Today is Thursday the 20th of March, 2008; or, if you prefer, the 29th of Ventose (wind), the sixth month of CCXVI (the 216th year) of the agricultural calendar adopted in 1793 during the French Revolution (and tossed out by Napolean in 1804). Supposed to be light rain and mid 40's, but lately that gets mixed with some sun....still great walking and poking around weather, and it'll warm up next week a bit. But spring is coming, and having been here 5 weeks or so now the changes are palpable and everywhere: in the feel of the air, in the extra hours of daylight (it seemed, in late December in Germany, like it was dark gray by 4pm, but now, here, two-thirds of the way through March it is light til past 7 pm), in the buds on the trees along the Seine and the Champs Elysee and in the Jardins. The sunsets are wonderful this time of year.....wild, living skies turning gray and purple with shafts of sunlight penetrating fast moving skies and dusk setting in the south west. Best viewed from one of the many bridges of the Seine itself.
Last night I was out on errands in the rainy twilight, arranging things with my not anymore local but still favored caviste (wine guy) so that you all have enough to drink (interesting tidbit....delivery is free, but if his delivery guy has to cross the river the max is 12-18 bottles). I had to cross the Seine myself to get there, and coming back a huge full moon had come up to the east and was fighting to be seen through the darkening, scudding nuages (clouds).
We moved in, in two tries, on Tuesday. Spent that morning cleaning up our soon to be late and not much lamented bathroom, then took the bulk of our luggage down to the street and around the corner to a cab stand and across the Seine to our new digs at 21 Rue du Cirque (you'll find it north of the Seine, starting one block north of the Champs Elysees, just to the left of the Avenue de Marigny and the Elysee Palace)....just one longish block. Met our 'guide' M- (more on this later), unloaded and got a few explanations of how things worked, checked the internet, took a cab back to Rue de L'Universite for a last meal with Clothilde (sad all round but also the last of her marvelous cooking and especially her tarte tatins). Then, with my tennis bag hoisted on my shoulder we walked back, across the Seine, through the Tuileries, across the Place de la Concorde, past the Hotel Crillon, made our way past the carloads of flics, gendarmes and paramilitary anti-terrorist units guarding the American Embassy on Avenue Gabriel, past the guards holding the fort on the South side of the Elysee Palace, and up the street to our new crib (the rain nicely holding off for the most part). The rest of the day was settling in and getting things to work.
Yesterday I got up and found out we didn't have the 'necessities' for our sybaritic lifestyle, so I went foraging. Local boulangerie/patisserie on the corner (check), local meat market (for the few times we might want meat--check). I returned home with the daily baguette, some almond croissants, some creme for the coffee, a banana, some overpriced strawberry jam...enough to cobble together breakfast. Late morning found us walking into centre ville, along the Rue St. Honore to the Place Colette (make note that Jaime would like the costumes at the boutique store by the Comedie Francaise), through a covered alley to the gardens of the Palais Royal, indifferent lunch, then continue into the not to be missed Gallerie Vivienne (getting cards at marvelous looking Le Grand Colbert for lunch...Jess, that'll be lunch on Saturday maybe!), and around and around. I feel good, in the sense that I have a cocky idea I know my way in Paris a bit. But on this walk, backtracking and turning this way and that, I got turned around so many times I lost track. Paris is very flat so even the boy scout 'downhill to the water' mantra is of no use here; i.e.--sometimes in the space of a few moments I don't even know which direction to look for the Seine. The streets are twisting rabbit warrens or suddenly change names even when they haven't changed direction at all. I think perhaps they have so much history and so many heroes, scoundrels, politicians (sorry for the redundancy),saints and martyrs to memorialize that each Rue and Avenue and Boulevard has to do double, triple or more duty to try and fit them all in. Thus Avenue Friedland becomes Boulevard Haussman becomes Boulevard Montmartre morphs into Blvd Poissonniere, Bonne Nouvelle, St. Denis and finally St. Martin, only changing direction slightly as it takes one across Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Republic.
'One'. I don't know what all of you know about the French language (I suspect young Jessica is our best speaker and I will be testing her at every opportunity), but the ubiquitous use of the third person impersonal in speech I find off-putting. My friend Richard once described a brief conversation he had with a concierge in Italy: 'Is it cool to wear shorts here?' 'Si senor, if one is a child.' 'One' would enjoy dinner at this restaurant, for example. Really? Well, that's what some'one' might want, but what do you want? It makes them all sound like pretentious athletes or dead emperors.
We return to our 'hood' (and to our travelogue) in the afternoon, stopping to buy some fruit around the corner from the delightful Mahfoud Hareche at Le Potager Mermoz. Mahfoud has been in Paris for 30 years but hasn't lost his Algerian accent and Paris hasn't beat out his friendly manner (or, cynically, maybe he just wants to sell us more legumes). But as we leave he does a nice thing.....seeing we are heading to the cheese shop a few doors down he runs after us and makes introductions to Jean-Luc the cheese guy...Like that, we are set up. During our l'apres midi peregrinations I also stopped at several banks to see if I could change one of my 500 euro notes (we thought we might have to pay for our lodgings up front in cash so we brought roughly $24,000 in cash, all in big notes....each worth about $800, and largely uncashable). None of the major banks would do it...if you aren't a customer sucking wind on their passbook pittances then you, pardon...'one', is scum de pond. None of the small shops can do it. But my caviste at Nicolas.....he did it. So, I'm in....as long as I continue to buy vast quantities of Bordeaux, anyway.
And lastly, les flics (the cops). Specifically, the tax police. We received an urgent email the night before we moved in......our 'facilitators', based out of Seattle, had received a phone call from someone supposedly calling from France, supposedly investigating the Italian owners of our apartment. The caller did not leave a name or number. But they called our new building manager (Linda) before we arrived Tuesday promising a friendly visit that afternoon. Our contact in the French Resistance (otherwise known as the local rep of our facilitator) has told us not to open the door to anyone we don't know...in fact not to answer the door at all and to pretend we are not there (which we just did 5 minutes ago). We are instructed to pretend not to speak any French (that shouldn't be tough). We are forbidden to answer the phones (there is a gray one and a black one....one makes a sound like attacking bull elephants, the other ring is a classical tune). We are given a cover story.....we are friends of the owners and of course staying for free and of course, a la Seargeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes.....'We know nothing!'). Above all, we don't know anybody in the Resistance....how we got the keys is a mystery. I try to explain that under torture I will probably confess to pretty much anything, but they don't listen. Anyway, so far so good (i.e.--only the one knock at the door, no one in a trenchcoat loitering around the entrance) though each day we do hear the phones, one after the other, competing with each other stereophonically. Maybe they are coming again. Who knows. Stay tuned. My next communique may have to be smuggled out out of the Bastille in a piece of bread. One lives in fear. A bientot, or perhaps adieu.
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