Travelers' Tales Paris

by James O'Reilly

  —George Rodrigue, “France Reopens its WWII Wounds,” The Dallas Morning News

  The benign attitude of the French gendarmes reassured me. It changed my outlook from terror to simple fear. It is astonishing what a kind word can accomplish in a desperate situation. The gendarmes ignored me and returned to their noisy game. In about an hour, a German brought my suitcase and handed the policemen a manila envelope. I asked the sergeant if I could get some cigarettes out of my bag. He nodded yes. I opened it. I could tell that it had been searched, but both loaves of bread appeared intact. My spirits soared from despair to hope. Everything was not lost. My luck was changing; with courage, imagination, and determination, I might escape the sharks. When the card game ended, the gendarmes added their score, exchanged money and then turned towards me. I offered them cigarettes and asked them if it was possible for us to stop and buy some food on our way to the jail.

  “If you have money to pay for it, we’ll gladly take you to a restaurant.”

  “If it’s OK, I would gladly buy drinks and dinner all around.”

  They looked at each other, but they didn’t answer. One of them escorted me out, through a back door, down an alley to a closed restaurant. We entered through the kitchen. It was empty except for the owners. We were finishing our first drink when the other two gendarmes showed up. I called for more drinks. We enjoyed a five course dinner with bottles of expensive wine with each course; then cognac and more wine. I told them that I was an American student trying to reach Paris prior to returning home. My arrest was a total mistake. I am sure that they didn’t believe me. We played cards and drank until midnight. Naturally, I lost heavily. Since it was past curfew, the jail was closed and I was such a grand fellow and model prisoner, they decided that I should take a room upstairs; drunk as I was they said that they were certain that I wouldn’t try to escape. Afterwards, hugged by the comfort and warmth of a feather bed, I decided that the odds were so poor that I could run away in the middle of the night, without papers, in a strange town crawling with Germans, that I planned to wait until daybreak before making my move. I fell asleep and dreamt of Paris.

  Next morning, shaved and dressed in my tweeds, I was ready to step out onto the wet pavement when one of the gendarmes showed up. He seemed surprised that I was still around. They must have really thought that I was a spy. Mustering all my courage, I asked him if he carried a gun. No, the Germans didn’t trust him, he was armed with a night stick and a whistle. If a prisoner tried to run away, his orders were to try to restrain him and to blow his whistle to alert the German and French police to come to his aid. Outside, the rain had stopped but had been replaced by a cold gray fog, the kind that chills you right through to the bone marrow. I took an envelope filled with currency and put it in his hand.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could give me my passport and wait a couple of hours before blowing your whistle.”

  He put the envelope in his tunic pocket, handed me my passport out of the manila folder, opened the door, pointed down the hill towards the railroad station.

  “That is the way south. Keep off the paved roads, try the fields. If you get caught tell them that you knocked me down and overpowered me. Good luck.”

  The streets were deserted, I walked across the Marne canal without seeing anyone. When I reached the railroad tracks, I entered the plowed fields slippery with brown clay. The fog was thicker around the waterways and the going so tough that I doubted that any patrols would venture into the countryside that morning. I stumbled along keeping the barely visible railroad lines to my right. From time to time, I stopped to rest and to listen to the sounds around me. I heard voices, dog barks, train, car and wagon noises. I was floating in a sea of fog with everything near but out of sight. Once, I was stopped by a canal. I didn’t panic, I backtracked alongside it and crossed the water at a railroad bridge which was left unguarded. Around noon, the fog eased a little. I had reached the outskirts of a small city. It was the town of Tergniers, a rail center with squat houses huddled around the station. Since leaving St-Quentin I hadn’t been challenged by anyone, my luck was holding. Before entering the town, I sat down and changed to a clean pair of shoes from my suitcase. I left my muddy ones in a culvert and, nonchalantly carrying my suitcase, I walked into the station. The platform was full of German soldiers. When a train with a Paris destination ground to a noisy stop, everyone including me jumped on board.

  Struggling with my suitcase, I walked through the first class section until I located a compartment with an empty seat. All other seats were occupied by young officers. They helped me heave my coat and my bag onto the rack. They spoke to me, I answered “Guten tag. Jawohl....” and smiled a lot. I intimated that I was Flemish, “Flemmisch Sprechen. Deutsch Verstehen.”

  In a sense, the wartime French government—headquartered in the resort town of Vichy and led by Marshal Philippe Petain—began to be rehabilitated under postwar President Charles de Gaulle. A vengeful bloodletting had followed the war, with perhaps 10,000 suspected collaborationists executed without trial. But then, for the sake of French pride and unity, the leader of the Free French helped build the myth of French resistance. Since then, French and foreign researchers have been systematically unraveling that tale, often against the wishes of the French government.

  The groundbreaking research into Vichy was performed by an American historian, Robert Paxton. His 1973 book, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–44, drew upon German records to prove that Marshal Petain’s government not only collaborated voluntarily, but in some cases went beyond German demands.

  —George Rodrigue, “France Reopens its WWII Wounds,” The Dallas Morning News

  Looking around, I noticed that all the signs in the car were in German. God. In my haste, I had jumped on a troop train which had originated in the Fatherland. My traveling companions mistook me for one of their civilian surrogates—a collaborator. They couldn’t have treated me nicer; having exhausted most of my vocabulary and before I could arouse any suspicion, I had to find a way out—not the toilet this time. A steward playing a glockenspiel stuck his head in the compartment and announced the second seating for lunch. I followed him to an ornate dining car. He thrust a reservation book at me to sign in. I wrote something illegible followed by the street address of a hotel in Antwerp. He waved me to a small table for two; except for some ladies, I noticed that I was the only civilian there. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible by looking out the window. The sun had finally broken through the mist. At a large table opposite mine, four German officers in full dress, their tunics covered with iron crosses, ribbons and medals were lingering over their desserts and plotting the train’s itinerary on a map. They observed the countryside with binoculars and talked about having traveled through there before. I overheard them say respectfully “General.” When the train reached Compiègne, the place where the armistices in 1918 and 1940 had been signed, they laughed and called for champagne. The General stood and proposed a toast. Everyone in the dining salon stood, including me. He noticed that I was raising my water glass so he directed the steward to bring me some champagne. On command, we toasted Germany’s victorious armies. As the only person not in uniform, I realized that I stood out like a sore thumb and expected the worst. Should the General try to talk to me, I was finished. When he stood up to leave, he directed the waiter to bring me two half-filled bottles of white wine and some cake from his table. I stood up, bowed and said, “Danke Schön, Herr General.”

  He gave me the Nazi salute, “Heil Hitler.”

  I responded in kind. When I sat down, I was pleased with my performance. My Heil Hitler to the General certainly impressed the rest of the diners who cast furtive glances in my direction. I really must be important for the General to take notice of me. The waiter brought the menu and I ordered sausage and red cabbage in my most guttural Flemish. The dining room was full and there were some officers waiting to be seated but because of my short acquaintance with my host I was allowed to sa
vor their best Rhine wines and eat their gourmet food at my leisure like a privileged member of the Master Race. Had I been dressed in shabby clothes, worn muddy shoes and sporting a two day’s growth of beard, I would be traveling on a train going in the opposite direction to a certain death. Clothes make the man; this morning I was haggling with a French policeman for my freedom and now I was dining in the German senior officers’ salon. My long walk and the dangers I had faced sharpened my appetite; I did justice to the meal and the chocolate cake, the first chocolate that I had tasted in months. The waiter brought a box of cigars and a brandy snifter. He opened the box and I selected one as he poured me a half glass of Courvoisier from the General’s bottle. When I reached for a lighter, he gave me a light and I lit the cigar like an expert. I gave him a couple of hundred francs for his trouble. For my taste I find Courvoisier a little sweet—not enough oak. I prefer a more robust Cognac, but this being wartime and given the circumstances I must learn to make do.... The cigar was Dutch Sumatra perfect, it built a wonderful cone of ashes. The train rattled through the last miles of our journey. I smiled with contentment and a young lady two tables away smiled back. I hadn’t meant to smile at her, it was a reaction to my change of fortune; happiness like misery is easily transmitted. I was jettisoning my anguish every mile that I traveled away from St-Quentin and towards Paris. Here I was in the midst of my enemies, enjoying their hospitality while in my bag I carried 150,000 stolen marks. I went from the depth of despair to the heights of elation. Paris was not only my destination, it was my destiny. When we reached the drab industrial approaches to the city, the train slowed and I decided that it was safe for me to return to my seat. The rail lines around the Gare du Nord were guarded by anti-aircraft batteries. When the train stopped, all the military personnel were allowed on the platform. When I tried to exit, my passage was blocked by military policemen. I looked out the window and saw the reason why. The huge glass and steel building was festooned with swastikas. An honor guard stood at attention facing the train. A band played “Deutschland Über Alles.” The General and his staff reviewed the troops, saluted them, then the honor guard changed formation, and the band attacked a lively march tune as they goose-stepped out of the station. The General and all the troops followed, then me, whistling and marching in step, carrying my precious yellow leather suitcase towards freedom and the Paris boulevards.

  I soon learned that the General who unwittingly helped me achieve the first stage of my escape was the new military governor of Paris.

  Marcel Laventurier was born in the United States but spent his youth in Belgium and France. After escaping from the Nazis he served in the US Navy throughout World War II, married in 1945, and became a pharmacist in California. This story is one of a series that he has written about his war-time experiences.

  During the long war years, when I was living far from Paris, I often used to wonder how so large a city found room inside a tiny compartment of the human brain. Paris, for me, had become a kind of inner world through which I roamed on those difficult dawn hours when despair lies in wait for the waking sleeper. I needed time, though, to take a conscious step over the threshold of this secret city that I was carrying around inside me; first there were the black weeks during which the mere mention of the name Paris broke the hearts of all who heard it. So I barred the gates of my city against myself; I banished its avenues as far away as possible. At night, however, flouting my own orders, I would slink along its streets like a spy or a thief, restlessly going from house to house. Suddenly I would appear in a room where friends were hiding. “What—you here? It is you!” And one of those interminable conversations would start up and not stop until daybreak. Things we could not tell one another with the width of the Atlantic between us we communicated from heart to heart in those imaginary conversations. Gone was all the water that separated us; I had abolished space; I was there. I wanted to know everything. As I left I used to touch the stones of the houses and the trunks of the trees with my hands, and I would wake with a curious feeling of having been both fulfilled and frustrated.

  Thinking about the capital all the time, I rebuilt it inside myself. I replaced its physical presence with something else, something almost supernatural; I don’t know what to call it. A map of Paris pinned to the wall would hold my gaze for long periods, teaching me things almost subliminally. I made the discovery that Paris was shaped like a human brain.

  —Julian Green, Paris, translated by J. A. Underwood

  THÉRÈSE LUNG

  Bearing Witness

  Every city has its sorrows.

  I RECENTLY SAW AN ARCHITECTURAL ARTICLE ON MITTERRAND’S final grand project, the new national library, Bibliothèque Nationale, and the memories returned in a flood.

  I had been living in Paris for many years, but every excursion still held the promise of discovery and the unexpected; being innocently mistaken for a camera-wielding Japanese tourist who could speak French would turn into a front-seat ride with a Métro driver on an interesting aerial stretch of the #2 line.

  It was a sunny day of July, 1991, the first good day for my black and white film. I took the Métro out towards the encampment of 30 or so homeless West Africans at the Quai de la Gare. The encampment was on the edge of the site of the much-heralded national library, for whose design prominent architects had competed. At that time the site was an immense vacant lot criss-crossed by narrow, ghostly streets. An entire neighborhood had been razed, as in a war except the process was surgically precise, dislocating thousands. These people came to symbolize the City of Light’s disenfranchised.

  Although most held jobs and could pay some rent, they could not find decent lodging in this increasingly gentrified city, whose very charm and identity had originated in the many villages which had come to constitute greater Paris’s quartiers.

  I was there with the urge to “bear witness.”

  At the entrance a large white banner proclaimed, “Un toit, un droit.” (A roof, a right.) It was hot and dusty from the nearby construction and the traffic rushing by. Inside the sheet metal fence, a table, makeshift like the tents, for petitions and information. Had I a right to intrude on these people who tried to live with dignity? How much support and visibility of this sort did they really need? Certainly little from me, who am neither journalist nor politician nor Abbé Pierre, their champion, France’s conscience.

  Barely arrived, and already in doubt, I told myself to stick to inert matter, such as the beautifully textured old walls of the Marais, updated with poetry and protests, or the peeling layers of old maps and advertisements on the Métro walls; in the meantime, two well-equipped photographers before me were refused the right to photograph the site; so much for my plans and nascent activism.

  Disappointed yet relieved, I was about to walk away when one of them approached me with a curious invitation—he would be taking photographs of children he’d been visiting in Belleville later in the afternoon, would I be interested in accompanying him?

  This seemed intriguing enough, in spite of oft-repeated warnings about French males, and I love children, so I accepted. Belleville, at the confluence of the 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements, is known for its lively cultural mix of North and West Africans, Vietnamese and Chinese or both, holdouts of the French Communist Party (whose headquarters were in the area) and their obligatory leftist intellectual sympathizers, and elderly working-class French, in the best tradition of French solidarity. Blue-collar Belleville is far from the mind and eyes of tourists. Small, unpretentious corner cafés and bistros still teem with the locals. It is one of my favorite haunts to rediscover the Paris of my childhood, and its diversity makes it always interesting and friendly.

  But first, I went on to the rue Watt, one or two large blocks away, whose images did not pose moral dilemmas. It had been rendered famous by Robert Doisneau, the photographer of quintessential Parisian life, when couples still danced the Java and kissed on the street.

  This short, wide underpass of a road ran
below the Austerlitz train line heading southeast from Paris. In the right light, the metal grating shielding it from the trains creates an intricate interplay of light and dark upon the dotted lane divider, a flickering pattern which moves with the sun’s path in the sky, and undulates upon humans and speeding vehicles alike. Elaborate, traditional iron banisters and streetlight globes separate pedestrians from the street on a raised sidewalk, turning it into a promenade. The warmth and lightness of the metal cast a new nostalgic glow on New York’s elevated train tracks and fire escapes, the urban eye-sores of my adolescence in Queens.

  As an administrator Haussmann was over bearing, irresistible, indefatigable, and efficient. He spoke habitually of his staff as his “militant personnel,” an army whose task was “to go forth to the conquest of Old Paris.” This army “would permit me to undertake ripping the quarters of the center of the city from the tangle of streets virtually impenetrable to traffic,” gutting “the sordid, filthy, crowded houses which were, for the most part, but entryways to misery and disease, and subjects of shame for a great country like France....” It is one of the hallmarks of a great administrator that all the business of his bureaucracy be considered important. From paper clips to patronage to boulevards, Haussmann oversaw everything.

  —David P. Jordan,

  Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann

  You might wonder why so much love was put into the design of an essentially unseen, unknown street in a forgotten part of town—probably this was not always so. Paris’s elegant and romantic façade belies centuries of transformation, often brutally sweeping, as under Baron Haussmann or in today’s unrelenting, accelerating pursuit of modernity; all along rue Watt are sterile forms of concrete and glass not unlike the cold polished geometric stone slabs, unworn by time, now covering the renovated Champs-Elysées and Les Halles. The Library would be just one more brick in the master plan. If the rue Watt was the final expression of an entire quartier’s bygone way of living, it would not survive much longer, but I did not know this. After one roll of film, I went on to meet my new acquaintance.