Ransacking Paris (22 page)

The obsessive, overpowering intensity of feelings, his devoted limpet-like tenderness, seem, to me, crowding, exclusive. I remember lying with Anthony once in an unpainted wooden house high above a deep valley and, after love-making, we rolled and tumbled together through the dark night above the valley, our still moist bodies and mingled breath indistinct from air and space. Decades later, I can still feel the night air on my skin although we did not leave the loft room where we lay. Surely love has to be spacious, part of everything around it. I barely recognise the claustrophobia he describes as love at all.

Montaigne writes of the ‘loving-friendship' of a good marriage, but then spoils it by saying the ‘boiling rapture' of intense sexual passion is not a good thing in marriage: ‘There is a kind of lewdness in deploying the rapturous strivings of Love's licentiousness within such a relationship, which is sacred and to be revered', and that ‘women's reason can be unhinged by arousing them too lasciviously'. Oh Montaigne, how could you! There is nothing wrong with love's licentiousness, or with being, at times, unhinged!

I'm forced to admit Montaigne is not at his best when it comes to women. This is the one topic where he is of his time, seeing women as a necessary and pleasing adjunct to men's lives: ‘What more do they want than to be loved and honoured?' and ‘reasoning powers, wisdom and the offices of loving-friendship are rather to be found in men: that is why they are in charge of world affairs'. It's also the one area where he is less than ruthlessly open and honest; he becomes theoretical and tells us nothing personal about his thoughts or feelings towards his wife, or any other woman. In his defence, I wonder if women were so highly constructed as fascinating objects by their roles at that time and in that place – and for the next several centuries in Western Europe – that they were near impossible to know as fellow human beings? And then Montaigne does wriggle out of it right at the end of the wonderfully sexy essay ‘On Some Lines of Virgil' when he writes, ‘I say that male and female are cast in the same mould: save for education and custom, the difference between them is not great.'

But it's not until Simone de Beauvoir that things change much. She still wants to be ‘in love' but she didn't think of herself as ‘a man's female companion; we would be two comrades'. I wouldn't use the word ‘comrade', but I like the idea. I could never be one of those women who subsume themselves in serving a great man – I don't want to look up or down, I want to walk side by side.

In a contradictory fashion, in the same paragraph de Beauvoir says, ‘I should be in love the day a man came along whose intelligence, culture and authority could bring me into subjection.' And then again ‘from the very start, he would be a model of all I wished to become; he would, therefore, be superior to me'.

I wonder if she was poking fun at her youthful perfectionism, but it does appear to describe how she felt about Sartre. She says she required him to be ahead of her in ability because ‘I was grasping rather than generous; if
I
had had to drag someone along behind me, I should have been consumed with impatience.' I admit, with some shame, to understanding that impatience, but I cannot accept being either dominant or dominated in the power battle of love; it has to be equal, or at least constantly shifting.

*

I saw a quote on a poster in the Luxembourg Gardens:
In nature, the bee and the flower desire one another and indulge one another with a true act of love
. I like the phrase, ‘indulge one another'; it suggests both equality and pleasure. Bees and honey have long been part of the imagery of love and sex, the penetration of the flower and the sweet liquid on the tongue. Renaissance artists often painted bees with Cupid as a symbol of the delights and dangers of love, the sting of deflowering and the richness of fertilisation and fecundity.

I suppose my conception of love was formed by the sight of my mother, Connie, and father, Don, walking together on the farm in the evening arm-in-arm, talking. And of my mother seated at my father's feet in front of the open fire while he ‘rubbed' her head – they never used the word ‘massage'. And the pair of them on the old sofa on the back veranda after they moved to the house in town, Dad with his arm over Mum's shoulder, Mum coquettishly holding his finger. There was a feeling of enjoyment of each other's company and of equal exchange of feeling and thought – except my mother was probably the more powerful of the two – which must have sunk into my heart. I didn't observe or think about sexual passion between them, although by the time I was a teenager I had become suspicious of them spending every single Sunday afternoon in their bedroom where we were utterly forbidden to disturb them. And the troubling salty smell their room often had. Then, later on in life, ten years after my father had died, my mother, quiet and not given to exclamation, one day exclaimed: ‘Sometimes I
ache
to have Don's arms around me again.' The word ‘ache' carried more weight than any word I'd ever heard her use.

*

After Norway, Anthony went to several cities in Germany for work and then Amsterdam to see Patrick. I pictured the two of them walking along the canals, discussing politics as they both liked to do, Anthony with his hands in his overcoat pockets, holding forth, Patrick biding his time. It would be clear to anyone watching they were father and son.

Anthony was gone for nearly two weeks and came back just before Ana and Jean-Jacques were due to arrive. I told him about Emanuelle's confession and about my companions' thoughts on love, especially de Beauvoir's need to gaze upwards.

‘She was a Catholic too, wasn't she? Looking up to the Father?' he said.

‘Yes, but I don't have that need. I mean, I need to admire you, but that's kind of a sideways gaze.'

‘Is that right?' he said wryly. We were lying on the leather couch, a favourite spot where the light flooded in from three directions. Above us on the wall was the small Matisse print, a girl sitting cross-legged against a glorious blue background. Outside, through all three French doors, I could see only sky from where I lay. Anthony leaned over me and opened his laptop on the low table beside the lounge and selected a song to play. For you, he said. It was a romantic love song, ‘Come Away With Me'.

‘Sometimes you can think about it too much,' he said. ‘But, you know, it's mutual. It's a kind of communion. I guess it's what we all want. To join with others – and that's the thing to think about. Why do we want that? And I don't think there's only one person for everyone; that would be mad. It's a matter of opening your heart and mind to the ones who come your way.'

It probably isn't exactly what he said but that was the gist of it. I thought about how both love and precise words are able to
briser les solitudes
, break through separateness. I felt my cheek on Anthony's chest, my stomach along his side, my leg over his legs, the length of two bodies and all the intimate places they touched. I went to reply, and then thought of Stendhal; perhaps it is too risky to let the Fates know what you love.

*

The wait to see Jean-Jacques made us both uncertain. In our minds he was still young and beautiful – and dangerous. He had lived the shadow side for us all those years ago; neither of us was sure how we would relate to a nice middle-aged man who ran his father's driving school. We had laughed by the fire, played at learning French, drunk red wine. It was only a moment ago, on the other side of the world.

And Ana, I remembered a photograph of a pretty brown-eyed young woman. What would we say to each other?

They flew from Lausanne in the evening and booked into their hotel. They had arranged to meet us at our place the next morning.

‘I want to see your Paris apartment,' Jean-Jacques said, and I could hear amusement in his voice.

Next morning I waited as Anthony opened the door and then Jean-Jacques stood there smiling, still handsome, but more solid. I saw in his eyes – he could never hide anything – that he too was nervous at meeting us, a middle-aged couple who purported to be the friends of his youth from Australia.

Anthony and Jean-Jacques embraced. Ana and I caught each other's eye and smiled. I think we knew straight away that it was going to be fine.

Jean-Jacques spoke his mixed French and English and Ana spoke careful French for me. How long have you been here? How do you like Paris? We are staying in the Hôtel des Artistes. Where do you want to go? The readjustments of people from each other's past standing in front of each other in different bodies with different faces. Hiding the sadness.

Jean-Jacques wanted to see all the
touristique
sites, he said, as if this were his first time. He had in fact lived in Paris for a year or so after he fled Australia. He had tried to quit heroin before returning home to Lausanne, before his parents saw him, but it hadn't worked. He ended up going into a detox clinic back in Switzerland and then he'd worked there for a couple of years afterwards, helping other people break the addiction.

‘This is what we do in Paris,
non
? See the monuments, be a tourist. I want to do everything. You are nice bourgeois in a nice apartment and you can show us Paris.' His eyes were alight with mischief. ‘And, Tony, you can give me a joint.'

Anthony did have a joint for him. He had bought some marijuana in Amsterdam on his way back to Paris. He still did have the occasional smoke himself, but I knew he'd bought it this time because he hadn't wanted to be caught without any by Jean-Jacques. We'd argued about it – it was risky and stupid to carry drugs through an airport. It seemed clear enough it was to stake a claim against middle-aged safety.

They had a few puffs – Ana and I didn't bother – and then we walked out into the rue Simart and zigzagged up the backstreets towards Montmartre. We came out behind Sacré-Coeur, near the park in the rue de Bonne where I had watched the little boy call out ‘
Regarde
' to his mother on our first day. I had been there many times since then; it had become a place to sit and contemplate. It was away from the rush of tourists but still high enough up on the slope to give a feeling of detachment. Jean-Jacques wanted to go to place du Tertre and to have lunch there, so we kept walking.

We wandered around the crowded square packed as always with stalls selling bright paintings of Paris streets and artists offering caricature sketches. Tourists bumped into each other, talked loudly, took photographs. We sat down on the terrace of Mère Catherine: red-checked tablecloths, woven chairs, a ringside view. I felt uncomfortable. I had not so much as stopped in place du Tertre, even though I lived less than ten minutes away, avoiding it or scurrying through if I had to go that way.

‘You are not ze tourist?' Jean-Jacques asked, gleefully observing my discomfort.

‘Not really.'

‘
Pourquoi pas?
' Why not?

‘I don't know. I live here.'

‘But it is good to be ze tourist. You can enjoy this
très belle ville
like an
innocente
.'

He was right of course, but I wasn't ready to let go my fragile sense of being at home. I turned to Ana and we started talking about our kids. She and Jean-Jacques had two sons and one daughter, the oldest about twelve, I think. Her youngest son, she said, had a developmental disability, which meant he needed and might always need careful attention. She said his need did not oppress her, that it had opened her heart and only made her love more. I knew it was true – in some people there is a largeness of heart, a loving compassion, which only expands more with hardship. I thought how fortunately things turn out sometimes, that Jean-Jacques had found someone who could love so well.

I told Ana that Jean-Jacques had known both our boys in the Mountains; that even when he was an addict he was like a sweet older brother, that he did the same things as our kids, collecting odd things, bones, shells, cicadas, and he liked to play and to dress up in costumes. And like a child, he couldn't hide his feelings. Delight, anger, wonder, pleasure were always right there on his face with no mask.

‘He is still like that.' She smiled. ‘He's still a little boy.'

Jean-Jacques heard her comment and the sweet-boy smile flashed. ‘
Un mauvais garçon
,' he said. A naughty boy. He put his arm around Ana's shoulder and I was reminded of my parents.

‘He's a good father, very protective,' Ana said. He worked long hours, she said, and she knew she could always depend on him. ‘But,' she said, ‘he is a child too. He plays games for hours on his computer.'

Afterwards Anthony and I went back to the apartment to do some work. Jean-Jacques begged us to go to the Louvre with them, but neither of us felt like traipsing past endless dark canvases and made excuses. We met up again in the early evening at the Tuileries because Jean-Jacques wanted us all to go on the ferris wheel on place de la Concorde. I hadn't been on a carnival ride since the octopus and the ferris wheel at Wellington showground when I was fourteen or fifteen. Every year the show brought rides and sideshows, Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent and the mysterious half-man–half-woman and the open-mouthed clowns, transforming the dusty paddock into alleys full of strangeness. Seeing it from above in a whirling ride had made it seem all the more fantastical, like a phantom town appearing briefly in our ordinary place.

It was early evening in Paris. The lights came on as we soared up and around, above the rooftops and monuments, high up with the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and all the way to the horizon one minute, and then down with the traffic and cobbles of place de la Concorde the next, and then up with the lights and distance again. The perspective shifted over and over, but slowly enough not to make me feel giddy. The air was cool on my face and the lift and sway of the ferris wheel gondola felt dangerous. Jean-Jacques looked happy.