6. Déambulations: Paris

I was just there, and now I am here. Stepping off the subway and into a swirl of cigarette smoke, motorcycle roars and intricate steel balconies. On the smooth grey sidewalk of the Rue Monges, waiting for the little man to turn green so I can cross the street. No one around me knows I barely stepped off the A train at Jamaica Station. That I still have the pulse of New York City in my veins.

Am I really here, though? My senses are still in shock. Almost overwhelmed by the Frenchness all around me, in the words, in the architecture, the behaviors, the air. I must be in one of my daydreams, when I am homesick and wander the streets of my memories. But the little man does turn green and it seems I take my first French steps in over a year. I walk past a boulangerie, an independent bookstore painted blue, a Monoprix, a hairdresser and an antique shop. A woman rushes past me on her scooter, sa trottinette, her pearl earrings catching the early spring light. I turn left, Rue des Écoles, and watch my white sneakers journey through the shadows of horse-chestnut trees, les marronniers. I don’t see any gum or floss or trash bags, no metal basement doors.

It starts to sink in. Oui, je suis bien là , je suis à Paris. I did it, I saved for months and now I am here, home yet in a different city, belonging and discovering all at once. Little by little, the rhythm of my heart changes, adapts to the vibration of the city I am in. My american exterior gives way slowly to the French interior, my two selves exchange places.

I walk in front of a café terrace at the corner of Rue des Écoles and Rue d’Arras : “Le Bon Vivant”. A group of young Parisians are sitting there laughing, gossiping and debating, sipping their espressos and pensively taking a drag from their cigarettes. I recognize them, I know them, and yet I am no longer a part of them. They kept going without me all these years.

I haven’t really decided where I should go, so I stop out of the way and take a look at google maps to make a plan. I still have three hours before I meet my friends for lunch. In that time I want to: check out the Theatre de L’Odéon, see what’s playing tonight, and the Jardin du Luxembourg, sit at a café terrasse, see the Ile Saint-Louis, maybe go to Beaubourg. I quickly scan the display of the streets and try to make an effective plan, then I instinctively begin to build my habitual momentum. Walking briskly and with determination, excitement and nerves taking over. I want to soak it all in, take a picture of everything, make the most of it in the short vacation time I have. Soon I’ll be back in New York. I don’t trust how much I will remember and I definitely don’t want this to be a faded memory. (Yet, do I want it to be reality?)

Oh, an email from work. Can I set up conference room B for the 10AM meeting on Wednesday and order catered breakfast for 10 people. Don’t they know I’m out of town? Anxiety, phones ringing and people in suits scurrying down Park avenue make a faint appearance at the back of my mind. So faint. I quickly forward the email to my colleague and let it go.

Let it go, and breathe it all in. The sounds, breathe them in, the shapes, breathe them in.The sand and cream colored buildings, no higher than five or six stories. The windows that open in the middle, flanked by wooden shutters. Potted red flowers on a balcony. Boulevard Saint-Germain to Rue Saint-Jacques and somehow back to Rue des Écoles? I want to look at Google Maps again, but something tells me to get lost a little.

Gradually, the city intercedes and softens my New Yorker steps .A detail here or there captures my attention, like a date and the name of an architect engraved in stone: “H. Tassu Architecte 1886” Did he imagine someone like me witnessing his work, over a hundred years later? What did he think of his building? And I turn into an empty side street, and I stop to look at a tiny painting of flowers above the street name, and a ripped up poster from the last elections, and a faded bouquet from the Mairie next to a historical plaque commemorating someone who died in World War II. Maybe I don’t get to decide where I go today. Maybe Paris does. Maybe we do together.

Suddenly my trajectory is curved, elongated and twisted. Time escapes.

D’abord le Boulevard Saint-Michel

Puis la rue Francisque Gay

La place Saint- André des Arts

Et la rue Séguier

Librairie “Actes Sud”. They were the first to publish Nina Berberova in French, I believe! But the store is closed today. Un lundi matin. Trop dommage.

Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Rue Rollin.

Place de la Contrescarpe.

As the streets of Paris unfold around me, I seem to find parts of myself again, fragments that were covered by the concrete and the feet rushing around the grid. Forgotten sensations and ideas. A momentary feeling of clarity and ease.

Another independent bookstore, painted green. I walk in.

“Bonjour! Je cherche C’est moi qui souligne de Nina Berberova.”

He raises a condescending eyebrow: “Ah, ca se vend encore ca?” But he brings me to the back of the store, professionalism over taste. I step back out, French translation in hand.

Where to next? I decide to go left, and maybe I’ll walk until I find the right cafe terrace to rest a little and read. I remember a passage where Nina mentioned she used to live close to the Cafe de la Rotonde and spent hours there discussing authors over a single café-crème. Alors, c’est parti!

Des rues encore des rues, des boulevards, des avenues, des balcons, des stations de vélib’, des stations de métro, des affiches de films américains et de pièces de théâtre, des cafés, des librairies, des boulangeries,des Monoprix, des bistros, des fleuristes, des tabacs, une plaque historique: “Sophie Germain, philosophe et mathématicienne, née à Paris en 1773 est morte dans cette maison le 27 juin 1831.”, un homme qui répare soigneusement une clarinette, une mairie, du riz et des pétales au sol, des kiosques, des bancs, des poteaux, des motos, des ados, des enfants dans les parcs. Encore une rue, un autre boulevard, une autre rue et voila le Café de la Rotonde.

Café de la Rotonde. Historical, nostalgic,a little tacky. The terrasse is practically full of tourists. I hesitate. I think of Nina’s apartment Boulevard Raspail. I see her shadow on this sidewalk and I decide to sit, even if a little embarrassed. The blood rushes back to the soles of my feet, like the prickle of a thousand tiny needles. The server comes up, he speaks English to me. I try not to take it personally, “Un café allongé s’il vous-plaît ”.

I start forgetting myself as a body that other people can see and I take a moment to breathe, rest, observe, reflect on my little expedition. I take out a notebook and jot down a few words.

“Voyage à Paris. Mars 2018. Quelques mots sur mes déambulations: Independence, serendipity, synchronicity, alignment, delight.”

I put the pencil down and look around, I imagine I am Nina who came here so often in the 20s, starting her life over, shaping a new self and future with all her identities and experiences fusing at the seam inside her. I look for the signs of her Paris around me. Certains immeubles, les cheminées, les toits gris et noirs, les chambres de bonnes, peut-être le trottoir? (The buildings, the chimneys, the black and grey rooftops, the chambre de bonnes, maybe the sidewalk?)

And I notice a sweet, exhilarating sensation flowering inside me at the thought of the relationship I just formed with the city. Just by wandering. Enjoying my own company and taking myself on an adventure. Trusting myself as I surrendered to the unknown, guided by my intuition, the architecture, beauty, strangeness. My senses alert and open. Walking the same streets as Sophie Germain and Nina Berberova, as someone five minutes before me and two hundred years before that and maybe several years from now. Are we all connected, for having seen the same door, the same window frame, the same dent in the sidewalk? Are they even the same?

Now I imagine Nina sitting next to me in the present. What would she notice? Could she believe what she saw? The woman in the fuschia dress and high heels straddling her motorcycle and rushing off. The large digital ads blinking above a restaurant. The teenager sending a text hunched over his bike. Countless smartphones screens reflecting the sunlight. Tourists who flew in from around the world for a few days.

Another email from work, a pang of anxiety twists my solar plexus but quickly fades away. Le café arrive. “Merci!” For a second I wonder if my life at the hedge fund actually exists. How can it be real when I am here placing a sugar cube into my café allongé? Why did I ever worry about people walking too slowly on 50th street, and the giant slush puddles and the long dreary commutes and the overpriced drinks? My life is now crystallized in this sip of bitter coffee, in this moment basking in the sun and watching people stroll by. Tension and anxiety evaporating.

But then, so are my motivation, my dreams and my grit. Maybe I don’t want the streets of New York City to disappear entirely from me. Maybe their existence is here to heighten this moment.

I wonder.

Do I miss home, or do I miss the comfort of childhood? Do I miss a way of life, or a change from my reality?

Do I miss the streets, or this version of me that exists inside these streets, or people who remember the same streets?

Who am I in these streets, and what do I really want?

Does the place decide for me, or do I create myself inside the place?

How can I fully embrace this moment in time and space, knowing that I can’t capture it entirely, exactly and forever? That only some of it will leave an imprint in my memory or seep into my intuition?

Some moments just have to be. What will remain will remain.