La Douleur

Before I post more pictures from India, I thought I'd put up a few from my stopover in Paris. I didn't take all that many pictures, because mostly I saw the same parts of the city I saw last time. What I focused on the most was my favorite statue in the world. I think the flash burned her out a bit, but I believe I catalogued her from most of the important angles.

Here they are, as well as a link to all the pictures I took in Paris. The captions tell the important parts of the story.

I must have taken nearly 30 pictures of her by now, and yet I still can't seem to convey her smallness, or the right color of green, or just how real she looks when you're standing next to her.

Day 5, The Bookend to My Attempted Sensual Experience

I get out in a square that gives me the Times Square feeling again, just like Place Clichy, only oriented differently. Four separate roads intersect here, but rather than be crossed orthogonally, they run in seemingly random directions creating wide spaces and narrow buildings that grow wider down the street.

I take out my map and my other map. I’m trying to orient myself, but I can’t see any street signs. I’m standing in what seems like a little median strip, like an island in the middle of heavy traffic. I take a turn around the little shops and offices on the island, and come across an Asian lady, probably mid-40s. I ask her for directions in French, and I have trouble following her accent. She looks behind me and I immediately think she sees someone she knows, but she's actually looking at my hair. She grabs my ponytail and makes a few clucks with her tongue.

“You need haircut!”

“Well, I was...”

“You need haircut!”

“What, do you have availability? Can you take me in right now?” I look into the shop and see one other hairdresser with a customer. It doesn’t take me long to realize that the time is now. I’ve been talking about it for four years. I’m in Paris where, rumor has it, they know a thing or two about hair.

“How much is it?”

“Shampoo zenmassageof head an blowjry thirty Euros.”

“Wait, thirty Euros?”

“Yeah, no style. Massage head cut blowjry. Thirty.”

Unlike the earlier transaction at Frou-Frou, I think I can consummate this relationship.

She takes me by the hand and leads me back behind a black curtain. She helps me remove my jacket. She puts her arms around me to tie an apron around my neck. She sits me down in a chair and walks behind me. She gently pulls my head down, and I hear water running. I can watch from a mirror they’ve put on the ceiling. Warm water smoothes out over my scalp and the rhythm of it makes me feel warm in my toes. Her hands caress me behind the ears and in the back of my head, and I can feel the water-wetness cause her hands to slip around.The flip of the shampoo-bottle cap, the sound of a good squeeze, and her palms are slickery sliding over my crown and at the base of my skull. She stops and I open my eyes. She starts speaking, not French. She leaves me, I can see her leaving in the mirror.

I feel pressure in my chest, like I’ve been spurned. I decide to relax and close my eyes again. She won’t leave me here.

I may have fallen asleep before the hands touched me again, much more gently this time. She’s running her fingernails over my scalp, digging in a little, causing rivulets of pleasure to radiate between my ears and down my back. I have to fight from saying, “harder!” I open my eyes to find a different girl. She’s probably in her early twenties, and it occurs to me that she probably has less experience but more skill. She rubs behind my ears for longer than it would take to lather, then her hands go away. I almost moan.

The warmth spreads over my head again as she rinses. She cascades her hands and her fingernails up and down the top of my head all the way to the back. I’m praying that she’ll follow the third step of shampoo etiquette: repeat.

She turns off the water and says, “Okay.”

I stand up and move to the chair. I impress myself by being able to negotiate the style I want in French. I even try to switch to English once to explain the part where “I still want to be able to put it in a ponytail,” but she doesn’t understand a word. After she’s finished cutting she blowdries my hair and combs with her fingers. Using an actual brush to style it costs an extra 8E.I stand up, feeling about seven pounds lighter, and pay. The ladies tell me how much better I look and give me about thirty pieces of hard candy. I pay the 30E on my credit card and bid them farewell, after I ask them how to get to r. Mouffetard. They point behind the building we’re in and say “au revoir” about twenty times.

I'm off, and ready, finally, for Hemingway.

Day 5, The Morning After

My bed shakes. I hear something four inches from my ear and jerk my head up. A foot sits on my headboard. Then the other one lands. The calves are shaven, increasing the chances it’s a girl.

I'm too tired for an introduction, so I close my eyes and play possum. Zip, zip, shuffle, shuffle, and she’s out the door. I go right back to sleep.

I wake up with the bells chiming 9 a.m. again, but I look at my watch and it’s 9:20. I get up, throw on the day’s clothes, and head down the hall to check in on Our Gang in room 20.
The door is ajar, and Justin is dressing. Paul is asleep, and Nima is nowhere to be found.

“She didn’t come in last night.”

For a Stanislawski moment, I picture looking at my computer at work. I point at my face, neutral as Switzerland, and say, “this is the look of my surprise.”

“Where was she?”

“Dunno, some guy I think.”

“Hmm.” He looks down and doesn’t move for a few seconds.

“What are you doing today?” he asks.

“I’m doing the Hemingway walk.”

“Hmm.” He looks around and grabs his gloves. “Well, as much fun as that sounds like, I think I’m gonna go to the Musee d’Orsay. Look at some impersonators.”

“I think you mean Impressionists.”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot.

“Sorry, man, it’s too early for my sense of humor. Haven’t had breakfast yet.”

We go downstairs and there are young people everywhere. We make some joke about growing old, and suddenly I wonder if any of these girls could be my new roommate... but there’s really no way to know. Well, there’s one girl who definitely isn’t her, but it’s probably rude to say more.

The South Africans are here, as are the Brazilians and the Argentineans. And a few Aussies. I get my baguette and shitty coffee and sit with my tour book and a map.

Today will be difficult, but I’m determined to read the whole walk before I start. I didn’t do that on the first day and I think I missed some things as a result. Start at a metro station in the 5th, end up at another one in the 14th. They’re pretty close to each other if you’re walking directly, but the round I have to make is shaped like a large balloon stretching through the 5th, 6th, and 7th before ending up there. It says it’s a 5-mile walk.

After I finish breakfast I head back upstairs to collect everything. Nima is awake and getting ready. Paul is in there with her.

You have to really try to imagine Australian accents in order for this to work right.

“So do I smell like sex?” she asks.

“I don’t know, I haven’t been that close to you yet.”

She runs up to him and pushes his head between her breasts.

“Ew, my God girl! Get the hell away from me with that sex smell. You’re turning me off! It doesn’t smell like you, it smells like him!”

“Fuck you, ya fuckin’ wanker! I’m gonna get my new boyfriend to kick your ass.”

“I hope he can kick ass better than he can serve drinks.”

“I’m gonna tell my new boyfriend that you said that, that you impugned his job skills.”

“Tell him he can kiss my ass.”

“Roight, I’ll tell him he can kick your ass.”

“Kiss!”

“Kick!”

“Get outta here ya fuckin’ skank. I’ll tell your new boyfriend to kick your ass while he’s at it. You’d probably like that, roight?”

“I don’t know, never tried it. But with my new boyfriend I’ll bet we’ll discover all sorts of new things togevah.”

“Did you ask your new boyfriend how many girls he has in a week? I’ll bet the bugger needs a snorkel to keep his head above all your fluids.”

“I didn’t ask him but how does he know I don’t lay just as many girls in a week?”

“You could have a competition!”

“You could be a judge!”

“You could kiss my ass!”

Paul gets up and runs toward her, arms out and hands grabbing.

“Get away from me fucko! I’ll get my new boyfriend to kick your ass!”

...and so forth.

Eventually Paul goes running. He’s going to England later in the evening after an extended stay in Paris, so he bids farewells, assuming he won’t see us again. Nima and I are left alone. We haven’t spoken since well before her evening with Peter.

“You remember what I told you about the Sun Also Rises? About the two main characters?”

“Yeah. Listen, mate. Could you help me here? I have to eat something but I think I’ve missed breaky. Do you think you could score me something?”

“I don’t think so, they’ve all gone. I may have something in my room or in the fridge, but I’m not sure.”

“Anything would be good. Goodonya, mate.”

I go downstairs to the refrigerator and take out the cheese I left there before. I don’t have any bread, but she’ll have to make do.

“Thanks. I’m a bit surprised I’m even up this early. Did you have a good time last night? I didn’t see you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect that you would! I gathered you were up to something.”

She looks at me, grinning out the side of her mouth. “Well, I wasn’t intending to. He wasn’t either, it was kind of a spontaneous thing, yaknow? Last minute.”

I laugh.

“What’s that?” She punctuates “that” with a near-S sound at the end, like “ts”. It’s something I’ve heard from a few Aussies when they’re really emphasizing something.

“Last minute? You’re kidding, right? It looked like you had been planning it all evening.”

“Nope. Paul and I were in there with Peter, then Paul left, and we were alone. I didn’t sleep much at all.”

“Have you ever heard the term cock-block?”

“Sure.”

“I thought Paul was being a bit of a cock-block last night. I actually tried to divert his attention a bit to get him out of the way, even.” I neglect to mention Peter’s involvement. Something in the “guy” code of honor prohibits me.

“No, not at all. I was just in there having fun and knocking one back. I didn’t think he was being a cock-block. Jesus, considering the experience I could’ve used a good cock-block.”

Oh, shit.

My John Wayne American stereotype stands an inch taller. “Was he mean to you?” I ask.

“No, not at all, he just wasn’t very, well, nice to me. I’ve had worse, but I think I’m old enough now to know when I could have had better. I mean, he took care of me, he was just a bit of a, well, blah.”

“Interesting. Well, next time you need a cock-block, you let me know. I thought you were in all-out seduction mode.”

“God, no. I’m never in seduction mode. I don’t know how to seduce anyone, they usually, well...”

“They usually come to you. That’s what’s so attractive about you. You don’t understand... you. You’re like a sun that shines on people when you’re interested in them. It doesn’t take much, but any guy would be drawn in. I’m glad you don’t know your power, ‘cause this way you can still use it for good.”

“Well, I don’t know about all that. But you can certainly be my cock-block anytime. Any time."
I look at my watch.

“Are you going? Do you have to be somewhere?”

“Today is Hemingway day. No more excuses. I’m actually going this time.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you.”

I start to walk out.

“Hey, Marcus.”

“Yeah?”

“What was it you wanted to say, about Hem and the Sun Also Rises?”

“Well," I pause. There's really nothing I can say and stay safe inside my cozy life. "It’s a pretty interesting story, don’t you think?”

“I will have to read it.”

I go out the door.

I take the Metro to the station at Censier-Daubenton, the first stop on Michael Palin's Hemingway tour. During the train ride, three Spaniards get on the bus and begin to play guitars and sing. It's beautiful and I consider missing a few stop to hear more, but they get off at my station. When I reach the street, the mood is perfect for Hemingway.

Day 4, Night-night and Some Company for Nima

12:45 a.m.

Good story, everyone agrees. That’s when I notice the bartender is different. It’s Peter, the tall American who’s nice to people. He chooses good music too, at least for someone of my generation. Nima is leaning against the wall next to the cash register. She and Peter and Malcolm are deep in conversation and I can’t hear anything.

We order another round, and I start to complain about how little French I’ve used on this trip so far. Angie points out two guys sitting at a nearby table and says they’re locals. One has a buzz cut and glasses, the other looks like the lead singer of a rock band, with long black hair and a crooked mouth.

Before I turn back to face my table I call to them, “Excusez! Je vous invite de nous joindre!”
They look at each other and shrug that half-shrug that should be immortalized in sculpture as the most French of gestures. They barely speak English, and I’m the only one at my table who speaks any French, except one little guy from Argentina. The four of us shuffle our chairs around and split off from the main group. We introduce ourselves and talk about where we came from, etc. The little guy from Argentina can’t understand anything, and I can’t understand him. Eventually he sits back and half listens. He doesn’t speak English either. I feel bad for him, but I think there’s very little I can do. I hope he can pick up enough of one conversation or another to at least stay here. I buy him a beer.

The two Frenchman are interesting. I have trouble understanding the clean-shaven one; he’s more than three feet away and the music is loud. The long-haired one is very patient with me, repeating himself when I need it and bearing with me when I start to talk where my vocabulary doesn’t support me. After a while I recount the story about the brothel.

“So,” the long-haired guy asks, “you didn’t do anything there? Have you not since you’ve been here?”

“Nope, I’m married.” I show them Alex and K.

They look at each other with closed-lipped smiles. They shrug again in unison.

“Mais,” the clean-shaven one starts, “mais, il faut profiter quand on peut. N’est-ce pas?”

It’s my turn to shrug. “Ce n’est qu’une semaine. Je peux attendre.”

They act like I’m speaking a foreign language. Is this the way these people really think? My first real conversation with real French people, and they throw out this bomb!

Nima’s calling me over. She wants to buy me a drink. Malcolm wants to tell me about all the editing that my novel needs. I hate to say it, I don’t even admit it to them, but I’m kinda tired of speaking French. Nima wants to go upstairs and get a bottle of wine. Paul and I accompany her, and we stay in that room for a while. Paul is talking about the Simpsons, and Justin wants to talk about my Moorish carver. I show them my book on calligraphy, and they seem interested, despite the alcohol.

Back downstairs, the Frenchmen are gone and it’s about to be last call. Malcolm is gone too. I still have a paper cup full of Nima’s bootlegged wine, and Peter pulls me aside to tell me to throw it out.

I order a bottle of cheap shit red swill for 8 Euros. It’s an Australian Shiraz, and I’ll probably regret that for the rest of my life. My only other choice was a white not much better than Yellow Tail. Nevertheless I start pouring around the table and Nima disappears to talk to Peter again. Paul and I start in on Simpsons quotes again, and we all sing with Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee” comes on. Every person in that bar knew most of the words, even the little Argentinean.

Paul’s favorite episode is the “Whacking Day” episode. For him it explores the most interesting elements of crowd psychology: normally reasonable people getting caught up in a barbaric ritual with dubious origins, and then following the leader in denouncing it the moment Barry White shows up. I tell him my current favorite is the Burlesque House episode and, aside from its timeliness tonight, it has great crowd scenes as well.

* * *
“Wait, people!”
Everyone stops.
“Sure, we could knock down the burlesque house--“
Immediately the crowd begins smashing and burning again.
“Wait!! I said, we could knock down the burlesque house, but then...”
Everyone stops.
* * *

And of course, Sideshow Mel acts as the voice of the mob in both cases. As I’m talking, a rain of warm liquid splashes on my hands and clothes and Paul jumps up. I’ve knocked over a wine glass, but it doesn’t break.

“Oh, shit, I’ve made a faux pas!” I run to get napkins.

This is only interesting because Paul then tells me the pants he’s wearing are his only pair. He’s been wearing them for three months and will wear them for six more if they last.

I say, “I find it hard to believe this is the first time you’ve spilled alcohol on them in three months.”

“It sure is. What an honor for ya, mate!’

Wow.

The lights go out. It’s five minutes until two. Nima is behind the bar now, talking to Peter, just inches from his face. We shuffle out of the bar and into the courtyard. There are three South Africans out there I’ve seen a few times. I’m not tired at all, so I grab a chair. I’ve still got some more wine. I don’t think Peter was supposed to let me take it out, but I think Peter’s got other things on his mind than following these rules.

The South Africans talk about American Football and the Simpsons, then one of them starts being a little sheepish. I swear he’s almost turning his toes in the dirt as he looks down.

“So, what’s up with your little friend in there?

“Huh?” I say, knowing full well who he’s referring to.

“Lakkebaude,” another guy says.

“What about her?” I ask.

“Well, you know she’s trouble, right? I mean... chhhhhhhhaaaat!” This sounds like the word “hot”, but with a sound like the “ch” in Scottish “loch” or Hebrew “challah”. A hard “h”. He continues, “You know, I spotted it wivin five minutes of seein ‘er. Maintenance like a bugger, but... chaaaaat!”

“Hot? Yeah she’s hot, but I don’t know much about her. What, were you thinking about tagging 'er?” Men talk like this. I’m not proud of it, just bear with me.

“Lakkebaude,” the other guy says again. The ‘d’ sounds like the ‘th’ in ‘that’. I know because they spelled it for me later.

“Lakketita,” the third chimes in.

They all laugh. My laugh is pretty hollow because I don’t know what they’re saying.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Afrikaans. Lakke is kind of like, well when you’ve gone out gettin pissed, you’ve had lakke beer. This chick is lakkebaude, ‘cause baude, means ass. She’s lakke ass!”

The third guy, a clean-cut prep-school type, says, “I suppose you can guess what lakketita means.”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Anyway mate, you’ve been hangin ‘round her a lot, and I just wanted to make sure you know she’s trouble.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yeah, wivin five minutes, mate.”

“Well, I don’t think she’s aiming to be my problem anymore, if she ever was. She didn’t say much to me tonight at all. I don’t think I’m her type, you know, married and all.”

All three of them laugh. The second guy, tall rugby type, says, “Fuck difference that make in a place like this? Why your wife let you come ‘ere, knowin’ what kind a place it is?”

“I don’t think she knew. I don’t think I knew. Doesn’t make a difference though. I’m only here one more night after tonight.”

I see a flicker to my right. It’s coming from the bar, through the glass-paned door. Paul’s still in there, lighting a cigarette, with Nima and Peter behind the bar.

“What’s this?” the little South African says. “When’s the bar close?”

“Two o’clock,” I say.

“Fuck, it’s two-thirty now!”

He walks up to the door and taps on it.

Peter throws open a different door, one I hadn’t noticed before. He must have been on his way out here already; he was through it before the little guy finished knocking.

“What time you guys close in there?”

“Two o’clock. We’re already closed.”

“So what you doin’ inside?”

Peter closes the door behind him and surveys the four of us, eyeing me more than the rest.

“It’s just me, the girl, and the cock-block in there.”

I burst out laughing. I can’t help it; I’ve never heard the term used in context before. I don't think I knew what it meant.

Peter and the little guy start to talk in low tones while the rest of us tell cock-block stories. I don’t remember any of them.

The little guy comes over and starts whispering orders. He points to us, giving us each assignments. For some reason the words come back to me, “If given the right atmosphere, this young man could go far”. We’re going to heard Paul out of there, and for our services Peter is buying one more round. I do the math on my own: Peter is going to spend 12E and risk going to jail so he can get laid. Am I betraying some friendship with Nima to help in this?

Well, another beer sounds good.

While we wait for Peter to open the door, the tallest South African laughs. He speaks to me in a low voice.

“You know what’s so funny about this is how we’re all so true to our cultures: it’s the American who’s willing to buy his way to getting laid, while the Aussies try to sit around and tell stories. All the South Africans are into it for is to get fuckin’ pissed!”

I wonder where that leaves me.

The four of us crowd around Paul as I get my treasured 1664. We glance at each other from time to time and inch toward the back door. Nima and Peter are getting closer together as Peter counts the till.

Within five minutes Paul is out the door and he starts to complain about the cold.

I finish my beer and throw out the empty. Suddenly my feet feel four days’ worth of intense walking and my eyes hurt. And I realize that tomorrow is my last full day. I nod to the other South Africans and bid Paul a good night. I’ve done my job and been a good soldier. Up the stairs, through the open door, I see there’s someone new on the top bunk. I think it’s a girl.
I take two Tylenol and drink a half-liter of water. I fall asleep within ten minutes, snickering about the cock-block and hoping my upstairs neighbor can sleep through it.

Day 4, Queues, the Hooker, and Having The Floor

As the lovely British girl was saying...

“When a British person sees a queue, he automatically thinks, ‘gee, there must be something interesting over there. Got to get in the queue!’ and they do. That’s why British love traffic, yasee, because it’s one giant queue.”

I tell Angie and Nima and Paul and Justin and the Brazilians that I’m forming a queue. Nima tells me she’s not going anywhere, she’s too tired. The Brits are staying in. Paul and Justin are going to do whatever Nima does. My stomach is turning; I almost feel a personal insult. What caused all this to change so quickly?

Twenty minutes later I turn to Angie. “Well, do you want to go somewhere? You need to eat, don’t you?”

She looks at the floor. “I guess I’m just going to follow the crowd. But don’t let that stop you, by all means!”

I’m not going to. I have two nights left in Paris and I’m going to do something fun with both of them.

I leave my camera in the safe-deposit box and grab another metro map. I make sure I have my tickets and that my cash is all in the money-belt thing. I go out the door, and I can’t help but turn to see if anyone came out behind me, or if anyone even looked. It’s starting to get cold and I put my jacket on.

Down Felix Faure, I plan to go see Notre Dame and the other buildings lit up like they say they all are at night. I have less than two hours before the metro stops running, so I’d better make my choice fast.

Wait, I don’t have my camera. And Nima and some others said they’d like to see these things at night, and if we do the bike tour tomorrow night we’ll see them anyway. I think I’ll do something else.

Well, I guess I could go see the Moulin Rouge. That’s probably something special. I take the Métro to Place de Clichy. I’ve been there before, so it should be easy to find everything again.

Wrong.

I get up to street level, and there’s that Times Square feeling again, but it’s not lit up like I expected. The buildings are dark and the street isn’t very crowded. I see a very skinny man in skin-tight black jeans walking chewing-gum style up the street, carrying a large duffel bag. He’s got one hand out to the side, palm down, and he swings it in exaggerated arcs with each step. Okay, that’s probably what I should have expected. Keep walking and hope he doesn’t turn around.

I duck in a doorway at a peep show entrance, without going behind the curtain. I check the map, hoping this is the last time I have to do it. The Moulin is just up and to the right, but I can’t see it. I come out from the doorway, and see the entrance not twenty feet away. I don’t know what’s wrong with my eyes tonight.

I cross Clichy to get a better look. It’s red, sure enough. The blades are spinning, and I contemplate the concept of a windmill for a few seconds before moving on. I decide to walk up Clichy a bit, I guess because I’m feeling a bit adventurous. I pass r. Pigalle, and I’m about to cross Clichy again to get to the metro, when--

Note: I’ve told this story several times to several people, and I think it always changes a little bit. I do that because it’s a bit involved, and I usually don’t want to spend many words or minutes on it. What follows is the definitive version, the one that actually happened, as best I can remember.

“Hey, buddy!”

It’s a man’s voice. I don’t look.

“Do you like girls?”

I look. Why did I look?

“Do you speak English?”

“Yeah.”

Why the fuck did I say that?

“Come check out my club, called Frou-Frou. It’s just down there.”

I look down the street (appropriately enough, it’s Pigalle) to see a little black sign hanging from an eave, with “Frou-Frou” in pink neon.

“No,” I say. “I have to go meet some friends.”

“Come on, it will just take a few minutes. Quality, good, nice girls for you. Frou-Frou.”

I think about my mother and about my wife and about Nima and about all the nice people in the world who would wonder just what the hell I’m doing down here.

“No!” I say, a bit more forcefully than I intended.

“Oh, I see. You don’t like girls. Men, then?”

“NO!” I say, far more forcefully than I intend. “I really need to get going, because I need to meet some friends.” I start walking, ignoring him and not paying attention to my direction. He keeps talking, but stays on his corner.

I turn right, on to r. Frochot, and see more peep shows and restaurants. I notice that the restaurants seem blindingly normal even though they have names like “le resto sex” and “Horny Toad’s”. I turn right again, hoping to at least run the gauntlet and see this famous r. Pigalle. I’ll at least be able to say I’ve done that, possibly the only American ever to walk here and not get laid. I pass the Frou-Frou, its double glass-door entrance blacked out with what looks like garbage bags. I cross to the other side, hoping to avoid the barker, but I see him again before I even reach the intersection.

“Did you not find them?”

I can’t think of anything. I freeze up. I think about George Costanza, The Great Liar. What would Costanza do?

“Nope, didn’t find them.”

“Come on, sir. You like girls, you can go in and go out and still have time to get back to your wife at the hotel. The metros run until 2 tonight.”

Well that last part is bullshit. I know for a fact they don't run past about 11:30. But suddenly a part of me kinda wants to see what a French strip club is like. While I’m in Paris, of all places, maybe I should see something racy. Why not? If it’s anything like America I should be able to get in and out for less than 20E and still get to mentally evaluate the talent they keep in these places. Listen to me. Being snubbed by people I barely know has turned me into an asshole.

He walks me through the doors. I should remember that he pulls the doors open from the outside, but I don’t.

The bar is about as big as a hotel bathroom, with the bar on the left and two small tables on the right. Large men sit at the tables, and a large man sits by the door. A young woman approaches me. She’s dark-skinned and dark-haired, and sounds like she’s from north Africa. Her lips form a natural pout, and I suspect that is what men notice first. She speaks French to me, telling me her name is Algerienne or Tunisienne. I can’t hear very well with lousy techno music in the background. I’ll call her Algerienne.

“What do you want to drink?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really. What can I get you?”

“Do you have water?” I can be such a cheapskate.

She looks at me, then at the lady behind the bar. The lady behind the bar is much better looking, very thin and French. Her black hair is plastered to her head in a bun.
She pulls some water for me.

“Ten Euros.”

Well, that’s cover charge, I guess. I hand her the money. Algerienne takes my hand and leads me through a black curtain to another room about the same size. On my right and left as I enter are two rows of small tables, and men seated in each chair behind them. In the back right corner is a stage no bigger than a phone booth. The fireman’s pole just doesn’t seem practical, but it’s the only thing in this building that looks clean. The back left corner is another black curtain, and light shines from underneath it.

Algerienne sits down next to me in a chair. Her red one-piece dress looks like exactly the thing I’ve seen at the Yellow Rose in Austin. Probably two pieces of cheap material stitched up each side and bought off the stripper rack. Maybe I should ask her if it comes from a place called “the Stripper’s Rack”. That’s funny. Wait, she’s talking.

“The show will begin in a few minutes. Now, would you like to buy me a drink?”

I look around. Every man in this club has gray hair, and most are wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Their coats are high quality and they look well-groomed. It’s not exactly seedy, but something about it isn’t right. They look very comfortable in this place, and I stick out, well, like I’d stick out at the RNC convention. They look a bit like Mafia, but what would Mafia be doing at a place like this?

“Well?” she asks.

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“Sure,” I look at the stage again. “What are you drinking?”

“That depends. What would you like to buy me?”

There aren’t any other girls around here. I guess Algie here is going to be putting on the show herself, unless the others are getting ready backstage. I miss the DJ guy, calling out the girls to the main stage and running down the list of strip-club clichés.

“Well, I don’t know. Do you like wine?”

“I like champagne. Would you like to buy me a glass of champagne?”

“Sure. What does that cost?”

“Fifty Euros.”

I look her in the eyes for the first time. Her eyes have a transparent quality that only comes with colored contacts. She has a half-smile, and she’s looking at me deeply, like I hold the key to her future.

“That’s got to me some high-quality champagne.”

“It’s for the show.”

“Well, what kind of show is that?”

“It’s, you know, a strip-tease. I dance for you, and zenamassageandzen I drink my drink. I love champagne.”

I can barely hear in this place, I barely understood any of that. “Hmm, well I don’t have fifty Euros. You can be sure of that. I have about fifteen after the ten I paid for this water.”

“Haven’t you been in a place like this before?”

I look around. Pathetic men, a small stage with a pole. Sure, it’s a bit small. “Sure, I’ve been places like this.”

She furrows her eyebrows. “I can drop for you, I can go to thirty Euros. Dance, drink, zenamassage.”

What was that last word? I don’t want to speak English, I’ll just let it go.

I make a big show of looking at my watch. “I have about twenty minutes until the metros stop running and I have to be back, otherwise I’m locked out.”

She stands up without a word and charges the black curtain. I follow quickly and meet the skinny French woman at the curtain.

“Sit down,” she says. “I want to talk to you. Finish your drink.”

I look back at the water. It’s very far away.

I keep walking to the front room.

She goes behind the bar and produces a laminated piece of paper. A menu.

Champagne 50E
Cognac 120E
Hennessey 150E
Combination 500E

Click!

I switch to English. “I’ve got to go.”

I turn around. Algie is already on to the next customer. The French woman grabs my elbow and pulls me toward the curtain. She speaks English too.

“You’re going to finish your drink. I want to talk to you. Two minutes.”

“No, I’ve got to go, you’ve got your ten bucks and you didn’t even have to give me alcohol. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

She tightens her grip. “Look, you get dance, you get massage,” she lets go of my elbow to open the curtain.

I take four quick steps toward the exit. The large men don’t move. I expect to hear a voice bark some command from behind me. I pull the door. Shit! Locked! I expect my life to pass before my eyes, but it doesn’t. I’m going to die. I pull on the door again.

The man behind the bar makes a pushing motion and starts to laugh at me.

I push the door and the fresh air of Pigalle hits me in the face. I practically run to Clichy.
A very beautiful girl comes up to me as I walk past. She’s wearing all black, a sweatsuit and windbreaker, and her blonde hair is tucked under a baseball cap. When she opens her mouth I know she’s American.

“Do you like girls?”

“I’ve got to get to a metro station,” I feel nearly drunk. "They close soon.”

“Come check out my club, called Frou-Frou. It’s just down there.”

I don’t know why, but I turn my head and look.

“I just came from there,” I said. She takes a step back and looks me up and down. “I didn’t like it that much.”

“Oh, I--I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. You didn’t, what was wrong with it?”

“I’ve got to go.”

I make it to Felix Faure before the metros stop running. I’ve been gone less than two hours, and I’ve got the story of a lifetime. How do I tell it? Will they appreciate it? It’s a good enough story, but something seems to be missing...

I arrive at the hostel and to my delight, people notice that I’ve been gone.

“Wheredya go, mate?” Paul asks.

“I just had to turn down a hooker, and I’m pissed because I had to use English to do it!”

Heads turn. I guess I have the floor again.

Day 4, Sauced Up For The Evening

6:45 p.m.

The hostel is already pretty busy, more than usual for this early in the evening. Paul is just inside, drinking a beer and smiling at me. I start to tell him about the day and lead him toward the door. Nima is standing in front of the doorway, motionless, her eyes focused on the bartender. I look at the tables, each populated by a small group of silent young people. They’re all staring at the bartender.

“What’s going on?” I ask Nima. “Should we go? Should we get ready?”

She nods in the bartender’s direction.

“Well, I need to go up. I’d like to change clothes and--“

“We can’t go in. The door’s locked.”

“But it’s after four o’clock. We shouldn’t--“

She cuts me off with a teacher's glare, then nods toward the bartender.

It’s the one who’s so skinny he has to take some medical supplement to stay alive. He’s 6’5’’ and doesn’t weigh more than 120 lbs. He’s difficult to look at, because you can see his ribs through his shirt. I’ve seen this man speak to one person at the bar in English and one person on the phone in French, both at the same time. He switches languages like Jennifer Lopez switches husbands. Zing! He’s talking to a girl at the bar, and neither looks happy.

“I don’t get it,” I say, “why would he lock the--“

“Fuck YOU,” the girl at the bar says. I turn to look at her. She leaned in to say it, and was no more than ten inches from his face. She has a large nose, the kind that distracts from her eyes, and I imagine the bartender is staring at it. She said it with a low, even tone, and it sounded a lot like the tone you use when you say “I love you.” We felt the sincerity of her hatred from where we were standing...

Skinny guy spits his words at her. “I make fucking 7,50E per hour in this place. I don’t have to take--I DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THIS KIND OF SHIT FROM YOU ASSHOLES! They give me nothing to work with, the staff is crap and nobody knows how to do their jobs, and on top of that is you fucking people. What’s the matter with you you want to come in here and tell me how to run this place? I should throw you the fuck out--go to another hostel. Now, I’m not opening the door until you apologize.”

“Fuck YOU!” now she sounds more excited. The bar is silent. I decide I’ve had enough. As a child of divorce, I want the conflict to end a) without causing it to escalate, and b) without dealing with any issues head-on. My weapon of choice is humor or distraction, today I will try both.

I ask Paul (and not quietly), “Remember that Simpsons when Homer kept trying to get Grand Funk Railroad to sing “Taking Care of Business,” then when they sang it, he yelled for them to get to the chorus?”

“Yeah, and then when they hit the chorus, he shouted, ‘working overtime’, ‘working overtime!’. Sure I remember. Why?”

“That’s what the Louvre was like today. I stood in front of the Mona Lisa and that’s what I kept thinking about. ‘Okay, now you’ve smiled, and you’re eyes are following me around the room. And you’re a little bit mysterious and you’re in this fancy room of your own. Well, I guess it’s time for the Venus! I was Homer today, telling the Louvre to get on with it. That’s the reason I didn’t want to do anything touristy. Now that I’ve done it I feel like I wasted my time.”

“You went to the Louvre today?” Nima asked.

“Yeah, I didn’t find my friend, so I decided to go check out the Islamic Art.”

“Ah yeah, that would be great for you, wouldn’t it?”

“It was. How’d you like it?”

“Honestly it was a bit overwhelming. I don’t think classical art really does it for me. I want to go to the Musee d’Orsay and see the Impressionists.”

I like her honesty. Most people I know (probably including myself) would just pretend to feel sad that they don't "get it".

“Yeah, me too. I think me starting with the Louvre to learn to appreciate art is like asking a three-year-old to do complex calculus. But I don’t think I’ll have time to go to the Orsay. Tomorrow I’m doing Hemingway and the Luxembourg gardens.”

She nods.

From behind her, the door opens. Skinny bastard opened it up. I guess they settled their differences, because the girl he was arguing with shoves past us and into the courtyard. Another girl follows her out there and they embrace. The girl’s shoulders are shaking as she sobs.

“I wanna go home, I wanna see my family!” she cries. Her friend rubs her back and whispers in her ear. I detest rubbernecking, so I guide Nima by the shoulders toward the staircase. She stops anyway.

“You saw the whole thing, didn’t you?” the consoling girl asks Nima.

“Yeah, and I’ve seen him do that several times to other customers. There’s no call to be that rude, not to anyone.”

“Will you complain about him?”

“Sure, mate. Definitely. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

We go upstairs. Justin is in the room already. Paul follows us in.

I suggest we get dinner, and everyone agrees. I want Moroccan, and everyone agrees. Our friend Erin shows up with the three Brazilians, and we discuss the plan.

Erin, Nima and I decide to get Moroccan after the rest of the men bail out in favor of drinking. We head up the street to r. des Entrepreneurs, not even a block away, and there’s a place. They sell it by weight. Nima and Erin order vegetarian plates, I order lamb over couscous. We eat it back at the hostel, and it’s good-but-not-great. The lamb is good enough, but it’s difficult to eat. It doesn’t fall off the bone like at Grains de Sel. No dessert. I’m starting to write off the idea that I’m here mainly to eat (four days into it). It’s a bit sad, but I'll do as much as I can in the next 48 hours to make up for it.

When we rejoin the group, there’s a new face. Angie. She’s a young American, and she wants to go dancing. She has a few French friends and they intend to meet in the Latin Quarter at 9:30p.m. I’m game, but I may not have the clothes for it. Everyone is excited, and we order another round. I’m on my fourth or fifth, and nothing is happening yet. Is it possible to develop a high tolerance in four days?

More talk of the Simpsons, American football, and avoiding politics. Angie starts to wonder if they should get dinner before they go. All the men are hungry now. They decide to get dinner. For thirty minutes and another round, they keep talking. Now it’s almost 9 o’clock and I’m talking to a charming British couple about my age. The girl is telling me that if I want to get people to get up and go, I should form a queue. Britons love to get in a queue!

Day 4, Le Louvre Before Sunset

12:30 p.m.

I labor back down the 284 steps and take the Métro to the Tuileries stop (close to the Louvre). They told us there was a super-secret entrance near here, where you can bypass all the lines and go right in. I walk right by the restaurant we visited during the bike tour and wave to the waiter who served us. He gives a little French smile that's hard to read. Further up, past the tourists, the tulips, and the tuileries, the green turns brown and the gravel pavement leads up to the Louvre Pyramid. The building itself probably covers as much ground as a stadium, shaped like a croquet wicket, with each leg several stories and very wide. The pyramid stands in the middle, looming over the crowd like an anachronism, and my opinion of it is not charitable. I don’t think it would be possible to have built something less appropriate to the surroundings, and it makes me even more sad that it cost more than a big “B” billion Euros to build.

As the building starts to wrap around me, a lithe young man, probably from the Middle East, asks me if I would sit for a caricature. “Your ponytail, I want to capture it". After some convincing, I agree, thinking it might be fun for me to suck it up and realize I’m pretty scary looking. When I agree, he goes and gets a much older gentleman, also Middle-Eastern-looking, squat and narrow-eyed. He talks to me for a few minutes as he draws me, switching from French to English indifferently. Some nearby French schoolgirls keep sneaking behind him and sneaking peeks. They grimace when they look at me. The man keeps talking about my hair and my American features, and I want more than anything to get out of here, into the museum, and to the antiquities that form this man’s heritage. I wonder if he knows anything about it.

He finishes and shows me a charcoal desert scene, with a triangular alien standing in the middle like Munch’s Scream. The alien has a ponytail. I want to pay for it just so I can destroy it. I look away and look at the French girls, and we exchange a shrug. I look back, hoping it will get better. It doesn’t. He lowers the price from 5E to 3E. I say no. He doesn’t look the least bit disappointed, so I guess this happens often. I’ve seen caricatures of me before, but that’s not what that was. That was an unfortunate man deluding himself about his skill level. But for the grace of some deity, there go I.

He walks off, and I say something that makes the French girls laugh. Behind the pyramid I see an enormous queue, and I look around. Just to my right is a statue of a man on a horse, and behind it is a small marble stairway leading underground. I go down, and immediately want to send the people at Fat Tire Bike Tours a thank-you note. There are people everywhere here, but a short way away is an entrance reserved for people with a Carte d’Orange, and nobody is there. I show them my card, and they wave me past, right into the Descartes wing of the Louvre. The line outside the Pyramid (the main entrance) looked like a good thirty minutes.

I'm heading to the Islamic Art section.

3:30 p.m.

After about three hours of cataloguing and study I leave the Islamic Art place to search for the Big Three.

• In front of the Mona Lisa stands the longest queue I will wait in all week. I am not awe-struck by it, even after looking away and looking back. Mostly I’m stunned by the disco-strobe frequency of cameras popping off all around me.
• Directly across from Mona Lisa is the Wedding Feast of Cana, as large as a badminton court. It’s much more impressive to me than la Joconde (the French name for the Mona Lisa), but you should enlist Sister Wendy to describe it for you.
• The Venus de Milo was more impressive for its history than for its actuality. I did enjoy her curves.

It’s when I see the Winged Victory of Samothrace that I realize that I’m lost. The maps don’t seem to make sense. I walk up and down stairs, trying to find a sign that says “Sortie,” but can’t. I go back into the mall area below the museum, and something about this scene reminds me of what I heard about Sept. 11th, about the large mall below it and the subway station that was destroyed. That helps to motivate me beyond the fatigue. I circle around several times, trying to find the metro station. My eyes are still not accustomed to searching the little M with the circle around it. I pass a children’s shop, where they sell mobiles for far too much money (34E for one that looks a little like a Miro, but too small for the price). I see clothing boutiques, parfumeries, restaurants, and an upside-down pyramid that mirrors the one above (a village idiot once told me there's a Holy Grail down there!). At a bookshop I browse the section about Middle-Eastern art, hoping to find more detail about the craftsmanship, but I can’t find it. After searching through Spanish, French, and Arabic books, I settle on a small book of Arabic calligraphy examples. It’s too expensive (13E), but I buy it anyway.

I ask directions to the Métro station and get on board, after walking what feels like a mile underground.

4:30 p.m.

I take manage to get to the Varenne station, which is supposed to get me right outside the Rodin Museum. I should have time to stroll through the garden and drop by Napoleon’s tomb before 6.

I walk down the same street we passed on the bike tour (Bd. Des Invalides), but I can’t find the entrance to the Rodin garden. After making a full circle around it, I find what seems to be the least likely place for an entrance: it looks like a loading dock, and it’s under heavy construction. And the gate is closed. I look closely at the literature that came with my Carte d’Orange, and there it is in black & white (and English): the Musee Rodin is closed on Tuesdays.

Well, more time for Napoleon.

I cross the Boulevard and enter via the same side-gate Nima and I used the day before. The guard waves me in. to my right is the infirmary, and several young men sit outside, some in wheelchairs, some with crutches. One is smoking. They are sitting in the sun and staring, motionless, at the people in the garden. Injured or well, these French love to sit and act like statues.

I circle around to the front of the domed building and go up. My Carte d’Orange doesn’t list Napoleon’s tomb, but it still works.

Napoleon’s tomb is a coffin about twenty feet high, fifteen feet across, and about six feet wide. It’s made of a beautiful light-brown wood, polished to a mirror-like sheen. It’s not very ornate, but it has sleigh-bed like flourished on the ends and carved wreaths in the middle. To see it, you must stand against a railing on the floor above and look down. You bend at the waist and bow about 30 degrees, which was evidently Napoleon’s full intention, and all that that implies. Several other people are buried in this building, but none with this much grandeur. There’s probably nobody in Europe buried with more grandeur. Maybe the world.

Between trying to find the entrance to the Rodin museum and walking around les Invalides, it’s after 6:15. I was supposed to meet for dinner and the bike tour. I walk to the back of les Invalides to the garden, hoping to find a metro station. To get there I must walk through the war museum: battered tanks, 30mm guns on turrets, and bullet-pocked pith helmets lay about the corridors. I put my fingers in the bullet hole on a helmet and feel a little queasy.

The garden is full of people reading, strolling, and sitting in the grass. I hear French all around. The metro is to the left, la Tour Marbourg, conveniently on the Balard line. It’s only four stops to my old friend Felix Faure.

Day 4, l’Arc de Trimphe, le Louvre, et le Tombeau Napoleon

The church bells sound nine times and I lay there, staring at the ceiling. My roommates are already up, gathering their stuff. They tell me they are leaving today, so the first thing I do is plan to get the bottom bunk the moment they’re out the door. They take their time, and I lay in bed listening to suitcase zippers and the sounds of clothes being shuffled. Finally they leave and I fall asleep again.

When the church sounds ten a.m., I get up and nearly fall to the floor. The bottom bunk is clear, so I begin to move my stuff to it. I lock the door and take off my clothes. Then I waltz. Push, wash, scrub. Lather, lather, push. Push, scrub rinse. Anne-Marie’s towel seems to have suffered no ill effects from hanging off the top bunk frame for 36 hours.

Down at the bar, Nima is talking to Paul, Justin and Erin. They’re going to go to the Louvre in the morning, and we’ll meet for dinner at about six, hopefully then we can go on the night-time bike tour, maybe even go to the top of the Eiffel tower beforehand. I don’t invite anyone to go with me, partly because I don’t think they’ll want to, and partly because this is the morning where I’ll try to meet my parents’ friend on the Champs-Elysée. While I’m there I’ll check out the Arc de Triomphe.

I take the Metro to the George V. station, which puts me on the street right next to Lido, a cabaret near the gentleman’s office.

The fellow I’m trying to find is an exporter of French goods to America, and all-around well-connected guy. Evidently he’s quite wealthy (you’d have to be to have an office on the Champs-Elysée), and I’m hoping he’ll buy me a nice lunch or put me up in a fabulous hotel or something. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to hope.

I find Lido before I’m on the street level: it’s visible as I walk up the stairs to the street-level. I stand outside it, trying to observe whether or not it’s open. The buildings to the right and left look like modest office properties, and there are car dealerships and cafes not much further up and down the street. I enter the Lido and ask whether the doorman has heard of the man I'm looking for. He waves me past, to a set of double-doors leading to what turns out to be the auditorium. This is a world-famous cabaret after all. So, I’m excited now about two things: this guy should be able to get good deals on tickets to a world-famous cabaret, and the fact that I was waved right by means I definitely have the right place. Right?

Through the double-doors I approach a long desk with two people, a man and a woman, sitting in front of an enormous aquarium. I ask the woman if she knows the man, and she’s never heard of him. I explain that he’s a friend of my parents, that I have sketchy directions to find him at or near the Lido cabaret, and that my parents haven’t spoken to him in over 10 years, so this may well not turn out well. She has worked at Lido for well more than 10 years, and if she hasn’t heard of him, he’s neither an employee nor a regular customer. To humor me, she asks the gentleman next to her, after he’s off the phone, if he’s ever heard of the man. He hasn’t.

I thank them and walk back out to the street. The building on the left has no doorman but a placard with names on it. I scrutinize each of them, trying to find the name. On the other side of the cabaret the building does have a doorman (doorlady, I might say). There’s no name placard, and the doorlady is no help either. I'm going to call this project finished. I can’t call my parents now (it’s 4 a.m. in America). I should try to find a directory, but I’m kinda eager to be done with the whole thing. Truth be told, I feel weird about dropping in on him anyway.

Back on the Champs-Elysée, I approach l’Arc de Triomphe. You have to go underground to get to it, as the Arc itself is at the center of a roundabout where twelve streets meet. Jeremy from the bike tour told us there’s an accident there every 45 minutes or so, and seeing it now, I can believe it. I go under, through a long tunnel, and reach the ticket office. I calculate that at 18E, a Carte d’Orange for the day will pay for itself if I go to three attractions (the average price is 6,50E). A plan starts to form for the rest of the day.

After I have my ticket, I begin the stairs. 284 steps, most of which are in the narrowest spiral staircase I’ve been in. I count to 100 and take a rest, my hamstrings burning and my calves stretched. My blisters are somehow not terribly painful, but I think this is mind over matter. I walk some more, singing songs and counting as I go until I’m finally in a trance-like state, clomping my feet over and over again, up and up, trying to imagine my angle to the street or to the Eiffel Tower. When I hit a landing I figure I’m done. I enter a museum inside the Arc, a permanent exhibition of World War I photography and video. The pictures are in color. Never in my life have I imagined The Great War in color. I look at picture after picture, fascinated, until the burn starts to go away and I realize I still have a few steps to go. I approach the staircase a little frightened, but once I reach the top I’m inspired. I’ve never been to the top of the UT tower, but I’ll bet it’s hard to see the Eiffel Tower from it. There’s nothing quite like that. There’s a mistiness, a fog, hanging over the city, but I can see the dome of Napoleon’s tomb, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Over on a hill, I can see the blinding whiteness of Sacre Coeur.

A young lady approaches me. She can’t be older than eighteen, with a beautiful face, and what is becoming a typical heroine in my fiction: olive skin and long black curly hair. She’s a foot shorter than I am. As she walks up I smile, and she asks me if I speak English. I don’t say anything and I look at her hands. She has the same exact Bosnian sob story as the woman near the Eiffel tower, handwritten on a small piece of paper.

I say, “Non, je ne parle pas anglais. Je suis désolé.”

If fire could shoot from her eyes I’d be going home in a crate marked “carbon sample”. She knows I’m lying as easily as she knows I’m human. She backs off and walks away, turning twice to glare at me. I want to apologize for some reason, but I know it will cost me money. There are a lot of rich Americans on this street. Let them pay her for my apology.

To my right there’s a young couple. They embrace and kiss each other. A little further down there’s a much older couple doing the same thing. I look out again across the swath of Paris on all sides, and suddenly it’s an empty experience. I’ve been going down the list of landmarks I can identify by sight, mentally checking them off, then moving on to the next. Not sharing it with anyone turns out to be a drag. I stay up long enough to get some pictures and study some things with my binoculars, and then I go down the 284 steps, not stopping again in the museum.
At street level I walk around the bottom of the Arc until I see the tomb of the unknown soldier. I always find these moving. The flame burns, hopefully eternally, just like it does in Westminster Abbey in London and at Arlington cemetery in the States. I stand for a few moments and watch the flame, trying to imagine what the body underneath looks like now. Is he wearing a uniform still? Was he decorated? Was he married? Did he have a little Alex at home?

After taking a few more pictures of the statues and garlands, I go down the steps again to cross over to the Champs-Elysee.

There’s a large, glass-fronted bookstore. I go in and try to find something to replace my copy of Madame Bovary, but the best I can manage is a mass-market edition (finally!) of the Da Vinci Code. I wish I could find it translated into French. I might learn a word or two, and I wouldn’t be distracted by Dan Brown’s dogshit prose. It’s 12E. I remember one of my teachers at UT telling me what a rip-off books are in the US. Yet another stereotype destroyed.

I walk downhill, mindful of the time and of my aching calf muscles. I need to decide what to do next, and soon. I don’t care too much about being on the Champs-Elysées, because I’ve been on Rodeo in L.A., I’ve been on 5th avenue in New York City, and I’ve been on Michigan Ave in Chicago. This may want to be different, but it’s not, and suddenly I feel like I’ve got to get out of here.

On the way to the Franklin D. Roosevelt station, I see across the street a Luis Vuitton shop, with a handbag, as big as my house, covering the facade. I take a picture for my friend Theresa, the youngest person I’ve ever met who has three (real) LV handbags.

Car dealerships, more cafés, more Americans wandering around. It’s getting to be lunchtime, so I start to look at menu prices. Everything is more than 15E for a fixed menu. I turn off the main boulevard and immediately run into a Lebanese café. Nothing is over 10E. I order a chicken shawarma and a beef kebab, served with rice on the side and a Coke. It's awesome. I eat it standing up, watching the plasma-screen show MTV-2. Very good-looking people. The food is fantastic, subtly seasoned and not over-salted. The chicken is tender and there are no “disturbing parts,” as K calls them. I pay and thank the man, and he complements my French. I thank him again.

Fascinating - Paris Syndrome

This article, from MSN travel, got me thinking. I experienced a completely different kind of delirium in the City of Lights...
MM

Day 3, Napoleon's Tomb and Back to the Hostel

5:30 p.m.

We leave, the mime spinning a tray on his finger and waving with the other hand. We cross r. de l’universite and Bd St-Germain and turn right on Grenelle. We can see the golden dome of Napoleon's tomb over the skyline. We turn again, left, then right on r. Varenne, and pass the gardens of the Musee Rodin. It’s difficult to see in, but we catch odd angles of bronze and marble. Wrought-iron fence and green hedges tower ten feet from street level, so we cross Bd des Invalides to see if we can get a better look. There’s the Thinker, but that’s all we can see. The museum is closed this late in the day anyway.

We walk parallel with the gardens of les Invalides until we reach a gate. The guard tells us we have ten minutes, and that it’s too late for the tomb, but we can knock ourselves out in the gardens.

We walk through it, admiring the bullet-shaped hedges and fountains. Tulips spring up in rows underneath thin trees, and benches sit in the shade and in the sun. People are reading in the little squares. We walk straight to the exit and look back at the dome. Through the binoculars I see angels and gargoyles, and I wonder if it’s easier to fashion gold or marble. I first decide it’s gold, because you can always fix your errors. But then I realize it’s got to be marble, because you have to get it right the first time--you can't ever know you're finished when you can forever change it.

We walk over the moat and leave the complex, trying to decide where to go exactly. We cross the front of the building and head down Ave de Tourville. On the other side of the street we realize that six different streets lead away from les Invalides. An older couple asks us if we’re lost. I start to answer in French, but Nima says, “Yes.” We’re looking for a street called Lowendal, and they point us in the right direction. We follow along behind l’Ecole Militaire and get back into a residential area. We pass a Moroccan restaurant with an elaborately carved door, and I take a picture.

We turn on Grenelle and see a tiny garden. We go in for a stroll and sit on the bench for a few minutes. I ask for my notebook and start to write. Nima does the same thing. I write about the lunch and try to finish a paragraph I’d started on the previous day, only I've lost my pen. I have to write in a different color ink.

We turn onto r. Commerce and see the church that has become my landmark for "the hostel is nearby". We stop in a small boulangerie and buy a baguette. We get back to the hostel and go to our rooms.

I take off my shoes and lay down for a few minutes, rubbing my feet and my calves the whole time. Nima’s in the next room and I can hear her, talking to Paul and Justin and making her apologies about missing them for "the run at 5".

I get up and join them. Justin has cheese he bought earlier that day and we all smear it on the baguette and drink wine Nima smuggled in. We drink it from paper cups and it seems very appropriate. After a few minutes I head down to the bar and order a beer.

Malcolm is there and tells me my story needs severe editing. I don’t want to hear it, so I invite myself to sit with the Aussie girls I’d been speaking to the night before.

10:30 p.m.

I’m very tipsy. I have the tolerance of a canary. I’ve had about half a bottle of wine and four or five beers over the past 4 hours, and my throat hurts from talking. Paul wants to write a Masters thesis on the Simpsons and their treatment of mob mentality (in particular Sideshow Mel's role in this). Justin wants to read my book (the one about the door carver, not the one about the Basques. Nobody cares about the Basques, dammit). Several more people are stacked up in the bar and I’ve gotten to know them all by name. There are Brazilians, Argentineans, Chileans, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and I think I’m the only Texan.

“We need to go to the Eiffel Tower,” I say. Nobody reacts. Nobody fucking does anything.
An hour later. “We need to go to the Eiffel Tower and see it lit up and stand under it while we’re drunk.”

30 minutes later. “I’m going to the Eiffel Tower. Who’s going with me?”

Three Brazilians, Paul, Justin, Nima, an American girl named Erin stand up. We set out up Commerce. Following the route that’s starting to seem familiar, I turn on Grenelle. French people are walking with their children and their dogs and they barely look at us as they cross to the opposite side of the street and back again after we’ve passed. The Aussies are singing and Justin and I are talking about geek stuff. We all grab a crèpe from a little stand at Grenelle and Av de Suffren. Mine is called “Trois Fromages + jambon”, and it’s wonderful.

We cross the outer gardens and onto the gravel walkway. People are jogging, and Nima can’t believe anyone would exercise so late. I don’t think she appreciates that we’ve walked nearly 3 km from the hostel to where we’re at now.

There’s a group of French people trying to figure out their digital cameras nearby. Paul asks one of them to take his picture with his camera, and the man has trouble with the controls. I manage to do a fair job of translator, but mostly I just talk to them about the coldness and about whether or not there will be any more shows tonight from the tower. We were all told they would go on until 1 a.m., so until then we’ll have to believe it.

The tower is bright, its normal brown bathed in mercury-vapor-orange lamps. Erin steps over a small chain to walk on the grass, and I follow. We sit together lined up perfectly with the tower. We’re told that the sparkling happens every hour, on the hour, until 1am. We have a few minutes. She tells me about Spain and I tell her about Spain, and it’s cold and I offer her my gloves. She’s adorable in her youth and in how she refers to her boyfriend every fifth word. I hope I’m adorable as I mention my little boy Alex every tenth. Nima, Paul, and Justin are in a tight circle back on the gravel road, talking loudly and singing what sound like rugby songs.

The tower goes black, and people gasp. After fifteen seconds people start to grumble and mutter, when it erupts in a starburst. White speckles that look like they’re inches apart are going off all over the tower. They twinkle, like a thousand-foot Christmas tree. The light reflects off buildings and off the glass war monument behind us. I concentrate on one point on the tower, but it seems like the same light is never in the same place twice. Are they projected? No, they’re too precise. Are they physically moving? I may never know. It’s a completely silent show, put on for the world every hour, and once again I realize what an empty experience it is to see this show without K or the boy. Erin pulls her sweater around her and wonders aloud what it would be like to have an apartment that faces this.

“I’ll bet it’d be horrible,” she says.

“Not for a kid,” I say.

After a few minutes of this we see the Paul-Justin-Nima group start to head back, so we turn around. We have to go 3km in less than 50 minutes, so it’s a good time to start. My buzz is wearing off, but I’m not cold. Erin offers my gloves back but I say I don’t need them. We rejoin the group and walk back. The French people are still walking their children and their dogs. I see a thousand places I want to visit in the daytime when they’re open. Lingerie shops (Erin and Nima tease me about buying at least one nice piece for K), children’s toy shops, and culinary shops display beautiful scenes in their windows. We walk slower to get back than we did setting out.

We make it in plenty of time for curfew and I again wake the Italians as I climb into the damned bunk. I’m 32 years old. There should be a hostel rule that says anyone over 27 should get to sleep in the bottom bunk. We’re in the real land of égalité, fraternité here, right? Make me equal to this my-brother-the-whippersnapper by kicking him the hell out of my bottom bunk!

I take Tylenol, drink a lot of water, and I’m asleep within 5 minutes.

Day 3, Nôtre Dame et Le Cathedral Ste. Chapelle

We circle around, in and out from under the columns. Woodwork is everywhere. Two priests walk around in the clerestory, looking at the ceiling. I look up, and pull out the binoculars. I can’t remember the details, but what I do remember is the cherubs. In the twelfth century, little boys were every bit as adorable as Alex. Maybe I should carve Alex in marble--

“Hey, pass those over!”

I pass the glasses. Nearby the chairs are still out, leftover from the morning mass. I sit. Nima studies the ceiling for several more minutes while I look back down, at the alter, at the cross-bar section of the nave, and at the people milling about. I want to talk to these people, find out why they would come all the way inside the church, unlike most people who just want to go to the top.

We walk around to the back, where there’s a roped off section, reserved for “silent prayer and reflection”. Nima goes behind the rope and takes a seat. I sit beside her. She closes her eyes. I close mine. After several seconds she taps me.

“What are those?” She points to funny-shaped chairs in front of us. The “seat” is low to the ground, and there are armrests where the back would normally go. The chairs face us, as if the are meant to point you away from the chapel.

“They’re kneelers,” I answer. As if to answer her question, a woman in her 40s approaches, teenage daughter in tow, and kneels.

We sit for a few more seconds, Nima with her eyes closed and me watching the people, trying to guess at what they’re praying for. There’s a flyer on the chair next to me and I pick it up. It’s from a prayer Pope John Paul II gave in the late 1990s when he visited the cathedral to canonize a saint. It made me think of the people in Vatican City shouting “santo subito, santo subito” during his funeral a few days before. I translate it for her. She decides to keep it in her bag.

After a few more minutes she says she’s ready. We walk back to the front, trying to decide whether we should climb to the top or not. We rationalize that a) it costs more money, b) there are better high places to climb, c) the line is too long, and d) we have a long way to walk before the day is over. We go out the front door.

Outside someone bumps me and I suddenly remember that there are pickpockets in the city, so I whisper something to Nima and we both tighten our grip on things. I do a quick check around my person and everything seems okay.

Near the hedges that separate Notre Dame from Ste Chappelle, a swarm of birds appears to be attacking an old man. He has a piece of bread, and dozens of sparrows hover and pick at it like hummingbirds. Near him several kids, sitting, start to hold up bread. For them, pidgeons show up instead of sparrows (630, 11A). We walk toward Ste. Chappelle, and Nima starts to talk about being tired and wanting to rest. There’s an open-air market nearby and we wander over. It’s a pet market--canaries, spice-finches, rosellas, and several Amazons chirp in cages too small for mice. Nima wants to buy one and so do I, but we figure we can’t get them back to our respective countries very easily. We walk through stalls of hamsters, chinchillas, small dogs, ladders, bells, and cedar shavings. The musk of the animal market is carried away by the breeze as we approach the Ministry building in front of Ste. Chappelle.

We go up Boulevard du Palais and follow the island street around to the back, to get into a queue in front of the smaller chapel. The admission price is 6,10E, and I give the ticket-counter lady 11,10E, hoping to get a 5E note back. She doesn’t give it to me, and I momentarily forget. When she’s finished with Nima, I tell her I gave her the 11,10E to get a 5 back, but I never got the 5. She questions me two times about exactly what I did, never switching to English, then calls her manager over. Then she pauses, her face changing expression. She starts nodding slowly, never breaking eye contact. Before her manager shows up, she reaches in front of her register drawer and picks up a 10E note. She holds it and looks at Nima, then at me.

“Je vous crois. Je crois que c’est correct.” She opens her drawer and gives me a 5, explaining that she thinks she remembers it, and that otherwise she’d have to have her boss count her drawer right now. Her smile is pleasant, and it seems genuine. I thank her and leave, glad to have slightly more battle-tested French credentials.

We go into the chapel, and Nima seems let down. It’s a long, narrow room, somewhat ornate but mostly just red and brown. I’m not particularly amazed by it, but then I know something about what’s upstairs. I guide Nima to the right and we go up the tiny spiral staircase. As we enter the upstairs area I hear the gasp again. Blue, red, yellow and green cover the floor in glows, like embers from a rainbow on fire. The source is a series of fifteen-foot tall stained-glass panels from one end of the room to the other, about 100 feet away from us in all. It’s a sunny day, just like Melissa’s mother told me it should be. I walk from the front to the back, studying the panels and the lead-work in between the panes. One pane is gone and it makes me want to cry. The figures are like cartoons, outlines in black and filled in with strong primary colors. I get out the binoculars and study the facial expressions, painted on in brownish paint over the flesh-toned glass. Nima finds a couple of seats and calls me over. As she’s calling, a loud “SHHHHHHH” comes from one corner of the room. She puts her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. I sit next to her and hand her the glasses. She sighs long and heavy as she moves from one pane to the next. I watch the reactions on people’s faces and they come out of the stairway and see the place for the first time. We’re facing West, watching the sun as it moves slowly down from behind the glass. The pamphlet says there are over 6,300 square feet of stained glass in this chapel, and I have trouble believing that could be possible. I’ve attempted stained glass. How could a square mile of stained glass exist in the whole world? Especially when they didn’t have rotary sanders?!

They used to store holy relics here, including the crown of thorns, but they were all dispersed after the Revolution. No matter how unlikely I think it could be that they had the actual crown of thorns, it makes me sad. I look at the depictions of cruelty, of kindness, of the whole human experience played out in colored glass, and I’m amazed that we could be here. From two sides of the world, this girl and I are in a place somewhere in the middle, sitting in a building that’s 600 years old, and we’re about the same physically and mentally as those humans were then.

Amazing.

I look over at Nima and she’s no longer studying the glass. Her eyes closed and her lip is trembling. A tear falls and she sniffles, then wipes her cheek. Her eyes snap open.

“You ready?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

She hesitates. “I just don’t know when I’m ever going to see anything like this ever again.”

“Yeah, me too.” I touch her shoulder and we walk out, this time to our right.

On the street, she wants to know what we should do next.

“Napoleon’s tomb?” I ask.

“Sure. Do you think we could pass the Musee d’Orsay on the way?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think we’d have time to do it justice.”

“Right. Offyago then, mate.”

We cross back to the left bank side of the Seine, to the Quai Malaquais. Book vendors are out now, with large metal boxes mounted onto the railing over the Seine, and we stop to browse. I look up the Seine, at the buildings that line her and the boats going under the Pont du Carrousel (630-10A). The books are almost all classics, Voltaire, Moliere, and Sartre, in what look like early editions. I don’t have any cash, however, and I probably have enough books.

We continue to walk, passing the Hotel des Monnaies, and several smart boutiques. Up ahead is the Musee d’Orsay, but we decide to turn left on r. de Beaune to follow the smell of crepes. The waiter is a bald young man, round-faced and my height. He motions us in without a word and acts like a mime with a gun to his head when I speak French to him. He sits us down and asks Nima what she wants. She wants champagne. I order a cafe au lait and a chocolate crepe with whipped creme. The waiter is clearly annoyed that I speak French and my lovely companion doesn’t. I weep for him.

The drinks come, and I clink my cafe au lait to her champagne. We toast to being in Paris, and to not really being alone. The crepe comes, and for someone who doesn’t like sweets, this girl goes a bit nuts. She doesn’t eat much overall, but she does enjoy it.

“Where did the chocolate come from?” she asks.

He looks at me, then back at her. I say nothing, suspecting he does speak enough English to have understood that.

“C’est le chocolat maison.”

“It’s the chocolate of the house,” I say. She smiles big at him. He points at his chin, and she begins to wipe. She gives me a dirty look for not having told her.

“There was nothing there,” I said. “He was fucking with you!”

She laughs.

When we ask for l’addition, he brings one for her and one for me. Hers says 0.00E. Mine says 17E. I hold out my Citibank card and he backs off, hands in the air. Again, mime in a stickup. Shit.

“That was a very nice thing he did,” I say. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any cash. I meant to stop at the--”

“No worries. I got it.” She throws the bills on the table. She's not the slightest bit annoyed. I attribute this to Australia, not to her being one-in-a-million, but I’ll probably never know.

Day 3, Lunch

12:30 p.m.

We leave the church and we're hungry. We walk up and down streets with names like “r Huchette”, “r Danton”, and “r. St Andre des Arts”. One place offers two formulas: a 10E and a 15E, each with entree, plat, and dessert. We agree, and are seated inside near a spiral stairway leading up and down. Our waiter tries to flirt with Nima, but he can’t seem to understand her accent and she doesn’t speak a word of French. I have to translate their flirtations, and I don’t do a great job of it.

For entrees, I order French Onion soup, Nima orders a simple salad. The soup is amazing, but really only in texture. I don’t know what it is about the texture, but it just seems smooth... doux is the best word for it, even if you don’t know the French. The taste isn’t even quite as good as my mother’s, but then again I’d probably say that about the lasagne in Italy and the cheesecake in New York.

For Plat, I order a filet of salmon with bearnaise sauce. It’s served with very plain pasta and a simple tomato confit. The texture of the salmon is soft and the taste is not at all fishy, but I’m not very hungry so I don’t finish. The sauce is too strong and too thick for the mood I’m in, and the pasta is completely lost on me. Nima has a sandwich.

For Dessert, Nima orders Chocolate Mousse and I order the chef’s surprise. I ask the waiter whether I should order the Profiterole or the chef’s surprise, and he urges me on the surprise. Now I can’t remember what it was, but I definitely remember it wasn’t as good as Nima’s mousse. I think it was a simple fruit tart with custard.

Over lunch Nima starts an interesting conversation.

“So, how was dinner with your friend last night?”

“Well, I guess it was--“

“Did you get… amorous with her?”

“Well, no,” I say, as I clasp my hands together, rubbing them in a way that puts my ring about seven inches from her nose.

“Have you been… amorous with anyone since you’ve been here?”

“Well, no.”

“Interesting. Do you normally travel alone, or are there people you usually go around with? You said you went to Spain, who were you with?”

“Well, let’s see, several friends, or… my spouse.” I’m not looking at her when I say this and I’ll regret it later. I have no idea what her reaction was.

“Well, that sounds like fun. Do you have any children? Are you still with your, was it, spouse?”
I show her Alex and K.

She calls Alex “a little person!” and tells me how gorgeous my wife is. Suddenly I start missing them, feeling as though I’m betraying them somehow, not by being at lunch with this girl, but by being four thousand miles away with no better reason than “I wanna go”.

Nima then tells me of her recent twelve-year relationship and how it ended. She’s in Paris, and in Europe, spending all the money she had saved for a wedding. She’s 32, trying to find meaning in her life, and looking to find herself in the Old World. Sounds familiar, only she’s not limited. Oh well. She’s a middle-school teacher with a stalker. One of her students, a girl, gave her a travel-journal that looks very nice. Nima reads me the note that came with it, a lot of poetic nonsense about how she’s the only friend the girl has ever had. I comment about how it sounds like the girl said the same thing over and over again.

“That’s not the worst of it,” she says, and hands me the book open to the first entry. It’s from the girl, and it’s more of the same.

“What do you teach?” I ask.

“Writing and literature.”

The writing is flat and cliché, moreso even than what I can remember from middle school. “I take it she’s not one of your best students?”

She smiles like a sister plotting revenge against her brother. I’ll get to know that smile well, too. It symbolizes our relationship, and all that that implies.

I tell her the plots to my two novels, and when I get to the “mystery of the lines” and how it works out, she says she’s got shivers. I believe her, too, though I don’t expect the subject to interest her at all outside of this context. I’m just flattered to have an audience--everyone at home is sick of my stories.

We get to talking about literary influences, and she confesses she’s never read Hemingway, and that it’s not on the program for middle school in Australia. I definitely agree with that decision. I read The Sun Also Rises when I was in my early twenties and didn’t get hardly any of it. I think you should only read that when you’re past thirty and have been married for several years.

“It’s an interesting story,” I say. “Tragic, really. It’s something I never understood when I read it the first time. There’s a man, the main character, and he’s injured. Hem’s pretty vague about the specifics of the injury, but it seems the man is unable to, well, ‘perform’, yasee. He and Brett, that’s a beautiful lady friend of his, are hopelessly in love. Literally without hope. They kiss, they refer to the times in the past when they’ve wanted to be together, they’ve tried everything, but they only end up in frustration. So you have the contrast between the love that can’t be consummated, then the woman, Brett, who can’t love anyone but Jake. She has affairs with nearly every man in the novel, but she doesn’t love any of them, doesn’t even feel pleasure with them. You get the sense that if she could truly love Jake, she’d probably treat him just like everyone else, and she’d get the hell out of there. It makes me want to cry to think about it.”

“Definitely. I’ll have to read it now, you know?”

“I’m sure you can get a copy of it here.”

We get l’addition, and for the second meal in a row I’m tempted to grab the check and change my mind. I changed my mind with Heather because I knew her company would pay for her part. Does that make me a bad man? With Nima, I just didn’t feel like it was necessary, and that something would be implied (implode) if I did.

We walk back onto the busy street and look up and down. People are everywhere, in every class of clothes, walking in every direction. The smells of the roasting chestnuts and fresh crepes make me wonder whether or not I ate enough, but I decide to ignore it for now.

Somehow, probably via r. St Andre des Arts, we end up on the Quai des Grands Augustins. As we approach the Seine, Nima yelps. She’s just seen Notre Dame. She waves her hands again and starts to walk faster. I’m still feeling heavy from the meal, but I manage to keep her in sight. She fumbles for her camera without looking for it, approaching the grand facade. I pull out my binoculars and study the thousands of details around the entrance (630, 9A, 11A, 12A): the Gothic arch towering over the main doorway, with the central carved-stone bas relief sculptures, the telescoping arches of figures lined up head-to-toe and side-to-side. The two innermost arches are angels, an audience for the Christ on the central throne. The four outermost arches line the Saints up, each with his or her own face, body shape, and pose. I want to touch each one, to find out how they were done, what they were thinking about when their artist formed them, and at what point did they become living things carved from a rock. The imagery is so dense I imagine a series of graduate students trying, and failing, to catalog all of it.
The line to get in is short and moving quickly. A woman approaches us in a headscarf and asks us if we speak English. I say nothing, but Nima says “yes.” The lady hands her the same note the lady from the Eiffel tower showed me Friday morning, and Nima reads it before giving her some change. Then we file into the line and shuffle in, drinking in the details, discussing the handiwork, in awe at the grandeur. The statues greeting us at eye level are probably 1/3-scale figures, old men nodding at us with their eyes closed. They all have beards and simple robes. As I pass under the arch, I notice that one figure, directly beneath Christ, is a devil figure, standing next to a child. He holds a scale, a small person in each side. The lines holding the cups are fully articulated, and I start to imagine the carver, working behind the marble ropes, smoothing over the devil’s belly. How fragile is that marble? How long did it take to release it from the rest of the stone? What if you cut it too deeply?

By this time I’m well past it and into the nave. Nima stops and several people mutter under their breath. I walk up beside her... she looks like a five-year old walking into a Disney Store.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, certainly nothing like this in Australia.”

I feel guilty that I’m not as awe-struck. I’ve seen Westminster Abbey, and I seem to remember a similar entrance and similar details around the inside. I read a 1200 page book about how one of these would be constructed (The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett). I’m only able to enjoy this so much because I’m with someone who can still marvel.

“Yeah, not in Texas, either,” I say.

Day 3, On the Way to l'Ile de Paris with Nima

I wake up when I hear the church ring nine times. My roommates are still asleep and groan when the bells won't shut up, but I tell myself I can only feel so bad for them. They made a hell of a ruckus when they left and came back last night, so my sympathy is gone. As I dress and pack my stuff, I hear snoring. Today I want to pack light, so I only have my jacket, my camera, and my notebook & tour guide. As I open the door I have to pull back the blackout curtain. I look back to my roommate on the bottom bunk and he’s wincing like a vampire at the light. I apologize in French and close the door after I’ve made sure the key is on the sink.

Down the stairs I realize it’s too warm for my jacket, so I take it off. It’s too cold to be without it. I enter the bar area.

An early 40s French woman with long dirty-blonde hair asks me if I want jus d’orange or coffee. I take both. She hands me half a foot of baguette, split open with butter smothered inside, more than I’ve ever seen an Englishman put on. I smother at least that much more orange marmalade over it and begin to eat. I can’t believe the lightness of the bread, the crispiness of the crust. Even in a pedestrian place like this they get bread that would be called “superb” in the US. Amazing. The coffee, however, is horrible. I sit at a table and get out my tour book. I grab a Galeries-Lafayette map from the display and open the book. I look for rue Mouffetard and the Censier-Daubenton stop on line 7. Nima appears in a black sweater, wide headband, and black jeans, looking fresh as the baguettes. She grabs breakfast from the lady and sits at my table.

“So what’s it to be today? I’d rather like to see Notre Dame.”

“I can do that. I was planning the Hemingway walk, but I’d really rather do that on a day when everything is open.”

“Good, then. I think I’ll come with you.”

Just then two guys come in, an Aussie and an American, Paul and Justin. They say they’re leaving as though they expected her to jump up after them, then look genuinely sad when she tells them about what was evidently a change in their plans. I can’t help but feel a small victory, like the one I got I won a bet with a bunch of guys from my youth group--we were in Colorado and wanted to see who could get one girl’s phone number. This victory is much more hollow. Nima tells them she’ll meet them under the Eiffel tower at 5 and they’ll have a run.

“Do you run, Marcus?” She pronounces it, “Maa-kis”.

I decide to dust off an old chestnut, “Only when I'm being chased.”

She laughs.

I don’t let her laugh long, “that’s not original... it’s from a movie a long time ago.”

“Well I don’t care, you could have put anything by me I think.”

We eat and drink and finish breakfast. She offers to carry my notebook in her little backpack and I let her, with vague trepidation, but ultimately deciding it’s worth the slight risk of my bad memory.

We walk up Commerce to the Commerce station, get on the Métro, and get off at Cluny-La Sorbonne. At street level we’re completely disoriented. We stand for a while in a large square, trying to find the streets and the metros and the monuments. Our maps aren’t good enough. We see a dome nearby and this turns out to be the Panthéon. The streets here feel more metropolitan than homely. In the 15th arrondissement, near the hostel, it has the feel of a neighborhood, but this feels more like London near Big Ben. The buildings are taller and more formidable, each one looking like it’s under armed guards and surveillance cameras. One building is a little more gray than the others, and I’m able to confirm it’s the Sorbonne. Nima has no idea why I want to see this building. It’s at least 4 stories, with small windows and thoroughly locked doors. We’re on the Boulevard St-Jacques, and if we go around to the other side (I don't find out until the next day), we probably won’t want to leave the area at all.

Anyway, we walk around r. Soufflot to the Place du Panthéon, and we see the dome. Nima can’t believe the size of it. Like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, it stretches impossibly high, supported by columns and perfectly straight stones, capped off in stone that’s almost black. I offer Nima my binoculars so she can see the detail: around the rim of the dome there are carved vines like laurels and wreaths, probably no more than several inches across but lovingly detailed. The craftsmen obviously didn’t care that the audience for these touches would be more than a hundred feet away, unable to appreciate the craftsmanship.

Nima is fumbling with her digital camera--she just bought it and has no idea how to use it. She begins to explore the features like black & white exposure, sepia tone, and shallow vs deep focus. I look around me to confirm that yes, of all the people near the Panthéon, only the two of us are looking down at a camera instead of up at the dome. I have a sudden fear that I’ve chosen the wrong travelling companion for the day, but I decide I need to give her another chance. If it goes on much longer this is probably a fine place to split up, and I already know she's fine travelling alone.

We move to the church right behind the Panthéon--l’Eglise de St-Etienne-du-Mont--and she’s never seen anything like it. It is a Gothic church, but it doesn’t have the flying buttresses like Notre Dame, so I tell her she hasn’t seen anything yet. This seems to excite her. We take a few more pictures, then head up r. St. Jacques again, passing the Sorbonne on our left this time. We still don’t have a great idea of where we are in relation to Notre Dame, so I ask a random passer-by, one of a group of French schoolboys.

“Excusez-moi, c’est probablement une question stupide, mais... où est la Seine?”

The kid smiles, I think without irony, and points down r. St. Jacques, in the direction we’re heading.

“Et voilà, monsieur,” he adds, “Notre Dame--elle est là!”

“Merci,” I say as he bounds off to join his friends.

“What was that?” Nima asks.

I explain, and we head toward the river. I don’t know why, but I actually expected to see water. I expected a bank like the Mississippi, and boats and a small church sitting on a small island. As we got closer it started to feel like something you’d call the Latin Quarter. Restaurants are popping up everywhere, the buildings are demonstrably shorter, and the smells of a thousand cuisines saturate the air. Nima starts shaking her hands up and down rapidly, a habit I would get to know well when she was excited about a new find. She charged ahead of me and went around l’Eglise de Saint-Severin. It’s another Gothic cathedral, slightly larger than the last one, and I'm really starting to appreciate her enthusiasm. If this is "excitement", what will her reaction be when she sees the two main churches? Her energy could power the lights of a large suburban village!

We walk in to Saint-Severin, and already she can’t believe the columns, the capitals, the ceiling lines, the small chapels that line the outer edges of the nave. She wants to read every plaque and photograph every statue. I'm not going to use any film here, and I don't have an agenda, so I tell her to go nuts. She does. When a crowd begins to form in front of the alter, she wants to go have a sit and find out what’s going on. It’s 11:00am and I’m in a Catholic Church. I’m about to attend my first mass!

We take our seats and the priest begins. Nima wants me to translate, but I can’t... he’s going too fast. They've left hymn lyrics all over the place, however, so I can translate the words to the songs. As a kid, I never sang in church, to the chagrin of my family. I couldn't do it. They're all singers. I have an okay voice, but I always felt self-conscious. I've sung maybe a half-a-dozen church songs out loud in all my life. But somehow here it's different. We both sing them with the crowd. It's inspiring. I begin to feel that electricity I felt when I was a child and my faith was, well, like that of a child. It’s almost an endorphin high. Nima wants to leave after about ten minutes of the mass, and I confess to her that I enjoyed that a lot more than I would have had I been alone.