Travelers' Tales Paris (33 page)

Azay-le-Rideau was just a few more miles down river. I was prepared to like Azay-le-Rideau from pictures I had seen, but they did not prepare me for the jewel-like setting in a tiny tributary of the Loire, the Indre. Unlike the larger stand-alone counterparts we had seen earlier which dominated their surroundings, Azay-le-Rideau is small, just the right size for the setting, and blends into the willow-lined banks of the Indre. It belongs there. It exudes peace, class, and style; it is the Jackie Kennedy of châteaux. I remembered Balzac had described Azay as “a multi-faceted diamond in the setting of the Indre,” and we saw the diamond aspect when the sun glinted off the river. We circled around several times at different altitudes trying to get a balance of the château, the river, and the trees to capture the harmony it reflects; to put on film the impression I had in my mind.

The pilot waved cheerfully as we climbed to our cruising altitude. He was very proud of his châteaux, and he had been right, the trip had been a piece of cake, but it was a gift of unforgettable memories as well, hopefully now on film. The view of the châteaux from the air had given us a perspective as to why they were placed where they were, in a way that walking around on the ground could not. We had seen the design of the royal gardens as the makers intended. It also helped me to understand the historical perspective—what had gone on in these buildings. Bernard cupped his hand and shouted, “The portion of the river we are following was the path Joan of Arc took when she led the army in Chinon to victory over the British in Orleans several months later—about 100 years before these châteaux were constructed.”

We landed in Chartres without incident and repaired to the bar to have an opportunity to chat with our young pilot without shouting over the noise of the motor. He told us he was a university student and found it thrilling to study what had happened in these châteaux during the week and then on the weekend be able to view them from the perspective of a bird, something even the
royal families had not been able to do. We headed back to Paris in the squat old Citröen. It had been a marvelous day, and we decided we much preferred the spontaneous reality of high adventure to the disciplined creation of fantasy in films.

If the rest of us go to Paris for romance, where do the Parisians go? Some go to one of the most beautiful country houses in the world: a 443-year-old château with lovers' initials intertwined over the door.

Château d'Esclimont is only 37 miles southwest of Paris, next to a village you've probably never heard of—St-Symphorien-le-Château—off the main road to Chartres. But those directions are misleading. Esclimont is not on the way to or from anyplace. For two people who have a great deal to say to each other, it is a hidden place far from anywhere.

—Richard Reeves, “Château d'Esclimont,”
Travel
&
Leisure

IRENE-MARIE SPENCER

T
HE TOLLING OF THE BELLS OF
S
ACRÉ
-C
OEUR SERVED AS A DAILY
reminder of the sacred aspects of Montmartre. Their heady, metal pandemonium blotted out all other sound, emptying everything from my head for the minutes of the tolling. The bells were both a mantra and a white-out. I was living at the foot of Sacré-Coeur, the sugar-coated triple-domed spectre of white, which rules one of the seven hills of Paris, where the spirits of generations of mystics and artists have all played a role in the creation of this place.

The
quartier
is diverse, ethnic, Arabic, decaying. It does not possess the modern aura of Montparnasse. On some streets just below Sacré-Coeur, it takes a good hard look to realize you are not walking the marketplaces of Tunisia or Egypt. Shop vendors stand outside, heckling you as you pass,
Monsieur
,
Mademoiselle
,
beautiful
,
please come in, want to buy a suitcase
,
a watch
? You name it. None of the trendy shops of Boulevard St-Germain or St-Michel here.

To go home, I got off at Métro stop Château Rouge. One long block up, past the mostly Tunisian open market which was there on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a block left, and two blocks up. My studio apartment was located on a long narrow passageway, Passage Cottin, at the foot of an interminable flight of decrepit cement
steps frequented by stray cats. The building had a decidedly industrial appearance, very basic. And my one-room studio on the third floor had only one window, which looked out to a blind court, a square of walls and rooftops, windows which glowed strangely orange in the lavender-indigo twilight. I could, on occasion, see the moon and a few stars by craning my neck and looking straight up into the black square. There was a large vent fan on the wall perpendicular to mine, which turned ceaselessly around and around, throwing shadows across the court at a certain time of day. I had no kitchen, just a hotplate. And a bathroom with a very deep but short bathtub, in which I spent many hours soaking in an embryonic trance induced by sandalwood bath oil, in the aftermath of a freezing afternoon visiting art galleries with my portfolio. The primordial landscape of my tiny apartment at the foot of Sacré-Coeur was not drawn with visual elements, however. It was the tolling of the bell, La Savoyarde, the largest in France, I'm told, the bell of Sacré-Coeur. This bell was the landscape which flooded my body, my eyes, my soul. I began to live according to the tolling of this amazing bell, as a monk's day is delineated with ethereal chiming reminders signifying a transition, such as the call to vespers. Inside, I felt this way about the sound of this bell. It had become a call to prayer.

One night walking in Montmartre, I felt a longing—I wanted to see the ghosts of Picasso and Apollinaire come strolling arm-in-arm around the corner from a no-longer existing Bateau Lavoir, or Toulouse-Lautrec and Aristide Bruant, smoking and chatting outside the Chat Noir.

The sky was a deep violet, and the windows were all yellow and orange lit salons, as if by gas lanterns, with people in them living out different Paris dreams.

I felt myself go inside those lives. I smelled the smoke of a wood fire. I walked past Erik Satie's house. I thought about a “way” of
living in Paris, a style which flows with the character of the city, and blends in continuously. G.I. Gurdjieff frequented the cafés of Montmartre. He could not have been blind to its charm, to the subtle sounds and sublime vision through the fog of a deserted Sacré-Coeur towering above the butte. Vestiges of the ancient pagan tradition were everywhere, if you looked through Paris eyes. I had met so many people here who directed me to new paths, and that's what living in Montmartre seemed to be about. But just what was it about Montmartre? The history I began to look at revealed some new twists.

The rue des Abbesses is named after L'Abbaye aux Dames, an infamous cloister of Benedictine nuns founded in the early Middle Ages who ruled the
butte sacrée
with a zest for pleasures of the flesh. Henri IV's wild escapades in the convent while making Montmartre his headquarters are notorious. As far back as the 18th century, Montmartre had already gained a reputation for sex and abandonment, even before a parade of artists and bohemian funlovers had made it popular. Mothers sold their daughters to wealthy officials in the likes of such frolicsome taverns as A la Fontaine d'Amour and Au Veau Qui Tète. The 19th-century art scene provided the current guidebook reputation of Montmartre as an enclave for hedonistic artists: Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin, Utrillo, Corot, Bonnard, Modigliani, Dufy, Ernst, Picasso, to name a few. Cabarets, underground theatre, dance-halls, and drinking establishments like the Chat Noir and the Lapin Agile proliferated in the twisted and cobbled passageways of the
quartier
. Today the vapid portraits and serene cityscapes displayed by the current “artists” of the Place du Tertre are a far cry from the energy and creativity of earlier times.

Leisurely afternoons spent browsing out-of-the-way, minuscule bookstores provided me with an unexpected surprise: a little ragedged book in French,
Les Racines Sacrées de Paris
by Pierre Gordon, or
The Sacred Roots of Paris
. A chapter on Montmartre traced the history of the
colline sainte du nord
, or sacred hill of the north, back to pre-Christian times. Now here was some interesting material. Montmartre, according to Gordon's little book, did not derive its
name from
mons martyrum
or “martyr hill,” as the prosaically-minded would have us believe, but instead had received the designation Mont Mercure, after the God Mercury, back in times of the Roman conquest. In the year 742 A.D., under the Carolingians, Montmartre was still called Mont Mercure. Mercury, or Hermes, was primarily the god of initiations. It was Caesar who designated Mercury the representative god of the Gauls. You can see the winged symbol for the god on a very
quotidien
blue square package of Gauloises, the prototypical filterless French cigarettes. And in the pervasive French cartoon, “Astérix.”

The Christian version of the Montmartre legend primarily describes the decapitation of St. Denis at the summit of the sacred hill, hence the appellation of Mount of the Martyrs which most standard guidebooks subscribe to. Gordon, however, maintains that initiation cults of pagan times frequently depict a “rite of the severed head,” thus ascertaining that a symbology existed prior to Christian interpretations of site-specific events. The severing of the head represents a psychological and spiritual death and rebirth, particularly in the case of an initiation rite. There is evidence that Dionysian initiation cults took place here as well.

Initiation was my prevailing mood at the time. There was my own cultural initiation of being a stranger in a strange land,
learning the language and customs of a new country. I felt like a baby, groping for ways to express myself accurately. The French pay particular attention to the details of their language, especially pronunciation. I was also experiencing a deep personal initiation, of getting in touch with my self, turning 30. I had finally found my own apartment in Montmartre, after months of unsuccessful living experiments and sleazy hotels, house-sitting and transitional living with various acquaintances of old friends. And now, everyone I had met and knew was leaving Paris. I would stay on alone. The Paris I was getting acquainted with had the perpetually revolving face of Janus. Looking up as I wandered, I would see green and gold ancient gallic links of ivy, one crescent moon linking to the next, the spaces of sky reflecting between the trees and the medieval stone sides of buildings. After an inspired, formless day spent drinking Grog au Rhum in the afternoon café, I would find myself wandering aimlessly through the dark, misty streets, completely and utterly lost and alone.