Paris in Love (21 page)

Florent told Alessandro today that he is worried that his love for the Italian waitress will never come to anything. For one thing, he is forty-one and she is much younger, a university student when she is not waitressing. They did have a lovely evening together on his last visit. He talked most of the time, but she seemed responsive. I do not have a good feeling about this, but Alessandro says that romance writers should be more optimistic.

Street vendors are selling Christmas trees that are flocked white—but also bright scarlet and vivid purple. The department stores are piled with ornaments separated by color: here all black ornaments, there all transparent glass, or Pepto-Bismol pink. No one seems to offer life-size Santas entrapped in huge plastic fish-bowls blowing with endless snow. Of course, there are no front yards, but I sense that’s not the reason …

Last night Anna and her friend Nicole were building a complicated house in the living room, involving the couch, my yoga mat, a little table, a ton of blankets, et cetera. From my study, I could hear Nicole warbling on in her lovely English accent, then suddenly, “Anna, do I talk too much?” And, with the uncompromising honesty of childhood, the response: “Yes.”

We went out for tea with Italian friends who professed themselves dazzled by the way Alessandro chatted with the waiter in French. He smiled modestly … until the orders arrived. My
cheese plate (
fromage
from the Gay Château) came as ordered, as did all other orders, except my husband’s. He had requested a
tisane du berger
(a cup of tea), and a
lasagne aux aubergines
(eggplant lasagna) arrived instead. How the mighty have fallen!

Alessandro is making friends with the young, very conservative priest of Saint-Eugène–Sainte-Cécile. It turns out that our jewelry box of a church is famous for being the first church built of metal in all Paris. I can’t see how this can be true: the walls are definitely made of stone. But one doesn’t squabble with a priest over architectural details, not when there are so many more interesting things, like causes for the recent rash of pedophilia, that one can argue about. Our priest is mortified, and doesn’t like to think about it.

Every night Anna and I lie in the dark for “talking time.” I learned this from my friend Carrie, who defined talking time as a penalty-free half hour during which a child can confide secrets, such as whether she’s being offered illegal substances. Anna talks of one thing: Domitilla. Today Domitilla was worse at math than Anna (inconceivable, frankly).… Domitilla’s mother is nicer than I am, because Domitilla gets candy bars and chips for lunch.… Yesterday Domitilla wore a pink dress (withering scorn). No drugs, just pink dresses. Yawn.

Our local covered market is a visual feast. Arrangements of feathers—presumably donated by previous occupants—nestle decoratively among the plucked pheasants. Grapes hang from
gnarled stands of grape wood, and fresh radishes are arranged in a shallow vertical box, greenery up the middle, red bulbs flashing like jewels along the sides. Today I ignored the pretty produce and, overcome by curiosity, brought home a black radish, a wrinkled and rather bendy phallic horror. Investigating it on the Internet, I discover that flaccidity is no better in a radish than it is (ahem) in a man.

A huge Ferris wheel, the kind with glassed-in, heated compartments, has been erected at one end of the Champs-Élysées. The children have taken several rides, so now only one thing really interests them: the VIP car, which has smoked glass to protect its Very Important People. Anna is convinced that, if she’s lucky, one day she’ll see Malia and Sasha Obama spinning above Paris.

As winter tightens its grip, it feels as though we emerge into a slightly darker street every morning. Peering into lighted windows of hotels on our walk to the Métro, we see fewer breakfast guests every week.

My French friend Sylvie and I went to a wonderful little museum today, the Musée Nissim de Camondo. Moïse de Camondo was a fantastically wealthy Jewish banker and a collector of art and eighteenth-century furniture. In 1911 he had a mansion built to house his collections, basing its design on that of the Petit Trianon at Versailles. He snapped up furniture when great estates were dissolved, even buying paneling from the apartment of the
Count de Menou, and then lived there for years in the midst of truly royal splendor. I find his obsession fascinating and sad; he could certainly decorate his rooms with Queen Marie Antoinette’s vases and re-create the atmosphere of eighteenth-century nobility—but as a Jew and a banker, he could never have been part of it.