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From Romania to France via America Novels ¥ La TraverŽee du Styx (Crossing the Styx) |
A Marquise of Our Time: Sample Chapter ÒPilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly
coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a
copper curl.Ó Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor CONTENTS Lucky Is the Author Who Doesn't Have to Invent Jealousy Is a Wildcat from Mars A Walk Along the Flooded Seine Chez Michaux with Russian Femme Fatale and Mint Tea A Phone Conversation Without Being Phony Past Recaptured at CafŽ de Flore Brought to You by the
Flirting Corporation When Life Imitates Art and Vice Versa Like the Seine, Quietly Flows the Verbal Foreplay When I Was to Have the Fun of my Life, a Tourist Dropped
in my SoufflŽ Deconstructing Ida A Fish and the Bicycle Doucement mais sžrement, or A Patient Wolf Never Starves Troubles with the Other Woman The Best Literary Conversations Are Consummated in Bed Breaking Thespian Legs in Paris Monsieur X of Editions Y A Most Inopportune Visit If I Were the Dictator of United States Highs or Lows Life Flows or Blows Stilted Life with Marquis, Coat of Arms, and Armagnac Rubbing Knees with the Aristocratic Couple Honesty Never Goes Unpunished No Happy Ending Man Ray's Imaginary Masterpieces My Stalingrad Commences chez King of Expats Take Your Pleasure and Run When in Doubt Trust Your Dirty Mind Self-Censorship: Literature's Worst Nightmare Never Underestimate Your Last Day in Paris Unexpected Addition to an Unending Story Angel Ascending A Walk Along
the Flooded Seine The last winter month of the new millennium, despite its spring lull
around St Valentine's Day, painted Paris in all shades of gray. Dark sky and
drizzle were the daily fare for the zooming-in tourist who cursed his luck.
The Seine had overflowed its banks and the romantic promenades along the
quays and the multilingual boat tours under the historical bridges seemed
joys of a past century. The wind made its visible presence in the overturned
umbrellas of hurried pedestrians. One grudgingly gets used to even bad weather, but nature has its own
way of adding fresh misery to one's already gloomy disposition. The clouds gallop
away and a postcard brightness and warmth pour over the city like manna from
heaven—just long enough for a lazy stroll on the grand boulevards or in
the landmark gardens. But as soon as the hapless tourist takes his outdoors
happiness for granted, the clouds rush in and rain slants with renewed vigor. This was the case that Saturday afternoon when Providence merged my
path with Ida's. As I was contemplating an afternoon in front of my laptop,
struggling with a frustrating chapter of an earlier novel, the unexpected
blue sky stretched its invisible hands through the window of my studio in the
Latin Quarter, dragged me out into the street by the ears, and sent me tumbling
with a kick, so to speak. I opted for a long walk along the flooded Seine, somewhat disappointed
that the river hadn't repeated its 1910 performance. The bouquinistes along the quays would have made an additional euro
or two by selling more than just postcards of mustachio matelotes ferrying
overdressed ladies across the street. How about a skinny dip on rue de Seine? I took the metro west as far as Pont Mirabeau and worked my way
upstream to the Latin Quarter. Why Pont Mirabeau? Because just days before
I'd come across a whole bookstore window dedicated to a Romanian-born poet
who had survived Auschwitz, but not his private hell. After I leafed through
his correspondence to his wife, I made a point of visiting this final stop in
his tormented journey through life. I walked on both sides of the bridge,
trying to imagine the soul-chilling blizzard that had swept him over the
edge. This is my second year in Paris. I left America in order to fulfill an
old dream. With 3.5 plays and 1.7 novels neatly stored in my laptop, I came
here to live the life of an Žcrivain.
According to Dostoevsky, "two times two equals four is the beginning of
death" (it might not be the beginning of death, but it sure is the death
of art), but in Paris two times two equals four point something. It nearly
amounted to five during the roaring twenties and thirties, but then la
gloire, too, follows the intrinsic law of
the stock market: it has its ups and downs. Whatever the score, Paris remains
a classy courtesan who sooner or later winks you into sampling her charms. The best nourishment for a writer is his environment. His experience
should outweigh the books on his shelves and the dirty mags under his bed. In
Paris even the cobblestones speak to him. They've seen more than any other paving
stones in the world. So much history has polished them, so much blood has
washed them, so many legends have trotted on them—their thoughts and
madness still floating in the air like errant ghosts. From the sans-culottes'
debacle to the students' Molotov-cocktail spectacle, from Lucien Chardon's
lost illusions to Jane Doe's delusions, they haunt and inspire the artist. So
here I am, eager to possess her jusqu' ˆ la moelle, spanks et al. Walking along the river, I mused that the Seine would be of no use in
ferrying me to the underworld, even if I were in a hurry to get there. I've
swum in many trouble waters, and my survival instinct has delivered me from
sneaker waves, barges, devil churns, speed boats, white-water stumps and
bumps, and even a waterfall. The Seine challenged me as much as a
five-year-old splashing in a wading pool. I would have been floating on my
back enjoying the view until they fished me out. Of all the rivers that I cross Where shall I rest my cross? There is nothing original about moving to Paris. All those who felt different
or elect have done it since pre-revolutionary times. The Marais and the Latin
Quarter are full of expats and ingrats. The natives must be fed up with
ŽmigrŽs writing about the French experience. Over two hundred American novels
alone in less than two hundred years, a researcher points out. Without even
counting the myriad of travel books! My first brush with Paris dates from my refugee days—before
immigrating to America. While waiting impatiently in a concentration camp
south of Rome, with no electric fences and no armed guards, but a concentration
camp nevertheless, I ventured across the border, sans papers and sans money,
hidden in the ceiling of a train. I had to sleep under the bridges until some
stranger shared the floor of his boat and the coffee in his pot. He was an
Englishman, my host. I hardly understood him, but surprisingly, for a Brit,
he made excellent coffee. Years had flown by like troikas on the Russian steppes and a month
before this story begins I visited my economically transplanted sister in a
small town near Torino. Life is not a bed of potatoes for the hard-up Romanian.
She or he wanders all over Europe, looking for work. After a week of
rediscovering Italy and comforting my divorced sister with a brighter future
(she has a hard time making ends meet while supporting a daughter and a son
in college back in Romania) I was ready to return to Paris. The crossing of
the French border brought back memories of guards cracking jokes, unaware
that in the cramped quarters above the ceiling an illegal alien was hiding.
Now the same alien with an American passport in his pocket felt as confident
as Moses crossing the Red Sea. But irony is my Social Security number. Even
though Italy belongs to the European club, the French still check papers on
trains coming from its Latin cousin. The beefy border guard asked me where I
lived, and I proudly said: "Paris." He pointed out that my
three-month visa had expired. Since I didn't have a carte de sŽjour or a return ticket to the States, he threatened to
send me back to Italy. I already saw myself sneaking across the border like a
contrabandist in a Fernandel movie. So I was hauled unceremoniously into the
police station of a freezing alpine town with a dozen Pakistanis and Afghanis,
who couldn't believe their luck that an American was a fellow in misery, and
three Romanian gypsies, one of them flauntingly pregnant. The guards searched
my pockets, my wallet and my bag to the last condom. What saved me was a forgotten
copy of my first novel at the bottom of my bag. Thank God, the French still
have a soft spot for writers. An hour later I caught a train to Paris. Let's get on with my promenade. On the flooded AllŽe des Cygnes two
male ducks were ruffling each other's feathers for the graces of a female
preoccupied with personal hygiene. A third male, waddling on testosterone,
was fast approaching. As I was cutting through the bustle in front of the
Eiffel Tower, a far-Eastern runt with a hat that resembled a rolled-up condom
tried to entice me to his trinkets. A mutt with a pair of wheels for hind
legs (surgically removed) sniffed the pavement behind an old couple. It was
both funny and sad to watch the tail-wagging mutilŽ trying unsuccessfully to mark his passage. At the golden flame, above the entrance to the fatal tunnel, tourists
were paying their respects to the British princess. I looked on, my mind
drifting to another princess. She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and
the niece of the last Russian tsar who married an un-charming elephant-eared
Romanian prince. She became queen, wrote books, supported artists, and saved
her kingdom from fighting on the losing side in the Great War. Her popularity
drew more crowds than the American president who was fanning his ego for
delivering the world from tyranny. My first residence was a dwarf hotel near what used to be "the belly
of Paris," owned by an ancient long-winded and broken-winded Bulgarian
whose avarice surpassed any stereotype. Getting to my mansard was an adventure
in the dark. The light went off before reaching my destination. Every
morning, the patron hung around the bathrooms to make sure that those who had
paid for bathing privileges weren't passing the key to those who hadn't. When
I asked him why he didn't install curtains in the showers or replace the
leaky hoses, he snarled: "If I make it comfortable, you'll be napping in
my tub. You came here to enjoy Paris, not my hot water!" Monsieur
Scrooge owns a chateau somewhere and is rumored to have millions in the bank,
but he would only buy one banana at a time for his bed-ridden wife who whined
in one of the rooms upstairs. A Moldavian with major conspiracy theories short-circuiting his brain,
whose shrewdness almost matched that of the patron, advised me to conceal my
Romanian origin if I wanted to "meet people." "But the French used to like us," I said. "Not anymore!" And he gave me a full account of the crimes
our fellow countrymen have committed since the fall of communism—from
stealing sausages in supermarkets to robbing parking meters and banks.
"A new scandal almost every day! They accuse us of mistreating orphans,
gypsies, women, dogsÉ" "I assure you that after 18 years of living abroad," I wrote
to a member of the French Academy I'd befriended at a book signing, "my
feelings for the old country have been lying in deep freeze ever since I
remember. The Romania I grew up in was not the country your father
describes—care-free and prosperous, mahogany bars and restaurants
second only to Paris, but one with shortages of every kind and food lines,
with ugly architecture and stinking factories, with informers and secret police,
with people risking their lives to get out. After more than forty years of
alien ideology, their poverty and amorality have pushed many of them into
petty thievery and complicated schemes of corruption. My patriotism goes to
your father's idyllic Romania. Except for its political turmoil, I miss her
too." Waves of tourists were taking the Ferris wheel on Place de la Concorde
by assault. Some two hundred years ago this square was the hellish image of
thousands of chopped heads, but now, like any other square in Paris, it is a
tourist attraction. Air-conditioned buses from all over Europe vomited their
human cargo armed to its teeth with cameras and camcorders. Among them: a
German Touristfahrt. Which made me
laugh hysterically. As I walked in Le Jardin des Tuileries, a poster caught my attention: Picasso
Žrotique. It was happening at the GalŽrie
Nationale, situated in the northwest corner of the garden. During my last
trip to Paris, I had visited the Picasso Museum and was extremely amused by a
she-goat with a bigger-than-life vagina. I decided to share Picasso's erotic
fantasies. There must have been more than a dozen "Viol" drawings which didn't fare well with the
politically correct crowd. Le Maquereau's fishy humor (mackerel & pimp) had me in stitches. The eye of
the one-eyed Mateau brother sitting in Anita's lap glowed for two as he
fondled a ripe melon. Deux Figures avec une chatte, featuring a busy couple with a burly pussycat looking
on, made me muse of Gertrude Stein's famous line which had deflated Picasso's
poetic ego: "Pablo, go home and paint!" The right title for the
painting should have been: Two Figures with Two Pussies. I rejoined the Seine on Pont du Carrousel. The blossoming trees along
the quays were submerged several feet under the water. No sign of benches.
The swollen river looked even more spectacular from Pont des Arts with a
surreal Ile de la CitŽ about to sink to its bottom. A King Tut impersonator
sweated in his golden polyester garb. A stout woman played the accordion. A
Police boat fished out a floating suitcase. I dropped a couple of coins in
the woman's cup. The accordion always makes me homesick. It transports me to
childhood, to the colorful weddings in my village where snot-dripping kids
played among merry giants. A brunette with dreamy brown eyes intrigued me. A foreigner most
likely, I thought, judging by her cross-country outfit and oversized backpack.
I was right. She had come all the way from New Zealand to discover Paris, and
it was her last day. She looked sad, not because she was parting with a
lover, but because there was no one to kiss goodbye. After two weeks of
sights, museums and sore feet, she was leaving without the thrill of a melting
glance, a stolen kiss—all that pit-a-pat that the French novels must
have fired her imagination with. I thought about inviting her to dinner. I'm
glad I didn't. If I did, this book would have never been written. By the time I reached Place Saint Michel, it had begun to rain. I hurried
to the CybercafŽ on rue Saint Jacques, hoping the drizzle would stop by the
time I checked my email. I don't know why, but every time I go on line I have
this weird feeling as if my blood has been substituted with Coca-Cola. Among
offers of discounted Viagra and penis enlargement, a material girl from the
States, whose husband had become immaterial (cremated) after a ski accident,
wished to "borrow" my company for a week. I wrote back that with
her luck I might be fatally hit by space junk on top of the Eiffel Tower. A Latvian
actress I encountered at the CafŽ de Flore sends me ÒloveÓ from the Vilnius
National Theatre. Amazing how foreigners catch on fast about the
meaninglessness of certain words and expressions in the English language. As I was staring at the computer screen, reading dead messages from as
good as dead people, I asked myself: What am I doing in Paris? What am I
searching for? Life has been pretty rough to me; is it going to get any
better? So far I've lived a mundane existence with extraordinary frustrations
for the writer and ordinary pleasures for the man. I've plucked the
fast-wilting flower of lust while waiting for love. Many years from now I
yearn to look back on my days in the City of Lights with a racing heart. On
the grave of my illusions, I want the ultimate epitaph: It was better than
sex. |