Impressions

by Susan Weber

Paris can feel like a high speed chase in a car with the windshield gone. Spectacular landscapes overload the senses. Writing helps me slow things down. It’s late in the evening of my first full day exploring. I sit and sip my dry rosé, rereading what I wrote today.

Sunrise…
My most potent emotion is wonder. Here spreading butter on baguette I watch la mouche noire, a black fly buzzing through the window. A woman and a man talk in the courtyard three floors down. They take me back to the coast of Italy when I sat in the lemon grove behind our hotel. I had slipped away from sleeping sons and husband with my notebook. From open windows up and down the valley I heard voices and kitchen sounds of people waking to the day. I was barely passing through their lives. Back then, going off solo to write was how I claimed a snippet of family vacation. This seems foolish now—how I miss the daily give and take.

Noon…
Salmon quiche, carrot salad, a diet coke. It’s nice to eat in. I stopped by the desk downstairs before my walk to ask about the late night visitor. The staff was very sorry that it happened. They said his door was across from mine; he got mixed up; he checked out this morning. I need not think of him again.

It’s tourist season and despite the overbearing heat, the city has endured. This morning we found ourselves with sprinkles from a moody sky. I walked to places recommended by my dear friend who once lived here in the Marais neighborhood. The name of the city’s oldest outdoor market, Marché des Enfants Rouges, means Market of the Red Children. When the market was established in 1628, the nearby orphanage dressed the children in the color of charity. I imagined little kids trotting down the street in a line, cheeks flushed to match their scarlet uniforms.

From there, by way of the fashion district, I passed the Picasso museum. The ornate building has been embassy, ducal residence, and a school in which Balzac studied. Streets that led to Place des Vosages were steeped in culture. A tenor sang an aria beneath the arches, his face as radiant as his voice.

Evening…
All afternoon and into evening I walked the tourist sites and neighborhoods connecting them. Angelina Paris is an elegant tea house known for a pastry named Mont Blanc: a meringue base and cream filling topped with chestnut spread. I ate mine in the Tuilleries where children played in the whispered rain and parents watched from folding chairs. I continued on through streets dwarfed by the Eiffel Tower, all my pictures pointing up.

I walked past bookstores, monuments, crusty loaves of sourdough, and a scale of opulence I could not make sense of. I thought for sure the golden domed riverside property had housed a monarch or two. It turned out to be Les Invalids, home and hospital for veterans from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Napoleon lies there still.

People…
I can barely keep up with a young man crossing at Hôtel de Ville. Besides his carrot colored hair, almost everything about him is black and white. His legs are long in his loose black jeans. He wears a white tee and wireless earbuds. A rolex slides down his freckled hand. His splay feet wear black shoes decorated by bright green snakes. He stubs his cigarette under one of these, unzips the satchel at his narrow chest and tidily extracts a card. His studied carelessness intrigues me. I want to follow him down to the metro, this Dylan in a French disguise. I know nothing about him, really. Except I think he might like snakes.

Posing with her family outside the Louvre is the designated mom with a sculpted bob. Her frilly polyester sleeves ripple in the tepid breeze. Sandal straps squeeze her feet. Last week’s heat would have wilted her. Today she’s got a fighting chance to visit Paris as a women who cares about appearances. My interpretation, not hers.

At café tables, dark-skinned youths reach across each other, flicking ashes at a porcelain dish. Infectious grins defy the haters. But some will hate. We all know that. Or do we?

The tall man has an extra long neck. His hair is recently styled. Confidence drives his flat-footed stride. He’s rolled his sleeves to his elbows, the back of his shirt stained darker than the rest. His companion, tall as he, wears a pencil skirt, low healed shoes, bobby pins in silky hair, and tiny pearl earrings. When she turns toward him to rub his back I see her pert nose paired with an embrasure the likes of Freddy Mercury. I wonder what her story might be and is she happy.

So I wrote the day. Now I’ll pour out my wine, turn down the covers, check my phone. Years ago, in pregnancy, I’d eat for two. Today I sampled Paris for myself and for the one who doesn’t get to be here in a mortal way. I know my husband more than I’ll ever know the human swirl around me. To look through his attentive eyes is to recollect constancy. I count on him to ground me, here in the city of light.


Photo Susan Weber CC BY-SA 4.0