"Will you
PLEASE, PLEASE speak more slowly?" the girl says with exasperation.
I lock eyes with her and ask in a soft, but firm voice, "At what
point exactly did you stop understanding me?" She sighs and speaks
rapidly in French to the bartender before stalking off. The bartender smiles
and says gently, "Madame, zat weel be 74 francs..." ($10.50 -- a
bargain even with the bitchy waitress.)
The place is
filling now with an interesting crowd. People are buzzing around, moving
into the main room. The techno music has changed to jazz and the volume
has been turned up a notch.
Tres interessant,
and here I sit pecking away.
A blonde man
leans over my table and begins speaking to me in French. I take off my
glasses, look him in the eye, and say, "Je ne parle pas beaucoup Francais.
Parle vous Anglais?" "Un petite peu,"? he says. Then in halting
English, "There ees un fete, an event beginning soon."? "I see.
I should leave?" "Yes, I sink so. Eet weel be tres difficile for
you to work." "What is the event?" I ask. "A program
of literatura," he says. "Ah, tres bien," I say. "I will
finish." My battery is running low anyway, so I wrap it up.
I call Adrian
Leeds on my cell: "You gotta get over here," I say. "This place
is hopping and there's some kind of literary event... " but she's on
her way out to meet friends for dinner. "Hey, Robin, you HAVE
to come with me to the Gay Pride Parade tomorrow. It's a happening you
simply cannot miss." We agree on a time to meet. She adds, "You're
going home to get this story out tonight right?" "Right," I
say. "See you tomorrow." "A bien tot."
I exit the
Web Bar and head for the Metro Republique, the computer under my arm and
camera bag over my shoulder.
I realize
that I'm hungry for some- thing I'd forgotten existed--creative, passionate
people. Oh well, the Web Bar still will be there next week. I hope.
Early June,
2000 I had
sprouted wings as planned and taken flight. After almost twenty years of
mommy-hood and life as a DW (doctor's wife), I was suddenly faced
with the freedom to live the second half of my life in the style and location
of my choice.
I'd dreamed
of life in a foreign country for years. "Where?" was the cental
question.
Expats. They'd
been there and done that.
So, in the
hope of finding a place to call my own, I began traveling to countries
around the globe and meeting some of the American expatriates who live
in them.
Paris,
the Grande Dame of American expatriatism, was to be my base as I traveled
throughout Western Europe for the next seven weeks to check out and report
on the heartbeat of the Americans who call Western Europe home.
However
just before I left the United States, life threw me an unexpected curve.
You know how you go to the doctor to have a pain diagnosed, and suddenly
the pain is gone? Or you take your car to the shop to find the source of
an annoying rattle, and the minute the mechanic puts his head under the
hood, it stops? And starts up again the minute you drive away? Well...
I moved to San Francisco six weeks ago, and suddenly, with the exploratory
trip just days away, my itch to find a new country had dissipated.
Over the past
six weeks I had wakened every morning to Chinese doing Tai Chi outside
my bedroom window, to the sun rising over the Bay Bridge, and to the sight
of freighters moving into the Pacific headed for foreign lands. I had the
whole of Baghdad-by-the-Bay beyond my living-room window. I was
overwhelmed. Daily. A walk two blocks from my apartment put me in Chinatown,
surrounding me with chattering Chinese filling their market baskets with
fresh produce.
A three-block
walk in another direction put me in North Beach, with access to freshly-made
ravioli from Molinari's Deli, freshly-roasted coffee beans from Trieste
Caffe, and the melodic Italian accents of those who owned the businesses
in that neighborhood. A walk in another direction, and I'd find myself
in downtown San Francisco, where the heady optimism of a city in the midst
of its second gold rush was palpable. San Francisco's multi-layered colors,
its creative spirit, its literary heart, its geographic beauty, and its
mild climate gave me a new bench mark in the search for "my" place.
San Francisco would be hard to beat.
June 15,
2000 I'm on a Swiss
Air jet headed to Zurich where I will change planes and depart for Paris.
I write a little and then sleep for six hours. I'm drinking my first morning
cup of coffee when Charles, the businessman sitting next to me, says in
reference to an idyllic
beach scene
on the airplane's movie screen, "I can't decide if life in a remote place
like that would be paradisiacal or tortuous." He adds, "Running away seems
to have, in my opinion, very little merit. It's a statement that one no
longer desires to contribute to society." Just one more opinion to add
to the mix.
We punch through
the cloud cover over Zurich and begin to descend over emerald-green, rolling
hills. Charles lives in Basil, Switzerland. "Cold there isn't it?" I ask,
wondering suddenly why Switzerland isn't on my shopping list of possible
countries. "No," he answers. "The climate is mild." "But the taxes are
high right?" I ask. "No, we're taxed at 20% and Switzerland is the 15th
largest country and number 8 in the Gross National Product."
I look at the
toy villages laid out in neat patterns below, with perfect-peaked houses
surrounded by acres of green. Charles says Switzerland has strict building
laws regarding building height, that any building over 30 years old cannot
be torn down.
We hit the
runway hard. In Switzerland it's 5 PM. In California it is 9 AM. I've just
wakened from one night's sleep, and another night is beginning.
6:40 PM,
Zurich I sit in another
Swiss Air jet waiting for the plane to leave for Paris. The passengers
around me are different on this flight -- they stare unabashedly at each
other and at me. And I know they must be French, because they are (and
I know this sounds trite) so good-looking. And the language... Oh,
la, la.
Across an empty
seat, a man who looks about 30 with skin the shade of Kalamata olives unwraps
a candy bar. He leans over and says, "Madame, would you like a chocolate?"
"No thank you," I reply, and return to reading Hemingway's "A
Movable Feast."
7:35 PM,
above Paris We descend
through gray clouds, and Paris emerges gray. Shadowless, colorless, damp,
sad like I remember. A lump forms in my stomach. Memories of Bernard. Love
lost.
8:50 PM.
Charles DeGaulle Airport Whew. Major
hurdles behind me. Customs. Luggage intact. A last minute conversation
with Laurent, the man who offered me a chocolate, as we pull our bags through
the terminal. He offers to drive me to my apartment in the St. Germain
section of downtown Paris. He lives 20 miles outside of the city. "You
are very kind," I say, "but it is too far out of your way."
"I do not mind," he says, "but it is up to you." "I will think
about it," I say. ($40 saved on cab fare is a temptation.) "But
it would be so much trouble for you." Lauren nods, shakes my hand,
bows slightly, and says, "Then, it was very pleasant to meet you. Bon
journee," and he rolls his suitcase out the airport door.
10:50 PM
that evening I'm seated
at a round formica table on a wicker chair under a rose-colored awning
at Le Buci Cafe in the St -Germain-de-Pres. Patrons sit at tables outside
bathed in pink light sipping pink kirs and speaking rapidly in the soft
nasal intonations that are uniquely French. I call my friend Evan in California,
and leave a message on his voice mail at work: "I'm sitting at the Buci
Cafe. This is amazing!" And I ramble on, describing the scene at that very
moment . He tells me the next day that he played the message for everyone
in his office.
A week has
passed since that first evening in Paris. I've met a number of the
Americans who live here and am becoming close friends with several of them.
I look forward to telling you their stories.
I've gone through
the excitement phase that being in a new place stirs up. I've been incredibly
frustrated at the sheer length of time, money, and mistakes it takes to
accomplish the simplest of tasks in an unfamiliar culture where I don't
speak the language, and the difficulties of not having a working telephone
or an internet connection. I've been anxious about neglecting responsibilities
back home, and I've had middle-of-the-night uncertainty about why I am
here. But I've returned, I think , to my normal optimistic self. I'm comfortable
enough at last in Paris, to plan a trip to another country tomorrow, and
to not know where I might go from there.
