Travelers' Tales Paris (17 page)

Mason and I photographed everything that struck a chord in us: the walls and pillars and columns of bones, the piles that had collapsed and spilled their sad relics onto the stone floor, the arrangements of skulls and crossbones. I worried that the gloom might be too much for my little camera, even with the flash. Shadows lurked beyond the occasional round fluorescent light fixtures.

Beautiful inscriptions graced plaques set amongst the remains. Here and there a yellow spotlight cast a narrow beam, but overall I was glad I'd brought that flashlight. Other visitors burned their fingers while lighting matches to read the inspirational words. One plaque spoke of shadows among shadows, another about the empty eyes of skulls and the full eyes of God. All men fall, several said. If you have seen a man breathe his last, you know what is in store for you.

Why, I wondered, is Death female in French?

After 200 years and at least two burials, some of the bones were beginning to decompose. White down grew on one wall of shinbones. Elsewhere, two skulls had turned quite green. Some craniums sported round holes. I imagined someone grasping a skull, only to have it crunch beneath his fingertips like eggshell.

I discovered that I'm funny about human bones. I find something especially creepy about the geometry of a skull, inside which someone once lived and loved and dreamed. A skull, more than any other relic, seems too personal to be examined by a stranger. All those skulls, all those empty eyes, unnerved me the most.

Throughout the catacombs, everything was well within reach. Although a sign had cautioned us not to touch, nothing prevented us. We could have easily taken a souvenir. As an intellectual exercise, we speculated on how one might sneak human remains through customs.

In reality, I had no desire to touch the bones or to allow them to touch me. Little matter that they could not possibly be
contagious after so many years postmortem. I did not want to feel the brittle evidence of death beneath my fingers. If looking into the void meant the void looked back, I expected that touching Death meant that Death returned the gesture. You see where fondling Yorick's skull got Hamlet. I kept my hands jammed resolutely into my pockets.

One of the guidebooks had warned us to take sweaters but, compared to the January winds outside, the tunnels were comfortably warm. It might have been cozy, if it hadn't been so damp.

Tiny nubbins, future stalactites, hung from the ceiling. Water dripped incessantly, puddling on the floor. I didn't want any of that water falling into my face. The sound, when the two of us stood alone amidst the dead, was like slowly falling tears. The atmosphere definitely affected me.

The catacombs provided a perfect cathedral in which to meditate on the folly of human aspirations, to think about the war in the Persian Gulf. Death was so universal, so inescapable, why seek to hasten it? There were so many things I had yet to do before I could surrender to Death. Did those American boys in the foreign sand feel the same? Did the Iraqi boys? Wars should always be considered among
memento mori
like these. Perhaps life would seem more precious to the politicians who wage them.

We rounded a bend in the tunnels in time to see a man in another group stumble. His friends snatched him back before he could topple into the stacked bones. What a nightmare that would be: falling into the arms of Death, hearing them snap beneath you. Once you stopped falling, the other bones would tumble down over your face. I shivered with empathy at his near escape.

Mason was glad when we encountered the family with the small boy again. Imagine, he said to me, the dreams you would have if your parents had brought you here as a child. Instead I
imagined the dreams I would have that night. This might be a good night to drink red wine before bed.

The ossuary seemed to go on and on. I wondered if we'd gotten lost, since we separated from the tour, but locked gates clearly delimited the direction we could go. When at last we climbed the tall steps of the spiral staircase to the exit, we found ourselves on an unfamiliar street. The pedometer said we had gone only a mile underground.

White powder edged our shoes, dried residue of the moisture on the path. The chilly January wind felt fresh on my face and in my lungs. I thanked goodness to find myself alive and in Paris.

I linked arms with Mason. If we weren't going to last until evening, I said, we'd better locate a
pâtisserie
. I had a burning desire for an apple tart.

A brisk fifteen-minute walk away the word
museum
takes on new meaning at the Museum of the Sewers. Entered through what looks like a big manhole on the sidewalk at the southern end of the Pont de l'Alma, it is both museum and sewers, that is, a section of the sewers—
les égouts
in French—that has been adapted to give tourists an idea of what the entire 1,320-mile network looks—and smells—like. (Actually, it doesn't smell too bad—a sort of musty damp smell most of the time.) It has a little museum, with paintings, drawings, and photographs accompanied by texts—in French, English, German, and Spanish—explaining how the sewers were built and work.

For centuries the city's sewage ended up in the Seine, which also provided some of its drinking water. Not a good idea, concluded Napoleon, who ordered construction of the first underground sewage canals to take the waste away from the river. By 1850 there were already 100 miles of canals, but the real turning point came in the second half of the 19th century, when Baron Haussmann tore down central Paris to make way for the broad avenues and fine buildings to be seen today. He assigned an engineer,
Eugene Belgrand, the job of building a proper sewer network beneath the newly transformed city. His legacy is one of the most extensive urban sewer systems in the world. Much of what exists today was his work....

The underground network, though, serves other purposes. In
Les Misérables
, the Victor Hugo novel that became a hit musical, Jean Valjean saves his wounded enemy, Marius, by carrying him to safety through the sewers. During World War II, when Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany, the French Resistance would hide and plot there. Today the city's water supply, telephone and electricity lines, and pipes carrying compressed air to hospitals run through the network of underground canals. Even the turn-of-the-century system of delivering express letters through pneumatic tubes survives. It now connects only Government ministries and Parliament, but it explains the occasional rattling sound that can be heard at the Museum of the Sewers.

—Alan Riding, “The Sights Beneath the Sidewalks,”
The New York Times

MICHELE ANNA JORDAN

I
ARRIVED AT THE
G
ARE DE
L
YON ON THE NIGHT TRAIN FROM
Milan at 7:22 a.m. Having treated myself to a first-class sleeper (the best travel money I have ever spent), I was in pretty good shape: well-rested, not wrinkled, and most importantly, not carsick. A porter helped me get my luggage to a locker and by 9:30, I had a hotel room nearby and was ready for my single day in the City of Light when it began to rain. After a long hot bath, it still was pouring but I was not to be daunted. I opened my red umbrella and hit the street, determined for adventure. I was one of the only people in sight but I hurried on, ignoring the water seeping into my red shoes and splashing against my legs.

I walked to the nearby Bastille in search of an interesting restaurant. I was longing for oysters, but more than that I wanted authenticity, a place without tourists where the waiter would not condescendingly address me in English as I struggled to speak my best French. Alas, I had left behind my
Food Lover's Guide to Paris
and would have to rely solely on my good instincts, which were a little frayed after nearly three weeks on the road.

I walked for what seemed like hours, and after lingering in a lavish outdoor market a stone's throw from the Seine, intuition
served me well. I settled into a comfortable table in a small wine bar that had simply looked right. Soon, I was sipping champagne and nibbling walnuts while I slowly considered each menu item. If I had but one meal in Paris, I told myself, it would be grand. Three hours later the singularly most indulgent, decadent solo activity I have pursued concluded with a strong cup of
café crème
. Every minute had been divine.

I followed my flute of champagne with the richest, densest slab of
foie gras
I have ever tasted, served with sweet butter and a basket of crispy toast and accompanied voluptuously by a 1988 Roumaud Sauternes, a truly rapturous combination. I ate slowly, relishing each bite and reading from a favorite book, Greil Marcus's
In the Fascist Bathroom
(known in its American edition as
Ranters and Crowd Pleasers
). Throughout my travels this tome on punk music is the one book that held up to all of my culinary indulgences. Everything else paled in comparison to what I was eating and drinking but Marcus's tight, intense essays formed the perfect literary counter-part to my gastronomic adventures, perhaps because he, too, eats with relish and enthusiasm. It helped that I knew that the final piece, a bizarre story called “I Am a Cliché,” had been at least partially inspired by a solo meal he'd had in Paris a few years earlier.