Day Three: Unwinding

After 39 years, the writer revisits Paris 

to explore memories and discover whether 

 for him there is still there

5 July 2017  – mercredi

On waking, I poke my head out the casement window, turn ninety degrees to the right and see about a mile away, Sacre Coeur, which does indeed look like a wedding cake. And so the hotel fulfills the promise of a view, though, due to the severe angle, I won’t be gazing at the cathedral while writing.

I dress then take the elevator to the first floor for breakfast. The coffee’s strong, the food plentiful but the dining area is small. The attendant offers a tray to carry back to my room, and I enjoy a relaxed meal while watching local TV news and picking through the newspaper. Having breakfast available without going out serves my envisioned routine of writing and reading in the morning before waltzing onto the streets.

Strategic plan: (1) revisit places to jog awake memories, (2) explore my younger self, and (3) write down observations. In possession are letters sent home thirty-nine years ago and contemporaneous journal entries of my two month, two week stay, which document emotions but don’t provide much description. I hope to fill in details and flesh out memories while creating new ones. Today, I decide to visit the Marine House (8e), the residence for Marines who provide security for the American Embassy and where I lodged eleven days before moving to a small hotel.

I leave the hotel and wander to rue Ordener, looking for a bus to the Champs-Elysees.  My internal compass senses “Go left” but the map at the stop says otherwise. I wait with others and consult the digital read out tracking the next bus. Then, behind me, I spot a newsstand in a storefront, a candy store for readers! In Paris, one doesn’t walk far without finding at least a kiosk with magazines and newspapers framing the sole man or woman attending. I buy the daily Le Parisien (1,30 euros). During my stay, I also buy Liberation (2) and Charlie Hebdo (3).

When the bus comes, I step up and tap my pass against the reader. Buses have a central bay about four feet long for standers and large carry-ons. A foot canal leads to the rear with seats on either side and across the back. The canal is 18 inches wide, unlike American buses, and I kick the sides. In front, just behind the entry, an elevated seat affords the rider a unique shotgun perspective.

The trip’s about a six-mile arc that seems longer. I enjoy watching the passing scene and get off just to walk. At an intersection (8e) larger and statelier than that at Jules Joffrin, stylish restaurants prepare for mid-day patrons. Wanting to eat so as to ward off hunger, I forgo white tablecloths for a humbler café around the corner. Il fait toujours chaud, but my table is in the shade.

A woman consults her smart phone. A driver parks his car and takes a seat beneath an umbrella. When the waitress delivers coffee, he pays right away. A man and a woman to the right are talking business over a laptop. My meal arrives: Croque-Monsieur, a sleeve of french fries, lemon soda, and Dijon mustard provided without asking. The young waitress goes down the street with a large paper bag that returns a quiver of baguettes.

Refreshed, I hop a bus to complete the journey, which leaves me at the l'Arc de Triomphe (8e), Napoleon’s tribute to his 1805 Austerlitz victory. My jaw drops, as memory does not register the grand scale of Paris that hits me now. But even as I gaze upon the 1,650-foot tall monument, small figures traveling in packs distract me: tourists! All over, they take pictures or mug for them, cross my path and move in mass formation. They are not in memory either of my stay from mid-April to the end of June 1978; since then tourism has increased eight-fold.

A dark tourist bus like redaction tape blocks the view, so I seek a better vantage. A bench beneath a shady tree is vacant, but when I sit a man on the next one grows agitated. He speaks French, I think, but I don’t understand. He points up to the sun-filtering leaves. I look and look and look until I see the twitching tail feathers of a bird. I leap up, shouting “Bonne idée!”  Memory echo: walking on a quay along the Seine, I noticed a green insect preoccupied on my shoulder. “Ils se tombent des arbres,” said a nearby fisherman. And they still do!

Beyond the curb a gyre of traffic circles the Arch, vehicles of all description that dart into radiating streets. I join a mob crossing a street then trudge across les Champs-Elysees whose dominant characteristic is breadth: sidewalks some sixty feet wide either side of four traffic lanes. The stop for local No. 73 is by the crosswalk. My Lonely Planet guidebook (thx D & L) deems the route scenic, going from the Arch down the boulevard, past la Place de la Concorde and ending at la Musee d’Orsay across the Seine. After fifteen minutes the bus arrives and I’m one of a handful of passengers within an oasis of calm. Outside, it’s extremely commercialized: Louis Vuitton etched on a building competes with other business; a large maroon canopy on the sidewalk describes a dining area. The reality grates against a memory fragment of drinking at the Red Lion on the Champs. That could not exist in this environment, if it ever did, and so the fragment remains an orphan.

   

Too quickly we pass the stop for rue La Boetie and I decide to ride to the end then come back. Approaching la Place de la Concorde, trees line the boulevard and rows of plastic seats are in place for next week’s July 14 celebration. On entering the massive circle, we pass the 3300 year-old Egyptian Obelisk, and I’m thrilled at the close up view of hieroglyphs that look like organized graffiti. We are stopped this side of the Seine by an unimaginable cluster of traffic -- La Tour Eiffel in the distance to the right, before being sucked through to the other side.

Back at rue La Boetie I go up the narrow street toward the Marine House, hopping curbs and cobblestones and dodging busy people in conversation or having a smoke. At no time am I more grateful for my collapsible cane, which spared wear and tear on the knees. Its purchase a month earlier was key to the success of this trip; otherwise I would have been knackered the first day.

                       

I pass by Saint-Philipe du Roule, which is being renovated. Too bad, I would have gone inside. I continue on until reaching the Marine House whose stone gray façade looks like a fortress on the small street. A sturdy polished door leads to an inner courtyard. Above, fluttering blackout drapes keep out the light and I imagine a Marine sleeping off a graveyard shift. In Athens, we worked two day shifts, two evening shifts and two graveyard ones before two days off. Our detachment was only 10 Marines and the Paris one at least five times as large, but their schedule would be similar.

Leaning on my cane across the street, I try to summon a memory but come up blank. I suppose I never had this perspective, as I would have been busy entering or exiting. A journal entry dated 3 June 1978 states, “I arrived at the Marine House at 1100 to walk…to the church in which Mark (M) would marry Carol,” probably at Saint-Phillipe du Roule. After my residence, I would come back for Friday night happy hours, which were popular with select locals.

I stand before an iron gate bearing a red sign reading Interdit. Nearby, vigorous young men mill about a doorway; they have something to do with security, I suspect. A thirtyish looking woman with copper-colored hair passes and seems to smirk. Perhaps she sees me for what I am.  

At the next intersection I find a bus that takes me right to Jules Joffrin where I eat at le Nord-Sud before returning to the hotel. After having made the hotel reservation, I fretted because rue Letort was beyond the scope of most maps. Now, after experiencing the tourist hordes, I’m happy to be so far out of the way.

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Next post in about two weeks.