The train hissed as it slid to a halt at Gare du Nord. Fellow travelers emerged from their seats promptly, grabbing their luggage from the overhead compartment, letting gravity bring their belongings to the train floor with blunt thuds. I was stuck in my seat, the end of a pen between my teeth and my nose buried in blank pages. I was writing a story, a tragedy, and I had hoped that the motion of the locomotive would have brought about productivity. But I was stuck, unsure of where my characters should go and what should happen to them. But the conductor was less patient than I. He shooed me off the train with sharp French commands. I got up fast, hitting my head on the compartment above, hurriedly grabbing my backpack and a rose I had bought from a flower stand in London. I took a small leap onto the platform.
The warm Paris air smelled sweet and old like powdered sugar with hints of smoke, of smoldering ash. I looked around, surveyed the area until I saw Joan, who was standing in front of a rusty bench. We greeted each other, her welcoming me to her home and me passing to her the tired rose. “You have always been thoughtful,” she told me. Her mousy-brown hair was worn back with curly pieces of it unrestrained, resting on her face. She had amber eyes to match, wearing a black outfit of cargo pants and a tank top. She placed the stem of the flower into her knapsack, red petals peeking out from the open zipper. “Follow me,” she said.
We left the station and stayed where the morning sunshine was brightest, where we wouldn’t fall victim to lurkers, and where the light made the buildings look like pastries. We braved the streets congested with tourists, maneuvering the crowds, which Joan must have been used to. Joan was a Parisian native and historian, a young curator of the Louvre, who was an expert in ancient architecture. I met her when she came to the States to do work at the Morris-Jumel mansion. I was writing a ghost story at that time about the spirits that inhabited the manor. As we walked, Joan told me about her new project.
“I’ve been tasked by the Historical Society to catalog the city and learn the history of every structure of Paris. It is difficult, but I am making progress.”
“Every structure?” I ask, dodging lost tourists standing on the sidewalk.
Joan does too, moving ahead of me. “Yes,” she said. “The ones made out of stone.” She exhibited excellent proficiency in English. From our conversations, I gather that she may understand the language better than I. She asked me, “Would you like to see some of the places I have visited?”
“I’m following your lead,” I told her.
She stopped suddenly and turned, facing me. “Then we must turn around and go back.”
We retraced our steps and first found a Greco-Roman statue that claimed the center of a flower garden. Dirt pathways erupted from the statue, snaking around yellow and purple tulips. We were on one of those paths when I heard Joan say behind me, “This was gifted to Good King Henry in the Seventeenth Century.” The statue was of a woman, stark nude, crouched over covering herself. “It’s Aphrodite,” she explained.
“The love goddess,” I replied. I went to the right of the goddess, viewing Joan through the window made by the bend in the statue’s elbow. She peered through and met my eyes. “This statue traveled many miles, through impossible terrain.”
“The men who transported her must have been skilled,” I said, brushing the pristine stone with my left palm.
“Not men,” she said quickly. “Women.” She brushed the goddess’s hair, stopping at the end of the statue’s locks. “The King could not trust his laborers with her care. He hired a caravan of mothers to take her from Corinth. They brought her across the continent and delivered her to Paris. The King knew that women would carry her like a baby and protect her. He thought that if men were put in charge of her, they would gnaw at her fingers.” I looked down at those fingers and touched them with mine. “The sculptor is said to have crafted the piece for his true love.”
I looked up at the face of Aphrodite, forever caught in a stare, transfixed by the people who come to see her. “And here I thought buying a rose for a girl was romantic,” I told Joan.
“It was romantic,” she told me with a grin.
She brought me closer to the center of the city, passing Deco structures and lone musicians looking for pocket change. One of the musicians was a violinist missing both legs and one arm, playing the Classics for passing strangers. For him we stopped and watched as his small, disabled body played one of Mozart’s symphonies. An overturned, worn cap laid on the ground in front of him. Perhaps he had went there after falling into hard times and was looking to help settle some debt. I wondered how long it took him to get there. People did approach and give to the amputated violinist. Joan put a few coins in from her knapsack. I scoured my pockets to find only a credit card and my pen I was using earlier. I took the pen and placed it on the brim of the musician’s hat. I could only hope that he would do what I couldn’t and create something brilliant with that instrument.
We were heading toward her place of work when Joan asked me why I decided to come to Paris. I explained that a lot of my time was spent in London, endlessly searching for the dark stories whispered about past monarchs. When I saw a roundtrip ticket for sale, I knew I had to come and experience something fresh. I told Joan that pictures of the cream-colored buildings of Paris made my mouth water. Surely they were crafted by a chef, someone with a sharp eye for cuisine. Maybe it was an empty stomach that was fueling that interpretation, but the monuments, the small, gothic alcoves and fountains, looked like they belonged in a bakery, as if they had been kneaded and manipulated. I envy people who can make things look tasty and beautiful.
We walked around old palace grounds until we got to a part of the left wing, which was far from the main towers. This part of the wing was much older than the rest, done in new French Renaissance style. “In the eighteenth century,” said Joan, “before the Revolution, the youngest son of Louis the Great lived in this section of the palace. He was a self-proclaimed recluse. The prince would say that community took away from his artistic expression.”
I noticed that the part of the building that stood before me was darker than the others, drenched permanently in shadow. “The prince had another motive for choosing isolation,” she continued. “He hid his lover here.” Joan got closer to the structure and placed her hand on it.
“Why?” I ask from behind.
“She was English and of lesser nobility. Their relationship was treasonous. But the prince knew the consequences of loving her and having her here. It was the realization that life without each other would be worse than death that kept their love alive. No one was allowed inside. Not even the royal family. They stayed in here for many years.”
I looked around the courtyard, imagining living blind to the beauty. “But eventually they were found out, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Who was it? The maid?”
“No,” she said, turning away from the building, toward me. “It was the prince’s brother. He had snuck in and found her.”
“I take it there wasn’t a happy ending.”
“They were both beheaded,” she said, walking into the courtyard.
“How French,” I replied.
We made it to the banks of the Seine mid-afternoon. The water was swirling with warm colors it borrowed from the sky. We followed the current and did so unwavered until coming across a boiling protest. The Parisian street was overflowing with angry citizens, all spewing a French phrase simultaneously. “What are they saying?” I asked, yelling over the commotion.
Joan kept her vision trained on the display in front of her. “They are protesting about climate change. They want the government to take action.” The crowd of protestors shifted like the weather, like a storm ravaging the causeway.
“Unir!” they chanted in repetition. Although a tempest, the protest remained contained within a steady surge, heat coming off of the many bodies in waves. “Unir! Unir!”
I felt Joan grab my warm hand. Her’s were cold as ice. “This way,” she said to me. She pulled me into the scene, dodging signs and pushing against the protestors. I held on to Joan, our fingers intertwined, acting like glue to keep us from being separated within the mass. After a few minutes of wrestling, we made it through, patting ourselves down to make sure we were still in one piece.
We followed the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, unable to get close. Surrounding the Tower was a clumped mob that shivered like a festering wound. We found it best to not stop, in fear of infection. Further down the Seine was an old church, a Gothic marvel, standing high and scraping the sky. I went up to the church and dug my fingers into the intricate carvings of the wall, tracing the complicated patterns, coming to ornamented angels and gargoyles. “I’m amazed,” I told Joan. I looked up, almost touching the behemoth, trying to catch a glimpse of the spire. “What’s the story behind this?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure,” I heard Joan say. “I haven’t done research on it yet.” I heard her voice get more distant. “I will in the future.”
As the sun was setting, we came to a narrow abbey on the left, just off the wide road we were walking down. Joan squeezed in first, the rugged stone grabbing at the fabric on her arms. I followed suit, having to turn my torso and insert myself into the space like a credit card. “This place,” she said, again, her hand on the brick, “This place is a living memory.” The abbey was tucked away from the rest of Paris, cut off from the vibrant demonstrations and tender music. This place did not look delectable or scrumptious in any sense; the abbey was stale and bitter.
“In 1940,” Joan began, “when the Germans occupied Paris, the city fell to sleep. Everyone spoke in hushed tones and kept their heads down. People would move silently through the streets. They did not dare to look up, because they knew that a Nazi would shoot them on the spot if they did so.” She brought her body closer to mine, her lips closer to my ear. “Some people can’t take that kind of isolation. There were two lovers that would escape the reality of the war and come here to be together.”
I looked up at the extended rooftops above that covered the area like a canopy. I imagined hearing the faint stretch of leather from marching boots and the crushing of rubble from large death machines. The walls started making me feel claustrophobic. “There isn’t much room to move around,” I said to Joan.
She smiled and said, “They didn’t need much.” She grabbed my bicep and moved me toward her as she walked the length of the abbey.
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“They were discovered one afternoon and shot.” She continued walking.
“Tragedy,” I said. That word stayed there. I could taste it on my lips. “Whenever I try my hand at fiction and attempt to write a story,” I told Joan, “I never give it a happy ending.”
“I remember reading those stories,” she responded. The abbey narrowed even more.
“You know better than I that happy endings aren’t realistic. Just look at what we’ve seen today.” I told her.
“To be fair, coming to Paris for two days isn’t realistic,” she added. We reached the end of the abbey, which opened up to a small pocket made up of neighboring buildings. At the center of this pocket was a simple well constructed of pale yellow concrete slabs. Joan and I went to it and placed our hands on the edge.
“I’ve been here before once,” she said. I looked down into the center of the well and saw no liquid or light, hearing only the chiming of untamed water. I looked up again and saw that the sky was growing darker. It would be nightfall soon.
“Why is this here?” I asked, moving my hand over the smooth blocks.
“I’m not sure,” Joan told me. “I don’t know the history.”
By the time we get out onto the main stretch again, night had consumed Paris. The street next to the Seine was like a raging river, flooded with noisy travelers and stoic locals. We joined them and headed somewhere, somewhere deep into the center of Paris. We seemed to walk for hours and hours. As the night grew older, the people around us became restless and increasingly agitated with drunks and feuding couples. When things got rough, I held onto Joan as best I could, like I had done before, but the stream of people turned into a rapid, and we became separated. I was washed up on one of the banks, on the steps of a jutting stoop. I called for Joan, but my voice was drowned out.
I stumbled around and looked for Joan under the moon, trying to make familiar of what I had seen of the foreign land. I found my way back to the Seine, the river stained in moonlight. I called for Joan again and again but as I went on, my roar declined in volume. I was alone among strangers in strange land. I became as white as the moon. Instead of standing still, I headed toward the Eiffel Tower that lit up the sky, guiding me like the North Star. As the night grew older, close to retirement, the people dwindled in number, and soon I was like a piece of litter being pushed up a deserted street by a strong breeze. I kept heading toward the Tower, occasionally calling for Joan, but exhaustion had muted my volume. I had lost Joan. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find her again. I was alive inside of another tragic moment, knowing that if I did find Joan, there wouldn’t be a happy ending. A reunion would just mean I would have to say goodbye again.
I trudged along, swaying back and forth, sleepwalking, until I was awakened by the sight of the church Joan and I passed earlier. My eyes widened and I turned a sprinted in retrograde. I looked to my left and kept on until I found the opening to the alley Joan and I had went down. I had this feeling that I would find Joan at the end, by the well. I used my last bit of fuel and tore past the place the lovers were killed, dragging my body against the hugging buildings, more and more, faster and faster. I got to the end of the abbey and flung myself like a flea into the plaza. “Joan?” I asked. It came out as a murmur. But my word did not meet anyone. Silence snuffed it out. I let out a large sigh. There was no one in sight. My dashed hopes made my eyes grow heavy, made darkness cling to me. I collapsed onto the tiles below, my eyelids giving way.
They opened to Joan, who was bathed in sunlight. I squinted at her shining image. “There you are,” she told me. “I’m glad I found you again.” I got up, rubbed my eyes, and messed with my hair, looking at my reflection in the well water. It must have filled when I was sleeping.
“What time is it?” I asked her, stretching my arms and cracking my neck.
“Almost noon,” she replied. “We need to get you on your train.” She turned to get back onto the main way.
“When I lost you last night,” I told her, following her steps, “I thought I would find you here.”
“I didn’t dare move,” she told me. “I thought you would come back.”
“We found each other eventually,” I told her, grabbing her hand.
We headed back to the train station. Paris was sleepy, still recovering from the day before. We walked half awake to the north of the city. Looking at the buildings and statues I had become intimate with, alleyways and old palace grounds and the goddess, now knowing where they came from, an idea came rush forward. I squeezed Joan’s hand.
“On the way back to London,” I told her, with renewed energy, “I want to write about being with you in Paris, about everything you showed me and how we found each other again.”
Joan’s cheeks blushed and she looked to me. “Will this story have a happy ending?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I replied.
She walked me all the way to the entrance of the train. When I got on, I turned around and looked at Joan one last time. She gave me a final, sweet smile and then she darted left. I watched her as she walked away, her brown hair now covering her upper back, moving from shoulder to shoulder.
I found my seat and stared out at the platform, Joan’s figure growing smaller as the distance between us grew. Before the train moved, I imagined myself still next to her, walking through the rest of Paris, stopping at every structure she has studied and hearing their history. A part of me will stay with her as she moves through the city, staying there until I come back for it, having written my story with a happy ending. I couldn’t start until I got back to London, however. I had lent my only pen to a violinist with one arm.
