Gambling and the Sacre Coeur

When we were 21, Mary and I began the first leg of our cross-country, and ultimately around-the-world, jaunt from Mary’s home in Newport, CA. We first drove to Las Vegas where my sister and her husband were performing as backup singers for I forget who. I guess I didn’t write a letter home, since the only note I could find about it was this reference when we were in Biarritz, France, 1962.

“Last night we went to the casino, an elegant building overlooking the ocean. We arrived with three whole dollars to gamble, but they took $1.20 from us at the door, leaving us with only $1.80. Mary’s friend Jacques, who works there, gave us a cup of coffee and we watched as other people drifted in and began to play. Finally we got very very brave and went to the two-franc minimum table (40 cents). By a well-planned strategy of only playing red or black, we won and won until our 40 cents increased to $3.00! Knowing luck was with us, we cashed in $1.00, got a pretty pink chip, just one, and graduated to the 5-franc table. Again, we won.

“The other players were interesting to watch. Once, by mistake, a man took the chips I'd won and walked away with them. There was quite a commotion when the other men at the table caught up with him and made him give them back. Poor man, he was probably just frustrated since he had usually played red when I played black or vice versa, and lost. The other people at the table tipped the house sometimes as much as $10.00! We ended up with our $3.00 increased to $9.00!

“The casino wasn't as much fun as Las Vegas because the atmosphere is all business with no bands, no noise, just gambling.”

The gambling bug must have lain dormant in Mary for fifty years, because it surfaced when we went to Sacre Coeur. What a circus surrounds this brilliant white architectural wonder built on the highest hill in Montmartre!

The streets from the metro stop are like an Arabian bazaar crowded with colorful shops, shoulder to shoulder tourists, side-alley drug deals, and thieves, with a background noise of shouts, bargaining, amplified music, and live musicians.

In one block were the sleight-of-hand artists. Each had set up a table in the middle of the walkway where he deftly switched three cups over and under, then stopped and the person who had given him 5-francs got to choose which cup held the token. Rarely did anyone win, and never did they win twice.

After watching a few times, Mary knew the secret. See her in the picture handing over her 5 francs. She watched intently as the man switched the cups, then tapped the left one. Nothing. She had lost. The onlookers begged her to try again. She did. And lost. She was finished. Cured. The gambling bug was gone, and we kept walking, leaving his accomplices to find another victim.

The stairway looked too steep to climb. I remembered the many steps up to the Fourviere in Lyon and didn’t want to repeat that experience, so we rode the funicular up to the top. Well worth it. (We walked down.)

This is the fabled area where composers and artists lived in the 1800’s. Little signs point out where Van Gogh shared space with his friends. Today’s portrait artists, their easels next to outdoor cafés, make excellent pencil or charcoal drawings of tourists. I am envious of their skill, never having been good at portraits. What’s to become of them, I wonder. Art is not a well-paid profession and jobs are few, even for the exceptionally talented.

On the broad steps a man with a guitar sang American folk music, pleasing a huge crowd that was also being entertained by the basketball/gymnast specialist. This guy could do anything with a basketball (except, perhaps, get it in the basket). Spinning it, he stood on his hands, climbed the light pole, hung himself out at a 90 degree angle, threw the ball and caught it, always spinning. Agile as a monkey, he performed impossible tricks, and didn’t get nearly as many francs thrown into his hat as he should have.

Finally we entered the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, or Sacred Heart. It’s iconic for Paris, but few know that it was built in the 1880s as penance for the sins of the people of Paris. Surely, reasoned the church authorities, Parisians had sinned, for how else could the Prussians have been able to lay siege to the city from September 1870 to January 1871, cutting off all supplies and starving the people? A menu at the time from the Latin Quarter included such delicacies as:

* Consommé de cheval au millet. (horse)

* Brochettes de foie de chien à la maître d'hôtel. (dog)

* Emincé de rable de chat. Sauce mayonnaise. (cat)

* Epaules et filets de chien braisés. Sauce aux tomates. (dog)

* Civet de chat aux champignons. (cat)

* Côtelettes de chien aux petits pois. (dog)

* Salamis de rats. Sauce Robert. (rats)

* Gigots de chien flanqués de ratons. Sauce poivrade. (dog, rats)

* Begonias au jus. (flowers)

* Plum-pudding au rhum et à la Moelle de Cheval. (horse)

How could this happen to a city like Paris, in a civilized world? I had thought things like that stopped in the middle ages. Naïve me.

During the siege, pigeons and balloons carried communications to the outside world. It’s not so long ago, is it? One hundred and forty years. Wars are still with us, continuously, fought with weapons and communications far different from back then.

Somewhere on this trip we saw a poignant, monumental painting of a young man, slain, lying on the ground naked, surrounded by a few people. The story was that he was a duke, and since his uniform had been stolen, only his long fingernails allowed him to be identified. I wonder if royalty didn’t cut their fingernails even for battles. Or maybe it was only the duke’s idosyncracy.

Ah, but I must take you inside the basilica! (I could be wrong about the details. They requested no pictures be taken, and I respected that. Do look at the link.)

Picture this: From the circus atmosphere outside, you enter into a celestial simplicity of white and gold mosaics. It takes you a moment to believe what you see there. Rather than a narrow gothic aisle of high stained glass windows, the vast space opens up like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. From behind the faraway altar, streaming upward across the entire arch of the seemingly boundless dome is Christ, the Lord of All, his arms spread out to encompass everyone, no matter how vile. This is the only major work of art in that church. Along the walls, spaced well apart, are very small mosaics, all in the same style. The clean, crisp simplicity grabbed my heart. When the knickknacks and jumble are cleared away, there is left only the essence, which is Christ.

I could have stayed there a long time.

Montparnasse

Every time I return to Paris, I feel the same uncanny exhilaration and familiarity, as if I’d lived there forever, but as a stranger. As a stranger, because otherwise even the nuances would become too familiar to be awed by them. Each morning and afternoon I’d stop at the same boulangerie, call out a cheery, “Bonjour, Madame!” and ask for a baguette. I’d tuck it under my arm and rush home to enjoy it with cheese and fruit and hot tea. It would become as ordinary as, as – eggs and bacon. It would cease to be exciting and different. (It would still and always remain comfort food.)

Let me be a traveler and a stranger, testing the oddest foods on display, taking chances on the narrow streets winding out of sight, stopping in at tiny stores to ask where I am.

Our return to Paris from Nancy came by a different route than we’d ever taken before. We had to pay strict attention to the change points on the metro map, denoted by green, blue, or red. All was going well until we got off at Blvd. Montparnasse and couldn’t find the hotel. I called and got the address. You’d think that would have been the first step, but I had thought the directions off the web site would be good enough. We walked and walked, but neither the address nor the hotel appeared. I was annoyed because obviously I had not understood telephone French, so I begged Mary to call this time.

She did a great job. Starting with, “I don’t speak English!” she plowed on, and finally discovered that we’d come about 7 long blocks too far. The metro stop was correct, but we’d walked in the wrong direction.

“Not my fault!” I would have pleaded earlier, but we were both too foot-weary by that time to care whose fault it was.

The hotel was elegant, used for expensive tour groups and well-heeled travelers. We approached the desk, scruffy and train-worn, with backpacks making our weary shoulders bend frontwards.

I’m pretty sure this was the hotel I grabbed off the Internet at the last minute because the one I previously booked turned out to be in the red light district. The price on this one was high but within range, and the area was definitely safe. After booking the room, I got a return email saying something like, “Congratulations, you have reserved our cheapest room!”

An elevator whisked us up to the third floor (or 2^nd floor, depending on whose system you use). Our key unlocked the door that opened to paradise!

Beautifully decorated, the enormous room had a tiny kitchen area, a big TV (showing BBC serials in French, of course), a terrific bathroom with heated towel rack, and tall windows opening onto the street. We were amazed! Cheap never looked like this!

It didn’t last long. Within a few hours, a leak in the bathroom over the toilet had dampened even my spirits and made a small pool of water on the floor.

I did not want to change rooms! Mary insisted on complaining to the management, but I kept thinking and saying, “We can step around it. We can wear our shoes. We can cover our heads with a towel. We can . . .”

Mary complained. They looked at it. We were quickly moved to another room, same floor, different view.

The new room was even larger than the first, but had a courtyard view, meaning we looked down into the neighboring restaurant’s outdoor seating area. Tall buildings surrounded it, giving a stark background to the tall lacy trees growing in the patio. Though it wasn’t the street view, it turned out to be good nighttime entertainment.

In the evenings, we ate at the middle eastern snack bar that formed the street entrance to the restaurant. There, we watched stylishly dressed patrons descending the stairs to the romantic outdoor patio.

Afterwards, we went back to our room, opened the window and drapes and spied on the diners below, letting the hum of their musical voices accompany our games of double solitaire far into the night. I think the last diners left around 1:00 a.m., long after I was asleep.

I think I’ll wait to share more about our return to Paris because there’s so much to tell. After substitute teaching all day, my brain needs to rest awhile. Too bad there’s no outdoor restaurant here in the desert on a cool, full moon night.

Nancy, France

In December, 1961, Mary and I were tired of hitchhiking in the cold so we found jobs at a newly-reopened U.S. Air Force base at Chambley, France. It wasn’t easy. We searched from Paris to Frankfurt, listening to rumors, following hunches, filling out paperwork, until finally this job opened up for us. I was hired as the Service Club Director and Mary was my half-time assistant and half-time French helper. I got the lead job because of having been a counselor at numerous YMCA day camps.

One of our jobs was organizing field trips to interesting places. Chambley is a tiny town in the northeast Alsace-Lorraine section of France with Metz being the nearest big town. To the south, but still in Alsace-Lorraine, is Nancy. It has an opera house, and since I like opera, I arranged a trip to see an opera there. That’s all I remember. I hope that the guys who went on the trip were impressed by Nancy, because when Mary and I returned in April this year, we found it absolutely glorious!

We arrived at the train station, having gotten up early enough at Lydia’s to catch the 6:30 train from Colmar. The map to our hotel looked like an easy hike down just one long street, no turns, no chances to get lost. Sometimes, I admit, that backpack made me feel like a little old lady, and Mary, with bad feet, felt the same. Valiant, we plodded onward and onward and yet a bit farther onward. The map showed our hotel to be just past Place Stanislas, so every time we’d come to a little park where four streets met, I asked someone if that was Place Stanislas. The answer was always an amused smile and “Non. Tout droit.” Meaning keep going straight ahead.

There is no mistaking Place Stanislas. An enormous open space gently rises to the center where stands a magnificent statue of Stanislas, the last King of Poland, on his majestic horse. Regency style (?) buildings flank the square, and the ubiquitous outdoor dining tables and umbrellas flutter around the edges like lacy doilies. Ornate gates of real gold painted wrought iron are at each corner and the two places where the main street enters and exits. Fountains on the north side corners are spectacular in their exuberant display of water! water! everywhere. Each is composed of statues caught by the sculptor at the peak of energetic action. They guard the entrance gates to the large grand park.

Place Stanislas is a glorious, happy, rich space where commoners and kings can meander or sit and enjoy the sunshine or an aperitif. Mr. Stanislas is the one who made it all possible. He became the Duc de Lorraine after his daughter married the future King of France. Blessed with lots of money, he had grandiose plans for turning Nancy into a showplace to rival Paris or any other large city, and he succeeded, at least during the times he lived.

Residents are rightly proud of Nancy. They keep it spotless, which was refreshing. The morning after our arrival I was up early, as usual, and walking. The hotel was only a block from Place Stanislas, so that’s where I headed, passing the opera house on the way. It was about 7 a.m. and the paving stones, laid out in patterns, were being scrubbed clean by a street sweeping machine.

The weather was cool, so I headed into the grand park and sat in the sun by the rose garden to warm up. So peaceful. Then back to the hotel to pick up Mary and start our day.

We definitely wanted to see the Musée des Beaux Arts, one of the buildings on Place Stanislas. But first we had to find a boulangerie for our morning apple turnover and an apricot non-fried donut sort of yummy thing.

The Beaux Arts is laid out beautifully and intelligently, by themes, except for lighting that in some areas bounces off paintings, making it difficult to see the entire work all at once. The main focus is on artists from Lorraine or artists who worked in Lorraine. These lesser-known artists were, in our opinion, equal to or better than many of the more famous ones.

The use of color in the impressionists and pointillists is so intriguing! Spots of cools and warms mold the shape. Mary taught that technique in her middle school with the same results I had when I tried it – mud. But not these artists. They achieved crispness and definition.

The sculpture of the woman’s head is one of the most beautiful things ever seen, partly because of the light shining from above onto her upturned face. Imagine, from the photo, how it looks and forgive the two-dimensional picture for not conveying the full effect of the three-dimensional graceful miracle of marble.

After the Beaux Arts, we visited the Ducal Palace museum which shows how trees became furniture in the old days, and iron became artistic curves and points. Early photographs of many Lorraine villages were proof that life used to be hard work and dirt. In the adjoining church are tombs of dukes and others. I gloss over this museum only because I was getting tired of looking at things. It’s truly educational in the best way – enjoyable.

The day was cold, so we found an outdoor café and sat in the sun eating a pave of apple, nuts and caramel, warming ourselves up. Then there was another long walk, exploring here and there and finally the big park where we saw peacocks strutting about. It was then 7:30 p.m.. We were tired and hungry, but didn’t want to take the time or energy to find a restaurant so chose, instead, the snack stand by the entrance to the park. It was a great choice, because my chicken and raclette cheese Panini eaten outdoors on the park bench was heaven-sent. A good price, too, not like the onion soup and chevre chaud salad the night before which cost me around 20 Euros ($24?).

That night, I bundled up with extra blankets and a bedspread until sometime in the middle of the night when I finally warmed up. That was the coldest I’d been since we got to France.