Erica was always going to Paris…
The young academic sets off on sabbatical leave to pursue the famous writer and literary theorist, Jacques Simon, across Paris. It is 1991 and Simon is already ten years dead. Erica takes just one of his books with her, Simon par Simon, an autobiography in which much of the writer seems missing. She will uncover the hidden life of this elusive figure – the lovers, the politics, the intellectual battles – while realising her dream of living in the City of Light. But nothing is as it seems…not Jacques Simon…not her French lover…not Paris itself…
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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.
Surrounded by this 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 really 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 mix-ture 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 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 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 finds herself looking directly at Nôtre Dame. It is not the iconic vista of Nôtre Dame on the postcards, that 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 she 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…Erica has arrived in Paris.
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