Outside on the street, South Montparnasse, there should have been all the familiar sights, or smells at the least. Paris smells like many things, but our street Rue Le Verrier, especially in the fall, had the papery taste of a library. That night, there was no library, but smoke, instead. Paris had grayed out, and all you smelled was smoke. You didn’t smell a fire, and truth be told, I didn’t know that smoke had a scent. It does: it’s metallic. It smells as if an army tank were parked in the desert, hollows out like a prune, and now is slowly evaporating into vapors. That night in Paris, to stand on the street was to breathe in those vapors.
Yulia couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, but I could. She saw a tank on the boulevard transforming by virtue of the prism into a mirage on the sand. She told me: I am hallucinating things. Nervous, I agreed with her mostly — really I knew. For I saw the same tank go, too. I watched an armored caravan melt pavement before the Archangel Saint-Michel with my eyes — it rolled north toward Châtelet, as the now toy-sized Citroëns scrambled to make way.
And escorting the machine on its flanks was a column of very matching soldiers. The tank’s camouflage itself was not matching; it wasn’t the right camouflage for urban, more jungle camouflage, instead. To me, this suggested that the French had had no time to prepare.
Yulia scanned my expression for clues, but I had none. I was busy searching French airspace above for an operation. I could see only stars and commercial flights in the sky. We walked a few blocks toward the high ground of Edgar Quinet, where there was a restaurant, Tournesol, that we fancied. We took one of the outside tables that lined the restaurant, intent on ordering tea, being normal. But of course the waiter didn’t come. Instead, he was on his phone, flailing about, talking to colleagues, to patrons, to passersby.
“Ah, monsieur! Monsieur, s’il vous plaît!”
He gave me such a look. When Yulia wasn’t herself looking, I physically checked around my eyes — that they were intact, that they weren’t bleeding. I didn’t know if bleeding eyes were a sign of insanity, but had they been bleeding, I’d have assumed that they were such a sign. Then when she did finally look at me again, I only looked away.
I wiped my glasses off by using the bottom right corner of my shirt, which first made them blurrier, but when you do it right, eventually it makes them less. Then I looked past her, over her shoulder, toward northern Paris. That was the last time Yulia looked toward me for answers.
It was the Sabbath and there were many Chassids running away. We saw many birds flying in the opposite direction. Yulia wasn’t speaking anymore. I asked the waiter:
“When will we find out what’s happening here?”
He said:
“Can’t you see for yourself?”
I looked out into Paris, but everything, except for the tank column advancing, looked normal.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look at the Tower!”
The Eiffel Tower was very far away, at that point. You had to stand on something to see that north into Paris. You could stand on a bench and maybe see it. The waiter was standing on a table. I stood on my chair.
And in the distance, I found it. The Eiffel Tower was on fire, and it wasn’t just a little. It was burning like the wicker man in a pagan sacrament. From base to the top of the Tower, flames took to every direction. They were mostly orange, but there were also blues and yellows.
“Was there a terrorist attack?” I asked.
“No,” he replied.
“But then, what?”
vi.
Probably there wasn’t an answer. I put my hand on Yulia’s hand. Neither of us cried or anything. We just watched and waited for the Eiffel Tower to fall, or to slowly wither away into nothing. I didn’t know how long it might take. Should we leave the restaurant, head west through the police state, and try to get closer to the scene? How close do you need to be to watch the Tower fall down? What does it matter if you’re close or if you’re not? Already I couldn’t remember what color the Tower had originally been. Like a moth, you don’t remember the flame, you go to meet it. But the longer we watched, the longer nothing happened at all. The Tower burned and burned and burned. None of its pieces fell off.
Wear the Lace
Susanna Crossman
This place that Proust slowly, anxiously comes to occupy anew every time he awakens: from that place, as soon as my eyes are open, I can no longer escape… My body.
— Michel Foucault, “The Utopian Body”
They were driving to Italy. It was April. Unexpectedly hot. Charlotte planned to sketch what she called An Impossible Balance. The hoisted four million bricks of Florence’s terracotta Duomo. On the way, the car broke down. It was a stupid fucking idea, her now ex-boyfriend, Steve, said, and took the first plane back to London. From Nice, Charlotte escaped on to a train bound for Paris. Everything tumbled. Arriving at the Gare de Lyon, she found herself stuck overnight, rang her new French landlady, Véronique, blurting out, Sorry, I’ve only known you for six months. But I’ve no money. Nowhere to stay. On the phone, Véronique’s voice, encased in red lips — a smoker’s, tarry, treacle growl — told desperate Charlotte, “Stay with my niece Hélène in the Marais. She’s a real Parisienne”.
Now, when Charlotte thought back to that day, it was as though she had begun to snip through the thousand ties to her past, one by one.
On that April afternoon, Charlotte observed Hélène slide open the top drawer of her wooden chest, catching her first glimpse of French lingerie. A collection of curves and lines, hooks and straps. Velvet and tulle. Vertiginous lace. Hélène was freshly-showered. Dew-wet. Long hair up. Enveloped in a man’s blue dressing gown. Charlotte stood by the door. Crumpled Sonic Youth T-shirt. Two day-old sweat. Bleach blond hair in greasy spikes. An overfilled rucksack by her side. Reaching into the drawer, Hélène said, abruptly, “My Tata Véronique said you arrive this evening. Sorry, I busy now. I—“
Charlotte hadn’t listened. Couldn’t think. She knew she should have been admiring, even sketching, the zinc-clad Paris rooftops Véronique described as A Lofty Grey Field in the Sky. But Charlotte only saw the drawer, Hélène’s lingerie, garments exposed in pairs, one cupping the other. Tops and tails. Row upon row, like precious jewels, or buildings awaiting inhabitants. Ivory white, burnt gold and black. Scarlet red. Bottle green. Knots and holes. Crisscross. Bows. Taut and silky. Charlotte longed to reach out her hand and touch. Hélène caught Charlotte’s gaze and giggled, saying, “Ah this is my collection”.
Charlotte laughed too, but her laughter was a cover. In that instant, it was as though Hélène had seen Charlotte’s old, mismatched bra and pants through her clothes, her awkward, sweaty arms and skinny legs, seen the British women in white cotton underwear that had brought her up. They wore functional garments on their skin, things put on top of other things.
Then, Hélène pushed the drawer shut. Charlotte blinked. The vision was gone.
Hélène waved red lace in Charlotte’s face, said, “Sit, I be getting dressed”. She disappeared behind a curtain. Charlotte didn’t know where to go. Her rucksack slipped to the floor, pulled a coat off a hook. Behind the curtain, Hélène hummed a tune. Sweat trickled down Charlotte’s back. The studio, an old maid’s room, was honed like a sharpened pencil. In one corner, pans hung neat as soldiers on parade. A shelf was stacked with columns of coffee bowls. In front of Charlotte was a low table with aligned papers. Post-it Notes with a pen on top. Things waiting to be written, Charlotte thought, and she longed to grab the pen and scrawl in her own diary that she wished she’d never come to France to study Architecture, hadn’t invited Steve. She wished, she thought, she wasn’t in this perfect fourth-floor Marais apartment.
Charlotte, slumped on a chair, she thought of her Manchester student house. No one ever washed up. Once, maggots had invaded the sink, swarming delicately in a pan of congealed beans. Little white forms, like ballet dancers, writhing amongst the red. In the student house, every open vessel, cup or plate, became an ashtray,
blooming flowers of butts.
In the Paris studio, beside Charlotte, was a pile of books. Hélène, Véronique had said, studies literature. Yet the first volume Charlotte picked up was on lingerie. A litany of words and illustrations tempted and taunted her: culotte, cuisse, négligé, parure, liseuse… She wriggled. The vocabulary was doubly foreign, strange two times over. Since she was ten, Charlotte’s mother, a doctor, had read her books on menstruation. Vagina, her mother would say, is a six-letter word. Diagrams explained intercourse. Rules to be obeyed. Before she had sex, Charlotte informed men gleefully, as she had once told Steve, “In case of pregnancy, I must make it clear, I’m pro-abortion”. Charlotte was twenty, raging and polite. There was no room for lace.
She snapped the lingerie book shut, lurched forward, knocking over some papers. At the sound, Hélène emerged from behind the curtain, in red underwear and jeans, but nothing else. Désolée, Charlotte tried to rectify her mistake, but the papers slipped again, and a sea of disorder swamped the tidy space. Hélène kneeled before her, so close Charlotte saw the freckles on her breasts, red lace fringed with a meadow of flowers. Hélène smelt of waves and buttery cake.
Then the doorbell rang.
Hélène rushed to open it and made introductions, saying, “Julien, Charlotte is my aunt’s tenant”. Standing, Charlotte laughed again. She clutched her rucksack straps, as Julien came and kissed her, placed his cheeks on hers. His lips touched her skin. Stubble. Rough. Smooth. The French bise. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. “Can you two collect the clothes from the laundrette?” Hélène had a large, empty cloth bag in her hand. She pushed them both out the door.
Two minutes later, Charlotte found herself with Julien, in silence, watching a dryer go round. Julien was dark, slight and small. He was wearing an ironed shirt and jeans. He held himself straight, contained, as though a distance must be kept from his sealed outside. Véronique had said, Hélène’s boyfriend Julien is an anarchist. Charlotte had expected him to look like her British friends: a shaved head or a mohican and Dr. Martens. To break the silence, she babbled, “Great of Hélène to let me stay. Bloody car broke down. Tomorrow, will leave early. Catch a train to—“ Julien raised his hand, interrupting her: “I must take the clothes. Now!”
The dryer had stopped turning.
Swiftly, he crouched down, placed the empty bag at a right angle to the machine. One by one, Julien removed trousers, T-shirts and men’s underwear. His slim, long fingers turned socks into parcels, crumpled T-shirts into Euclidean folds. Julien built towers out of square blocks of pants. His cloth architecture reminded Charlotte of Haussmann’s Parisian boulevards. Just recently, a lecturer had told them how, after the chaos of the French Revolution, Haussmann had steamrolled the narrow winding streets, replacing them with wide avenues. The Archbishop of Paris claimed the new architecture was bathed in light and would improve morality. It was restrained, controlled elegance. Nowhere to deviate or hide.
By the dryer, Julien let out a sudden sigh, examined the folded clothes and zipped the bag shut. For the first time he grinned at Charlotte and she tried to smile back. Later they returned to Hélène’s studio, and later still, they took Charlotte to a Polish restaurant. Friends came, borscht was ordered. A woman with eyeliner and immaculate curls conducted an in-depth conversation on strikes, Vorticism and Saumur-Champigny. The men flocked around Hélène, like urban pigeons by a fountain. After several glasses of wine, Charlotte loudly told a story about getting drunk and fainting into Steve’s arms at a wine show in Bordeaux, but nobody laughed.
Hélène placed her hand, gently, on Charlotte’s leg and said, You are cute. Your hair. So free. Hélène looked suddenly sad as though the lines of her perfection had formed a cage. But Charlotte didn’t understand. The words “cute” and “free” took her this way and that, into a labyrinth. Lost, Charlotte told another, louder story about hitchhiking to Glastonbury Festival with a pervert. She spilled purple soup on her lap. Wanted to dance. Saw Julien frown as she gulped down her wine. As the Parisian evening drew to a close, Charlotte felt everything slipping, pulling away. France kept making her feel like this — raucous, out of control, as though she exposed the wrong parts of herself. She was trapped in the outline of her skin.
At midnight, as she fell asleep on the apartment floor, she caught a final blurred glimpse of Hélène’s red underwear.
The following morning, Charlotte woke at five. Got dressed. Found clean black cotton knickers. Slicked her blond hair back. Before leaving, she glanced at sleeping Hélène and then at the chest of drawers. She stared at the top drawer ardently, longing to cloak herself in another façade. That April morning, Charlotte promised herself that one day she would own a similar collection. Wear the lace. She flung her rucksack on her back, and opened the door. It would be her revolution.
The Blues, the Yellow Sheets
Christiana Spens
Couldn’t get out of bed, then, as if standing would be falling. I stayed there so long that the details began to taunt me. The skulls on the navy scarf, fading in the light by the window. Teeth chattering and migraine sickness, cigarette nausea and weak tea. Lilac nail polish —the only sympathetic smell, it seemed, then. Respite from swirling pain, confused nostalgia, those fevered visions. Could I find it in a walk around the block, a tiny little bath, a Nespresso pod?
I continued to not get up. I stayed in an old-fashioned bed, in an old-fashioned room, with old-fashioned rose pink wallpaper that I liked very much, certainly more than getting out of bed. I was happy enough here, I thought at first. This would do, this pretty Parisian cell. It would do until I was forced out of bed by hunger, at least.
When at last I was hungry enough to get up, I put on some clothes and went down the street to the supermarket. I had always disliked supermarkets, even French ones, which seemed slightly better than the British equivalents on account of a decent range of coffees and fruits and flowers. And yet now even the Parisian supermarket made me uneasy. I wondered if I had a phobia of supermarkets: the glaring white strip lights and too many items and decisions to make. Things I wanted and things I couldn’t really afford or were too unhealthy, or had something that I may or may not have been allergic to. All the problems, all the futile, everyday little problems that I loathed. They didn’t even need to be problems: I had made them into problems. It was entirely my fault that I was wandering around a French supermarket wanting to die.
Eventually I picked up things that I needed: milk, coffee, wine, bread, some vegetables and fruit. I felt sick of these things upon buying them. The idea of having to cook anything filled me with dread. I was hungry, but couldn’t really imagine eating. I passed the flowers, suffocated in cellophane, hanging by the side of an aisle, wilting incrementally.
I reached the checkout and spoke minimal French. I used to enjoy the challenge of improving my French, but now it was one more handicap. I piled the foods into a canvas shopping bag and paid the money and smiled and left. I felt desperately inadequate. I was hungry but then I was sick. And if I could be sick and bored here, in Paris, then there was no hope. If all I wanted to do was stare at the wallpaper and lie in the bath, and I was still miserable, then something must be wrong. Paris had always been a good escape, the best escape of them all. But now, here I was, wanting out. Anything would do. I thought of options that would be easy, things in pill form.
There were no painkillers, though, and no people to bring them. It always takes sickness to realise you’re alone. Voices in the music, matching my own regret — but why? How could I try any harder? How could I stop my heart racing for no reason? Where did my flatmate keep her Valium? She talked about her breakdowns, and the tablets for emergencies; this seemed to measure up. I’d fit her size.
I’d manage two.
It dragged on — more pear juice and headaches, wound-up thoughts and make-believe. Fantasies, scratched down with good intentions. Quickly, it came to that.
I found the Valium, in a little white bottle. The language of languages,
medical terms. Drug names. Diazepam in any country. I walked into a dream, where I did not feel guilty for not leaving my bed.
*
The blues, the yellow sheets. Crumpled and lonely, dust in the sky where you should be lying alongside me, best friend and love, always, love in empty spaces — in imagined skies and letters outlined in colour. Better than the other ones, surely?
Letters fading into smoke and work and paint dust. Imaginary, but something I could plan around, at least. Pencilled into the diary, flights booked, looks learned. A whole story, sketched out too quickly.
I sit alone all day waiting for you to come back, strike lightning and chaos and remind me who I am, who you think I could be. Because that matters, now.
Stroking your hair as you try to sleep, you stroke mine when I can’t.
*
Can’t get the bed sheets straight enough. Sheets, walls, curtains, bag — all colours of vanilla ice cream. Sickly sweet, bile like ice cubes. Something chic now makes my stomach turn. Outside the window — caramels. A coffee sky. A broken chandelier. Pastels for every surface and emotion. Old things, told they were elegant, happy to keep breaking. Cigarettes losing their attraction; writers losing their looks.
I longed for night and the lights out, for imagined colours that must be better than these, I was sure of it.
Away from sickly nausea and dumb respite, wild animals beat at the door and did not listen when I said I liked domestic bliss and straight cream walls that didn’t move and blur. Love to stop the ground from swelling, revealing itself as the sea beneath my toes.
It didn’t come, but I forgot the symptoms, the shakiness. I blamed myself, or other things. I called them names I’d heard before. I opened my arms to an emptiness I could not contain, but which sounded right, sounded like the answer to the problems. Love, from a record, too much love, packed away and dusty. Something to want and want and want and want and leave, some day.
We'll Never Have Paris Page 10
