I’m sitting at an iMac in Cafe Orbital on Place Edmond Rostand across from Luxembourg Gardens. This is the second of only two days it has not rained since we arrived July 13.
In searching for this cyber cafe a few days ago, my friend Richard finally encountered musicians he knew from the years he lived here playing jazz in front of the Sorbonne. We had searched at all their old pitch places: Rue Mouffetard, where the open-air markets teem with shoppers on Sunday mornings; under the arches at Place des Vosges and the awnings of Galleries La Fayette, both good spots to play when it rains. The Left Bank cafe where musicians used to meet before going out to play has been closed.
Richard had lost all the phone numbers when his wallet was nicked (from a front pocket, no less) in the rush hour crush to board the Metro at Gare du Nord. Straight from the airport, juggling bags and horn cases, he must have looked like a tourist.
There are a few tricks to looking French, besides having brown hair and a prominent nose. French women wear black and dark blue skirts, sans nylons after the third hot day in June, and scarves around the neck and shoulder. Tourists wear plaid shorts, sneakers and carry backpacks and cameras, and read guidebooks on the Metro. American tourists are fat and walk around eating. French people are thin and always sit down to eat, usually for at least an hour. They don’t put butter on bread unless it’s stale–baguettes are fresh only for one day. They don’t use light or nonfat anything. They don’t need to because they have to walk about 10 miles a day. French women have trim ankles and well-developed calves. This is the city of 10,000 steps. Metro stations have anywhere from two to six flights of stairs. Some have escalators but somebody’s law says that it will not be running when you get there. Few houses and apartments, even hotels, have elevators.
The French have to stay thin because everything in the city is tiny. Tiny circular stairs in restaurants lead down to tiny toilettes. Tiny cars line the streets and park with two wheels on the tiny sidewalks. Speedy Rabbit delivers pizza on bikes and motorcycles are more popular than ever. It’s nothing to see a nicely dressed French woman, her scarf neatly arranged, carrying a motorcycle helmet.
We are staying way up in the 19th arrondissement, where there are no tourists, in the room Richard rented on his first trip in 1990. An old brownstone-looking house built in the 1870s, it was left to the current owner, Madame Outters, by her grandparents. Once trs chic, it is now a weathered relic in a working class neighborhood that is culturally diverse. The ground floor is leased as a separate flat, and the second floor, where Madame lives, had two rooms, a small kitchen and a bath that she rented to Richard and then to a string of his American musician friends. Madame no longer rents the rooms as she has redecorated them for her two children, 6 and 10 years. The kitchen is gone along with the peeling wallpaper and flaking plaster. The old vinyl has been scraped away to reveal a magnificent parquet floor with its original wooden pegs still intact. We lucked out because the children are on their summer holiday in the country.
Now most Parisians take five to eight week vacations, leaving their city to the tourists. Those who were still here on Bastille Day trooped to the Eiffel Tower for the fireworks. They picnicked on the grass in Parc du Champs de Mars, with the Eiffel Tower in view through the trees; they clung to lamppost bases and stood three deep along the two bridges east of Pont de l’Alma, which police had closed. The sunset across the Seine was as spectacular in its way as the pyrotechnics that followed. The twinkling white lights decorating the tower for the millennium year were turned down as the show began. Police, always on the alert for terrorists, kept the peace in a friendly, nonconfrontational way. Firecrackers were tossed off the bridges and in the streets, but that’s all within the law here.
Even though we are technically tourists this time, we buy the Carte Orange weekly Metro pass, and the Telecarte for the public phones, shop for wine and food at the Monoprix and walk home carrying our baguettes.
We read the International Herald Tribune every day and the Sunday edition of the London Times or Telegraph, which is a bit livelier. The Telegraph had a wonderful time with the comeuppance of novelist, playwright, philanderer and now convicted perjurer Jeffrey Archer, who four years ago won a libel suit against the Daily Star for exposing his dealings with a prostitute, and his live-in mistress of eight years and other dastardly deeds unbecoming a Peer. Archer was convicted last week of perjury in that case and will be writing his novels from prison for the next four years.
Last week in Paris, President Jacques Chirac faced three journalists on national TV, defending his own Travelgate. It seems several million in public funds were spent on airplane tickets for his private use. And Prime Minister Lionel Jospin admitted he lied for years, denying membership in a hard-core Trotskyist group. People here apparently couldn’t care less. Polls show the two are running virtually even as prospective opponents in next year’s presidential elections. The French are more concerned about the threat of genetically modified grapevines developed by U.S. researchers, which they fear will damage the mystique of their vintages and the varietal purity of their grapes. C’est la vie.