Almost French (14 page)

There are other reasons for my new buoyant mood. Lately, it seems as though I’ve had quite a bit of good luck. Although the strikes delayed my departure by a few days, I managed to
get to Sydney for Christmas. The fortnight there felt like a shot of life-blood. Then, a few days after my return to Paris, Frédéric had actually raised the subject of moving from Levallois.

‘What? You mean into Paris?’ I asked, amazed when Frédéric nodded. Before leaving for Australia I’d tried to bring up the subject again and he hadn’t even wanted to discuss it. As I’d become more entrenched in my views, Frédéric too had grown more adamant about staying at Levallois.

‘Well, we could at least have a look at what’s around,’ he said. ‘It seems like quite a good time to buy …’ And he started talking about the low interest rates and real estate prices. I’d wanted to leap into the air.

‘Wow, but that’s great,’ I burbled, making a mental note to go away more often. ‘I mean, where are you thinking, which
quartier
?’

‘Somewhere central. I really loved Rue Lepic when I lived there but Montmartre is a bit far away. We can forget about the Marais, too expensive …’ Now that he’d made up his mind, Frédéric seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of life in the city centre. His words resonated like a symphony in my ears, joyful and uplifting.

The truth is I am touched. Although he is right—it
is
a good time to buy because of prices and interest rates—there was nothing to stop him from deciding to buy an apartment in Levallois or somewhere else outside Paris. I am the catalyst for moving into the inner city. I also know that his change of heart represents tacit understanding of the loneliness and difficulties I’ve experienced at Levallois. This decision to move seems to give our relationship a new solidity. It is a good omen.

It takes us three months to find an apartment. Our house hunting started unpromisingly, partly due to a poor choice of words by Frédéric, who declared we were looking for something ‘
un peu original
’. This was open to wide interpretation. And lucky us—the very first real estate agent we called on had just the perfect place! Never mind that it was among the neon nightclubs on Rue du Faubourg Montmartre—one of the most congested, noisy streets in Paris. ‘Just wait until you see it!’

As it turned out, this place was more than ‘a little original’. It was unique. I know of no other building in Paris sheathed in glossy black panels of fake marble. But the real surprise lay inside. The apartment didn’t need ‘light renovation work’ it was totally uninhabitable—pollution-stained walls, ceiling cracks like crevices, smashed windows and a filthy kitchen where a squatter had left an open jar of Nutella and a mouldy baguette sandwich. The real estate agent tried to draw our attention to the period fireplace, as though this one redeeming feature might compensate for the surrounding shambles. Frédéric tapped dubiously on an internal wall. ‘What’s behind here?’ he’d asked.

‘
Mais voilà le côté original!
’ The agent was delighted we’d discovered it all by ourselves. In fact, the apartment contained an extra room, which some time in the past had been entirely walled in. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ our detective–agent had asked rhetorically. ‘There could be skeletons inside, a cache of weapons, perhaps treasure! What a mystery! Imagine the intrigue!’

What an excellent reason to blow Frédéric’s life savings on this miserable, overpriced dump. I was all scowls and sarcasm, unimpressed to have been dragged here by this upbeat idiot whose sentences all finish with exclamation
marks. But Frédéric was enchanted—the possibility of finding skeletons had already taken seed in his abundantly fertile imagination. An engrossed—and, in my opinion, utterly pointless—conversation ensued between the pair, during which possible explanations for the walled-in room grew more and more extravagant. Leaving the building, Frédéric bubbled enthusiasm, oblivious to my irritation.

‘It would be amusing, no?’

Then there was the place which we were told had ornate ceiling mouldings and tall, eighteenth-century windows. This turned out to be true. But many of the windows looked directly onto the unpainted concrete wall of the building next door: the bedrooms had all the natural light of prison cells.

More tempting was the apartment in a building that had one of those imposing entrances that led into a vaulted passageway and then an internal courtyard. The cobblestones shone as though they’d just been waxed. We passed two stately staircases on either side of the passage but the apartment we’d come to see had a more modest entrance at the end of the courtyard. As we climbed the steep twisting steps to the fifth floor, the real estate agent explained that this wing used to be for the servants employed by the noble families who lived next door. A developer had recently knocked out the walls and converted the tiny rooms into proper apartments. Inside, the place for sale exuded charm. Every surface was bent or crooked with age—the floors, the walls, the windows. But it was almost too cute for its own good. The exposed beams crowded the low ceilings like too numerous stripes, reminding me of a Swiss chalet. The quaintness was claustrophobic. It’d be like living in a medieval funhouse.

Out of the thirty-odd places we visited, the apartment we eventually buy—our apartment—is practically the only
serious contender. It would not be everyone’s idea of a dream home. For starters, it’s on the sixth and final floor and there isn’t a lift (although the real estate agent royally announces there’s a ‘
projet
’ to build one, which is no guarantee of a lift in our lifetime). The first three floors are occupied by noisy rag trade sweat-shops which will not be the most desirable of neighbours. And you could hardly call our entrance chic. In the past the building housed a school for problem teenagers and their grubby hand prints still smear the stairwell walls.

The kitchen is no more than a corridor with a workbench the size of a chopping board—dinner parties will be a challenge. The toilet is electric and flushing emits a thundery rumble which vibrates throughout the entire apartment. It is all noise and very little action. Directly across a courtyard is the other wing of our building whose cream painted façade is peeling like sunburnt skin. Next to it is another block of apartments; a geometric jumble of minute windows and tilting roofs. Although not without charm, it is not what you’d call a View.

But on first walking in, I knew we’d be really happy here. Even though the building is centuries old, the apartment has a fresh, contemporary feel which I find immensely appealing. Soaring ceilings make it seem airy and loft-like, and to my relief, this seems to satisfy Frédéric’s criteria for something ‘a little original’. At last we have enough wall height to hang his lovely big mirror—which sat on the floor at Levallois—above the console table. The advantage of being on the building’s top floor is you see sky, a precious commodity in Paris where frequently you stare straight into another apartment. Light—
it has to be light
, I kept repeating to Frédéric—spills through windows and falls in bright shafts from skylights. After visiting so many dingy inner city apartments, this had become my
foremost prerequisite. Instead of dark, heavy wood, the chunky beams which frame the spacious main room have been bleached the colour of sand. And then there’s a spare bedroom which will be my office. I’m ecstatic. No more working on the dining room table.

A small staircase leads from the lounge room to a mezzanine level. This is where visiting family and friends will sleep, banging their heads constantly on the low, sloping ceiling. Directly beneath the roof, the mezzanine floor is framed at both ends by two crossbeams which you have to climb between to reach the central ‘bedroom’ area. It reminds me of a secret cubby-house—one which offers a panorama of Paris if you stand on the knee-high joist and stick your head out the skylight. (Had our apartment been advertised by a Sydney real estate agent, it would have claimed Stunning Views of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.)

But the most wonderful thing about our new apartment is the location, smack in the city centre, within walking distance of almost everything—the Marais, the Tuileries gardens, the Left Bank, the Louvre. Most fantastic of all, we’ll be just round the corner from the lively market street, Rue Montorgueil, a picturesque seven-hundred metre stretch of
fromageries
, fish shops, florists, bakeries and fruit and vegetable sellers who bugle their bargains six days a week. The street is the main artery of a rectangle-shaped
quartier
that’s unique in the inner city because it is entirely paved and closed to regular traffic. This only heightens the villagey feel to the neighbourhood, the impression that it is somehow self-contained and separate even though it’s an intrinsic part of Paris. I discovered the area through the Journalists in Europe program, whose headquarters are a couple of streets away on Rue du Louvre. Soon I was in love with it.
It radiates life, it’s the Parisian
quartier
of my dreams, rich in contrasts, characters and vivid colour. Frédéric, as it turns out, knows it well: years ago he lived nearby and fortunately he is equally keen to move into the neighbourhood. The drawbacks of our apartment—the absence of a lift, the grubby entrance, the minuscule kitchen—seem a small price to pay for the joy of being close to Rue Montorgueil.

It is late June by the time the sale has gone through and the tenants have packed up, leaving us free to move into our new home. After collecting the keys from the real estate agent, we decide to take some things over to the apartment now that it’s officially ours. On the way there, my head spins with excitement. Before the car has even come to a stop, I’m fumbling inside my bag for the keys. This is it: the beginning of a fabulous new life in delicious 75002. Bye-bye dreary Nounou Land. Hello
le vrai Paris.

The main move will take place on the weekend. Tonight we’ve just brought over a few fragile possessions—the mad papier-mâché masks, the wooden sailing ship that Frédéric bought in Mauritius and the large Flemish painting of grazing cows, which he rescued from a great aunt’s barn (where I dearly wish it had stayed). But really, this preliminary carload is just an excuse to parade as proud owners and excitedly plan where the furniture will go.

We park in the loading zone just outside our building. Although we’ve come here many times during the day, in the darkness everything looks unfamiliar.

A couple of metres away, a man stands quite still, his back to us. He’s peeing, I realise, into the untidy strip of lime trees which we’ll soon dub the urinal because everyone from
toddlers to businessmen in suits relieve themselves here day and night. A little further along, surrounded by beer bottles, someone is sleeping on the ground between the parked motorbikes. I try to think compassionate thoughts but it’s no good; I hope we won’t have to pick our way over drunks and broken glass every night.

As we’re unloading the car, something catches my eye: a dark mass a few metres from our front door which appears to be moving, growing,
writhing
. The street lighting is dim and from a distance it’s difficult to make out what it is.

I stop, appalled. ‘Fréd, look!’

Scores of seriously big rats are tearing at something shaped like a human head which in a calmer moment I would identify as a pineapple from the nearby fruit market. But who remains calm after spotting a pyramid of vermin on their newly acquired front doorstep? I count eleven of them, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, there must be at least twenty. More arrive each second, busily squeezing through a metal grate covering the metro tunnel which leads from the Sentier station. Instead of fleeing as we approach they keep up their frenzied nibbling, cocky and concentrated.

This is hideous. Disgusting. Totally unhygienic. We’ll have to write to our new
mairie
about this. Traps must be set, poison laid. What will family and friends think when they come to stay? Kaleidoscopic images from another life race through my mind. Sapphire Sydney coves glittering in the sunlight; fragrant frangipani trees; rainbow-coloured rosellas on bright balconies, hopping impatiently for birdseed. These crystalline snapshots are the antithesis of this sordid, snatching scene before me. I can handle the broken bottles, the drunks, the peeing on our (sort of) front garden. But not this. Sydney cockroaches seem positively cute (at least they are
squashable) in comparison to these fat filthy creatures. I search Frédéric for soothing words.