Against the night sky

Anne had let me pick the hotel in London (a sleek, glossy little place that occupied part of a larger building just off Trafalgar Square), so it was only fair that she pick the hotel in Paris. She wanted to be close to the Eiffel Tower.

    “But you don’t need to be close to the Eiffel Tower,” I had said when we were booking the trip online. “It’s a tower. You can see it from anywhere in the city.”

    “You picked the London hotel, so I’m picking Paris” was her only counter-argument. She wants to be near the cliché, I thought. I would have preferred the Latin Quarter or Montmartre. I wanted the Paris of Picasso and Renoir, to be near Shakespeare and Company, where Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas tippled and scribbled and held forth. She wanted the Paris of Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan. But I let it go. 

    The hotel she picked wasn’t bad. A typically Parisian exterior, four storeys with flower boxes on the windowsills. Our room was nothing special, somewhat motel-like, with a beige, suburban décor. It had no window-box because it was on the main floor, with a view, if you parted the curtains, of a small parking lot: a couple of Renaults, a motor scooter, a potted ficus tree, a garbage can. “But it’s still a French parking lot!” I said.

And the hotel was on a Parisian street, with rows of 18th- and 19th-century buildings with wrought-iron rails on the windows, and motorcycles by the dozen, lined up tightly at a 45-degree angle to the sidewalk. 

    The main street was well shaded by trees and there were restaurants and café shaded by awnings and umbrellas and we loved to just walk the streets. It was late June and the weather was warm and sunny and the streets were alive with humanity — tourists who were there for the same reason we were: just to be there. 

    Following the directions on my phone, we walked the short distance to the Place du Trocadéro, a terrace that straddled two identical 19th-century stone museum buildings and overlooked the Seine, with the tower just beyond the far riverbank. We ate in a nearby café — at an outside table facing the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk — and watched big tour buses empty their human loads in front of the terrace. After dinner, when the sun had set and the sky had begun to dim, we walked over to the terrace. People were already gathering to do what we were doing: stand there and look at the Eiffel Tower as night darkened the sky and stars began to appear. A dozen or so souvenir vendors worked their way through the crowd — young Black men, presumably immigrants from francophone African countries or the French Caribbean— selling miniature Eiffel Towers of various sizes. The sellers were a bit of a pain, but they were not too persistent. Once you shook your head or waved them off with a “Non, merci,” they would leave you alone. But then the next one would approach and you had to wave him off, too.

    The crowd thickened as the night intensified and the tower came alive with light. Spotlights placed strategically at various points on the structure gave depth to its metallic, skeletal form and its bronze hue. I wondered if this wasn’t a cliché of a vacation activity, to be standing there just looking at a famous urban landmark. But the crowd seemed to emanate an oddly warm feeling of community, all these people, from various points in Europe, the Americas and Asia, united in this single, trivial purpose: to observe a beautiful manmade thing — Hollywood’s icon of Paris for those not worldly enough to recognize the Arc de Triomphe or the Louvre, I was the symbol we had all seen in movies all our lives. At one point the tower exploded with light, flickering and flashing as if by fireworks, and the crowd responded with oohs and ahs. Anne and I held each other close and took pictures of the tower and of each other.

    The next morning, we went into a tiny bakery across Av. Kléber for a coffee and a pastry. A tall, dark Haitian man sold us coffee and pastries at the counter, and we took a seat at one of the four tables set up in the small space to eat our breakfast. After a few minutes a well-dressed white man came in, marched through the room and stepped behind the counter and through the saloon-style door that led into the kitchen, as if he owned the place. He came out a few seconds later and started yelling in French at the Haitian man, then stormed back into the kitchen. The white man came out again and shouted some more. The Haitian slammed some cupboard doors and a drawer in anger, then took a 50-euro note and a small note pad out of the till and walked quickly out through the front of the shop, apparently on his way to a market to buy some ingredients for the lunch business. 

    I pitied the immigrant employee, stuck in a shitty job with a prick of a boss, but too dependent on the lousy pay to quit. The Frenchman came out and took over behind the counter. I was annoyed that he would abuse his employee in that way, especially in front us, the customers. He had a cool, fashionable look: 50-ish, short salt-and-pepper hair, trim grey beard, crisp white shirt and high-end jeans. He was good-looking and fit. You wanted him to be a good person, but he had stained his image to us. He tried to be pleasant, asked in English if we wanted anything else. We said, “Non, merci,” and left.

    After a day of wandering the streets of the Latin Quarter and, later, the Avenue des Champs Élysées, we were drawn back to the Trocadéro as the sun set. It was a cheap, low-energy evening’s entertainment after a long day of walking, and it was a short, pleasant walk from our hotel. A Korean tour bus pulled up and a new flock of visitors piled onto the terrace. The African mini-tower vendors were out in force. As night stained the sky, we edged closer to the rail overlooking the garden that sloped down toward the river and the tower on the other side. 

    One vendor approached me and proffered a miniature tower. The vendors would dangle a tower from a chain in one hand, with a backpack full of them slung over the other shoulder. The replicas were actually quite nicely made: solid metal, of an accurate colour, and well detailed. They came in various sizes, ranging from about four inches to 12 inches tall. 

    I refused the vendor’s offer while looking down at the model in his hand. I looked up, and saw that he hadn’t understood my rebuff. As our eyes locked for that second, I saw in his face a sensitivity, his eyes revealing a wavering confidence, an apprehension in his position as the subservient, intruding salesperson. He had been intent only on getting the communication right: did I want one or not? “Non, merci!” And then he turned away and I lost him in the crowd. This was not just about whether I wanted a souvenir; I had seen into the deep morosity of this man’s life. I suddenly felt a stinging remorse. Not only had I rejected his offer, dashed his hopes for a sale, but I had done so in a gruff, dismissive way. I had been the object of his shyness, his doubt. If I saw him again, I thought, I would recognize him. His face was youthful but manly, taut-skinned, his eyes clear and expressive, and tinged with a sadness I would never forget.

I held Anne close. The lights on the tower burst and sparkled against the night sky. Suddenly I believed all the clichés about Paris and falling in love. For a moment I didn’t have to feel guilty or stupid for thinking that the two of us and all these others around us were touched by the magic of the city of lights, a city that was here a thousand years ago and would be here a thousand years from now. 

When the tower glittered and strobed again, Anne and I snuggled and took more pictures. The African men circulated with their replicas. Some made sales. I hugged Anne again and felt an urge to cry. Because Paris had made me love her more and because my remorse over the souvenir vendor confirmed my humanity.

 

Back at the room. Anne said, “We’ll have to buy one of those miniature Eiffel Towers before we leave.”

    “I was thinking the same thing.”

    “We can give it to my mother. I can see it on her nick-nack shelf already. And it would be nice to give one of those poor Africans some business.”

    “Let me pick the guy to buy it from, OK?” I said.

    “Why?”

    “I think I offended the one trying to sell me tonight. I feel badly. Really.”

    I tried to explain the hurt in his eyes and how it made me feel.

    “Come on, they get rejected every five minutes.”

    “I know, but I think he thought I was rude to him. I just want to put it right. And I’m pretty sure                I’d be able to pick him out if I saw him again.”

    She laughed. “But even if you find him, he’s not going to remember you.”

    “That’s not the point.”

 

The next night we had dinner in a restaurant off the roundabout near the Trocadéro — Anne didn’t believe in the five-block rule: avoid restaurants within five blocks of a tourist attraction. We had this pink salmon casserole baked in individual hand-thrown bowls, and a half-bottle of Chablis. We sat facing outward, in the Paris tradition, watching the pedestrians and the cars flow past. A police car approached, its siren blaring that two-note interval, “bee-bah bee-bah bee-bah,” which then dropped a semitone in pitch as it passed us, just like in the movies. I laughed, but Anne didn’t understand what I was laughing at. I didn’t bother to explain. As the sun set, the tour buses pulled up and the terrace began to fill up with tourists and vendors. It was Friday and a little busier than usual. “Maybe people who live in other parts of France come here for the weekend,” Anne said.

    When we got to the terrace I looked around. I would have to be quick and decisive, otherwise I would be rejecting and offending vendors right and left until I found the one I was looking for. Then I recognized the muscular arms sticking out of the blue cotton shirt, the loose jeans, the hair in knotted short twists and, most of all, the clear, sad eyes. He was about 20 feet away. I looked at him until our eyes met. I nodded and raised a hand and he adjusted his backpack and came toward us. 

    “Un,” I said, holding up an index finger. Then, reciting the phrase I had learned from Google Translate, I asked, “Combien coûtent les moyens?” 

    “Huit — “ he began, then corrected himself, having recognized my accent. “Eight euros.”

Anne took her wallet from her purse and fished for the right change. The vendor rummaged through his bag for a medium-sized replica. I was happy. I was actually fixing a mistake, in the middle, brokering the deal. Things were falling into place. 

    “Just give him a ten,” I said to Anne, enjoying this small victory. We would have Kronenbourg later, or a bottle of wine. 

    The vendor handed me the model. It felt surprisingly solid and heavy in my hand. Anne gave him the money, and signalled with a wave to keep the change. 

    “Merci!” I said. The vendor turned away, indifferent to his success. As he left, another vendor, who also looked a lot like the sad-eyed one I had offended the night before, passed.

    “So, was that him?” Anne asked.

Another vendor, dressed the same, with the same short dreads and clear, sad eyes, passed. And then another. 

    “I’m not sure.”

    The sky darkened and the Eiffel Tower sparkled and shimmered.

    Maybe I hadn’t made good with the right vendor. But we had our souvenir, and one vendor had our money. And I knew that if I’d had enough 10-euro notes I would have bought towers from all the vendors in Paris, and begged their pardon, in French.