Letters From Paris

Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

Locals agree: The city of clouds is a bust. Between family illness, Fashion Week, and homeless people throwing picnics, ROSECRANS BALDWIN continues his series of letters from France.

Also by Rosecrans Baldwin

• Things We're Denying Ourselves (Of Recent Note)
• The Last Great Thing You Downloaded (Of Recent Note)
• Movies for What Ails You (Of Recent Note)

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Also in Letters From Paris

• Bonne Année (January 10, 2008)
• Le Coq Sportif (October 17, 2007)
• Language Arts (July 25, 2007)

» SEE MORE

Paris is trying to kill my wife. In the last two months she has been sick or maimed six times. First was a knee injury, then the flu. After the flu, a cold. After the cold, another flu, plus an overlapping, violent three-week stomach illness. Vertigo came last. She woke up one morning and tried to sit up, only to fall over as if she’d been spun around in a Cuisinart.

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I have vertigo.”

Behind the wall, a drill screeched. We have construction on every side of our apartment, from eight a.m. to five in the afternoon.

“Every time I sit up,” she said, “the room spins around. It’s not just the room, but me too. It’s really frightening.”

“Why don’t you try it again?” I said sensitively.

On the internet we learned the basic treatment for vertigo looks a lot like wrestling: An ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT) grabs your head and throws you down in order to readjust minute crystals inside your inner ear. We found an English-speaking ENT in Paris and got an appointment for the afternoon. Like a lot of Paris doctors, she sees patients in her apartment, as though you’re stopping by for coffee. We walked past her living room to reach her office: wood-paneled floors worn down to leather, a small examining table, large windows overlooking a courtyard.

“And you haven’t changed your medication recently?” the doctor asked after she’d done a few tests. Birds chirped outside.

“No.”

“Well you should probably see an ENT.”

“You’re not an ENT?”

She typed on her glossy white laptop, all its cords neatly hidden from view. “I can recommend one. He knows all the treatments. He speaks English very well.”

We took the Metro up to the 18th arrondissement and sat in the next doctor’s waiting room with another couple, grandparents passing each other gossip magazines they scanned but didn’t read.

“Yes hello,” said the ENT, bending down when he came through the door, being incredibly tall. He hesitated to smile. “You are feeling?”

He did not speak English very well. But he did know how to wrestle with ear crystals. He would say things like “Good, yes?” when he tipped my wife over and re-induced vertigo so intense she almost cried, and then “Hmm, maybe bad” when he flipped her the other way and failed to make her throw up.

He did some tests and looked puzzled. He rubbed his hair and sat at his desk. Really he was probably six-four, but he looked even bigger; he wore a jacket with shoulder pads that protruded like epaulettes.

“So that is all,” he said abruptly and stood up to let us know our appointment was complete. He reached out one of his long arms like an oar. “But do not be afraid. Don’t fear. This is not, you know, a thing forever.”


* * *

No one has more contempt for Paris or French people than French Parisians. On any topic that irks visitors: strikes, the lack of politeness on the Metro, the taxi shortage as caused by protectionist taxi unions. Then again, French Parisians don’t like much of anything. In London last week on a business trip to shoot a documentary, our crew numbered four: a Parisian director, a Parisian composer, our Welsh location coordinator, and me. Most of the time we were stuck in traffic, an hour’s drive from the next shot.

“So who would win in a fight,” the Welshman asked me, “New York or Los Angeles?”

It took me a second. “Los Angeles. New Yorkers would be too busy to fight.” Then I asked him, “OK, imagine it’s you and a hundred five-year-olds in a locked room. The children are overcome with a desire to kill you. How many could you put down?”

He thought for a second. “Can I use one of them as a weapon against the others?”

“Sure. But you have to remember they’re a mob.”

“Yeah, I can’t let them get me on the ground.”

A minute later we gave the game over to the French: “Who wins, Coca-Cola or Uma Thurman?”

The French didn’t answer and remained staring out the windows—it might have been Battersea, or Shepherd’s Bush. Then the French director said, “That is not a game.” He started coughing. “It is so Anglo, this game. It is not a game. How do you judge this? It is a soda and a woman. Then how do you decide?”

“One wins, one loses. Just pick,” I said. But he refused: “It is nothing a French person would think is a game. It is so stupid.”

The traffic wasn’t moving. I asked him to suggest a French game instead that we could play. “OK, OK, here is a French game,” he said. “We will talk about something for a little while. It will be about nothing. We will talk and talk and talk about it. Sometimes I will take the other side of the conversation, just to say you are wrong. And then we will stop.”

He resumed his brooding silence. The composer turned to say he agreed, this was a classic French game.

We were trawling for prostitutes around Soho that evening (the script called for us to find authentic prostitutes, and in London they take looking for; you have to seek out the handwritten signs taped up inside unmarked doorways: “busty,” “gorgeous brunette,” “upstairs”), when the director brought up our conversation from the car.

Paris held its own elections recently. My favorite candidate proposed building a ski lift on Montmartre and opening the hill to alpine sports.“See this is a thing I hate about the French,” he said. “They are too proud. They have a problem about being proud. They don’t say they like anything in public. Even when inside they love something, the most they will say is, ‘Enh, pas mal (not bad).’ And they don’t like to admit when they’re wrong.”

Two weeks earlier, my wife and I had a friend over for dinner so we could meet her new lover, a Parisian furniture designer who spoke English with an Australian accent, a chain-smoker with fantastic slicked-back graying hair. We talked for a time about bunkers. He was fascinated by them; he often went on scouting trips, looking for the perfect bunker he could fix up for a second home, maybe even a first, rather than his lavish apartment on Saint-Germain. A couple of concrete walls sunk into a grassy hillock, with slits for windows. What could be more romantic?

“You know, Paris can be tough,” said the furniture designer. He’d just told us it was the worst European city to live in, after London. “But it depends.”

“How?” we asked.

“Depends if you’re connected to reality. Some people aren’t. I know a guy, he’s lived here eight years, absolutely mad about Paris,” he said. “Barely speaks French, but he’s completely in love. See, you can do that if you’re disconnected—walking around all day, staring at buildings, living in the fantasy. But reality is, it’s a tough city to live in. It’s not like the movies.”

“You know,” he said later, “you can find really good real-estate bargains near nuclear facilities. No one realizes that.”


* * *

The hardest part, recently, is hearing about the elections back home and not being able to play a part. I’ve become a passionate Obama supporter from afar, one of those who dribble small amounts of money regularly into his campaign, since I’m unable to go door-to-door or stuff envelopes.

But I’m often called upon at work as a talking head. Like the rest of Western Europe, France is fascinated by the American political race, and full of questions: “Why is the election cycle so drawn-out?” “What exactly is an electoral college?” “Who are delegates, never mind superdelegates?” “Aren’t Americans too racist to elect a black president?”

My limited French forces me to find simple explanations. What I say to co-workers is that during the Bush years, I didn’t feel my government held my best interests, especially when the tools designed long ago for balancing power were discarded like so much brush to be cleared. That since I lack a fixed ideology, I find recent politics lacking. I explain how, during the Bush years, so many people in the U.S. felt powerless seeing the nation decline while those in power believed their mission to be almighty and righteous, and their righteousness absolute. And though there had been protests, they reinforced the impotency of protests; and instead of signs for booting out Bush’s posse, we got signs proclaiming Andre the Giant’s.

And then I say Obama is the first candidate in my voting experience who seems like he means what he says, and says what I feel. Who is of my generation; whom I get, and who inspires me. I’ve read his book, I’ve watched his speeches; I am head over heels, with no compunction. Because I feel myself taking a risk when I say I believe in him, since in my reflexive skepticism I rarely say I believe in anything. If Obama is elected president, of course the game will stay crooked; and instead of speeches we’ll get compromises; and something will fall apart. But for now I prefer the fantasy of what might come to pass, rather than the realpolitik of recent history.

Paris held its own elections recently. My favorite candidate proposed building a ski lift on Montmartre and opening the hill to alpine sports. His program also included keeping the cemeteries open all night (to reestablish a conversation between the living and the dead), and introducing commuting by hot-air balloon.

The French love Obama like you wouldn’t believe.


* * *

No one hears you when you say you’re sick of Paris. Sick of Paris: three words that make sense to people separately, but not in sequence. And they’re right—what am I talking about? What about champagne for sale in gas stations? And aisles dedicated to yogurt in grocery stores? And grocery stores that only sell frozen food of such high quality that, when reheated, it beats most bistro meals? And my boss and his thousand Lacoste shirts in every color? And all the gossip and insights: how French men go to pieces when they’re dumped; how Parisian girls won’t sleep with you unless you have permanent residency papers. And the white morning sunshine in Place de la Concorde, and its slow wheel of drivers, and me on my bike. And homeless men spreading out a picnic on a Metro platform. And Techtonik kids.

During Fashion Week, an editor friend jetted into town for the shows and invited us out to a big party at the Grand Palais. All the beautiful people reminded me of aluminum foil—their hair and clothes crumpled, all glittering when the lights came by. It was just a bit unreal, but not completely: the fantasy of an endless party, plus the reality of long bathroom lines. We stood next to Suzy Menkes and Karl Lagerfeld for a few minutes. Lagerfeld’s head up close is Beethoven’s with a ponytail, his face a powdered death mask of someone once handsome.

The winter’s blessing has been the weather. One day Claudia Schiffer filmed a commercial outside my office, wearing only lingerie, and she seemed all right.“This is what I’ll miss about Paris,” my wife whispered. “You think we’ll get this if we move to the Southwest?”

We sat down with our champagne. The editor asked me about my job. I whined about the long hours, the endless meetings. How it felt like we’re stuck here forever.

“But you’re kidding.”

“What?”

“You live in Paris.”

I shook my head. “I’m living at my desk,” I said, and for a second I dreamt about a bunker in New Mexico. A supermodel walked by in purple tights.

“Whatever,” the editor said. “You’re in Paris. Let me know when I can have your job.”


* * *

The winter’s blessing has been the weather: a warm winter, reasonably sunny, rarely below 50 degrees. One day Claudia Schiffer filmed a commercial outside my office, wearing only lingerie, and she seemed all right. I follow the weather reports in the States and when there’s a blizzard in Chicago, I send emails to friends that say things like, “60 and sunny here in Paris, how are you?”

As of this week, it’s starting to be lighter in the morning, a sign the long Paris spring is coming soon. My wife’s health is on the mend and the vertigo’s mostly gone. Most days when it’s nice, I try to look on the bright side of Paris and take my lunch to a small park and read. It’s just behind my office, a secret walled garden. Last Wednesday, it was about 50 degrees out and sunny with a few clouds. I bought a sandwich, picked out a bench and started eating, balancing the book on one leg and my lunch on the other.

Five minutes later it was snowing, huge flakes. And five minutes after that, the clouds were gone. You ask Parisians and they’ll tell you it never snows in Paris. Except in the movies.