My Idea of Paris

By Maxine Rose Schur

Paris Kiosque - April 1996 - Volume 3, Number 4
Copyright (c) 1996 Maxine Rose Schur - used with permission

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"We kept very still of course," wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "and were satisfied with the idea of Paris."

I sure know what Elizabeth meant. We've been to Paris five times, but the very idea of Paris still seduces -- I lust over memories. Yet, at night, when I lie in my husband's arms, it is not recent, sybaritic images I conjure to lure him into that most intimate realm only two people who've danced through life together can enter -- the realm of memory. No. At night, beautiful restaurants, scenic boat rides, chateaux and boutiques evaporate. In their place float up memories, strange and strong. Up floats an idea of Paris from my first visit a quarter century ago, when I was barely twenty two and newly wed.

It is a Paris of passion and elemental wonder. It is the Paris I knew when young and poor, and free of all desires except to experience. Of course, even then I had an idea of Paris. That's why when we drove into the city in our VW van, I dressed in what I fancied were "Parisian" clothes. Never mind they were Parisian clothes of some other century. In my long black skirt, black boots, hoop earings, flea market scarf of pink silk, I was Paris personified.

The moment I arrived in the City of Lights, I was lit. "We must stay at least a month," I told Steve, my husband. "We have to enjoy Paris!"

Paris was expensive and we had little money but I made a fuss so at last he said "All right, we'll stay...but we'll have to camp."

"Camp! In Paris?" I cried. Nobody camps in Paris!" We did.

That night we rolled our van, outfitted with no more than a mattress, down the ramp to the Quai de la Tournelle where vehicles are forbidden. We parked at the edge of the river, just past the Pont de la Tournelle. When we looked left, we could see the stone bridge with its little statue of St. Genevieve and beyond, the floodlit Cathedral of Notre Dame. Looking right, we saw our quay merge with the next then vanish in murky shadows. In front of us, across the narrow arm of the river, rose the elegant apartments of the Ile St. Louis.

We climbed in the back of our van, lay face-up on the mattress and looked out the windows.

Magic.

The effect was as if we were both inside the van and out of it too. At once cozy in an enclosed, secret place, and also right out in the city. In its very heart. Above us, apartments loomed into the stars, their lacy iron balconies bathed in light, and at our feet, the Seine flowed discreetly southward.

"Let's enjoy Paris." Steve murmured.

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Now a lot of practical things can get in the way of romance such as the need for a bathroom. But we had the courage of youth and didn't let it. The next afternoon we sat on the riverbank planning just which cafes we would discreetly visit at what times of day when a van, big and white as an ambulance, pulled up next to ours. A young man stepped out. He wore no shirt and balanced a hammer vertically on his nose.

"Gidday," he said.

This was Basil Didier, a Mormon New Zealander who'd come to Paris to research his genealogy.

His trick turned the wheel of camaraderie. We had a few laughs together then seeing our interest in his Citroen delivery van, he asked, "Would you like a perv?" which is New Zealand for "Would you like to take a look?"

We were awed by the ingenious cabinetry. The seat that evolved into a bed, the stove built into the counter, the table hung on the wall like a picture, and the sink with its clever foot pump, small as a piano pedal.

"I'm a carpenter," Basil said with down-under modesty. But when I opened the narrow door and discovered a flush toilet, I knew he was more than a carpenter. He was our friend.

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There must have been something in the air that August of 1971. The next day two more vans arrived. One was inhabited by a young New York couple who'd just returned from North Africa. The other, a rusted black Fiat contained a bearded artist from Hawaii named Hayden and his black dog, Mahler. Of an evening, the couple would regale us with their adventures in Morocco and Hayden would recount the curious theatrics performed by a tribe of gypsies he'd lived with in Toulouse. For the next month, the six of us shared food, opinions, toilets and at sunset, vin rouge. Surely there was alchemy at work for though it was totally "defendu" to camp there, directly across, as we learned, from the island home of Prime Minister Pompidou, the gendarmes never told us to leave. Au Contraire! Each night a gendarme would stop by our van to check passports and to see that we were all right.

"Ca va jeunes Americans?" "Ca va."

Now one warm evening, as Hayden was inside his van painting on its walls by candlelight what he called his "private version of Paris," and the New Yorkers were playing gin rummy, and Mahler was barking at every kerosene barge that chugged up the river, Basil, Steve and I sat on the quay, dangling our feet over the water. We were drinking wine and trying in vain to get Basil to taste the marked down cheese we'd bought from the Monoprix. But Basil was too busy preaching how French cheeses were decadent. "Food is just matter to fill up space," he said.

Then he went on about sex.

Mormonism forbids sex before marriage and in his opinion that was "too right" for any fool could see sex is merely a fad. A style! A fashion!

"Sex," Basil declared, "is just Gucci Hootchie Kootchie."

Bored with his ideas, we told him one of ours: to drive from France to India. " And what we need," Steve explained, "is a camper, fixed up like yours."

Basil was happy to take the bait for he said he was "right tired of looking up dead Didiers," and would be pleased to help us make our van into a camper. Our joy however turned to dejection when we realized the impossibility of such a project which required power tools, for we had no electricity nor any access to it. "Too bad too," I said, "When there's electricity all around us ..."

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The maintenance crew at the College de France looked up from their lunches, astonished when we drove into the courtyard.

"Why are you driving your vehicle in here?" a gray-haired man demanded.

"Where else would we outfit it for the expedition?" Steve retorted.

"What expedition?" I asked silently.

Then in the same ringing tone that metro stations are called out, Steve announced, "L'Expedition a L'Afrique du Nord!" The man looked skeptical and the other men laughed. Then Steve began relating the details of our "expedition scientifique," how we needed to collect flowers in Morocco and how outfitting the van for this botanical study was part of the project. Steve blended gobbledygook with what the New Yorkers had told us about Morocco.

The man threw his cigarette butt on the ground. "I'm sorry but my men cannot help. Union rules absolutely prevent involvement."

"Monsieur!" Steve cried, "We wouldn't dream of troubling you. We only need to use the electricity here... and some power tools."

The man paused, looking hard at Steve and me. And in that pause I dared hope he'd play accomplice to honeymooners....In a voice low and sly, like beer trickling out of a jug, the man said, "Well then, it's not impossible is it?"

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For the next three weeks we spent our mornings in construction. Basil drew a blueprint copying the classic VW camper interior. The crew chatted with us every day and cheered us on. They not only supplied power tools, but gave us steel rods and rollers from the lab to make the couch scoot into a bed. They also told us where to find scraps and army surplus items. While Steve and Basil built the cabinetry, I bought the supplies and sewed curtains.

Then, each afternoon, when Basil went off to his French class at the Alliance Francaise, Steve and I fell in love all over again. With each other and with Paris.

We strolled the Left Bank bookstores, plugging head first into musty books, anticipating delight in finding just the right one -- for each other. We read Baudelaire at night in the spooky ruins of l'Arène de Lutèce, a Roman amphitheater off Rue Monge. We sippped tea in tulip shaped glasses in the garden of the Paris mosque, and every other day crossed the bridge to the Ile St.Louis to bathe at the municipal baths. In our private washroom, as we splashed each other with warm water from the copper pail, we were serenaded by the soulful tunes the Moslem men who sang in their showers. "Mustafaaaa, Mustafaaaaaaaa!" they wailed. Rising and dipping, their songs reverberated off the tile walls and doused us in music. Then damp-haired, we'd stroll at dusk along the river bank, our sandals clapping on the cobblestones while above us chestnut leaves fluttered silently like the wings of giant butterflies.

The day our van was finished was also the day Basil ran off to Toulouse with his French teacher, Jacqueline. It was also the day before Pompidou was to return. And the day the gendarmes told us to go. "We have to leave all this beauty!" I cried. To cheer me, Steve said we'd have a farewell tète à tète in a restaurant. That evening we climbed up the steep market street, Rue Mouffetard but found all the restaurants full. Ambling down an alley we came upon a Chinese restaurant jammed with boisterous diners at tables no bigger than record albums.

"Entrez! Entrez!" the diners shouted at us. We were lured inside and before we understood what was happening, tables got squeezed together and we were seated with two men plowing through some inscrutable Chinese dish.

The two were as different as gruyère from gruel. One was tall and elegant with dark wavy hair. An architect, dressed in a chic suit. the other was short, fat and had a ruddy face. He appeared to be some sort of factory worker for he wore the blue working class jacket. In minutes we were drinking wine, enjoying mushy chow mein and listening to the men bemoan how Paris was no fun anymore as nowadays people were obsessed with making a living.

"WHAT A PITY WE'VE FORGOTTEN THE ZANY LITTLE WAYS OF LIFE!" the architect wailed and we all drank a toast to this loss, feeling giddy with joy.

As the evening wore on, I no longer cared that my intimate dinner had turned into a tète à tète a tete a tete a tete. We drank a lot of wine and laughed like crazy. In fact, the whole restaurant was a boat of merrymakers on the brink of capsizing.

When the lugubrious waiter asked if we'd like dessert, and I declined, the architect appeared offended.

"Do you mean to say, Madame, that you won't even try Le Bananae du Chef? It is the specialty of the house!"

"I don't have room for it," I answered.

"Nonsense! No room! You will have the room when you taste it!"

"Very true," the ruddy faced man said. "It tastes like nothing else in the world! Am I not right?" he asked the waiter. The waiter nodded as one might on identifying a body in the morgue.

"Why don't you try it, if it's that good?" Steve urged, knowing my fondness for sweets.

"I'll have Le Banane du Chef," I said to the waiter.

As conversation and wine flowed, it occurred to me (through a little haze) that this dessert was taking quite a long time. I was about to question the water when the lights in the restaurant went out, plunging us in darkness and causing a collective scream from the patrons. Then the kitchen door was flung open and our waiter walked through the black restaurant holding high a tray with flaming dessert. Somberly he made his way to our table, guided by the blue-yellow light of the flames. He set the plate in front of me and announced gravely, "Madame, Le Banane du Chef!" These words brought a hand-clapping and foot-stomping form the other diners. I looked down.

Banana fritters formed in the shape of a male's private parts.

Every eye in the place was on me, waiting for me to take a bite but I was giggling so much, I couldn't. At last, when I did take that first bite, loud cries of "Ooh La La!" went up and the lights came on. All four of us shared the dessert which was delicious. After dinner, Steve took my hand and led me up Rue Mouffetard. Up and up we wound our way through the medieval street. The night was bright with moonlight which gave the ancient gray houses the look of tarnished silver. We stopped and kissed, our bodies like clasped hands.

"Where are we going?" I whispered.

"You'll see."

We threaded up and around some side streets until suddenly Paris was spread before us. How beautiful it looked then! Exactly like my idea of Paris. Like everyone's idea of Paris. Vibrant and askew. The gold-lit Eiffel tower tilted jauntily, and for a beret, wore the moon. The Bateaux mouches were now spaceships floating on black iridescent ribbon, while at the Place de la Concorde, the obelisk was a rocket taking off. And far at the city's cusp sailed Sacre Coeur -- a white ship guided by stars. Yes, that night it seemed Paris, in sympathy with us, twinkled and trembled, and leaned too in fervent anticipation. An excited city listing toward love.

So if in the day, I recount some delightful French meal, shopping discovery, historical site or museum exhibit, you'll understand if I say that at night, a more passionate nostalgia beckons. At night, when I lie in my husband's arms, I need only whisper "Gucci Hootchie Kootchie" or "L'Expedition Scientifique" or if feeling particularly naughty, "Le Banane du Chef," to lure us into the realm of memory. Lure us back to that long-ago couple, fearless and fanciful. Back to the quivering nights of a time-distant Paris when the air was dusty with miracles and the stars were hung lower. Closer to our hearts.

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Maxine Rose Schur contributed "My Idea of Paris" as part of a Travelers' Tales, Francescape, and Paris Pages writing contest.