Paris Letters (7 page)

I thought when I first arrived in Paris that my biggest anxiety would be the language, but that fear fell away the moment I had to use the Métro. There are 303 stations, which makes the newcomer to Paris want to walk. But I soon learned that Paris was too much city for my aching feet. Plus, the Art Nouveau design of the stations was seductive. Their curving iron tendrils drew me in, and soon I was swallowed into the belly of the city. To my surprise, delight, and relief, the Métro was easier to master than I thought it would be. Each line is color-coded and numbered, and the direction each train is going is named after the final station. And maps are everywhere—above ground, below ground, and above each door on each train. As I sat on the train, I liked to imagine those who carved out the city—likely blowing out ancient Roman ruins and catacombs in the process. No one seemed to mind though. We sat on the train in silent contemplation as we zipped under the city, occasionally verifying with a sideways glance at the map that we were, in fact, headed in the right direction.

On the morning after Summer had left, I meandered up the Seine toward one of the Métro stations, but the river was sparkling like diamonds in the morning sun so I changed directions and walked along it instead. It was a beautiful time in my life when I was alone and could change course on a whim. No one to consult. No one expecting me to be somewhere. No one to convince. Along my walk, I took in the ornate iron balconies and steeply pitched roofs studded with oval dormer windows held in place by stone angels. I crossed a bridge and arrived at Notre Dame. The windswept esplanade in front of the cathedral was always crowded with tourists, pigeons, and beggars. Gargoyles peered down to ward off evil spirits (and also served as spouts to keep rainwater from running down walls and eroding mortar: gargoyle-gargle) and the front façade was lined with carvings of saints that seem to say, “Come on in, good lookin’.” So that’s what I did.

Mass was starting as I walked into the cathedral, so I took a seat. My feet needed the rest anyway. As I sat, I remembered a time when I had fantasized about all the things I’d do once I arrived in Paris, such as going to mass at Notre Dame. Now here I was, wandering without a plan, and boom!

Sometimes dreams come at us sideways.

Catholic masses are the same all around the world. The priests all say the same thing in the same way: even the cadence at which they speak is the same. You may not realize it until you go to other churches in different languages, but it’s easy to follow along. And since I rarely listened even in the English masses, I felt quite at home zoning out with the French.

For me, the church had always been quiet and uneventful, and that’s how I liked it. When I was a kid, I sat next to my sisters, mom, and grandma. Cousins and classmates filled the surrounding pews. I’d respond to the responsorial psalms and stand, sit, and kneel along with the congregation, but my mind was wandering or blank. Or I would stare at how the sun glimmered through stained-glass windows, making kaleidoscope patterns on the bald heads of those in front of me. The stained-glass scenes depicted were those of Jesus’s greatest hits: the miracles, healing the sick, the walk up Calvary Hill, the crucifixion, the rising from the dead. And then there were the rows and rows of saints that peered down from above with their arms raised to either give a blessing or wave. (Hey, good lookin’!)

The Catholic Church offers a slew of saints that you can pray to for every issue in your life. Saint Anthony is one of my favorites as he is the patron saint of lost things, and since I was traveling with only the essentials, I was paranoid about losing any of them. He’s even got his own rhyming prayer: Dear Saint Anthony, please come around. I’ve lost my (fill in the blank), and it cannot be found. My sister once said of Saint Anthony, “Watch what you ask for from Saint Anthony. It really works. You’ve got be careful. You’ve got to really want it back.”

There is Archangel Michael, who will cut your ties with whatever and whoever you want out of your life. And then there is Saint Christopher, who I thought of a lot as he is the patron saint of safe travels and that’s exactly what I was praying for. The greatest daily threat to a traveler’s life is traffic. After a few close calls with scooters, I had rubbed the Saint Christopher medallion around my neck more than once in thanks and prayer. Notre Dame has its own special saint. Apparently, Saint Louis IX was the King of France and he bought the Crown of Thorns from Baldwin II of Constantinople. I wonder if he prayed to Saint Anthony to help find it.

After I had peeled the bland Eucharist off the roof of my mouth and Quasimodo rang out the last bells of mass, I joined the procession out the door and headed down the river to Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6e arrondissement to find myself a crêpe. It was a chilly day in March, and I was looking for something warm and toasty. Now that I didn’t have a steady income, street food occasionally served as the big meal of the day. I walked down a market street lined with restaurants and tourist shops and found a crêpe stand where they whipped up a crêpe with egg, mushroom, and cheese.

With my first bite, I almost fell over. The paper-thin warm pancake enclosed the cheese, which pulled the egg and mushroom together in a trinity of amazing.

One word: Eucharist.

How had I ever been vegan?

10

Gustav Who?

Everyone thinks they’ll see the Eiffel Tower from everywhere in Paris, but she’s rather elusive. The apartment-lined streets often hide her from view until you turn the corner onto a grand boulevard. Suddenly there she is, gazing down at you in all her lacy steel glory.

I had been walking for an hour and not yet laid eyes on her. The day was cloudy, and the wet mist seeped through my coat and scarf. I was sure I was heading straight for her, but there are no right angles in Paris, only a maze of triangles. I was hoping the sun would come out and I could have a picnic on the grass in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, but my stomach was rumbling and my feet were aching, so I sat in the park next to the Rodin Museum to eat lunch and review my map. I unwrapped my baguette, which was sliced and buttered. Never in my life in Los Angeles would I have indulged in this carb and fat feast, but in Paris, it felt right. Plus, I still ran my calories consumed vs. calories burned calculator in my head, a niggling habit I retained from my former California life. They say the farther you walk, the smaller you get. I was walking enough.

Each time I ate bread during that first month in Paris, my grandmother came to mind. For long summers of my childhood, I sat at her kitchen table waiting for her to slice the warm bread fresh from the oven. Her slices were always thick and slathered with butter that melted on contact. The crisp crust gave way to a soft and chewy center. This was the kind of bread you never put in a toaster, not that it would fit. This bread was too special for toasting. This bread should be eaten warm and not dressed with anything but butter. With this bread, I felt fed from my head down to my toes that dangled from my chair.

I looked down at my baguette. The French eat this every single day! They know the feeling of being fed by bread in a way that I hadn’t felt fed since those summer days at my grandma’s kitchen table. The sun came out and burned off the mist. I looked up, and there was the tower in the distance. Oh right, you!

The world’s most recognized monument was built as the entrance to the world’s fair of 1889. Located on the Left Bank of the Seine, it has become the icon and main attraction of Paris. But it was never meant to be a permanent structure. The plan was to disassemble the tower after the fair, but by then radio towers were popping up in major cities, and it, being the tallest structure, remained in place as a beacon for emitting and receiving radio signals. The tower itself is a remarkable example of architecture.

When Gustav Eiffel started building, he noticed two of the four leg foundations would have to be built below the water level of the Seine. To avoid creating the leaning tower of Paris, he dug deep and poured massive foundations. Good thing he was a bridge builder. If you look at the Eiffel Tower with your head cocked to one side, it’s easy to imagine it as one half of a bridge. At the time, the tower had many critics. They called it vulgar, a great phallus in the sky. But Gustav Eiffel was steadfast in his reasoning behind the design. Mathematics dictated the shape: the stress of the structure equals that of the wind from any direction. And the lattice lets that wind pass right on through. Strong elegance. Nice.

When I learned how the tower was built, I saw Gustav Eiffel less as an architect and more as an artist. He took the elements of water and air, added the materials he had to work with, and created a structure that couldn’t possibly have worked any other way for what they knew of tall structures at the time.

Lunch eaten and feet rested, I continued toward the Eiffel Tower. Upon approach, the mood definitely changed. Tall African men stood and jangled large rings strung with mini replicas of the Eiffel Tower. “One euro, one euro.” Gypsies begged for money. “One euro, one euro.” And the thieves started appearing. The worst of all the pickpockets were the survey takers. Young girls and boys walked around the major tourist areas with clipboards and pens. Here is how it worked: They came up to you and asked you to sign a petition. You, being the kindhearted tourist you were, who was also slightly confused by this stranger standing so close, looked down at her clipboard with a fake survey attached. While you were reading this fake petition that saves Who Knows from Who Cares, they were slipping their hands into your pockets to swipe your phone, wallet, and whatever else they could grab. If the girl with the survey wasn’t picking your pocket, her friend who snuck up behind you was quietly relieving you of the spare change and Métro tickets in your backpack.

I had seen them around and was warned about them repeatedly. These thieves triggered me like no other, partly because they were so good at picking pockets and partly because they hounded. When one was done hounding, another came along a minute later. Soon the dreamy Eiffel Tower experience turned into me clutching my purse and yelling. They wouldn’t take a polite no for an answer. Only an aggressive “Non!” along with finger pointing followed by “I’m not a tourist, you thief!” yelled in French. I would have followed up with swear words, but I didn’t know any in French and wouldn’t know where to fit them into a sentence anyway.

If anyone ever got too close to me, which was a natural tendency in crowded places in front of monuments, and if they tried to get their hand in my pockets, they would have to get their sneaky hands past my tissues barricade. I had a layer of crumbled tissues, some used and some not, on the inside of my bag. My tactic was to gross them out. I reasoned that touching a damp tissue would deter them from going any further.

Then there was the ring trick. A young boy would walk by me and pretend to have picked up a ring next to me. He would ask if it was mine. I would tell him it wasn’t. He would offer it to me. If I accepted it, he would ask me to give him money for it. Luckily, I knew about the non-finger-pointing strategy before my ring bearers came along. “Non! I’m not a tourist, you thief!”

And there was the long-winded tales of woe trick. This one I actually fell for. A man stopped me on the street and asked for two euros to buy an inhaler, pleading on my Good Samaritan nature. Naturally, he had lost his wallet. Naturally, he was having a hard time breathing. Only when I opened my wallet and his face turned ever so slightly from a look of desperation to a look of glee did I know I had been had.

Eventually, I could spot them coming. I saw girls walking out of malls with too many handbags, running over to the man roasting chestnuts and stashing the loot in the boxes behind him. The chestnut roaster is in on it! The girls would continue on, lurking around unsuspecting tourists to snatch more handbags. Once I came upon a middle-aged American couple trying to read a survey from one of the quick-fingered heathen survey-takers. The couple was quietly being swarmed by pickpockets. Something came over me, and I went berserk. Clutching my own bag with one arm, my other arm flailing, I ran up and started yelling like an angry pigeon. “Thieves! Voleurs! Pickpockets! It’s a scam! They are trying to steal your money!” The thieves scattered, not wanting to make a scene so they could quickly get to the next set of tourists. When they left, I stopped flailing and kept walking, yelling back, “Have a nice vacation!” The middle-aged American couple looked baffled by the whole scene.

Besides all the thieves, standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower and looking up was still breathtaking. Taking the elevator to the top and peering down at the rooftops of Paris was still marvelous. The only problem was that when I was standing at the top, the skyline of Paris didn’t look quite as it should. It was missing one element: the tower itself.

Back on solid ground, I continued walking. This time I was on a mission to Le Bon Marché, one of Paris’s major department stores. The highlight here wasn’t the luxury purses or even the building itself, which was also designed by Gustav Eiffel. It was the food section. Since arriving in Paris, I had an insatiable appetite. Was it because I was walking so much or was it simply because I had deprived myself so often for so long?

Walking into the store, I came upon the fish section. Glistening oysters lounging on platters of crushed ice and fish gawked with their stunned, staring eyes. I continued to the chocolate section and gasped at the gravity-defying sculptures. I stood mesmerized by rainbow walls of fruity confitures and marveled at vibrant shelves of canned sardines, mussels, and paté. I was mystified by round mounds of cheese ranging in shades from creamy brie and ashen chèvre to speckled blue Roquefort. At the pastry area, I became befuddled, trying to decide between the tart au citron (topped with a meringue toupee) and the multi-layered millefeuille. In the end, I bought them both. Later, when I sat on a bench in Jardin du Luxembourg, I realized I had made the right choice.

A sliver of sunshine landed on me as I sat in the park, warming my cheeks. A few children were sailing toy sailboats in the fountain. A few men had hung their jackets on the racks (provided by the park) and had begun a game of boules nearby. I opened my notebook and scrounged around my bag for a pen.