Note: This is Part 2 of a previously published story.
The window in the main room of Henri’s – Ingrid’s – studio “ate” the Sacré Cœur. Son appartement mange le Sacré Coeur.
We’d say in English that it overlooked the church, but in this case, it under-looked it: our vantage point was from the top floor of a building in the rue Tardieu, just at the bottom of the funicular. We were still far below the church and yet close to it. The white domes – what Parisians call la choucroute – filled our view.
We spent hours at that window, Henri expounding on his theories. Our conversations ranged from the state of the world to his anarchist monologues, which, over time, smacked of crackpot guru more than charismatic charmer.
The one-room apartment was comfortable: an entryway led to a small – everything was small – bathroom and kitchen, where the only refrigeration was a garde-manger under the window: two cabinet doors opened to shelving exposed to the elements through slats of wood covered in a screen.
This garde-manger system worked well during three seasons, and Henri told me he had another solution for summertime. He’d run down in the morning to the local épicerie, or convenient store, to buy miniature pats of butter, the kind most of us only see in hotels, and just enough for his breakfast that day.
Years later, I experienced this way of living in western Africa, where I’d be sent out to buy the individual butter packets for my host family. We lived day to day, buying only what anyone could afford for the next meal – or, in this family’s case, what we could keep on hand without refrigeration.
When Henri told me about his background, I understood his habits: born in Kinshasa to a Zairian-Japanese mother and a Greek father, Henri spent some time in Belgium before moving to Paris. Ingrid’s apartment was downright luxurious compared to some of his former addresses – it even had a full bathroom, with a real toilet (not a Turkish toilet, still prevalent in buildings then) and a shower. The bathroom was painted hot pink, thickly coated with a shiny lacquer that holds cracking plaster together, at least for a little while.
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