Paris On Air
Page 3
“Did you eat lunch in the reception area yesterday?” he asked me.
“Uh, yeah I think I did. They were all eating in the kitchen, there was no space, so I just ate on the go on one of the seats.”
“Right, well there’s been a complaint. The receptionist wants it to be known that the reception area is for welcoming people, not for eating lunch. They’re a particular bunch, mate, watch your step.”
“But… why didn’t she just tell me at the time?” I asked.
“No idea, just keep an eye out. And the French never eat ‘on the go’ anyway.”
Wow. What a minefield. And what an unfair minefield. How can you avoid breaking the sacred French lunchtime codes if you don’t know what they are? To make matters worse, I was still feeling self-conscious. I didn’t dare to plonk myself down at the lunchtime table with the architects for their daily wine-filled feasts. I hated that I didn’t speak good French, and I found it embarrassing that I wouldn’t understand a conversation. Not least because I was working in a job where I should be able to communicate in French. I felt like an imposter. The competence in French would come, of course, but in those early days it seemed impossible. So as far as lunch was concerned, I decided if I was going to eat in the office, I’d do it surreptitiously at my desk. But of course that led to another of my downfalls.
One day, I went to the local supermarket to grab some cheese, bread, and ham. I bought plenty of it and made a few sandwiches in a hurry in the kitchen to avoid the architects. I smuggled my loot into the office and wolfed the sandwiches down before anyone spotted me. You see, lunch for me has never been much more than a necessity. Sure, I enjoy a good meal as much as the next man, but a sandwich would suffice for lunch on a work day. And where I’m from, it’s not wildly unusual to eat at your desk. So that’s simply what I did. I told the editor that there was plenty of leftover ham and bread if he fancied some.
About an hour later he came back from the kitchen.
“Mate, did you say there was leftover ham? I couldn’t find it.”
I headed to the kitchen fridge with him. Had the architects taken my ham? Surely, surely they hadn’t eaten my ham. But would I finally have a one-up on them?
“There it is,” I said, grabbing the ham from the fridge.
The editor raised an eyebrow.
“Mate, that’s not ham... that’s bacon. That’s raw bacon. Did you cook it before you ate it.”
“Uh, no. Shit. I made it and ate it so quickly…” There was a long pause. “What happens if you eat raw bacon?”
Yes, I had eaten raw bacon and didn’t even notice. Perhaps it was the rush of the smuggle. Perhaps it was the shame of sneaking my own lunch into an office to eat in secret. Perhaps it was the fact that I have a terrible sense of taste in general. Or perhaps, the editor said, after we had searched online for whether eating raw bacon will kill you, perhaps it was something worse. When the dust had settled and it was decided I wouldn’t die, the editor asked me the question I’d been dreading.
“Mate, you know it said pretty clearly on the packet that it was raw bacon… Now tell me, and tell me honestly… just how bad is your French?”
The answer was obvious. My French was abysmal. We agreed that if I was to be carrying out even halfway decent interviews with French people, I’d need to improve my language skills. I’d promised the bosses that I’d pick French up quickly and while I had studied it ten years earlier, relearning it wasn’t going to happen overnight. The editor suggested a refresher course and I signed up that evening. As much as I didn’t want to go back to French class, I figured that at least I could meet some new people. But the classes didn’t start for a while, so I’d have to experiment with other ways to learn. I’d been living in France for about a month and didn’t have any friends, French or otherwise. So in a country full of French people… just how are you supposed to meet them, I wondered. The answer, it turned out, was just around the corner.
1.6 The ‘guys’
The French have a great word for a person who likes to wander about aimlessly; that person is a flâneur (or a flâneuse if you’re female). But before I knew the word, I knew the idea, because that’s exactly what I was in those early days. A flâneur. I rarely knew what I was looking at, or where I was exactly, and I certainly didn’t have any context, but I loved it anyway.
Working in an office from Monday to Friday during a Paris winter meant I had no daylight hours to explore the city, except during the tourist-packed weekends. Those first weeks and months I spent in Paris must have been what it was like for tourists in the old days. I had no internet, no plans, no ideas… I just walked and walked and walked.
One Saturday morning I was on the right bank of the Seine River, in an area I’d later learn was called the Marais. The houses were all built on top of each other, with no room to breathe, but it wasn’t claustrophobic. At least, I didn’t think so. I thought it was intoxicating and exciting. I felt I could pass through a passageway, or a doorway, or a courtyard, and find a hidden treasure. And that’s exactly what happened. One day I was exploring the Village Saint Paul, a small collection of boutique shops, hotels, and restaurants, when a doorway opened onto the most stunning outdoor basketball court I’ve ever seen. Despite the cold, a bunch of locals were playing an intense game of streetball. But even though I was a basketballer myself, that’s not what caught my attention. It was the setting.
Looming ominously and impressively over the north end of the court was the Eglise Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis. Because most of the buildings in central Paris are six or seven floors high, churches like this one often seem even more gargantuan. The court itself was flanked by a stone wall, the longest surviving stretch of the city wall that encircled Paris 800 years ago. It was built by King Philippe Auguste and was the envy of Europe at the time. Years later I’d develop a fascination with this wall, track down its vestiges, and plot its course among the buildings that had swallowed it up over the centuries. But on that day, I just liked the look of it, and I watched the basketballers sitting with their backs against it. Further along, children were kicking balls to each other, bouncing them off the ancient stones. Eventually I turned my attention to the court. And I was overcome by the need to be part of the game.
The next day, I arrived at the courts again, this time ready to play. But, with my limited French that made me too nervous to walk into a restaurant, imagine how tough I found it to ask if I could play. It might sound silly, but summoning the courage to join in was one of the more difficult things I’ve done in my life. Now, this might not sound all that tricky, especially if you’re a happy-go-lucky child reading this. But as an adult in a foreign country, not understanding how the rules worked, I found it to be very challenging. Let me put this into context. I’ve played basketball for my entire life. I know the rules inside out. I know many variants of how to play streetball, and I even realize how the rules can change slightly from country to country. But even though basketball is a subject I could call myself an expert on, I was still nervous about joining the game. This is what it’s like to start a new life in a new setting, especially in Paris. Sure, you may know how to order a beer in a bar, or park a car, or bring a gift to someone on their birthday. But when you’re not sure how to do something in another language, your mind can play tricks on you.
So there I was, just like a child again. Just like a boy, standing in front of some other boys, about to ask if I could play. And I was riddled with fear. I picked my target, a guy standing with his back to the ancient city wall and watching the game. I started in French, and asked him a vague question about how it all worked.
“Comment ça marche ici?” I said, or something to that effect.
Honestly, I probably said something more like “How it work for to play basketball with us in here today?” I guess that’s how it sounded to him, anyway, because he answered in English. Perfect English, would you believe it? It turned out he
was a Parisian who taught English to high schoolers. He decided to take me under his wing and explained that it was pretty straightforward. You make a team of four, wait for a game to finish, then challenge the winning team. All you really had to do was make it known that you were up next. With that, he said I could play on his team, then yelled out something to the guys who were mid-game.
“Les gars, on a la prochaine.”
My existing knowledge of French, and of course the context, was enough for me to know that he’d just announced we’d be playing the next game. But there was one bit that made no sense.
“What did you say to them at the start? Laygar? At least it sounded like laygar?”
“Oh, les gars,” he said with a chuckle. “Yeah, it’s kind of funny, it just means guys. Gar is short for garçon, which means boy, but it’s just another way to say dude, mate, or mec.”
Ah, so mec means dude, I thought. That’s what the neighbour, Stephane, had called me. But the “les gars” bit still didn’t make sense to me.
“So, why did you say ‘les gars’? Surely that means ‘the guys’, no?”
“Ah, you’ve got a long way to go, my friend. You’re not going to learn this language if you expect logical explanations. The best way is to repeat everything. Like a parrot. Why do we say ‘hello the guys’? Why do we think half our nouns are masculine and half are feminine? I don’t know. But everyone does it, and you should too.”
“Thanks, mec,” I said, deciding that I’d adopt my first bit of French slang.
How lucky to have stumbled upon a language teacher to guide me through my first basketball experience. I had no idea at the time, but ‘the guys’ I’d meet on this basketball court would become like a Paris family for me - and a huge source of learning about French people, their language, and especially their slang. Yes, I was lucky and I was ready to shoot some hoops. There was a whole world in front of me and I was ready to jump into it. And just like that, the game being played was over and it was our turn to step onto the court.
Game on, les gars.
1.7 Another email
Belleville is one of those parts of Paris with a wonderful name. It literally means “Beautiful Town” but it’s the sound of the name that I like the most. Say it out loud, it kind of sounds like a very sexy “bell veal”. Belleville. Belleville. Belleville. I like the way your tongue presses twice against the back of your top teeth when you say it, I like those rolling elles. Unfortunately, the place isn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the name. But that will change: it’s quickly developing and will probably be the trendiest part of town soon. Heck, maybe it is already by the time you’re reading this. Paris doesn’t mess around when creating trendy neighbourhoods.
Anyway, the reason I was sitting in my apartment repeating the word Belleville in a sexy accent was because one afternoon I’d got another email that would eventually change my life. This time it was from a Swedish woman named Lina who I’d met at a party in Stockholm.
Hej, I’ve just moved to Paris for six months of study and I don’t know anyone here, so if you wanna grab a drink, I’m in Belleville.
Unfortunately the Swedes don’t pronounce Belleville in a sexy way. They go overboard with the elles and make it fun and silly like an ABBA song. But I wasn’t complaining. I’d never been to Belleville; I was alone in Paris; and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an evening than having a drink in Beautiful Town with a beautiful Swedish woman.
So I met her one winter night and we walked through the Buttes-Chaumont park, which is the closest thing Paris has to an Indiana Jones movie set. Afterward, we stopped for a drink in a dive bar. I told her about my neighbour and my internet problems. She said her apartment smelled like cigarettes. I confessed about the raw bacon and she told me how she had locked her laundry inside a laundromat in Belleville. She was getting it all wrong too, and it was nice to be able to laugh it off with someone in the same boat. We were two strangers in a strange land and we planned to meet again that Saturday night.
It’s impossible to remember which of us chose Saturday night, and whether that person knew that it was Valentine’s Day. But to hell with it now, it was a great move if it was on purpose. Or a fortunate accident. We were both single. Why not spend Valentine’s Day together, we reasoned. It was a date, why not? And what better city for Valentine’s Day than Paris? But how to do it? And considering I’d just paid the two-month deposit on my new place, how could I do it cheaply? Surely, surely it was easy to be romantic on a budget in Paris. Then again, how romantic do you want to get on a second date? Or was it a first date?
We decided to spend the evening taking a stroll to the Eiffel Tower. Neither of us had been there after sunset, and we were keen to see it up close for the hourly light show, the blinding sparkles, which I’d only ever seen from my toilet. Along the way, we stopped at a supermarket and grabbed a bottle of cheap champagne and some charcuterie cold meat, then headed for the tower. In those days, you could walk straight off the street and directly underneath it. After the attacks in November later that year, the city installed a glass wall that made it impossible to enter without going through security checks. But back then, on Valentine’s Day in 2015, there were no gates, no fences, no queues. It was still wide open, beautiful, and carefree. It was my first time visiting the tower as a resident of Paris and I loved it. I’d later learn that many Parisians have never climbed it and didn’t care for it, but I didn’t feel that way. I thought it was breathtaking.
We walked beneath the tower, stared shamelessly up under her iron skirt, then moved on to the Champ de Mars park, where the air was filled with the popping of champagne bottles. It wasn’t until I opened our own that I realized we had forgotten to bring anything to drink it from. “No matter,” she said, and took a swig straight from the bottle.
“I can appreciate the finer things in life, but I’m not against taking a good swig from a cheap bottle of champagne,” she said. Or something like that.
Of course, I don’t remember exactly what she said, because I was thinking, “Wow, what a gal. The kind of gal who’d go out with a guy like me, and not care that I’d bought the cheap bottle without any cups or glasses.”
My thoughts were interrupted by a collective gasp from the crowd as the tower erupted into the hourly light show. Thousands of light bulbs all over the tower flashed and sparkled furiously, brilliantly, and romantically. Lina huddled closer to me and we watched until the sparkling died out.
We eventually decided to head back to the city on foot, and strolled along the Seine until we reached rue de Rivoli in the fancy first arrondissement. A welcoming and surprisingly cheap-looking bar caught my attention. We went in and ordered a pair of gin and tonics as a nightcap. The drinks were cheap, which was perfect for a broke journalist and a student. The waiters were lovely, perhaps caught up in the romance of the night, or perhaps looking for a tip from two tipsy foreigners. Who knows? But what I do know is that they got chatting with us and seemed infected by our good mood. As we went to leave, the bartender produced two shots of liqueur from nowhere and insisted they were on the house.
“Welcome to Paris, I can see a great future for you two,” he said with a smile.
And a waitress handed each of us a red rose.
“Oui, Happy Valentine’s Day to you both,” she added.
We took the shot, said thank you, and headed into the streets once again, positively intoxicated by the romance in the air. Or perhaps it was the liqueur. In fact, it was almost certainly the liqueur. Because that’s the only way I can explain my next ill-conceived idea.
We walked along the covered footpath of the rue de Rivoli, heading eastwards, past all the designer stores and luxury hotels. And then I was blinded. My eyes were hit by the sheer beauty of a hotel lobby. It was so luxurious, so opulent. I had to know more.
“Come on, let’s see what’s inside. Pretend you own the place,” I told Lina.
We sat at the bar. Another two gin and tonics were the order of the night, and it would be my treat, I insisted, oddly forgetting that we’d just been guzzling supermarket champagne from the bottle. We enjoyed the cocktails as the love-struck, drunken, hypnotized daze continued to carry us along.
When the glasses were empty, the bartender slid the receipt to me. Before I even saw the price, my eye was drawn to the two words at the top of the paper and I was snapped out of my dizzy haze. Le Meurice. Shit. Oh, shit! Were we at Le Meurice? One of the fanciest hotels in the entire country? Good lord, I thought, what surprise figure waits for me further down this piece of paper? I avoided looking at the price, and in mere milliseconds, I sobered up as I cast a furtive glance around the room. It was only then that I really took it all in. All of the other patrons were wearing black ties and suits. And were the staff members actually wearing gloves? And those low leather armchairs: they looked like they probably had lost items of jewellery between the cushions rather than loose change. Bite the bullet, I told myself. Look at the bill.