Almost French (17 page)

Like some of the other Paris ‘markets’, Rue Montorgueil is not so much a market as a street of speciality food shops, some of which wheel out stalls. It takes only ten minutes to stroll from one end to the other but the repetition of boutiques reveals something about French priorities. Nine cafés, six
boulangeries
, four butchers, four wine shops, three
fromageries
, two
chocolatiers
, two
poissonneries
, three fruit and vegetable shops and—for the truly carnivorous—one horse meat butcher. Queues of people waiting to buy cigarettes trail from two
tabacs
. Three pharmacies feed the French addiction to prescribed medicine, a dependence encouraged by everyone in the lucrative health care business from doctors to pharmaceutical companies.

It is almost impossible to describe the pleasure I derive from the rituals that will become synonymous with my new life in Paris. My favourite time of day on Rue Montorgueil is early morning—‘early’ in France meaning anytime before 9.30am. Even on overcast days, the white façades quiver with brightness. The
quartier
has an air of industriousness. Delivery trucks roll in. The armada of green cleaning trucks marked
Propreté de Paris
is inching forward, trailed by a team of mostly African sweepers. Often, when I step out the front door of our building, they’re standing at the top of Rue Montorgueil
leaning on their bright green plastic brooms, hands chopping the air in animated conversation. Water fountains from drains, rushing in rivulets down the street and leaving the pavement stones fresh and glistening.

My first stop is at the
papeterie
for newspapers. It would be much cheaper to buy a subscription and have them delivered but this place quickly becomes a morning must. The miniature shop is crowded with a chaotic conviviality which comes from having too many people and pets in such a small space. Customers linger to chat with the two friendly brothers who own it. Among the regulars is an elderly Italian with opera aspirations who every morning carefully reads the pages of
Corriere della Sera
before putting it back on the rack. Although his cream hat wouldn’t be out of place on a beach and the gold buttons on his blazer have lost their lustre, this diminutive man is a walking testimony to old-fashioned pride and panache.

He struts down the street with princely deportment, singing the occasional LAAAA! at the top of his lungs. Anywhere else he’d probably be written off as a nutter but he’s lived in this
quartier
for almost forty years and everyone knows him. His sonorous, rather limited repertoire draws indulgent smiles. One day at the
papeterie
I ask him why he sings and his reply is simple and philosophic: growing up in Verona, Italy, his two favourite pastimes were singing and soccer. Now he’s too old for soccer, so he makes the most of his voice.

I should buy
Le Monde
. It is, after all, the chosen newspaper of
les intellos
and it remains the benchmark in France for good journalism. It is also excellent value for money if you judge by the number of words. It devotes an incredible amount of space to important, academic articles with headlines like ‘Fight
Intolerance, It’s Our Responsibility’ and ‘Is Philosophy A Monolith?’. Worthy though these subjects are, for me the scholarly tone, that spidery print uninterrupted by anything as plebeian as a photo, are too daunting. It would take all day to struggle through it. I don’t buy
Le Figaro
, either. Not because it’s a right-leaning paper but because I can’t forgive it for ‘Madame’, its weekend magazine full of beauty and fashion, the very name of which, it seems to me, implies that lipsticks and liposuction are far more interesting to women than the main magazine devoted to serious news. ‘Imagine the
Age
or the
Australian
calling a weekend supplement “Mrs!”,’ I rail, prompting astonishment from Frédéric who takes great Gallic pride in his country’s political incorrectness. Instead I opt for
Libération
(easy headlines, big photos) and the
International Herald Tribune
.

Often I go to Centre Ville for a coffee and a croissant. The advantage of this café is the good coffee and its location—from here you can watch the market come to life. I sit absorbing the energy, unable to concentrate on my newspaper for the theatre in front of me. Beefy men shoulder giant carcasses into the butcher shop diagonally opposite. ‘
Salut chef!
’ the driver shouts, seeing one of his market mates. While they stop to chat, a bright red side of something is left swinging from a hook out the back of the truck. I watch passing dogs straining on their leads for a lick, only narrowly missing the object of their frenzied desire.

Directly opposite the café, at the fruit and vegetable stalls, old biddies wheeling wobbly shopping trolleys stop for a sprig of parsley and a chat. Bright signs stab the radiant displays—everything is either ‘
extra
’ (top quality) or ‘
en promotion’
(special offer) or both. Red and yellow capsicums are arranged in perfect pyramids; tomatoes are sold on vines;
clementines come on stems with glossy green leaves. They look beautiful, like a still-life scene you want to photograph or paint.

For a change, sometimes I head higher up the street where the cafés with their unpretentious zinc counters have retained a hint of workaday spirit. Among them is La Grappe d’Orgueil, run by Dehbia who inherited the bar from her Algerian father and Jewish mother. At night the crowd is multicultural, lively and interesting—a reflection of her mixed heritage. In the morning occasionally I go to Le Commerce, where the floors are sprinkled with sugar wrappers and cigarette ash. Smart executives in immaculate black toss back espressos on their way to work. Next to them stand bloodstained butchers and tough fruit sellers enjoying beers with meaty breakfasts, having already done a half day’s work. The regulars mostly stand at the bar. ‘
Rouge ou blanc?’
the barman René asks them. In the corner sits a flame-haired woman who starts each day with a cigar and a medicinal glass of white. The old fellows kiss cheeks and pump hands, ‘
Ça va mon gros?
’ How’re things, my fat one? It is a fraternal French greeting—one of many which the likes of Jean-Michel use constantly. I’d love to be able to walk in and say ‘Hi, my fat rabbit’ too, but, of course, that would be totally inappropriate. Not only because it’s considered very blokey but also because I’m not one of them. As much as I love this street and this neighbourhood, I am a newcomer—a foreign one at that—and as such the regulars regard me with polite indifference. How long will it be, I wonder, before I really feel part of it?

No matter where I go for coffee in the morning, I always catch sight of Napoléon, rattling up and down Rue Montorgueil on a bike which looks far too frail to support him.
A giant fellow with a big belly and a grubby grey beard, he belongs to the
quartier
’s cast of characters. Shabbily dressed in a brown coat, beret and leather boots with the tongues hanging out, he looks as though he’s homeless but in fact Napoléon owns a spacious apartment a good deal larger than ours. According to the butcher, he inherited it from his parents and it is crammed floor to ceiling with the junk Napoléon pulls from local rubbish bins. By the end of each day, his bike basket is laden with treasures—broken toys, a left glove or torn umbrella—as well as fruit and vegetables which he’s either been given or has pinched from the stalls.

He is the street stirrer, a
provocateur par excellence
, a genuine eccentric. Beneath errant eyebrows, his button eyes fizz with mischief. He’ll sit on his bike, incessantly ringing its shrill bell in the hope of getting a bite. ‘
Ça t’énerve, toi?
’ he challenges passers-by with a sly smirk, irreverently addressing them using
tu
and
toi
. Does this noise annoy you?

One morning walking down Rue Montorgueil I’m startled by insistent tooting. Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Turning around I see Napoléon, who to my disbelief is behind the wheel of a gleaming navy BMW. It’s not unusual to see him doing odd jobs around the place to earn pocket money and this time it seems he’s parking the car of a local rag-trade magnate. Suddenly Napoléon brakes. By now all eyes in the street are on him and he laps up the attention, cackling through the tinted windows. With an actor’s appreciation of high theatre and timing, he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a pair of flashy purple sunglasses which he fits over his huge, vein-rippled nose. I recognise them—they are made of paper and earlier in the week people were giving the glasses away to promote some new 3D cinema. Grinning wildly at his
purple audience, he resumes his royal parade.

Along with eccentrics like Napoléon, every Paris
quartier
has its
clochards
—homeless people who have been living on the same streets for so long that no-one can remember a time when they weren’t there. Pierre has been in our neighbourhood for thirty years—most of his life, in other words. My first encounter with him is at the fruit and vegetable stall, where he is shouting drunken abuse and searching for targets. Pleased to have spotted a fresh one, Pierre smiles lecherously and offers me a filthy proposition, illustrated by crude hand gestures just in case anyone in the queue has failed to get the point. For the next few months I do my best to avoid him.

But in fact when he’s sober (which admittedly is not often) he is genial and remarkably lucid. As my face becomes familiar he starts greeting me from across the street. ‘
Salut chérie! Ça va ma belle?’
he’ll call, head bouncing to the beat blasting his ears through his Walkman. The headphones are just one of many second-hand items given to him by locals. Despite his sometimes belligerent presence and the noisy echo as he tears up and down the street on his clapped out scooter, most people seem to tolerate him with good humour—including the authorities. Whenever there is a drama on the street Pierre is first on the scene, importantly telling police his version of a crime he didn’t even witness, insisting on holding the firemen’s ladder as though if it weren’t for him it might collapse, generally making a nuisance of himself.

At night Pierre sleeps on the street or else squats in an empty building which is being gutted and renovated. He earns money on weekends selling fruit and vegetables for one of the market shops. The responsibility transforms him. He stands behind his street stall, scrubbed, sober and clean
shaven. Everything is ‘
extra!
’ he tells passers-by, bullying them into buying and you can tell by his swagger that Saturdays and Sundays are the highlight of his week.

One of the most appealing features of Paris is the rich diversity of life within a small circumference. A world away from Rue Montorgueil but less than ten minutes’ walk from our apartment is the Palais Royal gardens. An oasis of calm beauty, it quickly becomes one of our haunts. One Sunday evening not long after our move, we take a bottle of wine and sliced
saucisson
there. In the twilight, the graceful buildings glint with gold. Beneath the vaulted arcades which frame the gardens—where revolutionaries once roared about
liberté
,
égalité
and
fraternité
—an opera singer is performing
Rigoletto
. Her beautiful soprano bounces off the stone columns; the acoustics are perfect. ‘
Bravo! Bravo!
’ we cry when she finishes.

In Paris parks you’re not allowed to sit on the grass—the pleasure of perfect lawn is to admire not use it. We open the swinging gate of one of the enclosed gardens where benches have been placed for quiet contemplation. Throughout the day the sun had drummed down with uncharacteristic intensity, making the city air dense and polluted. But here in the evening stillness, the carefully tended blooms release an exuberant potpourri of honeysuckle, rose and vanilla; the fresh sweetness is heaven. At first we are discreet about our bottle for fear of the barking
gardiens
who patrol the place. But they only seem concerned with keeping people off the grass and dogs out of the gardens. The little one just glares (this is a permanent expression), while his bigger colleague smiles amiably, looking sorry he can’t join us.

Darkness comes quickly; lights blink on in the garden. We decide to take the long way home,
le chemin des écoliers
,
meaning the meandering route of children who don’t want to go to school. Through the southern end of the gardens, across Rue de Rivoli to the Louvre and the Richelieu passage where glass windows allow a view into the museum’s magnificent sculpture courts. We pass the magical pyramid, piercing the blue-black sky like an incandescent crystal. Its fairyland beauty has won over most of the critics, who complained its modern geometry would disfigure the majestic museum which was once a royal palace. The fountains are still spouting and because it’s a hot evening, children and adults dip bare feet in the glassy pools. Roller bladers slalom across the flat pavement stones.

In the adjoining Cour Carrée, a flautist is playing Vivaldi. It’s a cliché, of course, but then Paris is full of them. The familiar notes ring sweetly through the silence. Less ornate than the main Louvre courtyard, the square has a sparseness that is rendered almost numinous by night, when thousands of tiny spotlights make the friezes float in an amber aurora. Somehow it calls for calm and couples whisper on the stone benches, a dad tells his children to keep quiet.

The main, western wing is the most elaborately sculpted of the façades, abundant with tangled vines and bursting buds, lions’ heads, wise philosophers and angels. Cherubs gambol, their playful bottoms rendered in round relief, entwined with flowers and fruit and swooping swallows. It is a homage to nature and power, to royalty and religion, to literature and grand ideas. There is Homer playing a lyre, and next to him Virgil, pen in hand, a scroll of poetry falling over his knee. A majestic Moses brandishes the tablet of God’s law.