Paris Was Ours (32 page)

So it’s annoying when you head to the market, clearing a path with your basket, and the tomato guy doesn’t serenade you, and treats you just like any other customer. (And worse, you discover a couple of rotten tomatoes at the bottom of the bag.) Or worst of all, your corner bakery, where you go every day, has changed bakers.

When I first moved into my apartment, its biggest plus—aside from sporting the world’s most meticulous paint job—was the fantastic baguettes from the bakery just across the street. Each slender loaf was a dream, baked to a rough, crackly brown finish with little bits of flour clinging to the sharp ridges,
which swooped down the loaf at curvy intervals. The counter clerk would rifle through the basket to make sure to pick out an especially good one for me, because she knew how much I appreciated it. Then she’d wrap a small square of paper around the center, give it a few sharp twists to seal the ends, and hand it over with a genuine, “Merci, monsieur, et bonne journée!”

The moment I grabbed my loaf, I could feel the heat radiating through my hand and could barely wait until I was outside before I tore off and devoured the prized crusty end,
le quignon
. By the time I reached the top floor of my building, I had polished off half the baguette, and there was a telltale trail of little flaky crumbs behind me to prove it.

One late summer morning, a few years later, the bakery reopened after
les vacances
. Excited they were finally back after their annual month-long holiday, I nearly burst through the door as soon as it swung open, but was startled to see a new woman behind the counter. After I ordered, she brusquely slammed on the counter a baguette she absentmindedly plucked from the basket, one that was remarkably smooth and pale, with nary a blemish. When I hefted it, I felt like I was lifting a sledgehammer. I didn’t need to take a bite to know that something was wrong.

Outside, I ripped off the end and popped it in my mouth; the floury taste and gummy texture were a few steps in quality below what was on offer at my local Franprix.

DESPITE MY SETBACKS
, I was proud I had survived
le bizutage
, the hazing you must endure when you move into a new neighborhood in Paris, spending a solid year befriending the local merchants so you get good service. Sometimes you’re
successful, like I was at my local
boulangerie
; other times, not so much, like with the nasty lady at the chocolate shop a few blocks away, whom I was never able to crack.

I knew I had made it here when the woman at the charcuterie finally responded to my friendly overtures and actually carried on a conversation with me, one that lasted for a couple of minutes, instead of her usual grunt in my direction. And our chat consisted of more than how many
saucisses
I wanted and if I wanted regular wieners or the ones
aux herbes
.

That was after five years of visiting her charcuterie twice a week, which means I shopped there over five hundred times before I was met with something other than a disdainful grimace. No longer does she see how thick she can get away with cutting my four slices of
jambon de paysanne
, and sometimes she even lets me get away with giving her a €10 bill on my €8.50 purchase, without making me rifle through all my pockets for exact change. (The French like taking money, but they don’t like giving it back.) Funny how one measures success around here—by no longer needing to have exact change, and by the thickness of ham.

Parisians have a reputation for being difficult, and sometimes kindness seems to be a priceless commodity, doled out parsimoniously to the lucky few. Yet I’ve managed to survive any wrath I’ve invoked with my special brand of American optimism (and brownies). I’m also grateful that I’m probably treated better than someone who moved to America would be, not speaking a word of the native language, trying to get by in a foreign land.

What helped was that I understood the food and tried my best to adapt to the culture, rather than trying to make the
culture adapt to me. I arrived knowing a fair amount about the pastries, cheeses, chocolates, and breads, which impressed the French, and I also soaked up as much as I could. More important, though, I learned to take the time to get to know people, especially the vendors and merchants, who would patiently explain their wares to me. Plenty of people who move here arrive wide eyed and excited, only to leave after a year because they miss their favorite brand of shampoo, or air-conditioning, or customer service, or 110 cm shoelaces (which I finally found at Target, in Houston). I’ll admit there are plenty of things that I miss, too, but I have also made new friends, had quite a few unusual experiences, and feel much more a part of the global community than I would had I stayed in the States.

Once I learned the rules and got past the inevitable emotional bumps and bruises that an outsider anywhere must endure, I became a regular fixture in my neighborhood:
l’américain
and
chef pâtissier
. (I’m pretty certain the first distinction wouldn’t have worked out quite so well if I hadn’t had the benefit of the second.)

I do my best to act like a Parisian: I smile only when I actually have something to be happy about, and I cut in line whenever I can. I’ve stopped eating vegetables almost entirely, and wine is my sole source of hydration. I never yield to anyone else, physically or otherwise, and I’ve gotten so good at giving myself a shot that I’m beginning to think my mother was right—I should have been a doctor.

But I make sure to always stop for a handshake and a chat with the vendors at my market, who have become my friends—Jacques, who sells the best olives and tapenades from Provence, and José, at the Graineterie du Marché, whose bins are stocked
with all sorts of lentils, grains, salts,
pruneaux d’Agen
, and
le pop-corn
, which I think he carries just for me.

My Sunday mornings wouldn’t be complete without picking up a
poulet crapaudine
, a spatchcocked salt-and-herb-crusted chicken, roasted to a caramel brown crisp by Catherine, the wacky chicken lady who loves to yelp over the other shoppers clustered around her fired-up rotisserie: “Daveed—howare-youIamfine!” in one nonstop greeting. And since the pork lady decided I’m okay, my life’s become not just sweeter, but richer, too. There are lots more pâtés,
boudins blancs
, and
saucisses aux herbes
in my life, plus an occasional
goûter
of
jambon de Bayonne
when she’s feeling generous.

And, of course, there are the fish boys. Because of them, I now enjoy more fish than ever.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience things that very few outsiders ever get to see in Paris: early mornings hefting slippery eels, overseeing chocolates at one of the finest boutiques in Paris, and an educational trip to harvest salt off the Atlantic coastline, which included a delicious detour (of which there are many in France) where I learned the secret of salted butter caramels from a native Breton chef.

I’ll know for sure that I’ve made it here when I buy outfits specifically for taking out the garbage. And when it seems to make perfect sense to me that the switch that turns on the light inside the bathroom is located outside it. When during the stifling heat of summer, I know enough to keep my windows firmly closed at all times, to avoid the possibility of coming into contact with any fresh air—which would make me very, very sick. And when the gap-toothed vendor at the marché d’Aligre stops feigning surprise when I point out that the bag
of cherries on his scale is (courtesy of his thumb) off by more than just a few grams—a benefit of my pastry chef training.

I know I’ve finally arrived when my doctor no longer wonders why I’ve brought a flashlight to my appointment. When the change from my €1 purchase is 37 centimes, and the cashier doesn’t hand me back 37 individual centimes as punishment for not having the exact amount. And if someone says to me, “That new shirt looks terrible on you,” I take it as a compliment—because in that special French way, they’re actually doing me a favor.

On visits back to the States, I always anticipate the trip, thinking, “Ah, I can’t wait to be around people who understand me.” But that isn’t always the case anymore, and nowadays I’m not quite sure where I fit in: here or there. And I’m okay with that.

Every day in Paris isn’t always so sweet. Although I’ve tried my best to fit in, no matter where you plant yourself, there are certain to be ups and downs. I embarked on a new life in Paris without knowing what the future would hand me. Because of that, my life has turned into quite an adventure, and I often surprise myself when I find I’m easily mingling with the locals, taking on surly salesclerks, and, best of all, wandering the streets in search of something delicious to eat.

It’s the bakeries with their buttery croissants served oven-fresh each morning, the bountiful outdoor markets where I forage for my daily fare, the exquisite chocolate shops that still, after all these years, never stop astounding me every time I visit one, and, of course, the quirky people that really make Paris such a special place.

And I can now count myself as one of them.

Le Départ

I
T WAS AFTER
nine when we headed into the Bois de Boulogne that evening, yet, since it was northern Europe and midsummer, it was still only dusk. It was, in short,
about to be
. Which pretty much described the state of everything, on this night, for us. We were about to be gone. I’d ordered a taxi to the airport for the next day, sold our appliances and household things, dispiritedly, to strangers for outsize, brightly colored bills with writers on them—Voltaire on the hundred-franc note, Saint-Exupéry with his spritelike Petit Prince on the fifty—noting with irony that this currency, too, would soon be disappearing, supplanted by the euro.

I’d felt invaded, irrationally, by people who’d arrived by way of a classified ad, picking over our possessions in a manner that seemed brutal, ripping them from us, taking away the television on which Julian, my seven-year-old son, had watched strange marionette shows on Wednesday afternoons when the schools were closed and I’d tuned in to Arte, the Franco-German television channel, with its sometimes startling avant-garde programming, in the evenings after he finally dropped to sleep.

Gone was the cassette player on which he’d listened to E. B. White, more Wednesday afternoon fare, intoning over and
over his joy at having found—in a spider! — someone who was both “a true friend and a good writer.” The final words of
Charlotte’s Web
had sounded delightfully discordant the first time I heard them, hardly less so in the dozens of times since.

I’d implored friends to take all that wasn’t sold, the pots and pans, the bunk bed from IKEA, which I’d painted a shade called Breton blue. I’d rolled up the large Persian carpet, ancient, threadbare, beautiful, an heirloom that a friend had passed on to me before he, too, left town. I sold the much-too-big-for-me man’s bike—gift of another departing friend—on which I’d wobbled through the Bois, to a businessman who gave me a deposit, promising to send on the rest. (Ha!) Julian’s bright red bicycle went, too, the one on which he’d ridden beside me on so many Sunday afternoons, past the roaring smog of the
périphérique
, into the strange, almost artificial-looking countryside that was the Bois, desolate and far flung.

The young mother who bought Julian’s bike paid in full, I’m glad to report, although at first she refused the training wheels. (French children hardly need them; they begin riding miniature two-wheelers while still tiny themselves.) I offered them again anyway and she took them then, to humor me, I guess, and I still remember standing next to her, in the long, angled courtyard of the Villa Chanez, where Julian had zig-zagged back and forth on a succession of damp, gray winter Saturdays, learning to ride without them, and hearing her say that she lived in a nearby suburb with a surprising name, a place called Paradise.

So do I, I thought, as it all began to dissipate around me.

All that was left, besides our suitcases, were our mattresses and a telephone, a particularly complicated French variety—is
there any other kind?—that seemed to require a degree from MIT or, more fittingly, the École Polytechnique, to operate. It was the final vexation, burlesque in memory: I’d turned its ringer off long before, since the fax machine in the same room rang loudly enough. But now that was sold and the phone’s ringer couldn’t be reset without a screwdriver and a complicated set of instructions, both of which were packed away …

The curtain was coming down on the Villa Chanez, with its six identical golden brick buildings curving gracefully around a bifurcated central courtyard. Every detail of our cul-de-sac seemed iconic, from its rows of tall, balconied windows to the vast, geometric-patterned front gate through which people flowed each day, like the tide, greeting one another incessantly, “Bonjour, monsieur,” “Bonjour, madame.” Very little beyond these words broke the courtyard’s habitual, almost unnatural silence. The iron gate would click open and shut, the
gardien
might sweep the courtyard, and every few months a discordant ringing bell indicated that the itinerant knife sharpener had arrived. Otherwise, it was just soft footsteps or clicking heels and “Bonjour, monsieur,” “Bonjour, madame.”