In Waves

Taking Stock of Summer

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Illustration courtesy Sonja Bajic.

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News from Eastern Paris

With the heat and my growing to-do list, confusion had set in.

I was walking westward through the Place des Victoires after having finished a tour with students of Le Ritz-Escoffier cooking school. Just the night before, I’d attended the annual Ritz Garden Party, but the incomparable luxury and sublime sense of hospitality had already faded in the morning’s heat.

Before the tour, I’d locked my bicycle near the Petit Vendôme restaurant, and in the mid-afternoon swelter, I was walking back to retrieve it before bicycling home to attack that massive to-do list. The sun was oppressively high, and because of its angle, finding a shady sidewalk anywhere was impossible.

Photo courtesy Un Jour de Plus à Paris.

As I navigated the plaza, the bronze statue of Louis XIV to my right, two text messages demanded my immediate attention. The construction workers in my family’s new apartment couldn’t find the key to the cellar. That sorted, a call from the tile store as I simultaneously messaged the colleague for tomorrow’s tour. Then three more text messages from my kids’ class group chats about the organization of the upcoming end-of-year kermesse, the party, and their teachers’ gifts.

I continued my way past Louis XIV. With texts and call managed, I pressed the side button on my phone and slipped it into my bag.

I looked up. Something was wrong.

The new apartment…. and the beginning of our renovation.

An eerie brain-flash, then complete disorientation. Why was I standing in front of a shop window showing curvaceous mannequins in puffy wedding dresses? Had yet another bridal boutique opened on the west side of the plaza, when there was already one to the east? Then understanding: during the phone distractions, I’d made an entire circle around the plaza. I was standing back where I’d begun.

The heat wave – the first canicule – in Paris during those ten days of the French Open was mild compared to the more recent wave in June. This one felt downright pre-apocalyptic: the crushing heat drove Parisians to swim in the Canal Saint Martin, where they cooled themselves in the odiferous waters until after midnight. The wild splashing, a sound I associated with the insouciance of summertime, now felt threatening, like an end-of-times desperation. With five different public accesses to the Seine or the Canal during this summer’s “Paris en Seine” initiative, Parisians will visibly continue their public paddling whether I like it or not.

Bathing in the Canal Saint-Martin.

Between the two heat waves, a brief respite: grey descended on the city in late May. Cool breezes rustled loose the linden flowers from their branches, the very same flowers that had caused all the sneezing mere weeks ago. And with the clouds came thunderstorms, the sky imagining we were still in the ides of March. Setting out to my office one morning, the wind picked up noticeably, those linden helicopters twirling to the ground. Mini-tornadoes of already fallen flowers whipped through my spokes and down the tiny passages of the 20^th district as I pedaled uphill against the breeze. Later, after the rain, the tires of my bike fishtailed through slick piles of those now-wet flowers gathered in the gutters.

Linden. Photo courtesy Les Arbres de Paris.

But the heat came back, and with it, another Paris. Our aural landscape changed, and we adopted a different interpretation of time’s passing.

During the first few nights, our windows swung wide on both sides of the apartment, a whisper of coolness blew in. The tombstones and trees of the Père Lachaise provide us a bit of natural air conditioning. The intimate sounds of our neighbors’ lives blow in as well: somewhere a wine cork pops, silverware is rustled out of a kitchen drawer. A momentary sizzle of meat browning in a pan, the cloying notes of a TV movie’s music, unmuffled and rhythmic cries from a young couple downstairs. More pedestrians than usual fill our street, all escaping their oven-like dwellings. A passing car blares French rap: a driver’s “J’existe! ” and an open protest of the heat. And towards 11 pm, birds chirp even as the moon is high and the sun is definitively closing up shop.

As the broiling days wear on, the cooling nighttime breezes cease. The silent torpor of the afternoon gives way to still air and consequentially louder and more aggravated sounds in the evening. A mother yells “C’est pas possible!!” and fire truck sirens blare in the distance as first aid crews race to the rescue. A baby’s wail is edgy and rough. The same neighbor who usually watches TV late into the night is the only one sleeping now, his raucous snores filtering into windows from across the street.

An insistent clack-clack-clack as a fork goes around in a recycled mustard glass: vinaigrette. Because all anyone’s eating is cold foods. Artichokes purchased and cooked in the cool of the early morning, store-bought gazpacho, green salad that begins wilting the minute it leaves the refrigerator, pepper-studded rosette de Lyon saucisson on wisps of baguette slathered with unsalted butter, an avocado sliced in half, vinaigrette poured carefully into the pit-hole, sprayed with hastily-sliced cilantro leaves, and spooned out in careful deliberate bites. We’re even eating more slowly.

At night, we took to sleeping with our heads at the foot-end of the bed, which is closer to the window. Sleep came with some difficulty, dreams fleeting and terrifying. The real-life bewilderment caused by too many plates spinning brought on a visceral dream of entering into a state of dementia.

My Frenchman located and assembled fans. He stood in line outside “Best Affaires,” a bazar-type shop down the road, as its employees unloaded a truck full of them, les ventilateurs. He’d already tried two other stores, both displaying a sign in the aisles bereft of fans: rupture de stock – stock shortage. Now a few shops have replenished their aisles.

My first group of study abroad students made it through the heat wave valiantly. The whirring of their tiny battery-powered fans was the soundtrack of summer as we explored the art de vivre of Parisian hotels, toiled behind stoves, sipped champagne, and tasted spirits with cheese.

A bathroom at Hôtel SAX Paris.

Distillerie de l'Arbre Sec.

The heat broke the day my students left town. Another brain-flash: newfound lucidity. Surviving and enjoying this summer, with its challenges and pleasures, would mean sleeping enough, slowing down, existing. -AZ

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