Sunday Story: Paris in the Spring
No recipe today. No food theme either. Instead, a story from an era when travel was more open but also more challenging. This takes place in Spring 1988, when I was young and foolish and had a 6-month rail pass but little sense.
“What do you want?”
As a backpacker, I have come to expect such abruptness. We have earned a reputation for being vagabonds. I’m not helping my case. I haven’t showered in three days and it shows. I’m sure she can smell me from behind the kiosk’s glass enclosure.
“I need a room” I show her my guidebook. “Can you call one of these for me?”
“Full,” she says, not looking up. “Everything is full. You should book ahead.”
As I begin to explain, she closes the wicket. “Phone someone you know. You all know someone.” Before I can protest, she puts a sign in her window and leaves. Fermé. Closed.
I cross the cavernous foyer of the St.Lazare train station, heading for the row of payphones. With each step, the station seems to grow bigger, the phones further away. As I struggle under the weight of my pack, I flip through the pages of my guidebook. Somewhere, I have scribbled the number of a woman I barely know. We had taken a class together at university. We knew each other’s faces and first names but hadn’t shared so much as a coffee after class. A mutual friend gave me her number when we crossed paths in Amsterdam. “In case of emergency,” our friend told me. The wicket lady was only partially right.
A female alone in Paris. At nine o’clock at night. Tourist season in full swing. It’s not an emergency, but it’s an emerging situation. I find the name and number scribbled down the margin of my Let’s Go Europe’s introduction to Paris.
A drunk limps past and spits on the marble floor near my feet. His muddy eyes glare at me from a lined face and hair that shoots off in all directions. His hands twitch in the pockets of his stained jacket. I throw some coins in the phone booth slot and dial, listening to the ring tone and watching the man stumble toward the exit. A voice says hello and my anxiety melts at the familiar tone of a Canadian accent. I haven’t heard one in more than two months and feel an unearned sense of relief. I’m sure she will offer me her sofa for the night, or at least a spot of floor to sleep on.
My explanation rushes out of me. “I just arrived from a 2-day train ride from Portugal. I meet my boyfriend tomorrow. The hostel is full.” I hear my voice rise. “The hotels are booked. I just need a place for one night.” Reduced to begging charity, I cringe. “I meet him at 10.” I say. “At the Eiffel Tower, “ hoping she’ll take my agenda as assurance I’m be gone in the morning.
Her tone becomes cold and business-like. “You’re panicking prematurely,” she says, clipping her words. I remain silent. Stunned at her reprimand. Doesn’t she know the Travellers’ Code? Has she been in Paris so long she’s forgotten what it’s like to be alone amidst a population of almost 10 million people? Or have I been backpacking so long I’ve forgotten the rules of settled society?
I tell her the tourist lady says the hotels are full. The booking booth is closed. “You know. Paris in the spring.” I sing the words, but my voice just sounds weak and whiny. She gives me the number of three inexpensive hotels and assures me one will have a room. Proving her wrong takes another half hour and the last of my coins.
Left only with bank notes, I ask strangers for change, but they think I’m panhandling and turn away as I approach. Even when I hold a bill toward them, showing them I have money, they won’t look me in the eye. I try to smooth the lines the comb has left in my greasy hair. I want to bathe. I want to cry. I want it to be tomorrow.
I head to the waiting room and lean my backpack against the wall. I prop myself up against it and hug my knees to my chest. The benches are taken over by snoring bodies, wrapped in layers of clothes. The spitting drunk wanders by and I pull my knees tighter. A group of young people play cards in the corner. They are in their mid-teens, early 20s, laughing and shouting, their loud voices ensure I won’t nod off. Over the next few hours, the room fills with more people, none of whom are waiting for a train.
Some time around 2 AM, a young man in a brown uniform approaches the group of young card players. They get up and follow him. He walks to me next. He speaks in halting English and smells faintly of alcohol. The says there’s another lounge, one with big chairs where we can sleep. I’m about to refuse, but the drunk is staggering about again. I fall in behind the man and his newly formed entourage.
He leads us through an underground labyrinth of cinderblock hallways and into a room lined with old train seats. A small black and white TV sits in one corner. Someone turns it on, and the group resumes the card game. They smoke cigarettes and laugh. The man, little more than 20 himself, pulls at the logo on this shirt to show me he works for the train station. “You stay until six,” he says. “My boss not know.” I nod and eye the comfortable seats.
Before I can sit down, someone yells. The group drops the cards and bolts. The man grabs my backpack and pulls me out of the room by my arm. “Vite! Vite!” he hisses as we run down another tangle of corridors.
He pushes me thought a washroom door, shoving my backpack, then me, into a shower stall. “Shhh,” he whispers. “Wait. Silence!”
The door closes and I am alone in the dark. I wedge my back into the far corner of the stall and crouch behind my backpack. The tiles are cold against my back and I begin to shiver from a combination of fear, fatigue, and cold. The stall is so dark I can’t read my watch. I want to run but have no idea where I would go. Within this maze of indistinguishable beige corridors, I imagine myself lost and caught even further underground by one of the drunks. Or worse.
The stupidity of my actions fills me with each breath. Am I going to be arrested? Am I going to die? I hear muffled voices far down the corridor, feet running. I pray with strange, detached logic. “Dear God, don’t let him kill me. But if he does, let them find my body quickly so my mother will know what happened to me. Not knowing would kill her, too.”
Mid-prayer, the man’s silhouette looms above me. “Okay, now,” he says, pulling my pack from the stall. Stiff from crouching, I stand slowly and realize he is a full head taller than I am. “Suivez-moi,” he says. Follow me. Again I smell wine on his breath. I follow. What choice do I have?
He walks just in front of me, retracing the convoluted path with ease. I clutch my backpack to my chest, prepared to hurl it at him if need be. My passport and rail pass are in my money belt. I can sacrifice the pack.
We return to the lounge. It’s dark. And empty. “Where are your friends?” I ask.
“They go.” He leads me to a row of chairs. I sit down, muscles tense, ready to spring. My seat lurches as he throws himself into the one beside me. He reaches towards me, and I hold my breath. He fumbles with a button on the armrest and reclines. My seat remains locked in the upright position. We sit together, in the dark, and he begins to talk. My brain refuses to work. The only French I can remember is a poem from Grade 9. It’s about a bridge. Useless.
The man with the logo on his shirt and the wine on his breath speaks for a long time, slurring his words and gesturing emphatically. He makes a big sweep with one hand and I nod as if I understand. If he keeps talking, he won’t hurt me.
Still babbling, he folds his arms cross his chest and leans against me. He is warm, but his touch chills me. I don’t move, unsure of what just happened, what will happen next. The weight of his head presses into my shoulder, and I look down at his shaggy blond hair. A mixture of stale smoke and wine meets my nose. He begins to snore.
Afraid of waking him, I remain still and stare at a wall. When he snorts and shifts, I lean back too. His head finds my shoulder again, and I close my eyes, unable to stay awake any longer. I drift into hesitant sleep only to be shaken awake at 6 AM. “Vite! Vite!” he says pulling me up. “Time to go!”
Again, my bag and I are shoved down halls and around more corners than I can count. He opens a door and pushes me through it. I am back in the foyer of the train station now filled with commuters and bright light.
I turn to say good-bye, to shake his hand, thank him. But he is gone. The door is closed. For employees only.
Long lines fill the station as people cue for tickets. The sunlight has driven the sleepers from the benches. I pull a crumpled bill from my money belt and head to the Metro. I no longer need change. I have a train to catch and friend to meet at the Eiffel Tower at 10 AM. I’ll be early, but I’ll have a story to tell.