“A mind enclosed in language is in prison.”
—Simone Weil
Paris, When It
Sizzles
For Virginie Pirlet Denamur
“Voilà!”
Lana Cook regarded the heavily embossed, chalk-colored
antique faience platter held aloft by her old friend and host, Frida Famosa. Frida’s
smallish fingers, each one dramatically bejeweled, gripped it tightly as she lowered
it to a table covered in ivory damask linen; another imaginable treasure unearthed
at Les Puces. One hardly noticed Frida’s
chewed fingernails. Lana kept her own nicotine and paint-stained hands out of
sight and fiddled the crochet lace edging of the tablecloth.
Frida’s perfume, a palliative honeysuckle, mingled
the sweet fragrance of milky white freesias—Lana’s favorite—set in graceful
arrangements around the table. Golden bangles at Frida’s wrists rang like
cowbells in the French countryside. Black vintage Dior draped her petite frame.
Charcoal-colored hair, wound into old-fashioned plaits, crowned her delicate features.
Looping her neck were multiple strands of pinkish seed pearls; her carefully
drawn crimson lips a triumphant moue. Frida was, in a word, parfait.
“Un plat
typiquement français,” Frida trilled, “pour notre invitée d’honneur.” She
smiled prettily at Lana. Frida’s voice evoked La Habana, a tuneful parade along El Malecón, the ancestral home of
her father.
Philippa Punch, a friend of Lana’s from London who
had joined her in Paris, sat beside Lana. Her deliberate, mouse-brown bob jerked
imperceptibly as she tilted her head, lowered her chin and savored the
main course: “Cela sent délicieusement bon,” she murmured. Before Philippa could
translate, Lana snapped: “I got it.”
Lana regarded woody chunks of meat suffocated under
a cream blanket and managed a wilted smile. Veal stew. It was veal, fucking stew.
What part of no meat did Frida not
get? Lana chewed her lip and thought, “This is what torture smells like.”
Alain Durand—handsome, silver-haired and branded
with the round, bookish spectacles of the literati—rose from his seat at the
head of the table. Alain’s 19-year-old daughter, Anne, shushed a boyfriend at
least a decade older than she, halting, temporarily, a quarrelsome susurration. “A toast!” Alain raised
a glass of red wine, a pinot noire from Sancerre or Alsace.
He was Frida’s lover; the man Frida expected would father
her child. Lana rejected that sense of dynasty, of trusting a smaller self to reinvent
her world. She’d know when to stop.
Alain grinned at Frida—husky, gleaming teeth—and to
Lana it looked like a victory sneer.
“To our American friend,” Alain proposed.
Crystal goblets came together, reflecting candlelight
like a shimmering ruby bouquet. Alain smiled broadly at Lana. She was
fair-haired where Frida was dark, and she was big-boned. Lana dressed at will,
never a second thought about what was acceptable. She was persuaded to lipstick
years ago by Frida; the one capitulation to make-up that Lana still embraced. She
was straightforward and men often misread that. To Frida’s dismay, Lana had no
compunction about solitary dining in restaurants. “You will be seen as a woman
alone. In Paris, that’s death,” Frida warned.
“To Lana,” Alain proclaimed loudly. The seduction
unnerved her. The room reverberated with the ferocious possibility of shattering
glass. “To Lana,” they chorused.
The wine was delicious, light and fruity. A plate heaped
with rice and saturated with stew was placed before her. Lana briefly
entertained the idea of an ostentatious challenge. She might remind Frida of a lengthy
telephone call just before she’d left New York. She had been to West 57th
Street to see an exhibition by the political artist, Sue Coe. The work—a
surrealistic blood bath—was monumental and life changing. The exhibition was
called Dead Meat; images Lana would
never forget. “I’ve stopped eating meat,” she’d told Frida, “Won’t touch the
stuff.”
There had already been enough tension. Alain had
been out all night. Lana never fully understood his position at Air France,
only that he could be called for an emergency at any time, night or day; that
he was some kind of troubleshooter.
She’d known Frida for over eleven years, having met
her soon after Lana’s divorce. They had been introduced at a dinner party on
Manhattan’s upper west side, at the home of mutual friends, Manu, a Basque
writer, and his wife Mimi. Lana’s ex had been a doctoral student in Mimi’s lab
and neither woman missed him. Manu and Mimi had
conspired to bring the two young women together. “You have a lot in common,”
they told Lana. Then, Frida lived in the Marais. The first time she’d visited
Lana at home, the bookshelves, paintings, the tools of her trade and the
comforting disorder of the artist’s life prompted her to say: “I feel I am at
home.”
Over time, the writer and the painter had seen a
lot of each other in New York and Paris. Three years before, Frida’s odd procession
of lovers had ceased and Alain moved in. Lana liked him very much at first;
thought Frida had finally got herself the man of her making. His daughter,
Anne, came with the package, bringing her peculiar teenage rebellion.
Frida, the writer, was also a magician, possessed
of a mentalist’s ability to predict soon-to-be desirable quartiers of Paris.
She bought and sold like a seasoned trader on the floor of the stock exchange,
upgrading a few steps ahead of the developers who followed artists from one
undiscovered zone to the next, like dogs in heat. The arrival of Alain seemed
also to halt that quest and they remained at the multi-terraced duplex at the
top of Belleville.
Alain abided Frida’s ministrations, and her
attention to re-sculpting his exterior, with humor. She selected his clothes
and styled his hair in the relaxed manner of the cultured Socialists of the day.
The tortoise shell eyeglasses, he’d admitted to Lana, had no magnification. He
appeared at Frida’s side for book signings and cocktail parties, becoming more
at ease in her literary world. Women openly appraised him, adding to Frida’s pride
at her accomplishment. He had a study now.
Unlike her father, Anne furiously rejected Frida’s
attempts at re-fashioning a preference for plain sweaters and torn jeans. That
she eschewed makeup and jewelry confounded Frida. Anne’s friends, when they met
Frida, found her laughable; a bedizened bourgeois throwback who wrote
biographies of obscure women artists.
Anne left Belleville and crossed the Seine. Movie
posters of Jean Luc Godard and Agnes Varda came down; Che Guevara and Carlos
the Jackal disappeared. Her bedroom in Belleville became the unmistakably
masculine study that smelled of leather and oil paintings and books—all of
Frida’s choosing.
Lana had breakfasted alone in the kitchen directly
below the study, which served as a guestroom. Alain returned like a sleepy-eyed
tomcat, satisfied and indifferent at the same time. Frida appeared and Lana
watched as they discretely and cheerfully avoided each other. Frida did not ask
and Alain revealed nothing. Instead, he’d made small talk with Lana, practicing
his English, wondering aloud when she
would take advantage of the privacy and bring a lover back to the apartment.
“You are een Pareese so you ’ave to ’ave a lover!” Lana laughed, as she often
did, at Alain’s reference to her love life. Dinner was discussed, Alain given
charge of the shopping with a specific reference to a particular wine—white, as
it turned out—that Frida had requested.
Later that morning on the terrace adjoining the
study, Lana relished a rare burst of unadulterated sunshine before inhaling her
first Gauloises of the day. Parisians had returned from their holidays and
refilled what summer had emptied. The city thrummed. She’d turned 42 in August.
This trip was her birthday present to herself. She ran her hand through freshly
washed hair. Maybe she could, despite Frida’s protest, bring off a shorter
haircut.
Below lay the treasure that was Paris, spread out
like the spilled contents of a fantasist’s drawer of whimsical bibelots and
steampunk collectibles. In the far distance the Eiffel Tower pricked the
horizon like a tiny tin toy. How lucky she was to have friends here. Until
she’d met Frida, Paris was where Lana, dressed in a patchwork denim miniskirt
and platform sandals, stood at the top of the stairs at Sacre Coeur over a
decade ago, and from behind rose-colored granny glasses symbolically waved
goodbye to her marriage. She still had the white butcher’s coat she’d bought at
Les Halles. When she’d asked the man what the hood was for he said: “To keep
off the blood.”
A heated banter rising from the kitchen had
interrupted Lana’s reverie. Baffled ambivalence rose sharply to shrill
accusation; the kind of manic French that Frida, who spoke a passable English,
usually avoided with Lana. She recognized Alain’s voice. Frida would have had
to reconnoiter when Alain returned from the shops. He was not backing down. It
was something to do with the wine.
“Alain! C’est la tradition.”
“Je ne te comprends pas.”
“Blanc avec le veau. Nous ne sacrifions pas la
tra—.”
“Tradition idiote. Vous devriez vivre avec votre
temps Frida
There it was, the telling, vous.
Molten gloom had swept across the sun and the sky
turned leaden. Lana had dressed hurriedly.
She’d stopped at the kitchen. “Do you need me? I thought I’d go see Wings.” Frida’s startled look belied her
cheerful response. “Ah, Wenders, your hero. Of course, go. We are fine.” Alain
cradled a bottle of wine like he might a woman’s back. “Bring back a lover,
Lana,” Alain admonished. “What’s for dinner?” Lana asked. A surprise, she’d
been told.
A few hours in a darkened theater in the company of
witnessing angels had returned Lana to the apartment, keenly blissful.
She’d found Frida and Anne chipping away at an old
argument. Alain mixed drinks while Anne’s boyfriend maintained a studied sulk behind
his cigarette. The only part she’d caught of Alain’s introduction was that he
worked in Jack Lang’s office and had something to do with the Fête de la Musique. He’d glanced at Lana,
a smoky inspection: enemy or accomplice?
And then Philippa Punch had arrived from London,
bringing her peculiar head mistress style, a jokiness that had the quality of a
scold. They had not seen each other since Philippa left New York. Lana’s warm greeting,
even after nearly a year, had been kept at arm’s length. Philippa, instead, had
appraised Lana’s uncomplicated style, the relaxed linen jumper Lana had adopted—the
costume of a painter—and she’d cracked: “Are you wearing your canvas now?”
Philippa had been quick to engage Frida and Alain. “Bonjour,
enfin, nous nous rencontrons. Je suis une vieille amie de Lana. J’ai beaucoup
entendu parler de vous mais elle vous avait gardé pour elle,” Philippa eyed
Lana, like a journalist who had scored a hard won interview, “…jusqu’à
présent.”
On learning that Anne was starting at L’Institut
d’études politiques de Paris, Philippa had redirected her inquiry. “Ah oui,
Anne, Sciences Po. Je suis très
impressionnée!”
Philippa had stubbornly adhered to an accurate,
though soulless, French. Lana managed reasonably well with the language, but
she was far from fluent. Over the years her French had improved in fits and
starts when she’d traveled to France or attended an entire series of any French
film festival in New York. Lana pressed Frida not to resort to English when she
was in Paris, but, as in New York, Frida prevailed and English it was. Ignoring
a long-term friendship that had somehow managed to survive the language
difference, Philippa had deliberately corrected Lana’s French and balked at any
English spoken. When Frida had explained that they all relished a chance to
practice English, Philippa replied tartly: “Elle devrait parler français.” “But
we are easy here,” cried Frida. “Nous sommes en France,” Philippa insisted.
“C’est mieux pour elle.”
Lana had borne it all with tempered good will, buoyed
by herb-colored aperitifs. They had all been standing before Lana’s portrait of
Frida. It was a moody statement of Frida, the writer, painted when they’d first
met. It was a portrait Frida said
she treasured, and which had pride of place above the piano. Philippa had finally
crossed the line, effectively shutting Lana out of a lengthy conversation, when
she’d declared, in English, that Frida’s comments were too complicated in
French.
“She says you made her older than she is,” Philippa
quipped, finally. Lana’s look of consternation confused Frida until Anne
whispered something to her. “Non, non,” Frida cried. “Je citais Picasso. Il
a dit: Vous verrez, elle finira par lui ressembler….” She pressed Lana’s arm. “I adore this painting. I say I will grow into it. And I am.”
Lana inspected the dinner plate before her. No
point in bringing up the veal, adding insult to injury. She resolved to ignore
Phil’s earlier impertinence. Instead Lana picked over the Blanquette de Veau, spearing nuggets of carrot and mushroom until
there was only the meat, which she pushed aside.
“Lana, tu ne manges pas de la viande?” asked
Philippa. Lana rejoined with an infuriated glare. Philippa, taken aback,
stuttered: “Sorry. No harm—”
Distracted by Alain’s interruption, Lana addressed his
request and recounted her
introduction to Philippa a few years before. There had been a gallery opening
on Prince Street. In an indifferent fusion of English and French, Lana told
them how she’d organized the after party for the painter at a Mexican
restaurant on nearby Broadway. Philippa was a friend of the guest of honor;
another Brit. Lana discovered that Philippa was teaching at Dalton, on the Upper
East Side, around the corner from Lana’s studio. “I’m not exactly shy, so I
ordered pitchers of Margaritas,” Lana remembered, grinning. “Someone joked
about that, would there be enough?” She paused for a moment. “And then Phil
said, ‘She’s American. If there isn’t enough she’ll just order more. That’s
what they do.’”
“I did?” Philippa scowled. “I don’t remember that.”
Anne’s lover—Denis Hervé as it turned
out—scrutinized Lana. He threw himself back from the table in an attitude
reminiscent of a cocky protagonist in a Godard film, sucked deeply on a
cigarette and indicated to Lana, a possible ally. She nodded and he tossed a pack
of Camels. Denis stabbed the air with his smoking hand. “C’est meilleur, non?
We can speak any way we like. We ’ave no language police.”
In the decompressed interim before the salad and
the cheese, Lana took her cue from the two men and, overriding Philippa’s
disapproval, she dragged deeply on an unfiltered Camel. Champagne followed wine.
Stories emerged from laughter, protestation, and cigarette smoke, like some
ephemeral Book Of Lives, until Lana asked
about the demonstration she had wandered into on her way back from the film. Denis
explained that it was an ongoing protest against political repression, for the
students killed at Tienanmen Square.
“Still?” Frida asked.
Met with appreciable silence, Frida quickly changed
the subject to the most controversial topic of the day: La folie des grandeurs.
“Mitteramsès,” she scoffed.
“Non! Frida, la Pyramide est magnifique,” Alain retorted.
Anne agreed: “You ‘ave to come into the present Frida, like Mitterand.
“It doesn’t fit, that’s it. Passe-partout,” Frida insisted.
“We’ll see tomorrow, eh Phil?” said Lana.
Slow crawling cheeses, like Brie and Camembert, and
crumbling wedges of blue-veined Auvergne appeared. Alain stabbed the Coeur de
Neufchâtel with comic thrusts. Lana caught Frida’s unmistakable wince.
Alain, less steady now, raised his glass. A grin, like
a carnival clown logo, distorted his face. “Frida, mon coeur…”
“C’est assez!” Frida laughed tightly.
Lana withdrew her grudge and threw her arm across
her friend. “C’est bon de vous…hum…te revoir,
Phil.” There was the familiar stiffening of shoulders.
They rose from the table as if on cue, while Lana
lingered. She toyed with a small vase of freesias, inhaling the peppery sweet
breath of the tiny bulbs. Some things stay with you forever, she thought
dreamily, like the scent of a favorite flower. Looking around she saw the rooms
were bigger now with costlier ‘finds’ from the flea markets, but still so much
like her friend.
Frida wrote at a little table in a corner of the
living room near the ground floor window, which opened on to the street. Copies
of her books in French and Spanish stacked neatly along the windowsill, biographies
of women artists, written from the inside, as her critics described. Souvenirs—those
artifacts of memory—lay everywhere. One had only to admire any one of them to
be graced with a fascinating story of a known artist—a painter or musician or
another writer. Ornately framed photographs, like silent, overdressed guests,
crammed every tabletop. There were photographs of the two of them when they’d
first met. Frida in full skirt and embroidered shawl; Lana in miniskirt and tights—in
all black.
Instead of the usual after-dinner seduction of
danceable Cuban music, Lana heard the voice of Haydée Alba from the living room.
Frida was transformed by music, especially the
Cuban artists and the early recordings of Sierra Maestra. She was a spontaneous
singer with a gay, operatic voice. As a girl, she’d known that when music
filled their rooms in Paris, her father could no longer abide melancholy.
Lana recalled, with pleasure, her introduction to Alba’s
music. For three months Parisians had appropriated the streets of Buenos Aires.
She recalled, as well, Alain’s dogged pursuit of her friend. He courted Frida from
the start, disregarding the peeved look of the woman on his arm. Lana
remembered the feeling, as if she had been watching a betrayal play out in real
time. Memory is like the tide. You never know what it will return to the shore.
“I think you mean red meat.”
Lana, startled, looked up. “Boeuf!” Frida emphasized, “Not the white meat.” “Doesn’t matter,”
Lana said. “Pas des differences.” “Okay,” said Frida. “We are good?” “Oui,”
replied Lana. “Of course. We are good.”
They stood for a moment before Lana cheered: “Let’s
dance! Let’s all go to that club!”
“Le
Tango?” Frida laughed. “La boîte à
frissons.”
“I forgot that. The box of shivers,” Lana
chuckled.
“It’s
late,” Frida said. “Ce n’est pas certain.”
Lana goaded them, but Anne and Denis were already taking
their leave. Alain yawned and Frida lowered the music. “Alain, I think Lana
wants to, how do you say, party?”
“I’ll go by myself,” Lana insisted.
“You ’ave to be careful Lana,” Alain warned, “It’s
late and the Metro—.”
“I’ll go,” Philippa piped. “We’ll get a cab.”
Philippa decried the notion that she, too, wanted to dance. Left on her own,
she said, Lana would do something foolish.
“Hang on,” Lana said, and rummaged through her bag.
She plucked a single decorative chopstick from items she’d bought earlier and
pierced her long hair quickly knotted atop her head.
She grabbed an oversize linen jacket; soft
shouldered, with deep pockets, the color of wheat and bearing the shape of her.
“You still have this!” Philippa cried. “Yes,” Lana declared. “I’ll wear it
until it falls off me.” Philippa eyed Lana, unabashed. “Won’t be long then.”
The taxi moved swiftly. Streets blurred from one to
the next along the broad boulevard heading for the 3rd. Lana relaxed
into the movableness of the passing night scene while Phillipa, bolt upright,
prattled on to the driver in French. He willfully ignored her, rarely easing up
on the gas.
“Feeling better, Phil?” Lana asked.
“Pourqu—.”
“English, Phil, s’il vous plaît,” Lana sighed. “Lowered
the shoulders a bit, I mean.”
“What did?” Phil asked, frowning.
“Dinner, wine,” said Lana. “You seemed tense when
you arrived.”
“Me?” Philippa choked. “You were a bit bothered. What’s
with the no meat thing? Just like that?
No withdrawal?”
The cab swerved around Place de la République.
“Almost there,” said Lana.
“Your friend is lovely,” Philippa offered.
“She would go dancing at the drop of a hat once, or
as you would say, chapeau.” Lana recalled, for Philippa, a
memorable scene of Frida upbraiding the DJ when he’d leapt to disco at
midnight, when she’d come for the salsa at the same club they were headed. She’d
got her salsa back, though. “You couldn’t drag her away from a dance floor,”
Lana mused.
“This is okay here. I think,” Philippa said, and
paid the driver.
They stood at the bottom of Rue Volta. The departing
cab took with it the last ambient noise on the street, leaving them in darkness
that fell over their shoulders like a damp towel. Buildings crowded the narrow
streets with romanticized stoicism, where even the curbs were swaybacked. An
ancient half-timbered house appeared under a wan streetlight. It was a dark,
not necessarily grim, but aphotic corner of a fairy tale.
As Lana approached an unlit, unmarked doorway
Philippa commented that it was a weeknight, that maybe it was closed. “No, this
is it,” Lana said, and found a bell. A small rectangular window at eye-level
slid open. A door appeared in the black patch on the wall and they entered a
dimly lit corridor that led to the bar and a dance floor. Nothing had changed. There
were the familiar red banquettes, the lurking expectation of the picaresque. An
Afro Cuban beat sensuously nudged couples around the dance floor, while others
engaged in low conversation over drinks at surrounding tables. Lana and Philippa
were directed to the coat check where Philippa promptly surrendered her jacket
and headed for a table.
“Votre manteau Madame?”
“Non, Je suis bien, “ Lana replied.
The hostess persisted, indicating Lana’s jacket.
“C’est ok,” Lana said, returning a smile.
“Vous devez enlever votre veste, Madame,” the
hostess replied, less gently. C’est la règle de la maison.
Lana shrugged and shoved her hands in the pockets.
“But, but, this is my look. C’est mon look!”
Without a second thought, the hostess conceded
Lana’s point. “Ah, excusez-moi Madame. Bonne soirée.”
Lana swanned through the macaronic chorus of Africans,
Spaniards, the French and the English. Lana suspected she was the only American
in the club.
A formidable and very handsome Black man stood
before Philippa. He shrugged in exaggerated disappointment.
“Excusez-moi,” Philippa said, “Je viens
d'apercevoir mon ami. Peut-être plus tard?”
Not likely, Lana thought. Before the man could
withdraw, Lana piped: “I’ll dance! I mean, je danserai.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Do you speak English?" Lana asked.
“Non,” he replied. “Ça n’a pas d’importance.”
“No,” Lana said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re right.”
She let him lead her to the dance floor.
The music seemed to have no end and no beginning, a
seamless roll from one wave to the next, varying only in tempo. Lana noticed
that Philippa was engaged in conversation with another couple so she turned her
full attention to her dance partner. His arms were like tree trunks and she
felt like a doll. At any moment she might be tempted to hop on his considerable
shoes and dance as she used to with her father when she was a girl. She stopped
only once, to slide her jacket to her waist, tying it tightly. The man guided
her effortlessly and they sailed around the dance floor, a synergetic pulse.
Lana noticed another couple as seemingly
mismatched. The woman was tall, dark-skinned, voluptuous and turned out in a figure
hugging flame red dress. Oversize gold rings, as delicate as sound waves, swung
from her ears. Her partner was a head shorter, at least. He wriggled around
her, making her laugh, always just slightly under the beat. His copper-colored
hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He wore tight jeans and cowboy boots, which
curled at the toe. He skin was an even paler reflection of Lana’s.
Lana finally begged a respite. Her long hair had
come undone and spilled onto her shoulders, a mermaid rising from the deep. At
the same time, the other couple separated and Lana’s dance partner enveloped
the woman in an intimate, familiar embrace.
Philippa introduced Lana to Michelle, an American,
and her husband Victor, a native Parisian. She was a self-described, frothing-at-the
mouth trade unionist. Victor,
clearly besotted with his garrulous American wife, was an editor of political
journals. They were, as it turned out,
friends of the redhead, whose name was Ian Russell. He was a bass player from
London, on a holiday jaunt after touring with his band.
“They were just telling me about the Fête de
l'Humanité,” Philippa offered. “The one that Denis…?” Lana asked. “No,”
Philippa corrected. “That was the Fête de
la Musique.”
Michelle laughed heartily. “An easy mistake. Ian
hasn’t been yet. You two should go while he’s still in Paris.”
“Right,” said Ian. “Stray Cats played, you said.
Cool band.”
Philippa yawned. It was late and she was tired.
“It’s early, actually,” Ian said. “Nearly four. Pecker
up lass.”
Rejuvenated, Lana exclaimed: “I could go all night.
You know what I’ve always wanted to do? Sacre Coeur at dawn.”
Philippa rolled her eyes, exasperated.
“I’ll be fine, Phil,” Lana said.
“We have time,” Ian said. “To walk, I mean. If
you’re up for it?”
“You speak my language,” Lana laughed.
“Let’s get cracking then,” Ian said.
Victor assured Lana they would get Philippa to her
hotel. “We have to be home before the kids wake up,” he offered.
“Dogs,” Michelle explained.
Ian and Lana waved as their friends, tucked into a
compact deux chevaux, drove away. The sky was still black as pitch, like
the split second of blank screen before the film credits roll. A dubious moment
passed between them. Ian remarked that his friends treated their dogs like
children. Lana asked: “Do you want kids?” Ian replied emphatically: “Never.” He
asked: “Do you?” “No,” Lana said.
They stood quietly in the now indecisive dark as
couples emerged like sleepy-eyed rabbits from their burrow and scooted around
them. Ian grabbed her hand. “Ready then?” Lana cocked her head and stared at
him for a moment. “Yes, I think I am.”
The writer is deeply grateful to Virginie Pirlet for her patience and her impeccable French. Additional help comes from Vicky and Michel Maubrey with no less appreciation and love.
PARIS, WHEN IT SIZZLES is an
original short story by Linda Danz.
STORIES ON THE AMERICAN FRIEND
Writers Guild of America, East #R28299
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, and
incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used
fictitiously. The use of names of actual persons, places, and events is
incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional
character of the work. © MAY 2012.
