There will always be a France.
On
the airplane the stewardess, middle-aged and personable, returns my smile. So I
ask her if the air temperature inside plane could be made a little less chilly. She
will take care of it; we are on good terms. After the Air France meal,
continental dining at midnight over the Atlantic – memorable because of the
quality of everything on the tray (the cheese! the wine!) —she pushes a trolley
between the aisles. Is there more? More coffee perhaps.
It
is very dark, very late, mostly very quiet, still a little chilly, and the
hours are rapidly escaping because we are losing time rapidly as we head east.
It will be a short night, in which I will try to will myself to sleep, followed
by a very full day. She murmurs something I cannot quite hear. I look my
question.
“Cognac?”
Cognac!
“Mais
oui!”
Approaching
central Paris, in the hands of a young Parisian driving a hired car on a Sunday
morning, the avenues are very broad, the architecture magnificent. The scope of
the urban public design impressive – a Washington DC size public mall tucked
inside Manhattan -- the continual parade of statuary and stone carving, on
buildings and stand-alone, figurative, ornamental, is astonishing. Beaucoup de
grandeur. Nothing will ever be built this way again, anywhere on earth.
When
you leave the big squares, wide avenues and monuments, the approach to size and
space is very different. The “rue” on which our hotel is situated is narrow, a
mere alley by American standards, but very charming. It looks the way it's supposed to. American drivers would
have difficulty traversing it. But small and narrow is part of the appeal here.
The buildings, four-five stories, the streetscape, the tall windows, all are
perfect; speaking once again to a city that established beauty as its first
criterion.
Our
hotel front, distinguished by a show of green including a little forest of
bamboo beside the doorway – no room for an English garden in this street layout;
if you want trees, grass, flowers, go to the formal gardens and public parks –
is squeezed neatly into the street. At the end of its modest lobby is a narrow
elevator for taking ourselves and our luggage upstairs. Inside, the lift is an
area the size of a phone booth.
Voila,
I think. The secret.
The French have kept
and scrupulously maintained everything in the city that is old and beautiful, and
simply squeezed the new facilities, when absolutely required, into the smallest
possible space. Careful not to ruin the esthetic effect. This is we suspect a
tough city for wheelchairs; no ADA.
We
pull the two wheeled suitcases into the phone-booth elevator, rearranging our
positions a few times in order to leave space enough for the security door to
close. At our third floor landing (that would be fourth in American but the
French start counting floors with zero) you find yourself in a landing with just
enough space to execute a left turn with a wheeled case and address your locked
door. It’s an approach sure to winnow the field of less able guests. And
when the door opens you find yourself in a curved arc of narrow tunnel, more
like the design of the intestine than anything you expect to find in linear,
symmetrical classical France. You pull your suitcase through the curve – a salle de bain, retrofitted, opens off one
side of this corridor; then tunnel on until – enfin! – an actual room appears: wide
bed, narrow furniture, and some graceful curtained windows designed in the –
well, French manner – that open from the center.
When
you pull them open and look outside, there it is – rows of apartment windows
that look exactly like your own, their own silky curtains floating above the
charming alley. Admirable! Tres charmant!
Paris!
No comments:
Post a Comment