In a Lonely City

by Catherine Tennal (United States of America)

Making a local connection France

From the window of my dormitory in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, I could see Le Jardin du Luxembourg. Across the Boulevard Saint-Michel, men and women jogged, elderly ladies in long coats walked small dogs, school children shared gelato, teenage sweethearts kissed and sulked and smoked cigarettes. I took French classes on the second floor of a small building, tucked away down a cobblestone alley near L’église de la Madeleine. I walked everywhere. In the mornings I would leave my dorm, turning right down bustling Saint-Michel, then left along the Quai, passing street artists and men selling roasted chestnuts and dragueurs who called after me ("Ravissante, mademoiselle!"), until I reached Le Pont Neuf, where I would cross over the river Seine, the pulse of Paris. It was on this walk that I first saw Stefanos. I don’t remember the first time specifically. The times that stand out in my mind were the times I was with someone. Then our glances, quick like camera flashes, were secretly shared without the knowledge of whoever might be by my side. The smile was always the same. Given so openly, nothing held back. I thought of an epitaph in a French-language textbook from school: "A smile means friendship in any language." Trite, but maybe. Once or twice I hesitated, almost stopped, but thought better of it before the hesitation added anything more than a hitch in my step. He worked at a crêperie, half a mile down Saint-Michel from my dorm. I often bought crepes in the city, but I had never stopped at this stand. There were two men who worked there. One was a gruff older man--the owner, I think--the other was Stefanos. He was short and round, head and shoulders visible through the open service window, dimpled cheeks and curly shaggy brown hair. I was terribly lonely during that time. At night, under the thin, pilling sheet in my twin bed, I would think: "No one in this country cares if I exist. No one on this continent cares." He was the kindest face in a lonely city. Months passed before we spoke. I was with a new acquaintance, an Iranian immigrant. As we walked down Saint-Michel, he waved to the man in the crêperie who waved and smiled back. I felt a shiver of something imagined slipping into reality. Then he saw me. “It’s you!” He grinned broadly. "Stefanos," he introduced himself. He said he had always thought, “The next time she walks by I’ll offer her a crepe,” but he hadn’t wanted to seem like another Paris dragueur. I sat on a small wooden stool next to the open side door, and he made me a Nutella crepe with bananas and coconut shavings ("something to make it special"). Sometimes, when he was having a bad day, he confessed, I would walk by and smile and everything would seem better. He was Albanian but now considered himself a vagrant--a musician, a linguist, a street-life philosopher, a purveyor of crepes to the passersby of Saint-Michel. He smoked as we talked, an outlet for nervous energy, tossing the butts onto the cement absently. His hands were small and chubby, short-fingered, childish. Here, he said, he watched the city slipping by from the window of the crêperie. Sometimes he felt that he was inside a dull nightmare. Back in Albania--in his village of Dhermi, on the border with Greece--sea met mountains. While he was in Paris, Club Med destroyed his village to build a road for tourists. His childhood home was gone. Here he was, in a whole country that didn't know him, didn't know his village, that didn't care. And he was helpless. Daylight faded over Le Jardin du Luxembourg. Ten o’clock came and it was time to close up. He made a paper airplane out of a piece of receipt paper, handing it to me as we said goodbye. Happinesses is hard to find, he told me. And sometimes you're powerless to stop change, to protect what matters to you. But still, there are good things: dogs, and books, and musical instruments...crepes with Nutella, and friendly smiles in lonely cities that pull you from a waking sleep.