A Paris Notebook - On the Left Bank

Kalinka is now Mora... a work
in progress

Back in my room I had a soda water and ate my wrap. It was good enough. The straight back chair at the desk woke the pain in my back. I turned on the TV and laid on the bed fully dressed. CNN was the only channel in English. I watched it surprised that it had news without the usual hate mongering faces. Bored with it I surfed the channels. It didn't matter that I understood nothing of the language. One station had a documentary about history, and I could follow it... words matching up to the images... Churchill, De Gaulle, and the French Resistance. When Churchill spoke, the voiceover was in French. Distracting at first but I got the hang of it... The rhythmic cadence. It was thorough enough to go on for several hours.

I fell into a deep sleep but awoke with a strange dream. Aren't dreams supposed to be strange?

My fifth-floor balcony at sunrise was pleasant. I sat with a cup of coffee and looked out over the rooftops. Dazzled by the sight of old and new buildings painted with light, I wanted to go to the Left Bank immediately... to the Latin Quarter and google mapped the shortest route towards the Seine.

Down and over to a busy corner at Bld Montmartre, instead of a French cafe, there was a McDonalds. Hungry, but in no way would I have breakfast there, I turned away towards the Seine on Rue de Richelieu.

Random thoughts:

That was a familiar name from history. Yes, the Cardinal who had the ancient walls of cities and estates torn down declaring once and for all the Nation State of France (a good and bad thing). It was also his idea to introduce table knives... what a Clever predecessor of gun control, I grinned. Invitations to dine include instructions for those carrying sharp daggers, as was the custom, to dull blades and round the tips of their knives. It became bad manners when dining with the Cardinal and elsewhere in Paris from that day on. He had good reason besides manners to bring to the table any possible weapons. Sharp knives would present a threat to his power and his life by the nobles whose walls he'd demolished. So, when I butter my bread, it is the Cardinal to thank for not being able to use my Buck Knife in polite company. Yes, I think this way.

 

The serendipity of surprises began happening. One beautiful monument to Moliere, where Rue de Moliere veered off from the Cardinal's street, was one of many around each corner. What a treat... the nation that banned his plays and stories now honors its artists enough to have a monument built for him. I'm not a Francophile. I like the food, the women, the language, and the culture, but I don't go ga-ga over it all. I was beginning to be impressed regardless.

The street ended at the entrance of the Louvre Palace and once through it the glass pyramid was on the left and on the right, one of several Arc de Triomphes strewn willy-nilly throughout the city. I didn't have time for the interior of the Louvre. Paris, the city, had to be seen before the museums. That riverfront property housed more history than I could handle in one day or year.

Arriving at the Seine, I envisioned Ragnar Lodbrok's fleet of Viking long boats sailing up-river to sack the Ille de France. The river has more history than all the museums in the world and I wanted to go by foot along le quai de la rive droit on the same route towards the Ille de France as Ragnar's bold raid of the Norse Saga's. Fact or fiction didn't matter to me. The whole city so far had been like opening living pages of a distant and not so distant past.

There was romance along the river. Fishermen had several lines out while the couples, mostly young, arm in arm strolled, stooping every now and then to kiss for just a peck and others a full-on body and face melding. I didn't envy them, I simply felt what they were feeling. Hell, I had been in love once, and where else could youth do so with impunity and even admiration from old men like me?

Youth creates so much in the adventure of life. Yes, I was feeling old but the couples evoked memories of passion... and bliss is not an exaggeration for it; passion that rises above the hormonal flood of endorphins and evolves into love. Anyone who faults them for that is ready for the grave. It excited me with hope for the future, what little of it I had left. There was only a mild regret that I might never experience it again mixed with the pleasure of realizing I have had that sensation more than once in my life. I counted them as the river flowed by.. At seventeen there was Linda. At twenty-seven, Celeste. At thirty-eight, Katya. At thirty-nine, Kuka. At fifty-two, Adrienne. At sixty, Briana. And now it was on a whole magical detached bliss with Adrienne again. Six times, shit, I was indeed a lucky man who'd spent most of his time alone but still managed to fall for five women six times.

 

My thoughts turned to Mora. The young woman of twenty-one from my first day. Of course, it was almost an ugly thought, but I wondered. How did she see me... a fatherly figure? An uncle? A monk? Or could it possibly be, as a mark? Oh God. Don't allow me to go there.

 

Tourist launches shared the river with tugs and barges... working crafts plying the same waters. That is what I was seeing in Paris... it isn't just a tourist backdrop... like San Francisco or a Disney creation. It is still a living, breathing city with more wonder than a man can experience in a lifetime. Under the arches of the Pont de Neuf bridge, whose stones were laid long before James Town and Plymouth Rock were settled, gave me a sense of being the new guy on the block. A crane in the distance soared high over what would be the spire of Notre Dame. Sadness that it had fallen and hope that it would be restored jumbled through me... not for tourism but a symbol of the city. I was becoming more than fond of the spirit of this country. I didn't expect to feel this way.

 

I crossed over to the island at the Pont Notre Dame. Standing there awhile, the urge to go to the Left Bank towards the old Sorbonne was stronger. A Cafe there looked like a good place for breakfast as it had tables outside. I approached an empty one and walked past a woman seated near-by, blonde hair cascading over a long tan cashmere coat, before I noticed who she was.

"Max!"

I turned to see the most gorgeous welcoming smile on a woman that I could have ever have hoped to see. She waved and motioned for me to sit with her.

"Ah," I said, "A young woman in this ville antique!"

I was delighted to see a few heads turn at perhaps this old man's bad French, or more likely, her youthful beauty.

She stood, her cashmere coat opening enough to show off her long legs and short leather skirt. She asked, "Would you rather sit in the sun?"

She was taller than me and I'm six-foot. I looked down appraising her legs and to see if she was wearing heels. She was not. She looked at my feet.

I declined saying, "No, I would have to take off my jacket and you, your coat."

She laughed as we sat, noting, "We are wearing similar shoes."

"Yes. City boots for walking and they are leather for looking like shoes. You know, in case I must dine formal," and tapped the translator on my phone mispronouncing most of it, I continued, "avec une jeune femme chic."

I hadn't notice how pale her face was and how it highlighted the ruby red lip gloss.

"Are you going for a shoot?"

"No, I haf day off. I come... watch tourists."

"You too?"

A delicate forefinger's reasonably long ruby red nails pointed to a spot on the table. "I have new apartment here."

"Oh, but you no longer live near my hotel?"

"No. A gentleman thought I be mistress and bought for me,"

"Bought?"

"Yes, he put my name. Months ago.  Gone. He dump me. I think. Or I him." She laughed again. Not a nervous laugh but a guttural Eastern European one.

Her laugh turned tourists' heads again. An older man near the entrance nodded my way in approval.

The waiter came and I ordered the same as the day before with juice and coffee.

She ordered a salade au fromage de chèvre and it must have been a second glass of sauvignon blanc. I secretly wanted to taste it on her lips. Just a taste.

"It is my day off and I am, we say, je vais me saouler."

She said it slow for my benefit.

"I don't know that one."

"You want to get drunk with me?"

"Oh, I would love to, but no, I'm allergic to wine."

"Quelle pitié."

I understood pity but I would like to see how she was drunk. She seemed sober enough for me.

"No - no. I enjoy the company of pretty young women when they are drunk."

She laughed and smiled again, "You want profite de moi?"

"Are you flirting?"

"Oui, je le suis. Can't you tell. You aren't that old be my mistress."

We both laughed.

"I like you laugh like is impossible. Is common old men married have mistress heeer... not so much young ones. Parisian boys don't marry. They live with mawthers."

"Same with American youth. Hook-ups is all."

She grinned... beautiful lips showing teeth, "Hook-ups. I heard word before," and stuck out her tongue. "So, I don't go America?"

Our orders came and we stopped talking a minute.

She asked, "You like goat cheese?"

"Oh yes, I once lived in a goat pasteur."

"You old goat? I knew! Here, take bite." She loaded a fork and said, "Open."

Like a mother for an obedient child, she set the morsel on my tongue as I opened for her.

"See, you like?"

"Oui, I like anything you put in my mouth, jeune femme."

She set the fork down hard on her dish and smiled.

"Shit, I didn't mean it that way."

"J'espère ... ah, you do... you did eet?"

Oh my God. She must be drunk to make passes at me. I am fifty-four years older than she... Okay, I get suspicious. I have heard of such a thing. Hell, I wasn't born yesterday. Even as a young man in the services we know better... a beauty like this, hits-on you in a bar and you go to her room. You get your clothes off and she goes into the toilet. While she is there an angry boyfriend crashes through the door with two or three buddies and beat the shit out of you and take your wallet, watch, and rings. Happens all the time in port cities. A fool and his libido are soon parted, leaving with everything else of value. Insult to injury, the desk clerk comes to the door demanding rent... shore patrol is called, and your paycheck is garnished for the bill and damages... whether there were any or not. Never happened to me but it was common enough to be forewarned at muster before shore leave in a new port.

"Tell me, Mora, why do you tease me? I know I'm old enough to be your father."

Tears... real tears ran down her face to her pretty lips, but she wiped her face and smiled. "Max. Oh Max. You're old and be my grandfather. But I am liking you... how easy you laugh... how you came this city. You don't speak French. You have no people here. I see you on train. I say myself, this not fool. He is lonely man." She sobbed, "As lonely as me." Choking back her sorrow, she added, "I pray. I know will see him again. He needs my help... Uh... help me not be alone."

She was right. Can these tears be real? Was she more than a model but a fine actress? What is her game? I wanted to find out. Oh, brave Odysseus, naviguez au-delà de l'île de la sirène - sail on past the Siren's island.

So brave Ulysses plugged his ears and had his crew tie him to the mast and sailed on beyond the temptation to be devoured by the song of love and death. I had no mast to be tied to, no wax in my ears, or crew to row past her, I heard this Siren's song of sorrow and went willingly, eagerly but suspiciously, to her shoals. Oh Mora, you beautiful child, if only I could hold you now and caress you like we did in my dream last night. We were two people alone with each other. I was there with a lifetime of grief and she was there in her own world where her grief was hers and hers alone and where we lay in her twisted satin sheets, sun filtering through gauze curtains within the wonder of her apartment. The whole time I didn't think of Briana or Adrienne. She helped me take my time.

"There is no rush, Max. I am not hurry. You will fall in love me because that is how you are. You fall in love with it... not me, it. I will love you as no other for a time. My body pleases you?"

"You know you do."

"My belly will swell with your child. My body, like yours is now, will wrinkle and shrivel. These petite breasts you like will go old and sag, and my legs will have a roadmap of veins after you are gone. If I have you few years, I will be happy. I know that."

"Did I hear that right, my child?"

 "Yes, Max, I want you have baby. It has your mind and that pleases me. No, there are no wrinkles in it."

 

"I had a dream with you in it last night."

Her face lit up. "I had dream too. You were sables mouvants... ha, you say quicksand. I come save you and we both there sinking. It means something about change. Maybe we help each other."

"Mine was much better than that."

"Good, we dream together. We are friends now. In Ukraine, dreams mean something. I must go, mes ami."

We stood and exchanged cheek kisses. Her lips moved to mine and then she backed off. "I am sorry, Max. Embarrass you like that."

I watched her walk away with long strides...