Almost French (38 page)

Other traditions remain immune to change too. The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. I’d rather it wasn’t: I’ll never get used to people peeing openly in the streets. But seeing them no longer surprises me. Some of the culprits are homeless and where are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings? (What’s more, you have to pay to use them.) The sight of drunks sleeping outside our entrance doesn’t shock me anymore either. These days the space next to our front door attracts quite a crowd on cold nights. A new supermarket has opened below and its refrigeration system pumps hot air into the street. This winter the step in front of the vents is occupied by an amiable, elderly Hungarian called Stan who cheerfully greets me each time I walk out the door. There is a reassuring regularity to our morning exchanges which always begin with an assessment of the weather. ‘You should have brought an umbrella,’ he’ll tell me, waggling his hand to indicate the probability of rain. Sometimes he compliments me on my clothes, ‘Hey, nice boots!’ The other day he stared at me intently then declared, ‘You’re looking better today. Not so tired.’ I thanked him, smiling at the incongruity of the exchange: that this man who has nowhere to sleep at night, this man whose life is immeasurably harder than mine, might notice something as trivial as my tiredness.

Pierre is still swaggering around too, yelling drunken abuse at anyone he doesn’t know, acting for all the world as if he owns the place. At the moment he’s squatting in the building next to ours which is empty because of renovation work. He still has his rotten red scooter which he parks near
Frédéric’s motorbike and the two of them often discuss what they’d like to do with the youths who occasionally siphon their petrol at night (Pierre’s punishments being only slightly more draconian than Frédéric’s).

According to the French charity Emmaüs, there are about ten thousand permanent
clochards
like Pierre in Paris, while each year a further thirty thousand people are rendered temporarily homeless through circumstance and spend a period living on the street. The word
clochard
, literally means ‘tramp’. But while the English translation has a pejorative edge in French the word conveys a certain status. Pierre quite proudly describes himself as a
clochard
whereas it would be difficult to imagine someone importantly claiming to be a ‘bum’ or a ‘tramp’. The word originated at the old Les Halles market where a bell or
cloche
used to toll at the end of every day when it was time to close the stalls. (The bell still hangs above the wine bar, A la Cloche des Halles.) It became tradition that when the ringing had stopped, any leftovers and overripe produce were given to the homeless and the hungry.

The bell no longer tolls but
clochards
still come to the same spot for food at the end of the day. They gather on the steps of the St-Eustache church, where a soup kitchen serves hot meals throughout winter. Beneath the massive neo-classical columns, their breath ignites pale steam clouds in the dark. I’d watched the scene hundreds of times before volunteering to work one night a week.

I’d never been drawn to any kind of charity work in Australia. But then I’d never seen people sleeping on cold concrete outside my apartment before either; never lived in a place where homeless people were so woven into community life. Sometimes it’s unsettling, privilege and poverty so closely mixed. The disparity is sharpest in winter, when each year a
few
clochards
die of cold in Paris. Meanwhile, the shops along Rue Montorgueil fill with the traditional pre-Christmas luxuries. The seafood stalls spill over with
langoustines
, smoked salmon and prawns, piled like swollen, pink commas. The specialist delicatessens at the bottom of nearby Rue Montmartre do a roaring trade in pâté de foie gras. The bottle shops’ windows fill with champagne. One day in late November I’d just bought some oysters from Philippe, the charming oyster vendor from Ile de Ré who has returned for his twenty-fifth year of selling on Rue Montorgueil. I’d also bought a bottle of champagne. It was bitterly cold and I was hurrying back to our heated apartment. And then I passed the old Hungarian, huddled in front of the supermarket’s warm air vents. He was holding his crackly transistor radio to his ear, one of his few possessions, nodding gravely at some piece of news, too absorbed to notice me. All the same it was jarring, me with my luxuries, him with next to nothing.

But this close proximity also has a humanising effect. It lessens the ‘them and us’ distance. Sure, some locals can’t stand Pierre and their attitude is not entirely unjustified. He can be noisy and aggressive and downright dangerous on his scooter. But many people give him clothes, money and blankets. The shopkeepers are remarkably tolerant too, given that Pierre spends much of his time slurring over their counters, asking for food or peeing on their windows after closing. Anywhere else they might group together to try to drive him away. But when I asked the
fromager
if he minded Pierre’s presence, he just shrugged and said: ‘He’s been here longer than I have.’ His reply seemed a typically French blend of resignation and humanity.

At the St-Eustache soup kitchen, meals are prepared near the front entrance of the church in a small space shielded from the street by an iron gate reinforced with wooden panels. When I arrive for my first evening’s work, people are already queuing in front of it even though it will be more than an hour before they are served. Behind the gate, two massive cauldrons simmer in the corner and I quickly discover that ‘soup kitchen’ is a misnomer. In fact the charity provides a four-course meal: soup, a main meal, salad and cake and coffee. About ten volunteers are chopping tomatoes and cucumbers and putting yoghurts, bread and biscuits into little bags which will be handed out as ration packs to each person. Several others are doing the rounds of local bakeries which donate bread and leftover cakes for dessert. I’m in charge of cutting up baguettes to make croutons for the soup.

‘What are we having tonight?’ A pair of eyes peers through the rectangular gap between the gate panels.

‘Ravioli in tomato sauce,’ I say.

The fellow makes a clicking sound in disgust. ‘Well it’s not worth queuing then …’

A few minutes later another set of eyes fills the hole. The exchange is repeated.

‘What kind of ravioli?’ she insists.

I call to the kitchen and relay the answer: ‘Beef.’ I’ve tasted it myself and it’s really not bad, I tell her.

‘Where’s the beef from?’

‘Um, I don’t know,’ I say, taken aback and also reluctant to pester the cooks with a question they surely can’t answer. My ignorance makes her angry.

‘You can’t just give us any old beef without telling us where it’s from, you know. I’m not going to eat beef if it doesn’t come with a proper veterinary certificate …’

There is a shuffling sound as she moves away, muttering where I could stick my mad cow ravioli.

Xavier, who manages the different teams of volunteers, had warned me. ‘Don’t expect gratitude,’ he’d said. ‘Being demanding is a way for them to maintain their dignity: they’ll accept the meal if you insist, but it better be good because they’re not begging.’ But still I’m taken aback by the constant complaints and criticisms. These people might sleep in metro stations but that doesn’t mean they’re less discerning about food than any other French person. ‘The soup’s not salty enough.’ ‘Mine’s not hot.’ ‘I’ve told you before, I hate couscous.’

Standing outside with a twenty-something woman who’s offering extra salt and a retired school teacher brandishing pepper, I sprinkle handfuls of croutons over soup for whoever wants them. Most people are polite, appreciative. Some are astonishingly exact about quantity. ‘More, more, more, more, stop, I said STOP,’ one guy cries, upset that an extra crouton slipped through my fingers. Certain characters seem to confirm Xavier’s assertion that a large proportion of people on the street are mentally ill. One young fellow sticks his face right in mine and flashes me a lovely smile. ‘
Salut
Lady Di,’ he says in an oddly bright way. ‘Nine. I want nine croutons, please.’

A biting wind whips across the exposed plain of Les Halles. The cold has brought nearly two hundred people tonight. Most come because they’re hungry but some of the elderly also seek the comfort of company. A few years ago the St-Eustache volunteers regularly fed about three hundred people each night. The drop in numbers is partly due to the introduction of the RMI—a minimum guaranteed income which buys street people food and basic shelter—a cramped
chambre de bonne
or perhaps an underground parking space that they share with others.

The traditional Parisian
clochard
—the old, shabby character on a street corner—is gradually being replaced by a new type of needy. At least half the people in the queue are recently arrived immigrants, a number of whom are surprisingly well-dressed. It’s rumoured that some of those from Eastern Europe are ex-prisoners, released on the condition they clear out of their countries. Whether this is true or not I don’t know but certainly some in the crowd look like character actors playing Russian gangsters. Tension occasionally flares between different nationalities. A few years ago, fights used to break out almost every night, often sparked by local crack dealers of African or Antilles origin who’d arrive coked-up to their eyeballs. Eventually the police clamped down on the trade, although Les Halles remains one of the easiest places in Paris to buy drugs.

The mood on the steps of St-Eustache church can still be volatile. When four strapping Polish blokes arrive and attempt to jump the queue there is a volley of furious protest from the line. Within a split second, a group of Kosovars materialises, their smaller frames offset by the menace on their faces. Fortunately no punches or knives are pulled and eventually the Poles leave in disgust.

Curiously, none of the local street people I know turn up. Later, Pierre explains he doesn’t come to the soup kitchen anymore because he always ends up in fights. Then, just as we’re beginning to pack up, a familiar silhouette lumbers through the darkness with an authority that sends one volunteer flying to the stove to reheat some ravioli. I recognise the wobbly gait, can soon make out the clumpy boots with their loose tongues. Napoléon. Bossy and bellicose, he orders the
small cluster of people milling for leftovers to get lost. It’s obvious he considers himself King of the
Clochards
. He turns to me, his eyes bubbling with trouble. Brightly, I explain that actually we’ve stopped serving but—lucky him!—someone is kindly heating up …

Napoléon’s roar ricochets off the neo-classical columns.

‘I want caviar! IMMEDIATELY!’

Up close he resembles a bear, with hair sprouting from ears and nostrils. If you didn’t know him you might be scared. But Napoléon is all bark and no bite.

‘Caviar’s finished,’ I say. ‘How about ravioli?’

He refuses. I suspect he’s not even hungry. He just wanted to show off, to throw his considerable bulk around. Instead he begrudgingly accepts one of the little plastic bags containing yoghurt, biscuits and bread. Watching him lumber off into the night, the orange street lights giving the scene a filmic glow, it occurs to me that perhaps Paris is not such a bad place for people like him, the less fortunate, the crazy or the homeless. I don’t mean to put a rosy tint on the lives of those living in the street because at the best of times it’s grim and in winter it is insufferable. But the way the city is structured, the way it is broken down into ‘villages’ means that at least people like Pierre and Stan are not anonymous. Neither is Napoléon, who, although he has his own apartment, clearly has no money. They belong to a
quartier
.

That’s why the shopkeepers put up with Pierre’s trouble-making and why Frédéric gives him the clothes he no longer wears. It also explains why each morning I stop to chat with the Hungarian and frequently slip him a few coins. It is not that we are especially charitable. But familiarity breeds compassion and even affection. Quite simply, living side by side you can’t pretend they’re not there.