Young literary academic, Erica, puts her books aside and sets off on sabbatical to pursue the famous writer and literary theorist, Jacques Simon, across Paris. It is 1991 and Simon is already ten years dead. She takes just one book with her, Simon par Simon, his autobiography, ‘the life of the writer’ in which much of the subject seems missing. She will uncover the hidden life of this elusive Jacques Simon, the lovers, the politics, the intellectual relationships, while she fulfills her dream of living in Paris. Navigating her way through Jacques Simon’s Paris, she dines with Derrida, she takes a lover, she discovers a Paris that is beyond the romanticised Paris of art and literature. But nothing is as it seems…not Jacques Simon, not her French lover, not Paris itself. At the heart of Words and Things is a desire to understand the relationship of ideas to lived experience, of words to things, of literature to life.
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What Jacques Simon did not know was that during the summer of ’91, Erica pursued him across Paris. The year had begun with a war in the Persian Gulf and ended with a peace conference in Madrid. In between, the Soviet Union collapsed. Like a great ice pack melting, piece after piece broke off and floated free, till by Christmas, it was all gone, its demise declared official the following day. Left in its wake was a sense of expectation and hope. The future would be brighter, people said, as if the promise of the new millennium had arrived early.
In Paris the summer was hot. Apartment windows were thrust open to attract a breeze, while the city’s fountains splashed temporary relief. Tourists in their hundreds crowded onto the bateaux-mouches throbbing up and down the river, and tramped in their thousands along the gravel paths of the Jardin des Tuileries to form the queues at the Musée de Louvre, so by the end of summer, the age-old topiary of the gardens was coated in a layer of fine white dust.
Thoughtful entries were made in journals, ideas were floated, questions hung thick in the air. Discussions that played out over lunches would surface again as arguments during late night dinners. Hints were given, rumours confirmed then denied, and misunderstandings wafted across café tables like the smoke from those French cigarettes. Somewhere in all of this was the elusive figure of Jacques Simon.
It has taken so long to get to Paris that Erica feels able to face this first morning with a certain confidence. But it’s two days before Bastille Day and the citizens are restless. The baggage-handlers, (les bagagistes, her first new French word), have gone on strike, leaving everyone stranded at the carousels. She seeks help, but either no-one knows anything or what they do know is at once contradicted by someone else. She pleads, she struggles against their dismissive attitudes, she worries her French is starting to desert her. Alone, surrounded by the impending chaos, she tries making plans. How to survive these first days without fresh clothing or books…how to claim her luggage when it finally does arrive…how to see the situation as an opportunity. But all she can do is wait and keep reminding herself that she actually is ‘in Paris’. Two hours later, when the carousels suddenly jerk into action, Erica collects her red and black suitcase from the conveyor belt and gives herself a pat on the back for remaining calm. Not everyone had.
Now she is seated on the train to Paris, her suitcase occupying too much space between the seats, her legs apologetically tucked up against it. The carriage is a mixture of sullen mid-morning commuters and the new arrivals with their too-large bags. It is strangely silent, as if no-one really belongs, the only sound that relentless clack-clack-clack of the wheels on the tracks. Villepinte, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Drancy, Aubervilliers-la Courneuve…the place names mean nothing, but then she catches a teasing glimpse of the Paris skyline through the overhead wires before the train rockets into the tunnels under the city, eases to a crawl and comes to a halt at Gare du Nord. Two stations later at Gare Saint-Michel, Erica steps off the train and follows the sortie signs into the subway, pulling her suitcase behind her.
The two backpackers ahead of her are disappearing at a brisk pace and soon she is alone. She can hear footsteps echoing along the subway and the sound of a distant violin, while the posters on the subway walls introduce her to the city. La Beauté Convulsive, an exhibition of André Breton and Le Surréalisme, is at the Centre Pompidou, an exhibition of Seurat has opened at the Grand Palais, and Prêt à Aimer, a dating agency, beckons young garçons with pictures of doe-eyed and seductive jeunes filles. There are sales at the department store BHV, the Rolling Stones are coming to Paris and the United Colours of Benetton astonishes her with a full colour photograph of a just-delivered baby, still wet from the womb. Soon the footsteps are no more, the violin is silent, the posters are finished. Erica drags and bounces her suitcase up the last flight of steps and emerges into the brilliant light and noise of the city.
She is looking directly at Nôtre Dame. It is not the iconic vista of Nôtre Dame on the postcards, the view that emphasises the flying buttresses and the brow of the île below, but a partially obscured view of the façade. It is beautiful and she mouths that thought aloud. ‘This is beautiful!’ It seems to call out for a first photograph, but fumbling in her bag for the camera threatens to break the spell of the moment, so Erica simply stands there taking it all in…the symmetry of the cathedral façade, the blue-grey of the river, the quais, the ponts, the plane trees just bursting with fresh green. This is the confirmation she’s been seeking, Erica has finally arrived in Paris.
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linzi murrie 