“If you don’t know,” said Jane from her pillow, “then we don’t know what can happen.” She lay back and pulled the bedsheet up to her eyes. Mrs. Kennedy put out the light, promising again an interesting talk with their father, who would explain all over again how he didn’t know, either, and why.
Just before going to bed, shortly after ten o’clock, Mrs. Kennedy softly re-entered the children’s room. She carried a large dish of applesauce, two spoons, and two buttered rolls for the girls to discover in the morning. The room was totally dark, and stuffy; someone – one of the children – had closed the window and drawn the heavy double curtains straight across. Groping in the dark to their bedside table, she put down her burden of food, and then, as quietly as she could, pulled the draperies to one side. Moonlight filled the squares of the window. The breeze that came in when she unlatched the window smelled of snow. In the bright, cold, clear night, the lights from the villages down below blinked and wavered like stars. It was not often that Mrs. Kennedy had time to enjoy or contemplate something not directly dependent on herself or fated by one of her or her husband’s decisions. For nearly a full minute, she stood perfectly still and admired the night. Then she remembered one of the reasons she had come into the room, and bent over to draw the covers up over her daughters.
Ernestine had got into bed with Jane, which was odd; they lay facing the same direction, like two question marks. With one hand Ernestine limply clutched at her sister’s braids. Both children had wormed down into the middle of the bed, well below the pillow, under a tent of blankets; it was a wonder they hadn’t smothered.
Mrs. Kennedy drew back the blankets and gently pulled Ernestine away. Without waking, but muttering something, Ernestine got up and walked to her own bed. The hair at her temples was wet, and she generated the nearly feverish warmth of sleeping children. Sleeping, she put her thumb in her mouth. Mrs. Kennedy turned to Jane and pulled her carefully up to the pillow. “I left my book outside,” said Jane urgently and distinctly. Straightening up, Mrs. Kennedy gave the covers a final pat. She looked down at her little girls, frowning; they seemed at this moment not like little Renoirs, not like little dolls, but like rather ordinary children who for some reason of their own had shut and muffled the window and then crept into one bed, the better to hide. She was tempted to wake Jane, or Ernestine, and ask what it was all about, this solicitude for Mr. Kennedy, this irrelevant talk of God. Perhaps Frau Stengel, in some blundering way, had mentioned her pregnancy. Despairing, Mrs. Kennedy wished she could gather her children up, one under each arm, and carry them off to a higher mountain, an emptier hotel, where nothing and no one could interfere, or fill their minds with the kind of thought she feared and detested. Their minds. Was she really, all alone, without Mr. Kennedy to help her, expected to cope with their minds as well as everything else?
But I am exaggerating, she thought, looking out at the peaceful night. They haven’t so much as begun to think, about anything. Without innocence, after all, there was no beauty, and no one could deny the beauty of Jane and Ernestine. She did not look at them again as they lay, damp and vulnerable, in their beds, but, instantly solaced with the future and what it contained for them, she saw them once again drifting away on a sea of admiration, the surface unmarred, the interior uncorrupted by thought or any one of the hundred indecisions that were the lot of less favored human beings. Meanwhile, of course, they had still to grow up – but after all what was there between this night and the magic time to come but a link of days, the limpid days of children? For, she thought, smiling in the dark, pleased at the image, were not their days like the lights one saw in the valley at night, starry, indistinguishable one from the other? She must tell that to Mr. Kennedy, she thought, drawing away from the window. He would be sure to agree.
A REVISED GUIDE TO PARIS
(1980)
FIRST DAY
RATHER THAN SPEND his first afternoon in the hotel lobby with the rest of the charter group, watching a rerun of “Gunsmoke” dubbed in French, the wise traveller will set out without delay to replace the contents of luggage stolen from the airport bus. And what venue can be more suited to this than Paris – city where “everything can be had” (Anatole France)?
Leaving the hotel, he should not plunge at once into the Métro, tempting and convenient though it may seem, but be content to elbow his way along the bustling streets, absorbing the unique atmosphere of a metropolis “transported from Heaven and rebuilt stone by stone in Paradise” (François Mitterrand). In the Rue du Conseiller Municipal Aristide Rotonde, the traveller will observe a small russet stain in the gutter, commemorating the remarkable afternoon, 23 June 1977, when twelve armed robberies took place at intervals of six minutes. Farther along, just before the shop selling plastic buckles and buttons, a plaque indicates where Odilon Morasse had his vegetarian restaurant (1962-63). Below the plaque and a little to the left can be seen several interesting modern inscriptions, including “KEEP FRANCE FRENCH,” “FOREIGN SCUM,” “SWINE,” “DEATH,” and “OUT!” M. André (Dédé) Bouge, owner of the butcher shop at No. 94, has no objection to being photographed standing in front of the inscriptions, wearing a clean butcher’s apron.
Two doors beyond, the traveller will find the Café des Grands Mots, celebrated as the meeting place between the Nouveaux Philosophes and exponents of the Nouvelle Cuisine. It is said that one of the latter, returning from an exploratory tour of America, cried to one of the former, “Mon vieux, c’est une mine d’or!” As a result of this perhaps apocryphal anecdote, the café is now known to Parisian cognoscenti as “The Old Gold Mine.” Typewritten notices signify the tables occupied by chefs and philosophers, respectively, while a plastic shroud marks the place where Philosopher Anthelme Rendu on 4 September 1978 turned his back on his American publisher and began to sulk.
The tourist with a keen interest in quality souvenirs and artifacts can do no better than turn sharp right into the charming Rue du Dentiste Fernand Ladrerie. Here, at No. 22, all the crochetwork produced by wives of Cabinet ministers between 1908 and 1937 will at last have a fitting museum – that is, as soon as the present tenants of No. 22 have died off or have been coaxed into new quarters at some distance from Paris but handy to motels and auto routes. No evictions are performed in winter months, but in pleasant weather the sharp-eyed visitor can be sure of picking up many a “find” from among the motley effects grouped on the pavement: post-office calendars (about 7¢); paper roses (10¢ a bunch); gray or brown felt slippers (30¢ each). Knowledgeable Parisian antique dealers may well have got there first, skimming the cream; tufted bathmats and chrome-plated coffee grinders have a way of turning up in Faubourg Saint-Honoré shopwindows, quite disgracefully increased in price. Eviction aficionados have assured the author of this guide that cheap genuine French workmanship still abounds “if you know where to look,” citing as examples a foam mattress, circa 1960 ($17.80), and an electric steam iron, attributed 1954 ($12). The firm of Contre et Tourtière, at No. 31, will arrange for shipping.
So far so good, but “no one ever enjoyed budget-priced craft on an empty stomach” (Pablo Picasso), and the hungry traveller may well at this point be asking himself a legitimate question: “How about lunch?” All eating places suggested here will be found within the area bounded by the Rue du Fonctionnaire Leonce Mou; the police station at the end of the street; the Old Clothes Depot, unused since the terrible winter of 1963, when garments collected for the frozen poor were abandoned, owing to a sudden thaw; the Chinese restaurant known as Au Joyeux Bol de Riz (not recommended by this guide); and the Cultural and Theatrical Center – a venerable edifice at the far end of the Rue de l’Inspecteur des Finances Romuald Lampiste, where two much-loved French classics, “Mother Courage” and “White Horse Inn,” have been alternating ever since the theatre was inaugurated, in 1958.
Class A restaurants: Bien de Chez Nous, Jo-Jo la Bouffe, La Joie dans l’Assiette, and Paris Mon Paris are equipped with pinball machines, jukeboxes, and television sets �
� all in satisfactory condition. It is better to write one’s order on a slip of paper and hand it to the waiter, for an ambience of good cheer and lighthearted bantering sometimes makes it difficult to be understood. As this sample menu shows, even travellers whose language gifts are sketchy should have no trouble:
1 hamburger avec petit pain, viande, ketchup, et cornichon.
1 hamburger sans petit pain.
1 hamburger sans viande.
1 hamburger entièrement fait de macaroni.
Price differences will be slight, hovering in the vicinity of $9, tip included. You may want to leave something extra if service has been particularly attentive, or if you plan to lunch here again. Try to produce a sum of money that can be counted at a glance, and do not sit smiling and waiting around for change. Your waiter, anxious to get back to his pinball game, will have little time for “the pain and ecstasy of simple arithmetic” (S. de Beauvoir).
Among Class B restaurants, Au Repas Exquis boasts only a small transistor radio, but the premises are fitted out with loudspeakers, and the baffles convey a pleasing echo. La Croûte de Pain has no acoustical advantages to offer; by making a cone of the menu and placing one end to your ear and the other against the wall, however, you can hear, from the back room of the police station next door, real-life French vignettes your stay-at-home friends will envy.
The Cultural and Theatrical Center, mentioned above, is well worth a pause. For a modest tip, the porter, M. Barnabé Ruse, will show you the poster advertising “White Horse Inn” and will also supply you with the key to the only convenience in the neighborhood. In exchange for the key, it is customary to leave a deposit of about $125. On leaving the center, turn left into the paved alley between Nos. 34 and 36. Facing the kitchen entrance to Au Joyeux Bol de Riz and just past the Bureau for the Verification of Sandpaper Regulations (Ministry of Commerce Annex) is the door you are seeking. Don’t forget to return the key and collect your deposit. It might be wise to ask M. Ruse to call your hotel and make certain the rooms retained for your group were not given to the Japanese charter group after all.
Somewhat less impressive in appearance but a nonetheless spirited rival in the race for public funds and subsidies is the Center for Advanced Art and Culture, at the corner of the street. The original windows (1955), replaced after May, 1968, are notable for their iron grilles. Three wide iron bars traverse the front door. Visitors are usually allowed in one at a time. Having been frisked and admitted, the refined traveller will surely want to take part in the celebrated Monuments Competition, during which participants are permitted to sit down. In a darkened room, the visitor listens to the recorded description of a French architectural structure of historical importance – as, for instance:
The good President Marius Mordre Gabin laid the foundation stone. The architect, Elias Poudre, was also responsible for the cocoa factory at Ermont-les-Vignes. The carved lintels depicting “Harvest Time” are the work of the same anonymous sculptor whose charming statue “Public Health” still graces the old abattoir at Mulhouse. The façade is red brick, harmoniously broken by one door and six windows. The roof, which caved in after the snowfall of 8 February 1947, was restored in 1979, the cost of the restoration furnished by a tax levied on all the dog owners of France. The tarpaulin that replaced the roof from 1947 to a recent date is now in the Architectural Museum at Biarritz.
(The cultivated reader has of course guessed by now that this is the description of the Maternity Hospital in Borgne-la-Villa, Dordogne.)
After inscribing his name and address and the answer on the ballot provided, and after the ballots have been collected, sorted, counted, and checked for fraud – “The state can’t be too careful” (Landru) – the winner will receive at his home, in the course of time, an agreeable prize. Foreign competitors should remember that prizes fall under customs and excise regulations of most countries, and that a plastic reproduction of the immortal “Public Health” is of interest only to truly ardent connoisseurs, particularly when its value, set at $7, has unaccountably been translated into $700 in the home country – a sharp reminder for the erstwhile traveller that “the fun’s not always in the winning” (Napoleon Bonaparte).
AS DUSK FALLS – “Dusk! One of the few institutions not yet under the management of Social Security!” (André Malraux) – the traveller, footsore but happy with his “finds,” falls into the Métro to be whisked “home.” With luck, he may be able to see a few rush-hour passengers taken hostage by a gang of loulous – sprightly youths from the industrial suburbs – and will observe, with unspoken admiration, the stoic faces of the other voyagers and their entire discretion with regard to their neighbors as these are knifed or slugged or kicked in the shins, and the words of Mme. de Sévigné may recur to remind him that “an ounce of minding your own business is worth a ton of mugging any day in the City of Light.”
In the lobby of his hotel, cleared of all charter groups, including the Japanese, the East German, the Swedish, and the Australian, the traveller may notice the Action Committee of the striking hotel staff sipping Campari-and-soda and cracking jokes. A caution: After carrying his “finds” up the eight flights of the service staircase, the traveller often feels a slight letdown as he unlocks the door to the room. Perhaps here the author may be allowed to address the visitor directly: Work fast before falling into a black or discouraged mood. Stow your bargains in a safe place. Use a pillowcase to clean the washbasin and bath. Make a tidy heap of effects left by the previous occupant: pajama top with wine stain and torn collar; match folders from the Drug Store des Champs-Élysées; memo reading “Eighty – repeat eighty – thousand barrels per day unrefined;” scraps of paper napkin bearing the names “Vanessa,” “Ingrid,” “Julie,” and “Sabrina” with scribbled numbers. (“Romy Schneider” or “Catherine Deneuve” means only that Julie or Ingrid looked like Schneider or Deneuve. According to Roland Barthes, “women’s names can indeed turn out to be of mnemonic utility.”)
Roll up for the night in the cleaner-looking of the two blankets. The unmistakable scent of Paris air-conditioning (fleur-de-lis and smoldering Gauloise) will remind you of different nights in other capital cities – how the air-conditioning in Rome tended to rumble rather than to whine, how in London it smelled of smoked haddock. Drifting off, you will ask yourself the questions that inevitably follow a satisfying first day in Paris: “How can I get on the Anglo-American volleyball team?” “When are the Anabaptist Church sing-alongs held?” “Will there be time to visit the bacon-and-sausage shop set up by Mathilde, discarded wife of the Under-Secretary for Colonial Interference, M. Gontran Clubbe – a shop said to have been patronized for a time (22 July 1970) by leaders of the Opposition?” It will then cross your memory that something important to your Second Day seems to be lost or missing. A clean bath towel? No. The missing something used to be in the secret compartment of your handbag or the inside pocket of your jacket, and it contained your passport, your airline ticket, your folding money, and your traveller’s checks.
Do not hesitate. Roll out of the blanket, get into your clothes, and descend the eight flights of the service staircase. In the lobby you will notice some of the striking staff trying to have a game of billiards on the reception desk. Borrow a piece of chalk and make your way out to the street. Sit down on the sidewalk and think hard before you write. “I am a tourist who has been robbed to the marrow” will bring you two pay-phone tokens and a postage stamp. “Just released from jail after serving sentence of three months for talking back to a post-office employee. Who wants to lend a hand?” will encourage useless suggestions. “Hungry Yorkshire terrier at home awaits your generosity” is good for lumps of sugar. Strongly recommended by the author of this guide, who has been writing it to good effect on the pavements of Paris for the past twenty years, is this: “My five children, kidnapped and removed from France by foreign-born spouse, are now exposed to Anglo-Saxon culture. Please help raise jet fare to fetch them back.” Within seconds you should acquire a bale of bank
notes – more than enough to convey you, first class, champagne laid on, caviar around the clock, back to wherever you started from. For “does not the untrammelled mind know when to cut its losses and to look upon them as worthwhile, even at Paris prices?” (Marcel Proust).
THE COST OF LIVING
(1962)
LOUISE, MY SISTER, talked to Sylvie Laval for the first time on the stairs of our hotel on a winter afternoon. At five o’clock the skylight over the stairway and the blank, black windows on each of the landings were pitch dark – dark with the season, dark with the cold, dark with the dark air of cities. The only light on the street was the blue neon sign of a snack bar. My sister had been in Paris six months, but she still could say, “What a funny French word that is, Puss – ‘snack.’” Louise’s progress down the steps was halting and slow. At the best of times she never hurried, and now she was guiding her bicycle and carrying a trench coat, a plaid scarf, Herriot’s “Life of Beethoven,” Cassell’s English-French, a bottle of cough medicine she intended to exchange for another brand, and a notebook, in which she had listed facts about nineteenth-century music under so many headings, in so many divisions of divisions, that she had lost sight of the whole.
The dictionary, the Herriot, the cough medicine, and the scarf were mine. I was the music mistress, out in all weathers, subject to chills, with plenty of woolen garments to lend. I had not come to Paris in order to teach solfège to stiff-fingered children. It happened that at the late age of twenty-seven I had run away from home. High time, you might say; but rebels can’t always be choosers. At first I gave lessons so as to get by, and then I did it for a living, which is not the same thing. My older sister followed me – wisely, calmly, with plenty of money for travel – six years later, when both our parents had died. She was accustomed to a busy life at home in Australia, with a large house to look after and our invalid mother to nurse. In Paris, she found time on her hands. Once she had visited all the museums, and cycled around the famous squares, and read what was written on the monuments, she felt she was wasting her opportunities. She decided that music might be useful, since she had once been taught to play the piano; also, it was bound to give us something in common. She was making a serious effort to know me. There was a difference of five years between us, and I had been away from home for six. She enrolled in a course of lectures, took notes, and went to concerts on a cut-rate student’s card.
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