We first met in the Luxembourg Garden where I was sitting by the small Statue of Liberty after my morning class at the Alliance Française of Paris. It was the fall after graduating from Ohio State and I was now ready to make something of myself though I didn’t yet know what. My parents were pleased that I was continuing my education. I was studying French at the Alliance and pastry-making at the Ferrandi Paris cooking school.

I’d bought myself an exquisite chocolate éclair on the way to the park. After creating an Instagram post of a selfie in which I’m holding up the éclair like the statue her torch (Statue of Delicious #paris #thelife #frenchpastry), I sat down nearby to enjoy the pastry with the intent of then studying the passé composé of irregular verbs.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle,” he said. I looked up. He had lovely little brown eyes and smoothed-down brown hair, greying at the temples.

“Bonjour Monsieur,” I answered.

He lifted his palm toward the chair beside me and asked if it was occupied. Understanding his request more from his gesture than from his words, I removed my notebook and purse from the seat so that he could take the chair. Instead of moving it further away, he sat down beside me. He excused himself for remarking but said that he detected un petit accent.

“Je suis américaine,” I said.

“Amay-we-can,” he echoed with a scrunched smile without parting his thin pink lips, then, immediately switching to English, he added, “your accent is very char-ming. Do you know why we have a Statue of Liberty here?” he asked.

I did not.

He said, “But you should because you are Amay-we-can, so I will explain to you.” And so he did, as he would teach me much else, with intense, informative, endearing condescension, before concluding, “You have so much to learn.”

On our first date, the following evening, he took me to a wonderful little bistro, where a surly waiter served us a nice house red. When he told me again that I was charming, I felt myself blush. He called me his Mona Lisa because my name is Liz. I called him Bruno because that is his so adorably French name. When I told him that I would like to try the French onion soup, he said that was for tourists and he recommended instead the bone marrow, telling me that there was a sincerity to the presentation and sensuality to the texture. I marveled at the way used adjectives to describe food and accepted his suggestion. He ordered the pâté for himself, which he ate with thick chunks of sourdough bread. Then chicken supreme for me and andouillette for himself. We shared profiteroles for dessert. He wiped the chocolate from my lips with his napkin.

Afterwards, we walked along the Seine, where he lit a cigarette, and when it was finished, he flicked the butt into the river then turned and kissed me as the Eiffel Tower sparkled as though on cue. His breath tasted of a mix of cigarettes, coffee, wine, intestinal sausage, and a breath mint. It was a beautiful spring evening in Paris. I remembered the old song. He took my hand and we walked on, eventually reaching my chambre de bonne in the Latin Quarter.

I had only had sex with boys my age before, so this was different. He was 20 years older than me and knew not only what he wanted, as did the boys, but how to please. I was glad that I’d shaved that morning. After making passionate love, he opened the French window to smoke as I lay naked and mostly satisfied beneath the sheet. Leaning against the wrought iron railing, he blew rings out toward the zinc rooftop across the courtyard.

If you crane your neck to the right, I said, you can see the top of Sacré Coeur.

“Socray Core,” he repeated, mocking the way I pronounced it, then he stepped toward me and brushed his hand against my cheek and said that his Mona Lisa had a charming accent. He said that he would help me with my French, when it improved, but for now it was best to continue in English. He told me that since I was new in Paris it was natural to admire “Socray Core” from the window but that a real Parisian looks discreetly into the windows across the courtyard to watch people undress, and he pointed to a woman across the courtyard and one floor below who was removing her blouse.

He then told me that his wife and children were returning from vacation the following day, but he would be available on Wednesday afternoon.

“You’re married?” I ask, redundantly.

He waved away both the smoke and my question. He said that he and his wife were now old friends and stayed together only for the three children, so I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it. I ignored my mother’s voice in my head and thought, When in Paris…

Every Wednesday afternoon at about 5 o’clock (known here as 17 hour), he came up the stairs to my 7th-floor garret bearing gifts, either a pastry to die for or chocolates from what he said was the best chocolatier in Paris or a bottle of wine that he knew all about. Occasionally he would show up late, saying that he was stuck in court, and tell me that though he’d had a long, tiring day he couldn’t let a week go by without seeing his Mona Lisa. His Dior cologne arrived even more exhausted than he did, so several weeks into our relationship I asked him to shower on arrival. He said that despite man’s intelligence and ability to build great cities such as Paris, we are animals and should not fear our natural odors. I handed him a towel and reminded him that I was not born in the same den as he. He laughed and said that he would do anything to please this pretty lady.

He taught me many things. He taught me how to wear my hair and how to tilt my beret just so. He told me which exhibitions to see and how to appreciate movies without happy endings. He always left by 7:30—I should say 19:30. He called that a “reasonable hour for a lawyer.”

We rarely went out to dinner after that first time. He said that we had all we needed right here. The pastries and chocolates weren’t good for my diet but they were great for my Instagram.

We had plans to go to Deauville one weekend while his wife and children were visiting his mother-in-law in La Baule, but he texted me to say that his daughter was sick so we would do it another weekend. When I texted back to tell him that I was already waiting for him at the Gare Saint Lazare, adding an angry emoji, he texted back a reminder that he’d told me about his family responsibilities from the day we met and that he was the one with sick child, so I shouldn’t be a selfish about it.

The following Wednesday he brought me a gift as an apology. In a box bearing the name of a fancy shop on the rue Bonaparte in the Saint Germain Quarter there was a beautiful lavender scarf with a Galeries Lafayette label. He showed me different ways of wearing it, before lightly tying my wrists together with it while we made passionate love. He continued to teach me things, such as how to read the label of a bottle of wine and where I must go one day in Provence and when cherries are in season and why the Americans did not like the General de Gaulle.

In July, he told me that his wife and daughters had gone to Bormes les Mimosas for the summer and that he wouldn’t be joining them there until the end of the month, so we would have more time together over the next few weeks. “More time” ended up being two Mondays as well as the usual Wednesday. I suggested a weekend in Deauville but he said that there were too many lawyers in Deauville in summer. Instead, he said, it would be his pleasure to take me someplace nice for dinner on Wednesday. I’d been living in Paris for nine months by then so I knew right away that the bistro he’d selected in the Latin Quarter was unexceptional; it had only a 4.3 rating on Tripadvisor. But I was intent on enjoying myself. I’d checked out the menu online and asked AI what wine would go best with foie gras and pike quenelles, which I intended to order, and with whatever offal he might, and was told Pouilly Fuissé. So I proudly suggested that as we ordered. Instead, he asked the cute and efficient waiter for a bottle of a Sancerre red, telling me that I would understand the subtleties better with time. The young waiter nodded as he said, “Oui monsieur.” It took little time to discover that the Sancerre fell flat with my order. When I asked if he wanted to split an order of profiteroles for dessert, he said that I should profit from them (that was his profiterole joke) myself while he went outside for a smoke and to call his children. In his absence I chatted with the cute, young, efficient waiter, whose chestnut brown hair that fell adorably over his espresso eyes. He complimented me on my French and agreed that Pouilly Fuissé would have been the better choice. When he delivered the profiteroles, I asked him to take my picture with them. He sensed that Bruno and I were not married. He said that a man should not leave a charming young lady like me alone at the table. I agreed, and when he efficiently asked for my Instagram, I agreed to that and asked for his as well. His name is Pascal.

Pascal tells me that he adores me, and I feel the same. We’ve been together for three months now. He’s got me listening to rock from Brittany and using French slang, like kiffe for like and ouf for great, though we mostly speak in English. I’ve got him listening to Taylor Swift and wearing deodorant. We’re looking for a two-room flat to move into together. He supports my ambition of giving pastry tours to tourists while writing a book about how a girl from Ohio became a true Parisienne, illustrated with some of my Instagram photos, which he never fails to kiffe. When I tell him my dream of opening a donut, cupcake, cruffin and cake coffee shop that I would call Morning Liza, he says that would be ouf. I haven’t told him that my father runs the largest car dealership in Ohio, nor that I’ve been seeing my old lover on Wednesdays.

But I don’t have to think about the latter anymore because I told Bruno yesterday, after we made unimaginative love and while he was smoking by the window, that I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore because I was moving in with someone.

“A boy?” he asked, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth.

“A man,” I said.

He stubbed his cigarette in the flower box. He said that this—the two of us—hadn’t been working out for a while anyway because I was too much of a child and that I shouldn’t call him anymore, and anyway, he’d met someone more beautiful and mature, a real Parisienne. He then turned to look out the window, first to the right for brief glimpse at the top of Sacré Coeur then to the windows down below. It crossed my mind that I could push him over the railing then tell the police in perfect French, using the passé composé, that he jumped out when I told him it was over. But he’s taught me so much over the past year that I’m actually grateful to him. Anyway, I’d rather have the pleasure of watching him leave my apartment angry and forlorn, the way he likes movies to end. For myself, I still prefer a happy ending.

© 2026.

Cliché, a Paris Love Story by Lainey Harper. Lainey Harper is the pen name of a writer who’s leaving the dream.

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Preface

A homeless man was living under the awning of the restaurant downstairs while it was closed during the fall Covid lockdown. He was one of those ageless fellows you sometimes see living on the street, with a scruffy beard and unruly salt-and-pepper hair that rose high over his ears. Could have been 40-years-old, could have been 70—couldn’t tell. I’d walk by him while leaving and entering my building, especially in the evening since he was often gone during the day, and furthermore I was in the habit of taking evening walks during that period. Bonsoir monsieur, I’d say on my way out. Bonne nuit, I’d say on return. I tried several times to engage a bit of conversation—asking him how he was doing or if he’d eaten that evening—but in response he just half-smiled, half-nodded. I guessed he didn’t understand French. Perhaps it’s better that way. I mean, how friendly do you want to get with someone living on the street?

I can’t imagine what it’s like to walk a mile in his shoes, but he wore a pair of old sneakers that didn’t look to be holding up too well as the autumn damp took hold, so I took him down an old pair of shoes that I should have gotten rid of long ago. He just sort of looked at me and nodded when I set them down beside him. He didn’t try them on in front of me, just nodded.

The next day he was wearing them.

He never looked at me as though he was asking for anything. Thankfully. Anyway, I’m sure there are organizations that provide clothing for the homeless. He actually had a nice fall jacket, grey with fur-like lining. It looked warm enough in mid-November. Nevertheless, I also took him some socks, some underwear, a couple of pair of old pants and a few t-shirts. We’ve all got too many t-shirts. He was smaller than I am but not by much; I figured they’d fit. Nothing special. Honestly, I am not a generous guy, but there he was, and I had some stuff… You know how it is, right? He never said anything when I brought him these things, just a kind of a nodding greeting or maybe thanks, a slight mumble, a sort of nmmn.

He slept on an old mattress placed on top of lots of cardboard to keep the mattress dry, and he used other big sheets of cardboard as a blanket. The cardboard had images of bicycles on it because bike shops were receiving lots of them in preparation for Christmas sales.

In late November the weather turned colder and damper. I had an old tattered blanket in the closet, so I took it down one afternoon. I left it for him between the mattress and the cardboards. Just an old blanket—I hadn’t used it in years.

He also had a little three-legged stool that I’d see him sitting on some evenings. He’d sit there eating dinner that an association for the homeless brought by or that he’d brought back from the make-shift soup kitchen up the road. And here’s something curious: Sometimes, late in the evening, I’d look out the window and see him sitting on his stool just beyond the edge of the awning, in the light of the streetlamp, writing in a notebook. Occasionally he’d be writing when I went out from my nighttime walk. I once asked him what he was writing (after all, I’m something of a writer myself) but he just nodded, mumbled a little nmmn, then sort of stared at me until I said good night and walked away. As I say, he didn’t seem to speak French.

People go to sleep so early these days, and I like writing at night myself, so I’d be up in my flat writing and the only other person I knew who was awake would be him, down on the sidewalk, writing in his notebook, just beneath the edge of the awning, in the light of the streetlamp. I felt a strange kind of communion. Like we were the only two people on earth to describe the world as we respectively knew it at that moment.

One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, when he was absent, I took down a notebook—I have plenty—and left it on the stool for him, along with a few pens. That’s pretty much it. End of story. It wasn’t as though we were buddies or anything.

But I do wonder where he’s gone. You see, he stopped sleeping there sometime during the past week. I don’t know when exactly because on December 15 we entered a new curfew period where you couldn’t be out without a valid reason from 8pm to 6am and my view of his dwelling space is blocked by the awning of the restaurant below. I didn’t see him at all during the day this past week, though that wasn’t unusual. I’d look out my window at night hoping to see him seated on his little stool beneath the light of the streetlamp, writing in his notebook. But he wasn’t there. This troubled me, and it kept me from working. For a few nights I went downstairs toward midnight to peek out the front door just to see if he’d returned—feeling a bit clandestine just stepping out onto the street—but he hadn’t. Could someone who lives on the street be subject to curfew? Maybe he’d been given a bed in a shelter. Or else he just moved on.

This evening I saw that all of the items that made up his dwelling area had been cleared away. The mattress was gone. The big cardboard sheets were gone. The three-legged stool was gone. The city clean-up crew must have taken everything away. Just a few scraps of cardboard remained on the ground along with a mask, an empty milk box, a plastic-wrapped sandwich….

Then I saw, peeking out between two pieces of cardboard, the notebook that I’d left for him earlier in December. The brown-beige cork-like cover of the notebook is the same color as the cardboard, so I guess the crew didn’t see it when they cleaned the area.

I picked it up and saw there was writing inside. So I brought it upstairs. I feel like a bit of a thief, to tell the truth, but apparently he isn’t coming back and eventually it would have gotten trashed if left outside. I can always give it back if I ever see him again. Inside there’s writing in all directions and in different types of characters: Latin, Greek, logograms, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and even some figures that look like Neolithic wall painting. And strangely enough, there are a few pages written in English. Imagine that: for the six weeks that he’d been there I’d been walking by him and saying a few words to him in French—Bonsoir monsieur, Comment allez-vous? Vous avez besoin de quelque chose? Vous avez mangé ce soir?—and it turns out that he speaks English, or at least writes in English. So while I was trying to speak to him in my second language, we could have communicated better if I’d used my first.

Among the pages in English, there’s a poem. It’s near the back of the notebook, unless it’s the front—depends on how you open  it, because it starts in one direction then you have to turn the notebook over to continue reading. It’s entitled On Winter Solstice Night… which is weird because this is December 21st, night of the winter solstice.

Here’s the poem I found:

On Winter Solstice Night

‘Twas the night of the Solstice, when all through the flat
Not a creature was stirring, not even the cat;

Cute, right? You recognize that? Riffing on a visit from Old Saint Nick. But it’s more than that. Better that I read it to you. Give a listen. Sit back. I’ll start again.

Audio – A Reading of On Winter Solstice Night, Author Unknown
Read by Gary Lee Kraut

Preface, audio, poem © 2020. All rights reserved.

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“It’s your prostate,” she says.

You tell her that you resent her recognition that you have un prostate.

“Une prostate,” she corrects. “Your prostate is feminine.”

It’s moments like this when you’re forced to confront the fact that your French will always play second fiddle to your English. You generally don’t mind being corrected for an erroneous conjugation of tenses, other than perhaps a slight embarrassment at the thought that you should have known better. But mistaking the gender of a noun as personal as your prostate is more than linguistic, it touches on your very sense of self. It reminds you of your tenuous grasp on the nature of things. Of course, reproductive anatomy wasn’t on your vocabulary lists in French class in high school, and you managed to live in France for this long without questioning the gender of your prostate. But that’s no consolation for now being informed, however matter-of-factly and by a close friend, that of late you’ve been awakened in the middle of the night by a feminine prostate.

Still, honesty from an old friend is to be accepted with grace. And more comes when, upon your return to the seat, she tells you about her uterus.

She’d been sent for an MRI, she explains, and has just gotten the results. “The doctor says that there’s nothing to worry about, just a few harmless polyps that no one will notice. What’s more disconcerting is that my husband and I aren’t having sex anymore. Not disconcerting for me, but for him, meaning for us, therefore for me, because now we have to talk whenever there’s a problem, but he’s never been good at that, which wasn’t a problem before because we would have sex instead, but now what do we do?, we sulk and imagine we don’t love each other anymore.”

Just then, thankfully, the lights of the theater start to dim and her monologue fizzles out. As the curtain rises you lean over and congratulate her on having une uterus saine (a healthy uterus).

“Un uterus sain,” she corrects, for it turns out that not only is your prostate feminine but her uterus is masculine—and not just hers but all uteri!

The play is a comédie de boulevard, meaning that it’s full of conventional sexism, mistaken identities and witty word play. Aside from some contemporary twists and political commentary, it follows the genre well as the husband, his young would-be mistress, the wife, her young lover the plumber, and several minor characters enter and exit in insatiable, farce-inducing desire and quid pro quo. Though predictable, it’s quite funny and well acted. However, while watching the circus of desire you find yourself stuck with the triply disturbing thought that your testosterone level been decreasing, that your old friend now shares stories about grandchildren and polyps instead of lovers and parties, and that your prostate as it exists in your adopted country is feminine. Admittedly, your testosterone level peaked at 20, your friend adores her grandchildren, and you’ve always lived with une prostate, but being faced with all three at once is disheartening.

You have trouble concentrating on the play, though not much concentration is required as the husband hides his mistress beneath the bed while the wife’s lover hides behind the curtain.

It’s one of those precious, ornate late-19th-century theaters whose red velour seating was installed when the average Parisian man was 5’6”. There’s basically only one way to sit in such a theater: with straight back, knees clamped together and forearms fighting for armrest dominance with the neighbor. Between the confining position and your new understanding of la prostate, you felt a certain pressure down below. While on stage the husband opens the curtain to reveal a shirtless handyman who now tries to explain that his shirt got wet from plumbing work, you need to pee again.

It isn’t urgent; it isn’t even truly a need; it can wait until intermission, but you’ll be thinking about it until then. You sneak a look at your phone to see what time it is. Well, sneak is the intent, but checking the time on your phone lights up the entire row. The actors on stage might well notice the light coming from your lap. The woman sitting to the opposite side of you from your friend certainly does. “Tsk,” she pronounces with a distinctly Parisian accent. This is soon followed by the sound of the vibration of your friend’s phone in her pocket as it presses against the armrest. She can’t resist having a look at the message that it signals, further lighting up the row and eliciting from the neighbor on her other side a Parisian “pff.”

As the curtain falls for intermission, your friend turns to you. “It’s a message from my husband,” she says, with the same eye-roll as the wife on stage.

“What does he want?”

“Reassurance.”

“Well, go reassure him,” I say. “I’ll take a little walk.”

“OK,” she says. “I’ll do what I have to do. You do what you have to do.”

And so, like the aging good friends that we are, we do, before the curtain goes up for more plumbing jokes.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

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You now live at the center of a nameless territory with a radius of one kilometer, legally circumscribed by coronavirus confinement. If you were to give that territory a name, it would be your own, as noted on the form that the roaming border police may ask you to produce to explain your reason for not staying at home.

You might call where you live a neighborhood. But neighborhood implies that others share a similar sense of its borders. Under the circumstances, that would apply only those who live at your address, i.e. in your building, with the same legal radius of movement, along with the man who sleeps beneath the awning of the shuttered restaurant downstairs, were he to note that as his address, which he wouldn’t. Or, if neighborhood this is, then it’s a quiet neighborhood with lots of joggers, lots of pigeons, a few ducks, and a fine selection of bread, cheese, produce and meat products.

You might call where you live a community. But a community would have a common characteristic or shared interest that would differentiate yours from other communities. Or, if community this is, then what it shares is relative financial security and a belief that some other community will service its shops, remove its garbage and feed its homeless. It would be a community whose members acknowledge each other’s presence just two minutes per day, when applauding medical workers from their windows and balconies, before closing their curtains.

You might call where you live a village. But a village would have a place of worship, a square, a municipal building or a commercial street at its center, and boulevards, parks, mansions or monuments at its borders, and perhaps a canal or river as its edge. Or, if village this is, then it’s one with no history to celebrate, no idiot or sage, and if someone were to ask where you live in this village you would answer, as the other villagers do, that you live in the center.

You might call where you live a bubble. But a bubble sounds light, hollow, unhinged and unstable. Or, if bubble this is, then it’s one created by the second best forms of social distancing: seeking out useful information minimally, heeding current events frugally, and sucking on social media sparingly. And it would be like a bubble in a glass of champagne, one of more than a million, in a glass served in an international toast to good health.

If you still lived in Paris, you would say that you live in a time zone designated as GMT+2. But where you now live you’ve little use for a numerical notion of time. The baker does, the cheesemonger does, the pharmacist does, the stock broker does. But you now live on your own meridian, neither plus nor minus, with little reason to check the hour.

Where you now live, time is divided into two parts that ease one into the other: one part under a lighter sky, the other part under a darker sky. You’re equally at home in both the shifting brightness of the one and in the calming constancy of the other. You have no need to interpret them as the God of the Bible did when he “called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’” You don’t need a name for them any more than you need to call what you set out to do “project,” what you accomplish “productive,” what you exchange “conversation,” and what you now give to the man beneath the awning “charity.”

You don’t need a clock to know that it’s 8PM because that’s when the applause, that you may or may not take part in, starts. You don’t need a clock when, at sundown, a police car making drive-by rounds slows at the end of the street and a policeman inside draws down a window and tells the men who gather to drink wine and tall beers at the corner to break up the party and go home. Like teenagers, the gathering men complain a bit, but as the tone of the order rises they do as they’re told.

When you do check the digits of time, it’s to note them on your signed declaration indicating the who, why and when of an excursion into your namesake territory. An annoying reminder of constraint, yes. But, while you’ve been asked to produce your form under the lighter sky, you’ve never been stopped under the darker. As you put on your jacket and shoes for the latter, the outing feels venturesome, nearly clandestine. Then, once on well-lit streets, you feel curious and free. Here and there you pass a man with his dog, a jogger, a still or sleeping figure beneath a bus shelter, or a wanderer whom you recognize as neither friend nor foe but simply another.

You’re free of Paris, that place where you no longer live. Yet you’ll hear and read some people claiming that they still do. Grandstanding, they are, as they make declarations about “Paris” and “Parisians,” as if they’d been tasked with translating the philosophical or psychological or emotional state of the inhabitants of a zone designated on a map as Paris.

They will say that Paris is dormant or veiled or abandoned to nature. But Paris isn’t sleeping; Paris isn’t hidden; Paris isn’t empty. Paris does not exist. The birds you hear don’t live in Paris, they just live, with fewer other sounds to interrupt their questions. One grandstander wrote that the quiet of the monument-dotted Paris where he claims to live is reminiscent of the German Occupation. He must have been reminiscing about the life of a collaborationist, because for most others Paris also ceased to exist during the Occupation.

You wonder how journalists even manage to find Parisians to observe or interview because there are none where you now live. Parisians dress more fashionably than the people you see. Parisians smoke more and they jog less than these people who pant by you in stern prayer of good health. Parisians stand talking to each other in the middle of the sidewalk without moving until you ask them, not like these people who make room for you to pass. Parisians cut in line, unlike these people queuing a meter apart. Parisians take turns going outside with their children, not in couples like the people you see. Parisians enjoy going out after dark—they don’t turn off the lights at nightfall. Parisians flirt, Parisians are snobs, Parisians ride scooters into their 50s. These can’t be Parisians. How could they be when they don’t live in Paris any more than you do?—though many may wish they did.

Do you?

Well, you have many fond memories of Paris. Paris has taught you much: about language, culture, cuisine, wine, history, Catholics, Algerians, Muslims, Sephardim, atheists, intellectuals, Revolution, art, pigeons, cats, politics, friendship, sex, taxes, health care, love, age, death, and certainly more. You remember the way you moved from her periphery to her core.

But you no longer need Paris to reap the intellectual riches that you’ve sown, nor to enjoy the relationships that you’ve developed. You’re nearly relieved to no longer live there. What could be more satisfying than to live in this–your—place and time? What could be more fulfilling than being where you are, both connected and individual, collective and unique, part of a vast historical-cultural-eco-bio-system and alone with these thoughts?

Sometimes you miss Paris, though not for long—because this place where you now live is so true to who you are and you are so central to its life that if anything is now missing it would be something much larger or more intimate than Paris. And knowing that, you resolve to not return to Paris when quarantine ends, but to stay right where you are, centered.

Text and photos © 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

Gary Lee Kraut, editor of France Revisited, leads the Paris Vignettes Writing Workshop, an international workshop that meets weekly via Zoom. Workshop participants work on short texts, both fiction and nonfiction, not necessarily about Paris. Texts may be part of a longer work (memoir, short story, personal essay, novel). Current participants join from France, the United States, Canada, England and Israel. For details, contact Gary directly at gary [at] francerevisited.com .

The post You know you live in Paris when… You don’t appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

This morning, March 19, I slept late and so was out around 9:30 to buy my breakfast croissant. Because we are in a period of confinement at home, decreed by the government in an effort to stop the coronavirus epidemic, I had with me a printed certificate attesting to my plan to leave my apartment to buy basic necessities, such as a croissant. The atmosphere in the almost deserted street was ominous, and I wanted to make my purchase and get back home as fast as possible.

Going down the rue du Cherche-Midi, I saw coming toward me a dark-haired woman, middle-aged, plumpish, with glasses, who looked familiar. She must have also recognized me, for she stopped, observing the regulation coronavirus distance of one meter.

Then I recognized her. I used to see her at the bakery where she sold me my croissant each morning. I didn’t know her name, she didn’t know mine, but we knew each other’s identities all the same.

She spoke first. “I haven’t seen you for a while, have you been sick? And where’s your little dog?”

At that moment I was embarrassed. I could not admit to her that after having long been one of her faithful customers, I had deliberately switched bakeries. One day, on the weekly closing day of the bakery that I used to frequent, I had tried the croissants at another bakery located just a block or so farther on. They were even plumper and flakier than the ones I had been buying. So I had made the change.

I could not confess my sin of disloyalty to the woman in front of me. Instead I told her the truth, but a different truth. “I fell and broke a bone at the end of December, and I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Even after I got home, it was a while before I could walk without crutches.”

“But what about your dog?” the woman repeated. She looked truly concerned about my little wire-haired dachshund Britanie, whom I had always left attached to a hook just outside the bakery door where I, and the bakery woman, could see her easily from within.

Then I had to tell the rest of the truth, and I felt no more guilt, just pain. “Britanie is dead. She was an old dog, she was 14, and she died of a massive heart attack while she was with her dog sitter in the country. It was just before Christmas, on December 21. I was still in the hospital. I never got to see her again.”

“That’s terrible!” the woman from the bakery exclaimed. She added: “You must get another dog. Your dog was such a wonderful companion for you. It won’t be the same dog, of course, but it will be a presence in your home.”

A presence in my home. That was just the way I had always thought of Britanie. “She certainly was,” I said. I assured her: “I do plan to look for another dog, as soon as this coronavirus emergency is over.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” said the woman from the bakery. She gave me a big smile.

We went our separate ways, I returning home to face another long day of confinement. I thought about this kindly woman and how sympathetic she had been to me. And I thought about the croissants she sold. They are not that much less good than the ones at the bakery a block away. They are a little less flaky, but not enough to make a big difference. On the other hand, the woman at my old bakery is so kind, nicer than the women at the other bakery, who are polite enough but cool, who never noticed my little dog, or the moment when she was no longer there.

Tomorrow I will return to my old bakery and the kindly woman who warmed my heart in this cold, hard time.

© 2020, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post The Best Boulangerie, a Paris Vignette appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

… and texts you again the following morning at 10
Him: Bad news, there’s a strike today.
You: I know, I thought that was the good news.
Him: Not anymore. The teachers are on strike. I have to stay home with the kids.
You: Isn’t your wife there?
Him: She works in the private sector.

Version française

… t’envoie un sms à 23h
Lui : Bonne nouvelle, je suis gréviste demain.
Toi : Bonne nouvelle pour qui ?
Lui : Nous. Je pourrai passer dans l’après-midi.
Toi : Suis pas gréviste moi.
Lui : Tu travailles à ton compte chez toi. Tu fais comme tu veux.
Toi : Je bosse quand-même.
Lui : 14h, ça te va ?
Toi : Bon, d’accord.
Lui : Je dois partir à 15h30 pour chercher les enfants à l’école car les chauffeur du transport scolaire sont en grève.
Toi : Parfait.

… et t’envoie un sms le lendemain matin à 10h
Lui : Mauvaise nouvelle, il y a grève aujourd’hui.
Toi : Je sais, c’est la bonne nouvelle, non ?
Lui : Plus maintenant. Les profs sont en grève. Je dois garder les enfants à la maison.
Toi : Ta femme n’est pas là ?
Lui : Elle travaille dans le privé.

© Gary Lee Kraut

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Yet ever since you’ve spiraled up the staircase, passing the main dining room of Le Clarence along the way, a question has been nagging you, so as a waitress stops before you with a sweet smile and a tray of crab canapés you ask, “Why is the restaurant empty this evening?”

She responds, “Because there’s a private party this evening.”

“Where?” you ask.

She offers you a strange look, glances quickly to her bottle-cradling colleague, who offers a similarly strange look, then she says, ever so politely, “You’re at it, sir.”

“Oh,” you say, now feeling special, as you reach for a crab canapé from her tray and accept another pour from her colleague.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut, All rights reserved.

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© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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Preface

For over 150 years, from the mid-19th century to the early 2000s, eastern Paris was been home to a dense, working-class population, both native and immigrant, including Italians, Jews from eastern Europe, Portuguese, Muslims and Jews from North Africa, Southeast Asians and Chinese, and others. But as real estate pressures in Paris have pushed prices upward, recent arrivals to the area are more likely to be professionals and entrepreneurs with easy access to 20-30-year bank loans.

Part 1: Chadors, Communists, Cannibals

On a bright and quiet Sunday afternoon, two visitors in Paris, strolling down rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in the 11th arrondissement after languishing over brunch at Benoît Castel further up the hill, were surprised to come upon several shops selling head scarves, formless robes and Muslim prayer rugs.

Hajibs, she said. Shaylas, khimars, chadors, abayas.
Are those vocabulary words we were taught at the Alliance Française? he said. They’d met the previous fall in a conversational French class at the Alliance back home.
No, I learned them from my friend Shandra in yoga class.
How about burkas? he said.
I don’t see any burkas. You can’t wear them in the street in France, so maybe they’re sold in the back.

There were pictures of the Koran and of Mecca in one window. There was an Arab-language bookstore across the street.

Is this the hipster area you wanted to show me? he asked.
It’s the right street, Jean-Pierre Timbaud, but I didn’t expect to find Islamic shops, she said.
Or is it Islamist? he said.
Depends on who’s wearing them or is making their women wear them. Some just call them modest.
Yeh, he said, Isis.

She was blonde, athletic, in her late-40s, and wore a purple-and-yellow-striped knee-length summer dress. He was a few years older, in decent shape for a CFO, wearing knee-length shorts and a polo shirt.

He removed the cap from his Nikon and took a picture of the headless mannequins.

Among the articles that she’d printed out to bring on this 6-day trip to Paris she’d brought along two to guide them today. One was an article about Benoît Castel, the pastry chef in whose shop they’d just enjoyed an excellent brunch, from France Revisited. The other was an article about hipster hangouts and trendy boutiques on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud from The New York Times. She took out the Times article and looked at it again.

Strange, she told him, this doesn’t mention anything about Arab shops in the neighborhood.

He was now taking a picture of the Cannibale Café whose terrace splayed across a street corner at the base of a handsome beige brick building. It was one of those nonchalant café terraces that makes you want to live in Paris.

These people don’t looked like they shop for chadors, he said of the men and women scattered among the outdoor seating.

Cannibals, she said with a laugh. That’s more like it.

Walking on, they look down an opposite side street.
Bar Al Muslim, he read. I didn’t think Muslims were supposed to drink alcohol.
Dar, she said. There must be a D behind the “For rent” sign. Dar. It means place or something like that.
How do you know that?
I’ve had a life, sweety.

They were both divorced, with grown children. He had learned French while in Brussels for work for three years. She had studied French in high school and college and had continued to learn the language when she and her ex-husband lived in Lyon for two years for his job. They began dating a few weeks after meeting in French class at the Alliance Française. This was their first trip to Paris together. They both felt that their French was quite passable and headed toward fluency. They tried to refrain from correcting each other’s mistakes and pretended not hear each other’s accents. He never let on that he thought his French better than hers; she never let on that she thought hers better than his.

Just ahead the street open to a long square formed by the juncture of two nearly parallel streets.

Here we are, she said.

There were lots of bikes parked on one side, and near them a pharmacy, a pizza place, and a café called L’Arbre Jaune, the Yellow Tree. Seated in the café were the same types people as at the Cannibale, the same that stood in line for brunch at Benoît Castel, the kinds they both thought of as Parisian.

Beyond the Yellow Tree café was a building called Maison des Métallurgistes, which was divided into two parts. While she looked in at the part indicated as a cultural center operated by the city, he walked on to the other part.

He was examining the window display of what looked like Soviet-era pictures when she came over to him.
Metal workers union, he said.
Steelworkers, she corrected.
Right, steelworkers. Communists.
Are you reading that or just saying that.
Remembering that, from French class.

That’s the name of the street we’re on, she said, pointing to a plaque dedicated to Jean-Pierre Timbaud.

Parisian steelworker, she read, union militant CGT.
CGT, that’s the name of the union here. Communists.
Killed by the Nazis.

By the bus stop, where a woman with a head scarf waited beside a woman in a bright red-and-white African robe, there was a statue.

They read the title of the statue but for a moment neither of them ventured a translation because stuck on the word “répit.”
Must be “rest” of the worker, she said.
Respite, he said, of the laborer, with seven weeks paid vacation.
It doesn’t say that, she said, hitting his arm. Silly.

I wonder where Communists go on vacation these days, he said.
They probably vacation in France and complain about the system while enjoying cheese and wine, just like us.
Do I complain about the system?
Well you should. But you won’t as long as the system is lifting your stock portfolio.
My adorable lefty, he said. But you’re right about one thing, he said as two women in gray hajibs walked by in one direction and two African men in knit skullcaps passed in the opposite direction, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
That’s for sure, she said. Not a meth addict or a white supremacist slogan in sight.

They stood by a multi-colored water fountain observing people crossing the square in one direction or another: men in beige robes and slippers half off their feet; a woman with a green and yellow robe with an infant swaddled on her back; a group of young men in jeans and t-shirts hanging out by the bikes; a man wearing a yarmulke; a biracial couple.

It’s a melting pot, she said.
Some things don’t melt, he said.
I don’t like when you sound like my Nazi brother-in-law.
Just saying, he said. I’m enjoying this as much as you are.
He motioned to the Yellow Tree, where sat men and women dressed the same way they did back home, just neater and in smaller sizes.
It looks like the people in the café were just teleported there, he said, because there’s no one dressed like that walking in the street.
More cannibals, she said, confusing herself with her own joke.

They’d examined the buildings on the one side of the square and now they visited the other. There was a public nursery school next to the Saint Paul Catholic School next to the Omar Ibn El Khattab Mosque.

He’d noticed a sign on the wall of the mosque and got up close to read it. It was a simple but official-looking printed piece of paper with a letterhead in Arabic and a notice in French.

Advice to the faithful, he read aloud.
Notice, she said coming alongside him. Notice to the faithful.
He continued: We inform you that counting from Friday 29 December 2017, following to the decision of Mister the Prefect of Paris, the occupation of the public space during the prayer of Friday is strictly prohibited.
She took over: This decision will be applied by the presence of forces of order.
Enforced by the police, he said. We invite the faithful to take their dispositions…
To make proper arrangements, and to come close to…
No, to go to another mosque such as the caserne fish shop door…
That must be the name of the mosque—in the 18th arrondisssement or the mosque of Porte Bagnolet.
Thanks for helping us to preserve our mosque.

I wonder if this is where they filmed that video, she said. Every time I post a picture of France on my Facebook page my cousin in Israel sends me the same video of Muslim men praying in the streets of Paris, with the title “America Next” question mark.
She must be friends with my cousin in Oklahoma, he said. When he heard that I was coming to Paris he sent me a video like that entitled “Death to the West.”
They looked around the quiet square. The only people passing by were two joggers in shorts.
It’s a slow death, she said.

Or maybe not, he said.
He pointed to the Amen travel agency at the end of the square, with a picture of Mecca on the wall.
From what I gather, she said, the young professionals are the ones moving in. But what bothers me is that while our cousins tell us that every Muslim is a potential terrorist, the New York Times Photoshops the Arabs out from a travel article about a neighborhood with a mosque and a dozen Muslim shops.
Maybe the Times thought it would scare off American tourists if they mentioned it, he said. Everyone’s got an agenda.
What’s yours?
He winked at her and took her hand.
They both laughed.
God, I love Paris, she said.

Text and photos © 2018, Gary Kraut

Continue to Part 2, The Wall of 3 Crowns.

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