Sharon Harrigan

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Paris Journal: Patron Saint of Bargains, Headaches, and . . . France

Is Paris expensive? That depends. Not if you shop at the Sunday market in Saint Denis. Today we rode the number 13 metro about forty minutes and arrived at this largely immigrant banlieu, a few stops past the periphery of the city. I bought four dining-room chair cushions for 8 Euros total, about $10. Ella blew half her allowance on a fancy hand fan for 1 Euro (about $1.20). Bin upon bin of underwear and lingerie could be had for 1 Euro apiece. Part North African bazaar, part flea market, part fishmonger/cheesemonger/greengrocer/butcher, the Saint-Denis market is so large and bustling that we thought we’d seen it all when we’d only pushed our way, New York-subway-crowd-style, through the spillover and not even entered the main stalls. Once inside, even the gourmet choices were not super-expensive: e.g. marinated swordfish and salmon kebobs for 18 Euros a kilo, or about $9 a pound. The hundreds of hooves, feet, tongues, brains, heads, livers, and intestines of pigs, cows, and lambs could be had quite a lot less (though you’d have to pay me to buy them). On the other hand, a couple days ago Ella and I rollerbladed to the the tony and touristy seventh arondissement, sat at a cafe, and spent 10 Euros, or about $12, on two nonalcoholic drinks. For that I could have bought a dozen racy panties, a pair of shoes, or a week’s worth of farm animal appendages at the Saint Denis market.

Who is Saint Denis? According to legend, about two thousand years ago, he was decaptitated near Montmartre and carried his head in his hand five kilometers until he collapsed in the town and cathedral that are now named for him. Because of the way he died, he is the patron saint of headaches, and I said a little prayer to him for all my friends who are suffering from migraines because of the blue moon. He is also the patron saint of France, and his name is the French version of Dionysus. I’ll drink to that. With the money I saved, I can treat myself to the good stuff.

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Paris Journal: Virgin Among the Virgins

 

Yesterday, we took our first day trip from Paris, to Rouen. Our guidebook says that Rouen is a city of 400,000, ten times the size of Charlottesville. But when we walked back to the train station at the end of the day, Rouen seemed small. After just two weeks, we are starting to see the world from the vantage point of Paris.

Though not completely. “Why are there so many lingerie stores in France?” Ella asked, as we strolled the streets of Rouen. I’m not sure why she didn’t ask before, since our block sells more underthings than food.

“Because lingerie is pretty,” James said.

“But nobody gets to see your underwear,” she said.

“I almost told her I get to see yours,” James told me later “But she’ll figure this all out soon enough.” Or too soon.

I’m not really a prude, though I admit to sometimes enjoying my daughter’s naievete. My attitude often backfires, though, since she chooses the most public and inopportune moments to fill in the gaps of her sex education. In a place where advertisements for beds feature naked women lying over the covers, where kiosks display explicit magazines in plain view and cartoon condoms smile down from posters, she’s getting a crash course.

When she asked me yesterday what a prostitute is, we were sitting on the steps of the Musee des Beaux Arts of Rouen, so close to a twenty-something couple, they could have heard us whisper. (You didn’t notice the prostitutes we saw the other day in the Bois de Boulogne? I thought but didn’t say. Or do you think all French women wear hot pants and high heels and smile at passing cars?)

Ella’s question was prompted by a passage in her (children’s) book, which was recommended by a librarian here in Paris. Ella was taking a break with me, resting and reading, while James took one last look at our favorite painting in the museum: Gerard David’s 1509 masterpiece, “Virgin Among the Virgins,” pictured above.  I laughed to myself, thinking about the contrast between what he and I were doing. “A prostitute is someone who has sex with someone else for money,” I told Ella.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“What’s what?”

“What’s sex?”

“You know what sex is,” I said. Did she really want me to give step-by-step details in front of this nuzzling couple? Or have questions just become a reflex with her, now that she lives in a place where everything seems to need explanation?

She had blitzed us with questions all day, sometimes suggesting we check our smart phones if we didn’t know the answer. Tell me the story of this saint, that saint, she’d said, in the cathedral. How did John the Baptist lose his head?  What is the tree of Jesse? Who is Salome?

“Sex is what people do to have babies.” She finally admitted that she knew.

“Yes,” I said. “But there’s more. We’ll talk about it at home.”

And we will. Today. So she can truly see the world from the vantage point of Paris.

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Four Things Lost in Translation

 

1. This picture, even though it’s translated in several languages, is still an enigma to Ella. The signs are everywhere in Paris. Since I never answered when she asked me what it is, she’s invented her own explanation. “There’s the funny hotdog man again,” she says, pointing, when we walk past. Each time I hope no one within earshot speaks English.

2. As I stood at the counter of a cafe to drink an espresso, the barwoman called Ella “poupée.” I know this means doll, but when I returned home I looked it up, to see if it’s a common endearment. My dictionary told me that the English translation is “toots.” I pity the poor French tourist in America, thinking he’s so au courant, “toots”-ing American children.

3. Ella has a French-French dictionary for beginners, a reference we’re told all young French children use. There are several maps at the end, including one of the United States, with pictures to help new readers. Imagine my surprise when I saw the White House placed in the upper left, in the state right above Oregon. Who knew our capital had moved to the Pacific Northwest?

4. Ella enjoys ordering herself, and every time, after she asks for a baguette or sandwich or chevre, the merchant responds, in French, “That’s all?” “Ca suffit,” Ella says (that’s enough), prompting a laugh. “Why do they keep laughing at me?” Ella asked me today. I told her ça suffit might sound funny coming from a kid. Maybe it’s what grown-ups say to kids who drive them crazy. “Arrete,” I can imagine them saying. “Stop. Ca suffit! Cut it out!”

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Paris Journal: Public Toilets

One of the quotidian marvels of Paris is its system of public toilets. These hygenic enclosures line the city streets, as efficient, uniform, and convenient as everyone had hoped the Euro would be.

So you can imagine my surprise, on arriving at the Bois de Boulogne, the Paris equivalent of Central Park, to find ourselves in a bathroom crisis. Maybe toilets really are like the Euro, after all.

The park is large, acre upon acre, and the map showed only one toilet, far from where we were, for what must have been thousands of parkgoers that day. We asked the woman serving frites at a kiosk. “None,” she said. We asked the man renting ponies the size of golden retrievers. “Aucune,” he repeated. Another vendor suggested we leave the park altogether. “Maybe we could find a nice tree to hide behind,” I said. My husband shook his head. “Remember Prospect Park,” my daughter said. I won’t tell you what happened in that leafy Brooklyn enclave, except to say that the memory clarified the need to find a real toilet, san aucune doute.

In New York City, I’d always played the kid card: “My child has to go to the bathroom,” I’d say at a bar or laundromat (even if I was the one). But this tactic didn’t work in the Bois de Boulogne. The French had a secret place to perform their private acts, surely, but no one would tell us where it was.

Finally, my husband came up with a brilliant plan.

 

We would rent a boat and row to the only bathroom. Afterwards, my daughter was sufficiently relieved to even do some rowing herself.

 

Look how strong she is. Hey, maybe there’s still hope for the Euro, too.

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Paris Journal: Kiko Le Chien

Living in another country is like traveling back in time. Not to another era, but another age. Childhood. We speak in syncopated sentences with super-simple vocabulary, while children rollerblading in the park sound as if they’re discussing the Euro crisis or Deconstructionism or maybe the meaning of life, more quickly and multi-syllablically than seems possible.

We start to read picture books. It’s odd that our daughter, who just finished The Book Thief and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in English, doesn’t know all the words of Kiko Le Chien in French. Stranger still, neither do we.

Here we are, reading about that silly dog who wants to skateboard in the park. “Can’t you read?” the park gardien asks Kiko, pointing to a sign that says dogs must be on leash. Of course I can’t read, Kiko thinks. I’m a dog!

Of course we can’t read everything in French yet. We’re Americans.

But here we are, sprawled on the sofa with a plucky pooch, tucking away all our experience and education, all our preconceptions about how we’re supposed to act and what we’re supposed to know. Here we are, seeing the world with kindergarten eyes, laughing at Kiko, and ourselves.