Paris, a Wednesday

by Susan Mann (South Africa)

I didn't expect to find France

It is mystery, more than clarity, that propels us forwards. I return to France before daybreak early one September morning, mid-week, speeding into Paris from the airport, no traffic. A harvest moon dangles in the distance, lunar bling in velvet, luring the cab inwards from the highway - over here the party, baby! Paris, the dream-trafficking sorceress, never sleeps. She waits and watches, empress of the masked ball. Keys to the apartment I’d rented for three nights would be available at nine. Now it’s six, still dark. I shiver, stretching the arms of my sweater over my hands. The curtain has not yet lifted on the street in the 13th arrondissement. Silence at stage left, echoes at stage right. Small fists clench in my shoulders from lugging my backpack. Lucky for me Paris is one of those cities where people toss furniture they don’t want out into the streets. A Parisian friend once walked home pushing a ping pong table in a wheelbarrow. This time somebody has turfed out some old velvet chairs. I perch - tentatively - on one. After a while, my optimism starts to fade, needing more energy than I have to keep it petal fresh, needing a hot shower. I feel liminal as the hour. Priority: coffee. Soon as my bags are taken care of. Not a wink on the plane, I blink with sandpaper eyelids, hear the crunch of footfall, give a brief nod as a young man hurries into the street, leaning slightly forward. A cat yowls upstairs. A man yells back at it. Yowls again. Yells again. And on it goes. Finally the day breaks open, and the café on the corner lifts its iron shutters. Soon I’m tucked into a red vinyl booth, looking out at a row of plane trees, savouring the filtered sunlight and coffee. The café is still empty when a man arrives in crimson shirt and dog collar. (Red? My kind of priest.) I watch him idly. I can here, where people-watching is an acceptable form of public theatre. A woman with an open face and easy smile comes to sit alongside me, greets me, places her order, as though waiting for the show to begin. On cue, an unshaven youngster in a black jacket slinks in next to the priest. Within seconds several hefty motorbikes lurch to a stop. Suddenly the press swarms around the two men, jamming furry microphones on long sticks into their faces. The priest is interviewed, but the man with the stubble seems to be ‘le mec’, the guy. I lean forward to catch a glimpse. Nope, not a film star that I recognise. The woman alongside me darts off to investigate. A svelte lady in leopard print pants, with large sunglasses assumes her place alongside Le Mec. She drops a white Maltese poodle sporting a French haircut and jagged little yellow teeth onto his lap. ‘Jerome Kerviel!’ reports my companion in a stage whisper as she arrives back to the booth. I stare at her benignly. Shrug. ‘The young fraudster who almost singlehandedly brought down a French bank to the value of EUR4,9 billion a few years back.’ ‘EUR 4,9 million,’ I say, wide-eyed. ‘Milliards’, she insists. 'Milliards!' And I realise I’m still several zero’s out. ‘What is he doing here?’ I manage to articulate in French. A little café in the 13th, hardly famous. ‘His first coffee as a free man. He was released from prison this morning. That man in the red shirt is his priest.’ She leans forward and lowers her voice, ‘His confessor’. I watch the spectacle a little longer, before leaving the trickster and his party and stepping out into the sun. At some point I must sleep, I’m starting to bump into things. But I cannot ignore the tug of the quarter, its cobbled passages, terraced houses, and ivy. Did it even exist before? Yet another rabbit out of the hat. Paris, queen of diamonds and of sleight-of-hand. A man on a bicycle stops and asks me if I’m lost. ‘Probably,’ I reply. ‘But by choice.’ I wonder if he really exists too. Either way, it doesn’t matter. He smiles and nods and cycles on.