Chasing Sylvia Beach (12 page)

LILY ARRIVED AT the end of the boulevard Saint-Michel. Her memory of the giant square included overcrowded souvenir shops and student bookstores, and buskers who drew crowds in front of the enormous wall fountain of Saint Michael. Now, men gathered near the bronze statues of the two dragons at the front of the basin. The fountain never failed to impress Lily, who was particularly fond of the red and green marble. But it didn’t feel safe to linger; it had been only steps from here that she’d been attacked, and again Lily noticed that there weren’t a lot of women hanging around; indeed, a glance revealed only men.

Lily searched for a café. She spied two: one on either side of the sprawling square. The café closest to the Seine was packed with people, both on the terrace and inside, as far as she could tell. Turning, she noticed another tucked away on rue Danton. The terrace was dotted with people enjoying the spring afternoon, their chairs all facing the square as if to watch a show. She chose that one, and pushing open the door was greeted by the warm hubbub of a bustling café. The entry faced the bar, which supported a cluster of men chatting and arguing with the patron. They punctuated their conversation with puffs of smoke from their smelly hand-rolled cigarettes. Manning the counter stood a mustachioed man in an apron. Cheaply framed photographs of sports stars decorated the back bar. The men spoke over each other, the barkeep nodding sagely and refilling their glasses of red wine from an unlabeled bottle. Lily smiled; it was a real neighborhood bar, not one that catered to tourists. Surely this was the kind of joint Hemingway would feel comfortable in.

Passing several couples occupying wooden tables, Lily took a seat near the window at the back of the room. She removed her satchel, draped her jacket on the chair, and got out her pen and her notebook. Enjoying a moment of rest, she gazed out the window at the traffic and people crossing the square. After several minutes, mesmerized by the movement, she returned her attention to the café, looking for inspiration to start her pen moving. The coatrack near the door supported two forlorn umbrellas. Deco glass sconces allowed only a weak light that barely illuminated the corners of the room. She stroked the blank first page in her notebook. It was odd; on one hand, she liked feeling that she was here and not really here, this role of observer so perfect for a writer. On the other, she was acutely aware that she did not belong. She focused on the open page of her notebook. Where to start? She entered the date, European style, at the top of the page. The waiter arrived to take her order, his silver tray propped on his fingers.

“La petite demoiselle désire quoi?”

“A café creme et un verre d’eau, s’il vous plaît.”

He moved away, and lulled by the rhythms of the café, Lily let her pen glide over the paper. She was just getting going when a man entered and spoke loudly to the patron behind the bar in a bad French accent. The man shrugged off his coat and hung it at the row of hooks near the door. Was it Hemingway? He looked her way, tossing a newspaper on a table nearby. It wasn’t. She quickly lowered her head, nervously smoothing the pages of her notebook. The waiter arrived with her coffee and water and Lily was grateful for the distraction. After a sip of the creamy coffee, she plunged in. Within minutes, she was in the flow, words spilling out of her pen. She wrote, trying to capture the details of everything that had happened. She wrote about the way the air felt in Paris, 1937: thick, dusty. She described the people, detailing Paul’s expression when he showed her the magic trick—focused and excited. Finally, she paused when her hand cramped up. She’d filled three pages with her neat handwriting. Sipping her coffee, she glanced around. The man she’d mistaken for Hemingway had finished reading his paper and now sat with an empty glass and an empty expression. The sounds of the café—the espresso machine hissing, the clatter of cup against saucer, the rhythmic flow of French that she didn’t understand without focusing on it, all swathed her in a contented state. Shaking out her hand, she continued writing.

No one ever heard of emissions control, so cars and buses burp black plumes as they start, stop, start, and stop again, moving with maddening modernity along the wide boulevards that are, for one little bonus, the same as you remember them.

Being in the past . . . your skin feels funny, like there’s an extra layer between you and the world. If you’ve ever felt like an outcast, a misfit, an outsider, sideliner, nonbelonger, as a time traveler, you’ve got gut-gripping proof that we are all completely alone in life and sink or swim. Not being born in the current generation gives a constant sense of dislocation—and your mother not being born in that time makes assimilating or even understanding hopeless.

Imagine being inside a TV show, or a vaudeville act, or a movie fully committed to a well-rounded portrait of the past. Everything that’s quaint, old-fashioned, nostalgia inducing is actually quite modern. Spiffy and shiny, even. Art nouveau is passé, an outré expression of rebellion overcome by the masculine lines and blocky conviction of art deco. The modern bursts forth in an eruption of shorter skirts, tighter waists, and hats of absurdity only the French could muster with a straight face.

She shook out her hand. When she had tried to write as a girl, she’d been self-conscious of the words on the page. Everything she penned could be seen by someone else—namely, her mother. It wasn’t that she went through Lily’s things, but Lily didn’t feel she had enough privacy to reveal her thoughts. Now, for once the words came with no concern about who would read them. They had no purpose other than for her, right now, suddenly less lonely because of the pages she was filling.

People’s skin is different, a pallor that could be city life or malnutrition; with the coming war, food for the masses is dwindling in quality and availability. Every day, every moment is like moving through a spell that’s been cast. Sometimes it’s not so bad to be clueless about the current events everyone is talking about. It’s the dislocation, the dischronation that’s disconcerting.

Will you ever see a computer or cell phone again? Will you ever relish the joyful lightness of plastic—plastic pens, compacts, timers, keyboards, bottles, cups? Will you ever feel the freedom of getting a to-go cup of hot coffee wrapped in its little cardboard sheath, and relish the ease of tossing it away? With a desperation heretofore unknown to you, you find yourself craving and loving those very things that you cared so little about.

Everything is heavy; and you, too, lost in a time you used to fantasize about, you, too, are heavy. The objects in this time are made of real substances—metal, glass, wood. The books are bigger, heavier, with sturdy bold type and soldierly spines.

Lily came up for air. The sounds of the café came back into focus: the clink of glasses, the steady rise and fall of friendly arguments among the men at the bar, the hiss of the seltzer bottle. The people at the tables around her had been replaced by different ones; she had no idea how long she’d sat there. A couple was now in the man’s place, leaning together and talking urgently over their beers. She dove back in, letting the activity around her fade away.

It’s a new level of self-censorship, monitoring everything you say for its appropriateness. You discover, for instance, that you pepper your speech with the word “like” as a way to like what, you are not sure. With the hyperawareness of your words, you put your verbal tic on a short leash and discover that pausing before talking makes you feel smarter.

It’s not the inconvenience of all this so much as the floating, the surreal sense that you are not yourself nor anyone else, that you do not and will not ever belong here nor anywhere. It’s seeing yourself go through the motions of life as if they mattered. Here you are buying writing supplies. It’s seeing yourself lose your life, seeing it and feeling it—like that time your new ruby ring slipped off and sank into the lake just off the edge of the dock, and no matter how much you dove and dove and dove after it, gasping for air, grasping for what you lost so easily—that makes this so weird. Knowing that you were spoiled by your near-perfect life, the ease of it, and that you have become what you would not wish on anyone—a single woman without a family in the path of Hitler’s onslaught.

And why here? Why now? If I can travel through time, I’d rather . . . I’d rather be here earlier, or . . . I’d rather go back and see my mom one more time. I didn’t know when I left for France that I’d never see her again.

Lily’s throat clenched and she blinked several times. The waiter moved among the tables, wiping them down, straightening them. A few people lingered over empty glasses. The clatter of dishes being washed came from behind the bar. She pressed her fingers over the words in her notebook, testing to see if the ink was dry. The waiter paused by her table.

“Autre chose, mademoiselle?” he inquired. Lily asked if they served food. He nodded, telling her they had a few sandwiches left. Lily craved a real meal, something warm and savory, but she ordered a cheese sandwich. It had been hours since her lunch with Paul and she didn’t know when she’d eat next. When the sandwich arrived, a tough, chewy baguette with a slice of mild cheese and a slathering of butter, she ate it slowly, considering what she’d written. Back home, she never made time to sit down and write. Now, she had something to write about and she enjoyed the freedom of describing her experience without needing to lie or evade. When she finished the sandwich, she sat back, full and momentarily content. It felt good to write. She stretched, catching a sniff of her blouse. She hadn’t changed her clothes. Whoa, she thought. It’s time to freshen up. She asked for directions to Printemps, one of the large department stores near the Opéra, and made her way there.

The giant stained-glass dome at the top of the department store glittered in the weak Paris sunlight. The store commanded an entire city block. The few times Lily had tried to find clothes in Paris had been a failure. She knew the sizing system was different, but the clothes seemed to be made for tiny women. Yet women in the 1930s were more buxom, shaped more like her, wide hips and generous bosom.

She entered the giant revolving door and found herself in the accessories department. Gloves fanned brightly on tables and costume jewelry winked from wooden display boxes. The hat department took up a whole side of the floor. There were so many to choose from: felt hats lined with ribbons, sharply sculpted hats, straw hats pinned with bunches of fake flowers.

An atmosphere of refined elegance drifted through the store like a fine perfume. Lily passed the cosmetics department, dotted with vanity tables. She only needed a dress and a few pairs of underwear and she’d be fine until she got home. If she got home.

The clothes weren’t arranged as they were in modern department stores. A few mannequins stood around with lots of room in between. It was like a bad party, no one talking, no one connecting. Lily hovered near a mannequin wearing a full-length peach gown.

“Je vous aide?” A thin woman with penciled eyebrows and bright red lips hovered nearby, as if she didn’t want to get too close. Lily responded in French. It came out like someone walking up a set of old steps, hesitant and creaky.

“Yes, I’m looking for a comfortable dress.”

“For what occasion?”

Lily smirked inside. As if she would have the opportunity for an “occasion.” “For everyday wear,” she said.

With thinly veiled scorn, the woman pointed a long fingernail toward the corner of the store where steps led to the basement. Lily headed that way, insecurity shadowing her. Surrounded by the elegance, class, and grace of the French, she felt like a farm girl with dung on her shoes. She gathered her imagination around her. Clad in her sparkling shoes, tiara, and flowing peach evening gown, she floated past the woman in the dress department, outshining her in every way.

By the time she got to the basement, her pretend confidence was working. She found clothes that suited the average woman, not someone who dressed frequently for the opera and government cocktail parties. Other women perused the items on the racks, holding up dresses to show their friends.

She paused to inspect a row of long flowing pants with wide bottoms. She held them up against her body. They were too long and a drab shade of gray.

“Je vous aide?”

Another saleswoman. Maybe she did need help. She had no idea what size she wore, how much clothes cost, or what the dressing room policy was.

“Oui. Je cherche une robe.”

“Your size?”

“I don’t know. I’m American, and we do size differently.”

The saleswoman pulled out a cloth tape measure and held it against Lily’s hips. It was strange to be touched, even lightly, even in such a professional manner. She stood very still, letting the birdlike pressure on her hip bones sink in. The woman took the tape away.

“I’d say you’re a size three. Let’s look.”

She guided Lily toward a rack. The woman presented dress after dress, then led her to the dressing room. Finally, Lily left wearing a new navy blue dress with a scalloped collar, her old clothes in a shopping bag.

Lily couldn’t help but stop in the lingerie department, which mimicked a pastry shop in its color and extravagance. Corsets, garters, and other appliquéd contraptions were layered on tables like almond wafer cookies. Fluffy piles of silk were as tempting as meringue. She hesitated at a table of peach silk panties fanned out, their lace edges rippling like waves. Her fingers stroked a pair, relishing the velvet ribbon. She glanced up and saw a woman she recognized slipping behind the curtain to the changing room. Lily frowned. Was it the woman from the plane? Lily couldn’t be sure. It was more of a sense of recognition than actual identification. A saleswoman approached her, and Lily stepped away. She tried on a camisole and a slip. In the end, she bought a few pairs of panties, including a pair of the fancy peach ones.