Anniversary in Paris

by DONALD MOFFAT

1

AT the corner of the rue St-Honoré and the rue de Castiglionc stood a military vehicle mounting a huge searchlight, whose beam, pointing north, crossed a twin beam from the rue do la Paix. Hoi h were t rained on I he figure of Napoleon, perched high on his spiral column under the blue-black arch of the night sky, evoking the illusion of a liltle white manikin hanging in mid-air. The column itself, the Kanes noticed as they approached the Place vendôme, was lighted a rusty red from below, and its base was shrouded by a pavilion of greenery, looped in garlands and picketed with tall white and gold flagstaff’s, from which drooped and fluttered the banners of France.

They strolled along with the sauntering crowd and, as’they reached the temporary barrier set up at the ent ranee of the Place, they heard behind them the swelling music of a military band. At the barrier Kane paid three hundred francs apiece, and the handsome young agent de police saluted and smiled as he drew aside to let them pass.

“Do you think the police were picked for their looks, after the war?” Mrs. Kane asked her husband. “They’re all so beautiful, Look at that lot over there!”

“Could be.” And Kane observed that the group of twenty or thirty other agents. drawn up at ease on the sidewalk, were also, to a man, young and handsome, and smart in their blue kepis, cloaks, and white gloves. The Black Maria parked near them al the curb seemed 1o be the only motor vehicle in the Place. Otherwise the strolling crowds had it to themselves: young couples, old folk, family groups with babies in arms and bigger babies underfoot, knots of tourists, a few uniforms, and the eternal gay little Paris dogs threading and greeting and sniffing and never, never fighting. Mrs. Kane was struck once more by the essential innocence of the Paris crowd, how naively and quickly it responded to beauty such as this, and how prone to embroider, with a sorl of delicate mass irony, its complacent accoplanee of Paris as the center of the civilized world. Kane thought of how many times in the past the mood of just such a crowd as this had suddenly changed, to stain the pavement with blood and deflect the current of French history. The police were not there by accident! But he felt drawn to Paris-in-the-streets nevertheless, and took sentimental pleasure in identifying himself with it.

The crowd opened In let the quickstepping band of the Chassours-à-Pied circle the column and lake its place beside the other crack regimental bands already in position. For this was a birthday celebration, the 250th anniversary of the Place vendôme, begun when Louis xIv was on the throne of France. Now the principal facades were flooded with light; from classic pediment and balcony hung folds of red velvet picked out with golden emblems of the Sun King. wherever the eye fell if embraced a perfection of proportion, a grace of form, a symphony of color, all for the glory of France — and, as Kane overheard from the lips of a passing ironist with the fashionable strip of beard on his youthful chin, “pour épater les touristes.” Kane, having reached a certain age, was no longer averse to being taken for what he was, a tourisl; and delighted to be épaté. So he smiled benignly on the young man, and the young man grinned back.

In France, when there is a celebration, there must be music, and the music was ready; (here must be wine, and wine there was: here and there on the sidewalk round the Place, I little groups of concierges, seated comfortably in chairs, entertained their friends at tables drawn from their lairs, sipping their red wine, dim comfortable eyes taking glory for granted. And wine upstairs behind (he glowing red velvet and gold, in the principal rooms ol the great couturiers, banks, jewelers, and hotels.

Kane showed a card, and they were escorted up to one such apartment where friends had gathered for a glass of champagne and a perfect view over the Place. The parquet gleamed, the crystal chandeliers glittered, and the walls and ceiling, looking just as they did when they were painted two hundred years or more ago, gave Mrs. Kane the sensation of stepping into a Watteau. Even the ladies’ clothes, she reflected, seemed to go perfectly with the gaily painted figures on the walls -but then, why not? They were both, clothing and painting, designed and executed in Laris. Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher—not to mention Louis himself — would have comprehended and enjoyed these feminine absurdities, as they had rejoiced in the frivolities that were modern in their own day.

Leaning over the narrow balcony they gazed down over the Place, where, hemmed in by the crowd, seven bands were drawn up side by side; and presently kane heard them crash in turn into all his favorite marches, familiar from “la guerre de Quatorze"; the Sambre-et-Meuse, Marche Lorraine, Joli Tambour, Madelon, Chant du Depart, and the other old martial airs to which Frenchmen had marched off to war in times past. The drums rattled, till’ brasses blazed, and then the tasseled, spinning bugles came to rest at twenty pairs of lips and the thin golden knife of sound pierced his very heart, He thought: the trappings of war! How men — and women, too; especially women! — have always responded to them, loved them: the swinging columns, the uniforms and braid, the banners, the bugles, the swords, the drums! Even now, he reflected, when we know damn well that it has nothing to do with war, we love its panoply still. That crowd down there, dawdling attentively: we’re not so naive as our great-grandfathers, we’re not taken in. Mais — c’est beau, quand meme.

2

FROM a dais at the base of Napoleon’s column came an amplified voice speaking in a solid Midwestern American accent, and the voice was Eisenhower’s, repeating, on the anniversary of the Normandy landings, part of his message to the people of France. The voice stopped; from the dais a baton was lifted, a hush — and then the Marseillaise, played by seven bands in unison.

Kane, stirred as always in spite of himself, turned and left the balcony, picked up a little tasseled booklet from a pile on a side table and, to hide his emotion, read the message written for the occasion by Paul Claudel, ending: —

. . . ici la France recoit, ici la France travaille, ici elle reste pareille a elle-méme, affirmant son unité átravel’s les vicissitudes d’une longue histoire. . . .

Ft e’est pourquoi nous vous invitons tons, d’oú que vous veniez et oÙ que vous alliez, á prendre plaee autour de eette table que nous avons dressee au cceur de Paris á I’occasion de ce mémorable anniversaire pour y porter á vos levres dans le cristal d’une soirée enchanteresse quelques gouttes d’un vin qui a 250 années de cave, d un grand vin oÙ notre pays tout entier s’est fait sucre et cher pour venir jusqu’a vous.

Kane wondered guiltily whether anyone had noticed his little emotional spasm, and then said to himself: “Damn it, why not? This is Paris.” And, down in the Place again after thanking their hosts, he thought: there should be torches here, smoky acrid torches to cloud the crystal with the authentic odor of antiquity. These lights are too modern, too bright. The twin beams fixed on the Emperor were suddenly cut off.

“There goes Napoleon,” said Mrs. Kane, and yawned.

“ va-t’en, belle, t’es gâtéc!” she heard a gay old grandmother call to a girl ahead, hand in hand with a boy friend — apropos of what, she had no idea, but smiled at the phrase for its Frenchness. “Bedtime, I guess,” said Kane.

“Once upon a time we’d have headed for the Jardin de Ma Socur. Or Zelli’s. D’you mind getting old?”

“Middle-aged,” he corrected her. “Not a damn bit.”

Mrs. Kane said “Hm.”

Even the polite little mongrel dogs were beginning to yawn. The bands formed columns and began marching away to the tapping of their drums. Mothers called shrilly to weary children. The crowd swirled slowly towards the rue de Casliglione, carrying the Kanes along, hand in hand, towards their hotel.

Under the arcades the shopwindows were still lighted, and Kane noticed as they strolled past that they were all dressed in the Louis xIv motif. Used as he was to his wife’s magnetic attraction for showwindows, he was not surprised to find himself suddenly alone, he stopped, and turned: there she was, standing before one of them, beckoning to him with her smile.

Over the shop door was the name of a famous chemisier; but in the two windows, for the Anniversary week, the customary socks, handkerchiefs, and bolts of linen had been replaced by royal raiment. A card reading LEVER DU ROI SOLEIL was propped against the glass, and behind it was displayed, with a sort of casual grace, everything — obviously— that a King of two hundred and fifty years ago might have needed on getting up in the morning: a shaving kit and basin, brushes, little pots of pomade, a great golden wig on a stand. From another stand hung a marvelously embroidered waistcoat and longcoat; and over a chair, white silk knee breeches and stockings, a plumed hat. A long ebony walking stick leaned against it, and on the floor waited a pair of little red highheeled shoes with diamond buckles. There were a few pieces of period furniture, including a carved walnut armchair — “Oh, I’d give my right eye for that!” murmured Mrs. Kane. An old fellow in working clothes breathed over her shoulder: “ Ttens! C’est line chaise percáe!” and laughed. The Kanes, looking more closely, saw that indeed it was, and laughed with him.

Moving to the other window they read a similar card: LEVER DU SOLEIL . . . Roi, and laughed again. For here was a beach scene, with sand on the floor, and a couple of camp chairs, and a picnic basket spilling its debris over a folding table. On one chair a girl had flung her Bikini bathing suit, on the ot her lay a pair of men’s shorts, and scattered about on the sand they noticed such classic French picnic accessories as a corkscrew and a couple of empty wine bottles, dark glasses, a fishing rod, sandals, a iipsticky handkerchief, an ash tray full of cigarette butts, and a battered alarm clock.

“Well!” said Kane. “Sunrise!”

“They’re always so wtty!” said his wife. “That alarm clock!”

Still smiling as they stopped at the desk in the hotel to pick up their key, they were bowed into the jewel box of a lift by Pierre, the old attendant, with his neat little mustache, his medals, his one arm. As Pierre was closing the iron gate, he paused for another passenger, hurrying from the foyer; and the Kanes recognized the young American they had happened to meet that very evening at dinner, He had just driven up from Prades, it seemed, where he had been attending the Pablo Casals Bach festival; and it hadn’t take the Kanes long to discover in him the complete music snob: a tall, black-a-vised, haughty young man, indifferent to France and all things French, intellectually attuned to the mathematics of music, and to nothing else.

“Ilullo,” said Kane in surprise, “I thought you were planning to catch some sleep tonight.”

The other looked at him in disgust. “Sleep?” he said. “With that infernal racket going on out there? Ha!” He gestured bitterly towards the Place Vendome and the bands. “Third floor.”

“Bien, monsieur,” murmured Pierre. He stopped the elevator and swung open the gate. The young man hurried off down the corridor without another word.

The elevator rose again. Pierre lifted an eyebrow. Kane felt like apologizing for his compal riot.

“He’s a cellist,” said Mrs. Kane.

“Ah!” replied Pierre, and nodded his head slowly in total comprehension. “But monsieur and madame have enjoyed themselves? C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?”

Perfectly lovely, agreed Mrs. Kane.

“ — mais cc nest pas la guerre, he-in? ” He stopped the lift at their floor. “Bonsair, monsieur, madame.”

“Good night, Pierre,” said Mrs. Kane as she got out; and, turning, added with a smile, “You can’t eat glory, can you?”

“C’est vrai, madame. Mcme pas avec uue sauce remoulade.” He hesitated, then: “Vans savez, madame — the young American: there is much to be said for his point of view. He is young, bien eutendu. Mais—”

(“Mais!” thought Kane. “ Hero we go!”)

Pierre placed the forefinger of his single hand against his nose, and thus for a moment he stood, a living symbol of French tolerance and ironic understanding. “Mais — the glory of strings is greater than the glory of brass, or we are lost. N’est-ce pas, madame?” He broke the pose, and swung the gale shut behind him. “Bonsoir, monsieur-et-dame.” The lift sank slowly out of sight.

Will they light? Kane wondered to himself, walking down the dimly lighted corridor. For the right to play the cello — yes: and, symbolically, for all the free things such a right implies. But for the brass, for the brass bands? Yes, no doubt for that too, if the time ever comes. But they’ll know what they’re lighting for. They won’t fool themselves, not for a minute.

He stooped to unlock their door. His wife went in, switching on the light.

“I do like France,” she murmured. “ Where else can you walk along the street holding hands without anybody even noticing?”