.
But he had to move on; it was his European trip. I was much younger than his usual girlfriends
he said surprised to see I wore no make-up and was amost always dressed in
jeans. Actually I had no idea of such
things though eventually I would find out.
Paris was the perfect place to do so.
Then
I went out with a postal clerk I met at the showing of The Last Tango in
Paris. We had absolutely nothing in
common but we sat next to each other in the cinema and we laughed at the same
parts of the film. It never occured to
me that the subject matter of the film could have played a role in his asking
me out.
His life was structured and rigid with his own
rules. Fifteen days was the maximum to
spend on a bus; evening meals were to be light. He was shocked when he discovered I hitch-hiked.
But there was a hopefulness to him that made me sad; he showed me books he was
reading, he tried redecorating his apartment.
When we went out I always borrowed clothes from a friend from New
York. She had the largest collection of
cashmere sweaters I´d ever seen. I´d
come to Paris with just one suitcase and had never owned such a thing.
Then
there was the all night movie theater. I
often ended up there with my closest friend after the metro stopped running and
we found ourselves stranded downtown.
There were double features that went on until about six in the
morning. Generally we watched the first,
napped through the second, and woke up in time to catch the first metro in the
morning. One night we took our friends,
one of whom entered the theater with Miko, his black cat. That gave a new twist to the evening, Miko
was on a leash but didn´t stop jumping over the seats in front of us.
Our
French friends were stunned we would go to a place like this. It looked like most of the viewers chose this
cinema rather than pay for a cheap hotel room.
The owner periodically walked around to give someone a poke to wake them
up. He had shoulder length hair which
looked like it had never been washed.
Here, we saw films like Ziebreski Point, Car Wash, Texas Chainsaw Massacres,
and any number of usually bad films I only saw half of before I nodded
off. There must be a tenacity to our friendship
since these French friends are still friends, after so many years.
This
was my Paris. The city of the nuit
blanche, the café near my maid´s room where I would have a coffee and a tartine
on my way home as the sun came up. I was putting on weight with the endless
amount of bread and cheese I consumed. I
lived right above a chocolate shop that had dark chocolate truffles the size of
a dessert plate. They left the dust of cocoa powder all over as you bit into
one. And since I had to walk up endless
flights of stairs to get to my room, often I treated myself to one as an
incentive for that climb.
Part
of my studies included theater too. So I
saw the ever popular Ionesco´s The Bald
Soprano which may even still be playing in the Latin Quatrter and went to the
Comedie Francaise where I discovered I simply didn´t fit in the seats designed
for bodies a couple of centuries ago. I
saw Eden Cinema, written by Marguerite Duras before The Lover made her a
household name.
Of
course I discovered food in Paris. The
first restaurant I went to was Algerian and I developed a love for
couscous. It was also the first time I
saw it was perfectly acceptable, if not desirable, to have an entire bottle of
wine with a meal. I adapted
quickly. Of course I had the requisite
French food which I loved but found a bit heavy in the days before nouvelle
cuisine.
The
worst place to eat was in the student cafeterias in the university. And there the worst dish I had was tongue
with a layer of fiber covering its sponginess.
And sudents were hungry. Often if
you left something on your plate someone would pick it up. There was no shame involved; it happened with
lightning quickness. It all depended on your budget. I was on student loans and working as an au
pair so I was careful but didn´t have to go that far.
My
job as an au pair entailed on afternoon and one night a week of childcare. The
mother always made me lunches with large quantities of beef which she thought,
being American, I would love. There
wasn´t much of an age difference between us.
It doesn´t sound like much work
but at the time I had never even held a baby in my life and had no
experience with children whatsoever.
There were two, the boy as I described to a friend, just lay there and
she informed me he was probably under six months of age and the little girl was
three. Their mother had been a former
model and tried to brush out her daughter´s curls and make them straight. That brought on screams and tears on a
regular basis. The husband knew less
about children than I did and didn´t seem particularly interested in
learning. When he arrived I could technically
go but he always asked me to stay until his wife got home from her
shopping. Feminism hadn´t reached this
household yet.
Often
I would find myself with both children crying and screaming for no apparent
reason. There was nothing that could distract them. I soon saw that being a mother or even an au
pair required fulltime attention. It
wasn´t possible to pick up a book or even do something that required less
concentration like watch television. I soon developed a generalized anxiety
whenever I had to go to work. Sometimes I practiced deep breathing and would
tell myself I could do it and I was lucky it was only two days a week. Probably
more than one woman has decided not to have children based on an early
experience as an au pair.
My
last visit was on my way back to Spain from Buffalo. I spent a couple of days
in Paris in August but that didn´t matter at all. I breathed in an element I had been missing -
a mixture of baroque architecture and history in the foundations. The jardin du
Luxembourg with its hidden enclaves and statues were precisely things you
wouldn´t find in an American park. There
is a dank mossy smell of age which isn´t unpleasant at all and metal chairs to sit near the palace or
the lake. This order of gardens and
space is what I find comforting. It´s a
public space which is meant to reflect the measure of man and to finely tune
nature. Nothing is left to chance
which I find reassuring. If I want nature I will go to the countryside.
The
gothic cathedrals also left their impact on me.
I visited all the great ones in the nearby cities trying to imagine the
days when they were brightly painted and the centers of all activity. They were visible from a distance and grew in
size as you approached on foot. There
were Chartres with its rose window, Rouen´s cathedral painted by Monet, Reims
with the stained glass designed by Chagall, and Beauvais that reached so high
the vaulting collapsed and all that´s left standing are the transcept and
choir.
Perhaps
the image of France that stays with me is on a walk in the countryside complete
with snacks of boiled eggs and apples organized by our French teacher and her
husband, who were spry well into their sixties. We came upon an outdoor wedding celebration,
all the guests seated around a long wooden table on a gloriously sunny autumn
day. It seemed the very embodiment of happiness. Paris served as a positive image of what
humans could construct, of what constituted beauty, of how it could be a
measure. It brought to life nineteenth
century romanticism which I still hold as an ideal.
