The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue Des Martyrs (30 page)

“Where’s your car?” one asked.

I said I didn’t have one. He looked at me as if I were insane. Without a word, he returned to the shop and locked the door.

The sign was covered in plaster dust. A small piece of neon from “58” was missing, but otherwise the neon remained firmly attached to its black panel. The panel was bigger than I’d remembered, about four feet tall and five feet wide. Emerik and I tried to lift it. It weighed a ton. Not a ton exactly, but more than we could carry to the bottom of the rue des Martyrs, around the corner, and up a block to my apartment on the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

Emerik said it would not fit on his scooter. We didn’t know where we could borrow a dolly on wheels. We were, however,
sure that no taxi driver would be willing to take it. I knocked on the door of the shop. I used my most formal and polite French.

“Excuse me, sir, but we can’t lift the sign,” I said. “I know this will be an imposition, but would you be so kind as to keep it until my husband can come and take it with our car?”

Even as I said this, I was lying. I had already figured out that the sign would not fit into our car, a very large 1995 Audi A6.

“Lady, you want the sign, you take it,” the worker said. “There’s no place for it here.”

I tried to pull rank. “Your boss wants Monsieur Hassid to have it,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. It’s a surprise for Mr. Hassid. It’s part of his
patrimoine
.”

By now the workman understood that he was dealing with a lunatic. He offered no help. I told Emerik that, somehow, we had to get the sign home. We began moving downhill on the rue des Martyrs, sliding the huge panel along the sidewalk. We took it slowly, stopping at each curb. As we approached the right turn at the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, I realized it would be a challenge to get the sign into my family’s
cave,
our basement storage space.

Karim, one of the street’s greengrocers, was having a coffee at the café at No. 8. “Karim, if we get into a real emergency, would you give us a hand?
” I asked.

“You can count on me!” Karim said.

Emerik is the most patient young guy I know. He maneuvered the sign into the courtyard of my building and down the narrow, curved stone steps into our
cave.

That night, I told Andy what I had done. As a lawyer, he wanted the facts, just the facts. How big is the sign? Where exactly did you put it? How did you get it into the basement? How long will it be there?

I was prepared for him to be annoyed. Instead, he said, “It was a
mitzvah
.”

Viggo called the next day to ask how the pickup had gone. Instead of telling him the whole story, I said everything was fine. I thanked him again and again. “Newcomers aren’t always welcome in the neighborhood,” I said. “The old-timers feel they’re being pushed out by the young and the rich. And sometimes the new merchants aren’t very nice. You did a
mitzvah,
Viggo.”

He had no idea what I meant. So I told him that
mitzvah
translates as “commandment” in Hebrew but has come to mean an act of kindness.

“Well, I hope it’s just the beginning and I get to do many, many more,” he said.

Yves sounded delighted when I phoned with the good news. I told him Andy had called it a
mitzvah
. Yves said he would pick up the sign next day.

“It’s much too heavy for one person to carry,” I said.

“I’ll come with a friend and we’ll put it in my car.”

I told him it wouldn’t fit. He insisted it would.

I told him the neon tube that illuminated the “58” had broken.

Yves was silent. Then he said, “What number 58? Just what did you take?”

“The big sign above the store,” I said.

Silence again. He thought I had salvaged a much smaller sign, called a “flag,” that juts out perpendicular to the facade, enabling passersby to see a shop’s name as they walk up the street—a sign he wanted to rehang if he opened another shop.

“The sign you took is huge!” he said. “It’s really heavy. You are crazy! Of course I can’t put it in my car. And what am I going to do with it?”

He laughed, but he sounded disappointed.

I apologized for taking the wrong sign. I said maybe he could remove the letters from the wooden frame and hang them on his wall at home—like a piece of modern art.

He talked about the fragility of neon and the challenges of lighting it. Even as he insisted that he wanted the sign, I knew he didn’t.

At the new waffle shop, Viggo and Gabriel removed cheap wood flooring to reveal the original nineteenth-century painted tile beneath. They hung a black awning that announced their specialties from the “Belgian Kingdom.” They installed a Swiss espresso machine that made Italian caffè macchiato with fair-trade Belgian Taeymans coffee beans, in layers of four colors.

They imported waffle dough from Belgium. Instead of using banal Nutella to make chocolate waffles, the way every other Parisian
crêperie
and waffle maker seems to do, they stuffed theirs with fine Belgian chocolate.

Because apples are emblematic of Belgium, they made fresh-pressed juice from organic apples. They also sold a thick, dark molasses made from apples and pears, Speculoos cookies by the same Speculoos maker that supplies the Belgium royal court, pyramid-shaped raspberry sweets, vanilla cream snowball cookies, and hard salt licorice. Every morning, when they open their window, the fragrance of sugar, butter, and vanilla fills the sidewalk.

Yves, the DVD guy, and his wife, Nathalie, opened the “Looky Caffe” in Asnières-sur-Seine. They chose a solid working-class neighborhood and specialized in what Yves called
la restauration rapide
—fast food. They made salads, sandwiches, and specialties from Tunisia, where Yves was born.

“I’ve always loved to cook,” he said. “I make everything on-site, from scratch.”

Yves was reborn.

As for the neon sign, it is still in our
cave
in the basement. Someday, when I live in the United States again, I will hang it in my house as a souvenir of the rue des Martyrs.

LE POTLUCK

. . .

The sun joyfully taps at your windows;
Love very softly taps at your heart,
And they are both calling you.

—“S
OLE E AMORE
,” G
IACOMO
P
UCCINI

O
VER TIME, I GOT TO KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE ON THE
rue des Martyrs that I wanted to bring them together in a celebration of the street—the whole street. But how to do it?

Sébastien! I thought. Sébastien Guénard, the chef and owner of the bistro Miroir, at the top of the rue des Martyrs.

“Imagine a party where everyone comes together,” I said. “The people at the bottom meet the people at the top.”

“Let’s have the party here!” he said.

Miroir used to be a Montmartre joint catering to tourists who craved cheap onion soup and garlicky escargots. Although the place looked filthy and run-down when Sébastien first saw it, it was a
coup de foudre
—love at first sight. “There was a side to the place that said, ‘So Paris, the Paris I love, the Paris for real people,’” he recalled.

He opened Miroir in 2008 with financial backing from Bruno
Blanckaert, a businessman with a passion for reviving this part of Paris. Every morning, neighborhood residents stop in for coffee and conversation. The postman comes by, with the mail, of course, but also for a quick espresso; if he is unable to deliver a package to one of the neighbors, he leaves it at Miroir for safekeeping. Because the school nearby bans skateboards, students sometimes leave them with Sébastien until classes let out. Most afternoons, before the restaurant opens for dinner, Sébastien stands on the sidewalk, greeting everyone he knows with double-cheek kisses. Every evening, he sets aside three or four tables for friends and regulars who might show up.

Early some mornings, when I’m not at Le Dream Café, at the bottom of the rue des Martyrs, I venture up here. I perch at a table close to the window and watch the world go by. Catherine Mourrier, a slip of a young woman who chain-smokes and sports a brush cut with her bangs gelled upward, makes me a
café crème
in between washing down the sidewalks and Windexing the windows. She always brings me a small pitcher of extra-hot milk. One day she started serving me croissants.

A man who lives at the top of the street is a different kind of regular. In the old days you would have called him a wino. He carries a guitar on one shoulder and sings when the spirit moves him. He came by one morning and asked Sébastien to open his wine shop, across the street, because he wanted a bottle of red called “Forbidden Fruit.” If Sébastien was annoyed, he didn’t show it. He unlocked the shop door and handed the man a bottle. The man didn’t pay.

“Who was that?” I asked, after he had left.

“An artist of the neighborhood,” Sébastien said. “He’s as sweet as can be.”

“But he didn’t pay you!”

“Oh, he’ll pay one week or the next.”

MY IDEA FOR A
party may have seemed whimsical, but I was determined. First, I mentioned it to everyone I knew on the street. Then I hand-delivered invitations. “Dear Martyrians,” it began. “The moment I have talked about so much has finally come!” I invited them “to celebrate our rue des Martyrs, which we love so much.”

I planned an old-fashioned American potluck dinner. Potluck does not exist in Paris. The French would be unhinged by its disorder: no quality (or quantity) control, no logic to the courses. Even a French family picnic in the country is more formal than an American potluck. To help bring people around, I included a note with the invitation, defining potluck as “a meal in which everyone brings something to eat or drink that can be shared. We do it often in the United States, because it’s a great way to meet people around a simple meal.”

We needed music, of course. I asked Pablo Veguilla, a young Puerto Rican–American opera tenor, to join us. Pablo is an American success story. He was born poor in Chicago and raised in Orlando, Florida, where his father worked as a nursing home janitor and his mother as a hospital secretary. Yale University plucked him out of oblivion to study music at its graduate school, all expenses paid. He lives with his Romanian-born wife, a pianist, and their three sons, outside of Paris.

“It’s not the Met, but we’ll have a blast,” I said.

I suggested that he sing an aria from Puccini’s
La Bohème
because of the opera’s historical connection to the Brasserie des
Martyrs, the famous nineteenth-century tavern at the bottom of the street. I told him that Henri Murger, whose book about Paris bohemian life had inspired Puccini, had been a regular there.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” said Pablo. “I’m getting excited about this.”

Most of the shopkeepers I invited shared Pablo’s enthusiasm. Arnaud Delmontel, the baker and pastry chef, said he’d bring his signature loaf cakes. His competitor, another Sébastien (Sébastien Gaudard), an even more haute couture baker, promised a surprise. Éric Vandenberghe, the owner of the Corsican food shop, said he’d bring charcuterie. Yves and Annick Chataigner, the cheesemongers, offered Camembert and Beaufort.

But when I asked Guy Bertin, the curmudgeonly bookseller, if he would join us and bring a book, he said, “People don’t eat books.”

I told him I was planning a raffle as entertainment and we could raffle off one of his books.

“I’m too busy,” he said, his voice flat and low.

“It’s in the evening, after the shop is closed. Besides, you have to eat.”

“I don’t go to these things,” he said. “Besides, my wife—”

I interrupted: “Bring your wife!”

Nothing is more humiliating than giving a party to which no one comes. So the day before, I made a desperate appeal up and down the street. Abdelhamid and Kamel, the greengrocers, said they couldn’t make it.

“If you don’t come, I’ll be mortified!” I said. “It will be a
vergogna
.”

In Italian,
vergogna
is a strong word that means loss of face . . . forever.