by Terry Fallis
The dull ache in my buttocks confirmed that I had just endured a very long flight, despite the prevailing west wind. The plane actually arrived on schedule, but the thinly padded seats made it a long haul. In Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, I’d downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which included “The Blue Carbuncle,” the story James had examined in his paper. He was right. The story itself was wonderful, and the writing was downright glorious. I suspect I fell so hard for the prose because it tends toward my own. I’m not suggesting for an instant that I’m anywhere near Conan Doyle’s league. It’s just that he writes the way I aspire to write. Unlike Hemingway, Conan Doyle doesn’t just plod along from point A to point B in minimalist prose, but crafts complex and ornate sentences that make you feel good about the trip. If Hemingway’s writing is a competent skater crossing a frozen river, Conan Doyle’s is an elite figure skater, elaborately costumed, tossing off triple Salchows and quad toe loops along the way. Yes, both writers get you across the river, but Conan Doyle makes the journey as entertaining, significant, and rewarding as the destination.
Don’t get me wrong. I certainly understand those critics who hail Hemingway as the master, believing his simple, straightforward writing gives the reader free and immediate access to the story. Those same critics often contend that Conan Doyle’s florid prose distracts and detracts from the tale it’s telling. I understand what they mean. I get it. I just don’t agree. I doubt I ever will. And the warm tinges I felt reading “The Blue Carbuncle” lent physical affirmation to the judgment my mind made a long time ago.
Then I read James’s paper. Intentionally or not, it was written in a style similar to Conan Doyle’s, which seemed fitting. In part, James examined the extraordinary deductive conclusions Holmes draws early in the story about a mystery man, based solely on the careful scrutiny of a dusty, creased, and cracked hat. It’s a wonderful scene that leaves Watson reeling from the detailed descriptions and predictions Holmes provides about the man’s life and habits. It is as if Holmes had known the man for years rather than simply “knowing” the man’s hat for minutes. That section of the story alone is worth the price of admission.
I thought the paper was outstanding. It was thoughtful, substantive, enlightening, and very well written. There was even a dollop of humour thrown in to leaven the academic rigour. Even though I know very little about the Sherlockian world, I could not imagine a respected periodical like The Baker Street Journal rejecting this submission. But James was filled with doubt. He really did believe that sharing the infamous name of Sherlock’s nemesis compromised, perhaps even crippled, his chances at publication.
When I’d finished with “The Blue Carbuncle” and the Moriarty paper, I read a few more Holmes stories and was entranced all over again by the writing. It was as if I were reading on two levels. I was enjoying the stories themselves with their intricate plots and fully formed characters, while marvelling at the wonderful words assembled to tell them. My brain was fatigued after all that, so I killed the rest of the flight watching the aptly named film Dumb and Dumber. It was dreadful, but it took my mind off the pain in my inadequately cushioned hindquarters. I slept not a wink and arrived in Paris early Saturday morning feeling a little dazed but thrilled to be back in the City of Lights.
I was a little early for my rendezvous with Marie Antoinette so I decided to walk from my hotel to Notre Dame. If you have the time and the right shoes, I would always recommend walking in Paris. It’s the best way to lose yourself in this spectacular city, figuratively, and often for me quite literally. I’ve learned never to wander the streets of Paris without the aid of my smartphone map app. When you’re walking, you’re in the streets with the crowds. You’re seeing the architecture up close. You’re hearing the city, and smelling it, too. You’re jostling with citizens and tourists alike, navigating market stalls, and passing more little cafés than you ever thought one city could ever support. Full immersion is the best way to get inside and underneath Paris. It’s really the only way to be a part of Paris.
As well, walking in Paris is recommended simply because it’s infinitely safer than driving in Paris. Then again, professional knife-catching is safer than driving in Paris.
I left my hotel and walked east along rue Saint-André des Arts, past the local Starbucks. I veered north when I hit rue Danton and headed toward the Seine. I took a right at the river and continued east along the bank until I crossed over the bridge to Île de la Cité with Notre Dame beckoning on my right. All of the tourists around me, and there were many, were slack-jawed at the beauty of the famous cathedral, one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture anywhere in the world. But I was staring slack-jawed at Marie Antoinette.
She hadn’t yet picked me out of the crowd so I just stood there on the periphery and watched her for a few moments. We had surfed Google Images together for photos of Notre Dame and picked out a bench in front as our meeting place. She was sitting there smiling at passersby. She looked, well, radiant, content, perhaps even expectant. Warm tinges, not unlike those triggered on the plane by Conan Doyle’s writing, returned, but I recognized their origins had nothing to do with words on a page.
Like a tap on the shoulder when you think you’re alone, feelings can sneak up on you, and catch you off guard. I didn’t need Dr. Madelaine Scott to explain that my ambivalence toward John Dillinger was linked to his obvious interest in Marie. But still, I had not really understood that my heart was involved until that moment when I saw Marie, bathed in sunlight, in front of Notre Dame. It seems that Paris in July can clarify and crystallize.
She was wearing what I think would be called a yellow sundress, though the nomenclature of women’s fashion was definitely not my forte. Even under the tutelage of a trusted high school classmate, it had still taken me an unduly long time before I could correctly distinguish among skirts, dresses, shifts, pinafores, culottes, and gauchos. Enlightenment eventually came only through the heavy use of flash cards.
Marie looked lovely. After a sleepless transatlantic flight, I was quite sure I did not. But when she saw me, she waved and stood up. She’d already been smiling before she’d laid eyes on me. But she seemed to turn up the wattage for me. Did I mention she looked lovely? When I reached her, there was no hesitation. She hugged me. I hugged back, trying to figure out if this were anything more than a “Nice to see you, Uncle Bill” interaction.
“Hey, stranger, you made it,” she said, beaming.
“Jet-lagged, hungry, and sleep-deprived, but in one piece, and on time,” I replied.
“Yes, but the consolation is we’re in Paris. We’re really in Paris.” She sighed and did a little pirouette with her arms outstretched.
The German backpacker, heavy-metal guitar spilling from his earbuds, was not expecting the back of Marie’s hand smashing into the side of his head. Neither was she. Fuelled by her plaintive apologies and impromptu temple massage, Heinz soon calmed down and before long was back on his way.
“I thought you handled that very well, under the circumstances,” I said.
“That’s it. I’m imposing a moratorium on celebratory spinning in all touristy hot spots,” she replied.
Then she took my arm, perhaps to help enforce her own edict, and led me back across the bridge to Left Bank. It really felt nice walking through the winding, narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, with Marie Antoinette on my arm. We had a leisurely lunch at a tiny café not far from the Seine. I felt much better after putting away a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise and a half-litre of shiraz. Marie drank the other half and devoured the classic French dish croque-monsieur.
Beyond “Oui,” “Non,” “Merci,” and “Ou est la toilette,” I spoke very little French. But Marie’s training in Paris over the years had left her very nearly fluent, as you might expect someone carrying her name to be. It was very impressive to watch her switch from one language to the other, and back again.
“So how has the pastry course been so far?”
“Oh, it�
��s been wonderful, but quite demanding. The chef is a bit of a prima donna, but you know how pastry chefs can be.”
“Oh yes, of course,” I replied with a wave of my hand. I paused. “Actually, I have absolutely no idea how pastry chefs can be. How can they be?”
It wasn’t intended to be a funny line, but she giggled. Not a laugh, not a chortle. It was definitely a giggle. I could tell by the way she put her hand up to her mouth as she kept her eyes fixed on mine. I went somewhere else for a brief moment.
“Well, let’s just say he’s very, very uptight and has little patience for sloppiness and carelessness,” she explained. “When you’re making the dough, the slightest slip-up in measuring and mixing can turn a perfect, flaky croissant into just another bun with the relative shape and texture of a horseshoe.”
“And I always thought horseshoes were good things.”
We talked, ate, drank, talked, drank, and talked for quite a while. We learned more about each other in those three hours than we had in all of our previous time together. I gave her my entire convoluted family history, including the expectation that I would take over Hemmingwear, and the recent developments with my sister and father. I told her everything. She made it easy. She told me about growing up in Baton Rouge, watching Julia Child on television, and deciding after her undergrad that baking was her true calling. I told her about Dr. Scott. Back and forth we went, spilling our selves before each other. It felt not unlike confession but without the priest, cramped venue, and absolution. We both just seemed to feel comfortable with each other. There was a natural feel and flow to the conversation, as if we’d known each other for a very long time. Even when there was silence, there was no pressure to fill it. As my mother might have put it, had she ever known Marie, “She has a very nice way about her.” And yes, yes, she did.
“If you can still walk after that wine, we should really make our first stop on the tour,” Marie suggested, checking her watch.
She took my arm again and we walked back toward the great cathedral where we’d met and onto rue de la Bûcherie. I knew where we were headed. It was one of my favourite stops in Paris. I’d visited there on every one of my Paris trips.
Since 1951, Shakespeare and Company, a cramped and jam-packed English-language bookstore, had been located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, overlooking the Seine and Notre Dame beyond. Its distinctive yellow and green storefront signalled a welcome refuge for literary types with limited French-language skills. If you were eager to hear English spoken or to find a book in English, you came to Shakespeare and Co.
It was just as I’d remembered it, locked in time, destined to be the messy, overstuffed, two-storey literary labyrinth that it had been for more than sixty years. I wandered around from room to room soaking in the ambience and trying to inhale the history of the place. As I walked up the staircase, I read the inscription on the archway above me: “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.” I loved that. There are worse credos by which to live one’s life.
The original Shakespeare and Company was established by Sylvia Beach in 1919 over in the 6th arrondissement, where it quickly became a hangout for artists and writers, including one Ernest Hemingway. He even used Shakespeare and Co. as his mailing address in Paris. In the 1920s, it was a fixture in the city’s literary firmament. It was not unusual to bump into Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Hemingway, and many others in the store. With Sylvia Beach’s blessing, George Whitman opened the current Shakespeare and Co. back in 1951 and, thankfully, it’s still hanging on in the 5th arrondissement.
I went straight to the shelves with Hemingway’s writing. They had many books by him, and about him. Marie stood well back and let me commune with anything Hemingwayesque I could find. Standing near a photograph of him, I read passages from his novels. I leafed through coffee table books about him. I read the little notations about Hemingway in the store. I closed my eyes a few times and concentrated, trying to summon up his spirit, daring him to make himself known. Armed with flowing, intricate, gossamer sentences of my own, I was ready to do battle with Hemingway’s blunt, spare, flat, anvil-pounded prose.
“Are you all right, sir?”
I opened my eyes to face one of the many young, somewhat bedraggled, lit-loving travellers who lived and worked in the store. He was Irish, I think.
“Oh, yes, I’m fine, thank you. Just, um, trying to immerse myself in the history of this place.” I was skating. “You know, get a sense of what it must have been like here in the early days.”
“Well, we have a first edition of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells in very good condition, if you think that would help.”
Marie and I left soon thereafter. I was pretty well wiped after the flight and time change. We walked back toward my hotel through the meandering streets that had completely escaped the hand of an urban planner with a straight edge. But that’s part of the Paris charm. I was reminded on the way back just how popular small dogs are for Parisians. I’d somehow managed to blot that out of my memory from earlier visits. Three times I stopped and stiffened in my tracks with Marie still on my arm as a leashed poodle or a Pekinese pranced by.
“Right! I remember now,” she said with a sympathetic look. “You’re petrified of dogs, aren’t you?”
“Well, it’s true I’m scared of dogs in general, but to be precise, for some reason, I’m only petrified of small dogs.”
“You mean you’re more frightened of a poodle than you are of Bernese Mountain Dog?”
“I have no idea what a Bernese Mountain Dog is, but if it’s larger than a breadbox, your assertion is correct,” I replied. “I’m well aware that my canine condition is utterly bereft of logic and reason, but it still has a powerful hold over me. I’m working on it.”
“It’s actually quite fascinating,” she replied, always looking on the bright side.
“Well, rest assured, if we are ever attacked by a mountain lion, or a silverback gorilla, or a thirty-foot anaconda, I will gladly hold them off while you escape. But if we happen to run into a Pomeranian, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
“Got it,” she said. “Have you spoken to Dr. Madelaine about it?”
“It’s been a frequent topic of discussion between us but we haven’t yet unearthed any reason for my Chihuahua aversion.”
“What about hypnosis?”
“Been there, done that.”
“And?”
“Well, it wasn’t a complete washout. I have a short video of me waddling around her office quacking like a duck, of which I have absolutely no memory.”
“That could be fun to watch,” she said with a straight face. She squeezed my arm.
In my addled brain, that Marie was comfortable poking fun at me felt like another frontier crossed.
Conveniently, the apartment where Marie was staying was quite close to my hotel. Despite my objections, she insisted on getting me safely back to Hôtel de Buci. By this time it was nearly 6:00 p.m., but eating was the last thing on my mind. I managed to take off my shoes before collapsing on the bed.
The next day, Sunday, was a full-on, no-holds-barred Hemingway jamboree. After breakfast in a café simply known as Paul just down the street from the hotel, Marie and I made the long walk over to the Cardinal Lemoine Metro Station in the 5th arrondissement and met up with a clutch of tourists for our walking tour of Hemingway’s Paris. Tom, our guide, was an ambulating encyclopedia of Parisian literary history. It was a great way to see at least one important section of the Latin Quarter, including fragments of the ancient city wall, the building wherein Joyce penned part of Ulysses, and, of course, several sites where Hemingway and his wife Hadley spent time. When we arrived at the apartment they shared, I actually sidled up and pressed myself flat against the building. It sounds irrational, I know, but according to Marie, that was nothing compared to how it looked. I’d come all this way, so I wanted to get right up into Hemingway’s face, figuratively speaking.
We spent the afternoon drinkin
g red wine and eating baguette and cheese in the Luxembourg Gardens. Hemingway was said to have spent a lot of time in the Luxembourg Gardens, occasionally bumping into Gertrude Stein as she walked her dog. We were reclining on the blanket Marie had brought and watching the people move through the gardens while we ate and drank.
“Did you know that when times were tough in Paris, Hemingway even caught pigeons in the gardens?” I said. “He’d take them home, pluck them, and Hadley and he would cook them for dinner.”
“How do you think he caught them?” Marie asked.
“Who knows? Perhaps he just glared at them and they’d keel over dead in a cloud of his fatal manliness.”
“Yes, that’s probably how he did it,” Marie agreed.
Something else happened in the gardens that I’d not been expecting. As we lay back watching the clouds and soaking up the sun, I felt Marie’s hand slip into mine. I barely noticed it. That’s how natural it seemed, as if we’d held hands a thousand times before.
At about 4:30 we walked over to put another check mark on our list of Hemingway landmarks. We had coffee in Les Deux Magots, Hemingway’s favourite café. It was on the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue Bonaparte, with seating outside and in. Its illustrious clientele, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Picasso, and of course Hemingway, has made Les Deux Magots one of the most famous cafés in all of Paris. Hemingway’s favourite table was in the northwest corner of the room, marked by a photograph of the man himself on the wall behind. Our timing was good. The table was open and I sat where Hemingway sat whenever he was in the café, which was often. As had become my practice, I closed my eyes for a moment to try to feel the significance of this place. Nothing. I opened my eyes and Marie was staring at me and, yes, still smiling.
