A Literary Paris

Hemingway, Colette, Sedaris, and Others on the Uncommon Lure of the City of Light

Jamie Cox Robertson

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781440507403
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

You don't have to live in Paris to experience her unique beauty, allure, and enchantment. With this dazzling literary celebration of the City of Light, you can stroll along the Seine with David Sedaris in Me Talk Pretty One Day, sample croissants in a patisserie with M.F.K. Fisher in As They Were, and savor Mona Lisa's smile at the Louvre with Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad. With fascinating annotations on the works, the writers, and the wonders of one of the world's most beautiful places, A Literary Paris takes you on a bon voyage through this incomparable city--one mot juste at a time!

I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere

BY ANNA GAVALDA (1999)

Boulevard Saint-Germain, 1910

Born in 1970 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, an upper-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, Anna Gavalda is considered one of the most talented new voices in French literature. Once a high school French teacher, she now lives with her two daughters in the small city of Melun, Seine-et-Marne, southeast of Paris and writes her novels and short stories. She also contributes regularly to Elle.

Gavalda's work has been commended for its originality, and has become a common selection in schools worldwide in recent years. Her stories center around love and loneliness, thereby having an international appeal, but there is no mistaking the Parisian quality of her work. By writing with such honesty about the vulnerabilities of today's Parisian culture where a quarter of the population lives alone, she has managed to strike a chord. She published her first collection of short stories, I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, in 1999. The book has since been translated into several languages. Since that time she has published two novels: Someone I Loved (2002) and Hunting and Gathering (2004).

This excerpt, “Courting Rituals of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” is one of the eleven short stories published in I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere.

“COURTING RITUALS OF THE SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRéS”

Saint-Germain-des Prés? … I know what you're going to say: “God, that whole Left Bank thing is so clichéd. Françoise Sagan did it long before you, chérie — and sooo much better! Haven't you read Bonjour Tristesse!?”

GERMAIN-DES-PRéS SAINT

This area is named for the church that it surrounds — the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. After the Second World War, the Boulevard St. Ger-main became the intellectual and cultural site for Parisian life. Writers, intellectuals, and artists frequented the cafés, and it became the center of the existentialist movement with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir seen regularly in such cafés as Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore.

I know.

But what do you expect? … I'm not sure any of this would've happened to me on Boulevard de Clichy or in some other part of Paris. That's just the way it is. C'est la vie.

So keep your thoughts to yourself and hear me out, because something tells me this story's going to amuse you. You love this kind of sentimental fluff — having someone make your heart beat faster with these evenings full of promise, these men who want you to think they're single and a little down on their luck.

I know you love it. It's perfectly normal. Still, you can't read Harlequin romances while you're sitting at café Lipp or Deux Magots. No, of course you can't.

THE BRASSERIE LIPP

By café Lipp, Gavalda is referring to the Brasserie Lipp, which opened in 1880 and sits across the street from the famous Café de Flore and Deux Magots. Other than briefly closing in the early 1900s for refurbishment, the café has remained open and popular in Paris for decades. Today, while pricey it isn't as expensive as the other two famous cafés, and literary and political figures still meet here for drinks.

So, this morning, I passed a man on Boulevard Saint-Germain.

I was going up the street and he was coming down it. We were on the even-numbered side, which is more elegant.

I saw him coming from a distance. I don't know just what it was, maybe the carefree way he walked, or the way the skirt of his coat swung out in front of him … anyhow, I was twenty meters away and I already knew I couldn't go wrong.

Sure enough, when he passes, I see him look at me. I shoot him a mischievous smile — kind of like one of Cupid's arrows, only more discreet.

He smiles back.

I keep walking, still smiling, and think of Baudelaire's “To a Passerby.” (What with that reference to Sagan earlier, by now you must have realized I'm what they call the literary type!) I slow down, trying to remember the lines of the poem … Tall, slender, in deep mourning … after that I don't know what … then … A woman passed, with a sumptuous hand, raising, dangling the embroidered hem … and at the end … O you whom I had loved, O you who knew it.

That gets me every time.

And during all this, pure and simple, I can sense this gaze of my Saint Sebastian (a reference to the arrow, see? Stay with me, okay?!) still on my back. It warms my shoulder blades deliciously, but I'd rather die than turn around. That would ruin the poem.

I'd stopped at the curb up by rue des Saints-Pères, watching the stream of cars for a chance to cross.

For the record: No self-respecting Parisienne on Boulevard Saint-Germain would ever cross on the white lines when the light is red. A self-respecting Parisienne watches the stream of cars and steps out, fully aware of the risk she's taking.

To die for the window display at Paulie Ka. Delicious.

I'm finally stepping out when a voice holds me back.

I'm not going to say, “a hot, virile voice” just to make you happy, because that's not how it was. Just a voice.

“Excuse me …”

I turn around. And who's there? … why, my scrumptious prey from a minute ago.

I might as well tell you right now, from that moment on: screw Baudelaire.

“I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner with me tonight….”

In my head, I think, “How romantic…” But I answer:

“That's a little fast, don't you think?”

Without missing a beat, he says (and I swear this is the truth):

“Well, yes, I'll grant you that. But when I saw you walking away, I said to myself, ‘This is ridiculous. Here's this woman I pass in the street. I smile at her, she smiles at me, we brush past one another, and we're about to lose each other…. It's ridiculous — no, really, it's absurd.’”

“…”

“What do you think? Does that seem like total nonsense to you, what I just said?”

“No, no, not at all.”

I was beginning to feel a little uneasy….

“Well, then? … What do you say? Let's say we meet here, tonight, at nine o'clock? Right at this spot.”

Get ahold of yourself, girl. If you're going to have dinner with every man you smile at, you'll never get out of the gate….

“Give me one good reason to say yes.”

“One good reason…. God … that's hard….”

I watch him, amused.

And then, without warning, he takes my hand. “I think I've found a more or less suitable reason….”

He passes my hand over his scruffy cheek.

“One good reason. There: Say yes so I'll have a reason to shave…. You know, I think I look a lot better when I've shaved.”

And he gives me back my arm.

“Yes,” I say.

“Good, then we're on! Can I walk you across the street? I don't want to lose you now.”

This time I'm the one watching him walk off. He must be stroking his cheeks like a guy who's struck a good deal….

I'm sure he's enormously pleased with himself. He should be.

Late afternoon and a little nervous, I have to admit.

Beat at my own game. Should've read the rule book.

A little nervous, like a debutante having a bad-hair day.

A little nervous, like someone on the threshold of a love story.

At work, I answer the phone, I send faxes, I finish a mock-up for the photo researcher (what did you expect … a pretty, vivacious girl who sends faxes from Saint-Germain-des-Prés inevitably works in publishing…).

The tips of my fingers are ice-cold and everyone has to tell me everything twice.

Breathe, girl, breathe….

At dusk, the street is quieter and the cars all have their headlightson.

The café tables are being brought in from the side-walks. There are people on the church square waiting to meet up with friends, and at the Beauregard people are lining up to see the latest Woody Allen film.

I don't want to be the first one there. It wouldn't be right. In fact, I decide to go a little late. Better to make him want me a little.

So I go have a little pick-me-up to get the blood flowing back to my fingers.

Not at the Deux Magots, it's a little uncouth in the evenings — no one but fat American women on the lookout for the ghost of Simone de Beauvoir.

CAFéLES DEUX MAGOTS

Once frequented by Hemingway, Sartre, and Picasso, this famous café sits in a cluster of cafés in the heart of the chic Saint Germain-des-Prés. The café's name derives from two oriental statues in the dining area. Today, along with the entire area around it, this café is more popular than ever. More than its cuisine, the café's popularity is attributed to its alluring history and unbeatable location.

I take rue Saint-Benoît. The Chiquito will do just fine.

I push the door open, and right away there's the smell of beer and stale tobacco … the ding ding of the pinball machine … the hieratic bar owner with her dyed hair and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Giovanni's Room
• Claudine in Paris
• Capturing Paris
• A Tale of Two Cities
• As They Were
• Madame Bovary
• I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere
• A Moveable Feast
• Les Misérables
• The Ambassadors
• Satori in Paris
• The Razor's Edge
• A Woman's Life
• Chasing Cézanne
• Me Talk Pretty One Day
• The Innocents Abroad
• April in Paris
• Our Paris
• The Fat and the Thin
• About the Author