Paris in the Fall
Hemingway wrote that “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you.” He was wrong. I don’t think that you have to live in Paris for it to become a part of you, forever. Just a few days is enough.
It seems to be a city built to imprint itself in one’s memory. Knowing where you are going means marvelling at the elegant spiral of Arrondissements and sketching Metro lines in your mind’s eye. But memorable also because it is a city of happy accidents, a city with surprises around every corner when mental maps inevitably fail. White cups singing softly on the street outside a cafe. Another pâtisserie, somehow more vibrant than the last. Suddenly, a park, a little verdant whisper against the constant thrum of cars and bodies.
I am sitting in an airport, television screens blazing all around me, the steady scrawl of news screaming out even with the volume down. Terrorist attacks in Paris. Suicide bombers. Hostages. Dozens dead. Maybe a hundred or more. State of emergency. Borders closed. Be vigilant. Do not be afraid. We will not be intimidated. Confusion. Blood. Tears. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
I thumb through pictures from my last visit to the city, the fall of 2012. My wife carried the camera, I didn’t own a smart phone, and I was self-conscious about pulling out my iPad to snap photos, so most of the best moments live only in my head. Booksellers outside of time along the Seine, displaying heaps of treasure in rickety wooden carts (Giraud’s Lt. Blueberry for me, Asterix for my son). The night we ate hunks of fresh baguette and drank red wine from ridiculously small glasses in our hotel room. We had bought the glasses for a picnic beneath the Eiffel Tower. I had to toss them in the garbage when we began our ascent, and I fished them out of the trash can when we got back to the ground. We still have the glasses in our cupboard at home, use them all the time. The colours of the leaves. Rain shining on cobblestones. The goldensweet smell of crêpes warming my childrens’ cold fingertips. The indentations in the steps of Notre Dame, the invisible tracks of countless footsteps shifting stone, one atom at a time.
The best day in a week of best days is the walk from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre. We wander about the Jardin des Tuileries, stop and sit and enjoy the way the sun scatters across the fountain, the way the sun feels on our skin. We are young and alive and we secretly dream that this is our city. Hemingway was wrong, but I am still jealous.
Statues populate the gardens, but I have pictures of only two of them. The first is “Cain venant de tuer son frere Abel.” “Cain coming from having killed his brother Abel.”
The other statue is “Le Bon Samaritain.” “The Good Samaritan.”
One more memory: on our last night in the city, we hear a loud squeal and crash from the street outside our window. We strain our necks over the ledge of a tiny balcony and see a car crumpled against a lamp post. The driver is out of the car, hand on head, dazed. Two or three men frantically move to the front of the car and try to lift it off the curb. More join them. They are straining to lift the car and slowly the group manages to ease the car back. It is then that we see the ruined motorcycle and the rider who had been pinned beneath the car. He wears a dark helmet. The skin of his neck is very white. An ambulance arrives, then another. The next hour is spent trying to bring the man back to life. They cut the man’s shirt off. Medics take turns pounding away at the man’s chest. They crush his chest, again and again. The compressions are so violent that I have to turn away for a while. They bring out a defibrillator and begin to shock the man. We watch all this from the balcony, whispering to the children, telling them to stay inside.
The man’s bare chest looks gray and I can see blood smeared on it. They pour shock after shock into his lifeless frame, and we watch his body lurch and jump off the pavement. It is clear to me that the man is dead, but they won’t stop shocking him. I know he is dead, but they won’t stop. I give up and go back inside. The next time I come out, the man is covered in a white tarp.
The televisions in the airport continue their silent scream. The pictures are getting worse. The body count is rising. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. But I am.
Tonight, as I think about Paris, I think about those two statues. Tonight, they seem to memorialize all that it can possibly mean to be human. The worst and the best we can be. I think about the way they both gesture to the unsculpted future, to the uncertainty of what happens next. I forgot that I had the picture of The Good Samaritan. I don’t remember taking it. Tonight, especially tonight, I’m glad that I have it.
Cain, I remembered. I remember standing in front of the statue of Cain for a very long time.
__________
If you enjoyed this, please click the heart to recommend it to others.
