We'll always have Paris

When I become lost in my memories it is not to a place of my childhood that I wander.  Perhaps that is phrased wrongly, indeed it is to a place that as a child I visited, but it was not somewhere that I spent a lot of time.  Most people enjoy recollecting childhood burns and braes and nooks and crannies.  I ,however, find joy in recalling childhood visits to France,  and more recent outings to Paris.  It may seem clichéd, after all it was Humphey Bogart who said, ‘We’ll always have Paris’ a phrase which continually rings in our ears.  Perhaps that is true for all of those who have visited Paris, not just for the Ricks and the Ingrids, that even when we have left, we will always have Paris.

I still remember the first time I went to Paris, aged about eight, the obligatory trip to keep the parents happy after Disney Land.  We did the perfect tourist things, we got lost in Pigalle, we gazed across the impossibly busy round about by the Arc de Triomphe and we ate the least reasonably priced croissants available.  And I hated it all.  The smells, from the pollution to the hairy, sweaty man in the metro’s armpit.  The busyness, from the crowded metros to the teeming streets.  The sheer impatience of it all.  I had expected a tranquil place, full of men on bicycles eating baguettes, with onions round their necks.  I was disappointed.

It was not till several years later when I re-visited as a more mature twenty year old that I eventually fell in love with Paris.  From the moment I spotted the Tour d’Eiffel sparkling on the horizon as I entered by Porte Maillot I was transfixed.  The language was, by this point, no longer babble to me, it was coherent, fluent, liquid beauty.  I could feel it, see it, taste it.  When I overhead a couple discussing the Cotes d'agneau grillees frites they had eaten for dinner that night I didn’t need to translate it in my head.  I could see the lamb in front of me, I could taste the crisp fries, I could smell the heady scent of the red wine in front of them.  I was in love.  

Perhaps it is rather unfair to say that this is the moment in which I fell in love with France.  No, that had happened years earlier in the cobbled streets of Clermont Ferrand.  Standing outside a bakery, Jean Jacques Goldman jammed in my ears, gazing, transfixed, upon the sheer Frenchness of it all.  It had been here that I had fallen in love, it had been here my dream had taken focus, the blurry edges had dissipated; my future had taken form.  

Returning to France was a bittersweet experience.  Here was the land I would never live in, the language of which I would never study.  I could peer in the window but I couldn’t step inside.  Disembarking the plane in Beauvais the cool air had hit me like cold reality.  It was gone, life was now an English classroom in an English department.  No French, no baguettes, no joie de vivre.  It was going to be Shakespeare, sonnets and William Golding instead.  Yet when I saw the Tour d’Eiffel glittering in the darkness I couldn’t help but fall for Paris.  It was like meeting your ex boyfriend’s prettier, sweeter fiancée.  You could be great friends but things would never be the same.  Something would either always be missing.

From Porte Maillot I took the Metro to Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, knowing the moving escalator would take me up to the Champs Elysées, into the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.  The trees lining the street would be twinkling with lights, the street bustling with late night shoppers, the sky reflecting the lights below.  I let myself be pulled along by the crowd, let myself be forced up into the street above.  But there I stopped.  I stopped and I gazed, overawed by the sight of Paris at night.  I spent my evening watching the people pass by the window of a café, sipping a coffee, wondering if anyone would notice if I just didn’t take my flight home.

The last time I had been in France before this return I had whispered as the plane took off, ‘Je vais retourner.’ But I hadn’t meant like this.  I had intended to return as a student, to study my own language through the eyes of France.  To become lost in this inconceivably beautiful language and country.  To become a part of it.

Spending time in Montmartre, the imposing, white beauty of Sacre Coeur looks down at you.  The most impressive thing you will see in Montmartre is not the art deco metro station, it is not the cobbled streets around the church, it is not the birds tamely eating off of the tables of Chez Eugene.  It is the plaque on the school at the base of the hill which tells of the students who died in various concentration camps during the occupation.  And of the teachers who were sent there with them for trying to protect them; sacrifice.  These are the things that the carefree lovers miss in Paris; they don’t see the street corners with their signs commemorating those killed for France; for freedom.  They don’t see the sobering truth of Paris; the homeless living under the bridges of the Seine.  

In July the French pour tonnes and tonnes of sand upon the stony banks surrounding the Seine.  As you walk along, ice cream in sand, enjoying the sunshine, you could easily walk past the spaces under the bridges that become homes for the homeless.  The only clue is found in the piles of bags stacked along the pillars or the bikes chained to the metal fencing preventing access.  You could miss it so easily, real life.  

I have never been in love in Paris.  I never want to be.  There is too much to miss while being so wrapped up someone else.  I never want to miss the 5 minutes of the Tour D’Eiffel’s lights twinkling every hour because I’m gazing into his eyes.  I don’t want to walk by Némo’s murals in Ménilmontant in my hurry to get back to the hotel room.  Equally I don’t want those memories when I return to France without him.  Of how his arms circled my waist as we admired Saint Chappelle or how we laughed for hours at how ugly the Mona Lisa actually was.  For me Paris is not about love, at least not about romance.  Is it possible that generations of people have got it all wrong?  Paris is not the city of love...Paris is the city of emotion? Whatever emotion we feel when we visit Paris is trebled.  If we hate something then this hatred will never leave us.  

Equally, something which we love in Paris will always be loved.  Look at those poor 12 Japanese women who fall prey to ‘Syndrôme de Paris’ each year.  We all have such high hopes for Paris, it is so built up in our imaginations as being perfect, that when it is not (and even I can admit that Paris is not, in fact, perfect) a -very- small proportion of visitors face complete mental breakdown.  Tell me that is not a manifestation of emotion.  Tell me that these woman do not feel like their heart has been ripped out when they see those crisp packets floating in the Seine, or realise that the Eiffel Tower is only a glorified pylon.

Paris is full of memory, the streets cry out of the things that have happened there.  Walking down the Champs-Élysées you can’t help but see Hitler’s tanks rolling up to the Arc de Triomphe, red Swastika flags decorating the hotels on Rue de Rivoli.  Or in Place de la Bastille the history of the revolution seeps from every inch of ground.  

One of my most favourite places in Paris is not even open any more.  Yet every time I go to Paris I seek out ‘Samaritaine’ just to stare at the building because it intrigues me.  It was shut down without notice a few years ago as a fire hazard and was rumoured to be re-opening in 2010.  If it ever re-opens I don’t think I could bring myself to go inside again.  I see it as a giant, imposing building hiding secrets within.  Abandoned mannequins leering at abandoned shelves; dastardly wooden floors threatening to ignite at any moment.  I can almost see the antique elevators with their ornate cages squeaking from ancient floor to floor.  I have the picture in my mind, I don’t need it to be ruined by the sight of new age escalators, lino flooring and displays of garish Paris fashion.

I remember the first time I visited the Arc de Triomphe, it wasn’t the height of it which struck me but the forever burning flame at the bottom; the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.   I lay in bed that night, imagining the soldier lying cocooned in concrete for all eternity, an eternal symbol of sacrifice.  I couldn’t help but imagine a mother visiting the tomb, crying for her lost son, knowing he could be in any of the mass graves anywhere in France.  In any of the graves marked ‘near here lies a fallen soldier of this regiment’.  This son of hers who could have performed all manner of feats for France, for the Allies, for freedom, is now lost and nameless.  Buried under layers of French soil, French grass with a French tombstone marking the place where he fell.  Who knows why he ended up fighting, if he even wanted to.  If he’d just stayed at home or not been in the wrong place at the wrong time perhaps he’d be an old man now.  Teary eyed every year at the cenotaph, growing old unlike his comrades, remembering them as the sun sets and rises.

Everyone has their own landmarks in Paris; the places that remind them of the last time they were there, a funny anecdote.  One of my favourite places is far more transient than the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur or The Catacombs.  I love any metro stop which has a train leaving for a station called ‘Nation’.  I have never been to Nation, but I want to go- every train which leaves for Nation is perpetually jammed-  packed full of people.  I’ve never even been able to find out what is at Nation; to me it is just the place where the green and the blue lines converge, that carriage after carriage of people drives towards.  Does anyone ever come back from Nation?  

My other favourite landmark in Paris is rather macabre and just slightly depressing.  It is a graveyard, but not just any graveyard.  It is the final resting place of greats such as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf.  It is so easy to get lost in as you walk round and round in circles, past identical tombstones.  I went to seek out Oscar Wilde’s grave, more specifically I wanted to kiss it.  Two hours later I was still wandering, seeking a glimpse of the familiar tombstone.  When I eventually found it, nowhere near where I had been looking, it was exactly as I had imagined and exactly as I hadn’t.  The stone was marred by lipstick mark upon lipstick mark, graffiti adorned every corner.  It was grubby and as unromantic as something can be.  I added my lipstick to the grave that day: appreciation.  So you see, perhaps the grave of this man is more than a grave.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a metaphor for Paris and the feelings people experience when they visit.  For once I was being a typical tourist, I had built this grave up in my mind as being a shining beacon in the middle of a leafy suburb of Paris.  What I got was lipstick and graffiti.  But this didn’t put me off, when I go back I’ll visit old Oscar again.  Just like Paris, she’s pretty grubby, but I love her anyway.  

On reflection this perhaps has not been the best description of Paris, I have not explained to you why you should go there, I have not explained to you what it is about Paris that is just so magical.  I would be a terrible tour guide.  This is the one ‘Everything You Need to Know About Paris’ booklet you would not pay good money for.   Yet what I think I have done is let you know Paris.  Do you feel as if you are just a little bit more familiar with her?  Can you imagine being in Pére Lachaise graveyard now?  Can you see the crisp, scarlet, Autumn leaves dancing dizzily from the trees? Can you see the ancient French widow hobbling to her husband’s graveside trailing a bouquet of white Chrysanthemums?  Paris is not what you think it is.  It isn’t moonlit walks by the Seine, handsome French waiters serving you ‘vin’ and old men riding bicycles with onions around their necks.  It is so much more than that.  Paris is a real moving, breathing, being, city.  It is full of life, not just tourists.  Inexplicable as it is, when we leave, life in Paris goes on.  The widows still visit their husbands’ graves, the Eiffel Tower just keeps on sparkling and the metro keeps going round and round.  

I will go to Paris again, perhaps the next time I won’t feel such enduring loss when I hear the French speaking their beautiful language.  Perhaps I will be content to study the language I was brought up to speak instead of someone else’s.  I’ll stand in the Metro blowing with noiseless, hot, breathless air.  I’ll watch the trains leave for Nation, packed full of people; no one looking at each other.  I’ll stand under the trees in Pere Lachaise and gaze at the tomb, suspended in time.  I’ll stand by the banks of the Seine and gaze into the murky depths as the garish tourist boats glide by.  I’ll stand at the shuttered doors of Samaritaine and pay silent homage to those floors which will never see the light of day again.

Perhaps the conclusion I have come to in our long ramble of through Paris is that Paris is just like a person.  Paris has so many imperfections, she is fallible, she is fundamentally flawed.  Yet I think that I can live with these flaws, I don’t mind that the waiters are rude to me when I falter in my French.  I don’t even mind that the men in Paris are just like the men in Scotland.  I can forgive Paris, not because I am in love with the idea of the perfect city.  I can forgive Paris all of her faults because I am in love with her very being.