| Pictures
by Jola Kudela
You look through the cab window with a smile on your face. You’re in Paris – again! You enter your beloved city by Porte de Clignancourt. How ugly! How great! you think, looking at a street that could be anywhere in Cairo, Beirut, Bangladesh, or Hell. A guy on a scooter bangs on your driver’s window. Watch-out, you asshole! he yells, adding a few other colorful expletives before zooming away in the dense traffic.You remember an American couple you shared a taxi with, years ago. They came from Texas to honeymoon in Paris. You remember how they hugged each other in horror all the way to their hotel. Is that really Paris, the city of Love, they asked? Where’s the romance? Where’s the glamour? Where’s the beauty and why does everyone look so poor, so sad or so pissed off? Oh God, darling! We should have gone to Fiji instead! You quickly drop your bag in your apartment rue des Martyrs, and run outside to go to your meeting. You’re catching up with your friend Jola Kudela at Hôtel le Crillon to shoot the pictures for this article. You love going to hotels in Paris. You remember when you were a kid and your Dad took you on his motorbike. You sat right in front of him as he pointed at every hotel on the way. Le Ritz, le Georges V, le Lutetia, and le Crillon, of course - his favorite. He told you if you ever wanted to do an international phone call, you just had to go into the Ritz and ask the concierge to connect you. He used to say there’s nothing a concierge in Paris can’t get you. A cup of coffee, a cab, a seat at the Opera house, happiness, you just ask him. To this day, you can’t resist going to the Ritz or the Georges V and spend the entire day walking through the reception, pretending you are some sort of mysterious guest. Yet, you never found the courage to ask the concierge to connect you with America, Sweden, Timbuktu. |
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| It’s early.
You decide to walk. It’s a great thing living rue des Martyrs.
You go North, you find yourself in restless Montmartre. You go South,
and within seconds you’re in the heart of the cushy posh Rive
Droite: L’Opera, La Madeleine, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré
where you can check out the remains of Parisian Haute Couture. You’ve always known rue des Martyrs - before you, your grand-parents lived in the very same apartment – you spent the 70s, 80s and 90s glued to the window, waiting for something to change in the street bellow. Nothing ever did. It’s the same guy playing the accordion every Sunday. The same little café where they serve this awful Robusta espresso. The same shops, the same clients, the same magical mood. First, you decide to cut through les Grands-Boulevard via the rich network of passage and galleries. Here is another thing you should have told those two terrorized Texan. The Paris they were looking for - the Paris of their dreams -, is not to be found outdoor. It’s preserved under the roofs of dozens of historical arcades, like Galerie Vivienne or Passage Choiseuil. You stop at one of the bookstores. When you were a student, you could spend hours in the Galleries, reading books you could never afford. Some of them are still on display at the exact same spot fifteen years later. You always wonder: how do the shop-owners make a living? Why don’t they sell cheap bibelots for the tourists, like everyone else? Are they on some sort of desperate mission to save the Parisian soul? You decide to help them by buying an original copy of Elizabeth Wilson’s Adorned in Dreams – Fashion and Modernity, the bible for the better-informed fashionista, and head west toward Place de la Concorde. |
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| Jola already
waits for you in one of the Salon of Hôtel le Crillon with a
young model called Lila. Yes, just Lila, she says and giggles. You’re
pretty sure it’s not her real name. Models always have huge hands, you think, shaking hers. You spent your childhood in your parents’ workshop and at catwalks believing models were the scariest creatures on Earth. You used to run away from them each time they tried to pinch your cheek or force you to play “dada” on their knees. Jola is ready to shoot. Lila is wearing a tiny black cocktail dress. Everyone’s waiting for you to explain what you’re looking for. Well, you want to write an article about Paris, you explain shyly. You want to capture the romantic mood, this je ne sais quoi everyone talks about. You want to write about Paris as a feeling, you say and an embarrassing silent follows. Ha! Tourists stuff! Jola sneers. You’ve been away too long, Francisco! Paris is a big nasty city. It stinks. It’s ugly. It’s dangerous. Even breathing the air is hazardous. You look around at the magnificent salon, the beautiful Lila checking the view while Jola sets her camera – a room service steward gracefully passing by – and you think, no, it’s there, right in front of their nose, but they just don’t see it anymore. You propose to do the pictures anyway. We can just try at least. Chasing glamour and romance in Paris could be like chasing a ghost. Sometime, it appears magically on a picture taken randomly. You read too many fancy novels, Jola says asking Lila to sit on the sofa and try to look romantic by putting her arm above her head. |
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| Going to Restaurant
Le Velly with Jola is more about socializing than actually getting
food inside her. She has eviscerated her Scallops Crustini and pushes
around the various elementary parts without ever eating any of it.
When she’s done playing with her food, she pushes away her plate
and order an espresso with a shot of cognac. She’s doing all
the talking: she complains about this and that. Paris (too expensive,
not romantic, polluted). Her job (grey, boring, life consuming). Her
latest girlfriends (promiscuous, mad in their heads and way too young).
Her dog (getting fat because of cortisone shots). You’re listening, eating your grilled pig foot. You always give an important place to restaurants in your writing. You can’t remember writing a novel or a screenplay where your characters didn’t spend their life in fancy bars or funny bistros. And each time you’re placing them in a restaurant, you never think of Amsterdam, London or New York - you immediately think of Paris. Chez Denise, Chez Julien, Le Louchbem or Le Boeuf sur le Toit. You remember lunching in those places with your Dad (him again!) as others remember their very first bike, or the first time they saw the sea. Here, you say, interrupting Jola in the middle of a rant on the impossibility to find the right partner in this stupid city. Here, what? She asks. This restaurant, you explain. You’ve traveled a lot, lived in a lot of cities, in a lot of countries. Nowhere you’ve ever had this special feeling one gets in a genuine Parisian bistro. What feeling? She asks, looking at your unfinished pig foot as if her answer could lie down there in the sauce. You try to put a name on it. You remember this brief moment when Lila discreetly smiled at you in between shots, sitting on the floor of the beautiful salon of Hôtel le Crillon. It’s like… poetry, you say clumsily. Jola clears her throat and leans over to confiscate your glass of wine – you had way too much red to drink, my naïve boy. |
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Oh, come on,
just one last set of pictures, you beg Jola, convincing her to follow
you rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré and then to Galleries La
Fayette. Somehow, you always felt that if there is one place where
you could catch the Spirit of Paris, it had to be right in front
of the windows of your favorite couturiers. Jola complains. It’s
freezing. She’s tired. And then she asks, why are you always
writing about fashion, anyway? |
