Colette Obrien

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PARIS IS A BLACK WOMAN

The French -- myself included -- and those drawn to them, have an unusual relationship to death and to those delicacies that grow underground; truffles and mushrooms, to cheeses valued for the degree of pungence brought on by decay. A favorite commentary on the French by a recent French president -- which today is always said with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders-- is, ‘How can one govern a people who make more than 300 types of cheese.’ And whose favorite Sunday outing is to take a selection of those delicacies --and of course the ubiquitous ‘fermented’ grape -- to picnic in a favorite cemetary. A pentient for flavors that perfume the palatte darkly.

At breakfast in the small hotel dining room where I was staying in St. Germaine de Pres, a Canadian woman who’d been in town longer than I, had insisted that the Basilique -- burial place of the kings and queens of France -- was not to be missed.

The long history of the Abbey Church dates back to 250 A.D., and to the origins of the French monarchy whose several historical lines were inseperably interwoven -- they were not just intermarried but interburied. The worst case example was during the French Revolution when the remains of the kings and queens were violently exhumed and thrown together into unmarked piles.

Once past the Opera and Saint Lazare metro stops in central Paris, the population on the underground grew steadily darker skinned and more exoticly dressed, the variety of languages a melodic melange. Basilique St. Denis located just outside of Paris, is the last metro stop on the number 13 line that runs between St. Denis in the north and Chatillon-Montrouge in the south. It is a very long way and passes through neighborhoods of vast difference.

At the LeFourche stop, a family of gypsies rushed in; two adults dragged three ragged children from 1 to 6 years old. My fellow passengers turned away or averted their eyes as if an ill wind had entered the car. At this point in the journey, the elegant Parisian shoppers, the students, the small business owners and most commuters were gone. In their place were Arab, African and Lebanese families and a few stragglers making a long commute.

The moment of rising out of the dark station underground into the light of an unfamiliar place always fills me with wonder and curiousity. The St. Denis station came out in a modern semi-enclosed shopping area; smooth grey cement floors and walls with no view out accept to the sky; a labyrinth of corridors and inner squares. The only people present had come with me from the train. Metal accordian doors of the shops that lined the squares were locked closed over the entrances. My shoes echoed in the long halls.

After coming to several dead-ends and finding no one from whom I could ask directions, what had felt like a trap, sprung open, and I found myself on a street that was so bustling with life, I laughed in relief and surprise at the extreme contrast.

A traffic jam of vehicles blocked the way to a huge area of stalls covered in bright colored cloths brilliant in the fall sunlight. It was an open air market. Horns honked, voices called, bells rang. The scent of gasoline merged with garlic, tomatoes and roses in a strange bouquet.

A sign for the Basilique pointed to the left. My senses, however, were instinctually drawn straight ahead into the melee of color and motion, scent and sound -- into life. Why go left toward darkness and death, I asked myself? The bones of men and women in cold marble tombs, whether royal or common, made my nose wrinkle in distaste for the morbidity. But, as an amateur archaeologist, I’ve followed the scent of decay and long dead civilizations for as long as I can remember. I turned left. Besides which -- I am French.

The Basilique towered in grey-stone elegance above the street scene; a watchful god standing alone and uninvolved. I soberly climbed the wide entrance stairs.

Inside the huge vault, the light was soft and multicolored as it streamed through the numerous stained glass windows that punctuated the walls. The space was so large that the several hundred people there before me seemed to disappear into the dense silence of the environment.

The church is not a uniform structure. Its overall architecture bears the marks of history; a history that weaves not only the lines of monarchs but of the Catholic church and its relationship to the kings and queens. Remodeled and added to several times over 1800 years, it is itself a living history of France; its rulers, its religious, its politics, and its artistic movements.

The most accomplished artists of their time contributed their talents to the funerary monuments of St. Denis. The world’s greatest assembly of such art was here. As I moved among them, the prevailing consciousness of the peroid I walked through was revealed. During the Middle Ages, the sculptures were full of fear and superstition, the faces hard and cruel. During the Renaissance they were inspired and full of meaningful symbolism. I could see how the consciousness of the people of the period was expressed in the way death was depicted. Finally during the French Revolution a large number of bronze tombs were melted down and the majority of other tombs were removed and piled in the garden that flanks the north transept. Other bones were dumped in a pit in the Valois cemetery. This seemed to me to be a very powerful expression of the 18th Century mind.

As fascinating as all of this was, after an hour or so, I began to feel depressed by the dark and cold, and the thickness of the history. Besides I was getting very hungry. The memory of the market drew me outside.

The streets above throbbed with life and the present. As I wandered through the crowded aisles the array of products was staggering in its diversity. A mountain of garlic rose up from a large table, its golden color sparkling in the afternoon sun and sending out waves of scent. A woman stood smoking beside it. Every type of vegetable and flower was arranged in neat rows, clothes, shoes, sequinned slippers from heaven knows where, every color of tennis show, and artificial flower, vases, auto parts, pots and pans, costume jewelry, cassette tapes, videos, jogging suits, socks, underwear, women’s bra and pant sets, in red white and black, laced and embroidered. Yards of fabric plain and colorful.

But what made me stand back and watch in astonished pleasure was the people. Senagalize, Malinese, Gabonese, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, dressed in their traditional clothes dazzled me with beauty of color and shape and the pure grace of their movements. Stately African men in long robes with their hair close cropped led children by the hand.

The image of these people who have come to France after being colonized by the French monarchs, now dancing on the graves of their previous captors, made me smile.

A Sengalize woman walked past me, a foot taller than I, in a yellow and white dress like the daffodils that come out in spring where I live in Northern California. She moved like the wind over the fields of my home, and I followed her for a while hoping she wouldn’t mind, but I couldn’t resist. I felt like a child and I wanted to get close to her.

The stalls butted up to a building the size of an airplane hanger that was the indoor market. I let myself be moved in by the throng. Stalls of meats, fish, poultry -- you had to buy your live chicken outside -- and sausages hung up like necklaces beside sweatmeats bright red. I bought a pufffed pastry filled with cheese and devoured it hungrily as I continued to make the rounds.

An entire aisle was taken up with glass cases of cakes, tartes and pastries decorated like baroque jewelry; blueberries spiraled over rounds from 4" to 20" in diameter, razor thin apple slices tumbled over one another like fallen tin soldiers, perfect chocolate shavings curled voluminously in mountainous mounds surrounded by fluffy white whipped cream.

I chose a chocolate eclair. Biting through the crisp exterior, the thick cream spread over my nose and chin.

The clerk behind the counter laughed and asked,"C’est bonne?"

I grinned foolishly through my mustache.

Content, I went back outside to look for the one thing I’d promised myself I’d bring home from Paris; a winter coat. I tried on a long black wool style while the shopowner nodded approvingly as the sleeves hung over my fingertips and the hem swept the dust at my feet. "Do you have smaller sizes?" I asked.

She called over a young man who was assisting her to look through the racks as she did the same.

We tried on several, all too big, but in the process we laughed and joked around.

The young man was eager to please and kept bringing more very inappropriate pieces for me to try on.

The woman pointed to him, "He doesn’t speak French. He’s from Pakistan, speaks English."

He smiled broadly across the brown, red and black coats. "I’ve been to the U.S." the woman said proudly. "I love Americans. They’re so open. Not like people here, people here are no fun. They’re closed." She smiled conspiratorially.

I wondered what she had in mind but didn’t ask for fear she’d tell me. I also began to wonder if I was being ‘hooked’ as it’s called in the selling game but didn’t mind. I was having ‘fun’ with them.

My attention was drawn back to the market --I hadn’t found my coat -- the clothes of the shoppers were far more interesting than anything for sale. At first I’d thought it was the uniqueness of their costumes that had attracted me, but I began to see that their clothes reflected something else. There was a strength and confidance; an earthy no-nonsense attitude as they bartered for goods, disciplined their children and interacted with each other. This certainty was in the sparkle of their eyes, strong boned faces, full lips, hair piled high on their heads. And, of course, in their clothes and the way they carried them.

It seemed to me that it had been no accident that the French colonized Africa. Surely they recognized in one another the, pentient for flavors that perfume the palette darkly.