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.

The Boy in the Blue Hat

Our last five days in France, we were back in Paris, this time in the Montparnasse district.

A couple of days before leaving California, I had learned that the hotel I had reserved on the right bank was in a redlight district. Panicking, I opted for more expensive and left bank Montparnasse, figuring that after 4.5 weeks we might want a bit less of La Boheme. It was a lot more expensive, but hotels were filling fast so I grabbed the cheapest room at the Villa Luxembourg while I could.

Montparnasse: The name stems from the nickname “Mount Parnassus" (in Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry [from Wikipedia].

Wait! I’m off track! I want to tell you about the Boy in the Blue Hat!

About ¾ mile from our hotel was Le Jardin du Luxembourg (gardens, playgrounds, palace, etc.). Every morning while Mary finished sleeping and making up, I would amble over there for an hour or more of blissful reflection. Up Blvd. Montparnasse I strolled, turning left on the street by the fountain at the Place Observatoire, going alongside the long narrow parks where children play and dogs are forbidden, past the College of Pharmacy, and finally entering the garden through the tall ornate metal gates. I wandered in a timeless world where tree-shaded, chair-lined, wide paths criss-crossed the immense palace grounds. It would be early enough for most Parisians to still be abed, having been up late the night before, so only gardeners and joggers joined me there. After meandering along various paths for awhile, I would usually end up at the area dominated by two sculptures, one of a deer family with buck rising majestically over doe and fawns, and the other of a male lion majestically rising over his kill, an ostrich. Every day I thought, “How odd. An ostrich.”

One morning I sat longer than usual, eventually closing my eyes so I could hear the songs of the birds more clearly. I probably dozed as the morning sunrise warmed the air, because I remember becoming aware of whistling in the distance. The tune was gay, like something from the romantic 19^th Century rather than our own prosaic one. Curious, but also reluctant to be disappointed, I slowly opened my eyes to search for the whistler.

Across the grass, farther than the next path, and just beyond the border of green trees, danced a young boy in a blue cap, twirling, leaping, pirouetting, flying in and out of the long morning shadows – while his unseen companion whistled and another contributed marvelous tinkling bubbly laughter that filled the air with bright sparkling light.

Watch them and don’t breathe!

I tried to imprint them on my eyes, in my ears, so as to have them forever in my heart.

Try to hold onto them a moment longer while I tell you another story about Luxembourg. When I got home, I was rushing through an online catalog of Impressionistic paintings from around 1900-1910. Suddenly my eyes stopped to stare at a singular one. When my brain detoured back to it, I saw my chair in the Luxembourg Gardens right where the Lion rises over the Ostrich! Someone was sitting in my chair, a lady from another century clothed in black, but otherwise the scene was exactly as it was for me in the mornings of my last five days in Paris.

Was there a Boy in a Blue Cap in the painting, just beyond the row of trees? I hope so. I hope boys will always feel free enough and happy enough to dance through the gardens, laughing and whistling while the world swirls around them.

[Unfortunately, hours of searching for that image to share with you have produced nothing. The best I could do was the one of the deer where the trees are still leafless - news-e.hoosta.com - not full of green like they were that early week in May.]

I know I promised more of St. Malo for this blog, but the boy in the blue hat wanted to be remembered. Next time, back to St. Malo!