Travelers' Tales Paris (21 page)

Every day I chose a bouldering circuit, Bleau's specialty. Each circuit contains a numbered sequence of boulder problems, as many as 70 or 80, that weave in and out of a particular
chaos
. The rocks are neatly painted with tiny arrows, numbers, and parenthesized dots indicating a jump. Color-coordinated by difficulty, the circuits range from the yellow
peu difficile
to the fiendish black
extrêmement difficile
. In the United States, eco-vigilantes would have squelched such desecration of the scenery before it got started; at Fontainebleau, the circuits integrate the human and the natural, as do the formal gardens of the palace.

I had lost for good, I thought, the urge to boulder: at stateside crags, the scene reeks for me of chalk-dust and ego and painful calisthenics. But Bleau reawakened a sense of play. On a warm, windy day, with no one else in sight, I puttered through the 71 problems on the blue (
difficile
) circuit at Manoury: I tackled the Mustard Pot and the Camembert Traverse, was stumped by the Drunkard's Arête and the Subway Handle, but managed Toto's Slide.

Then I lounged on a sandstone table and opened a bottle of wine. Rousseau's gnarled oaks swayed in the breeze, and Corot's umbrageous glooms flickered on the periphery. As the Beaujolais worked its charm, I lapsed into wistfulness, ruing the eternal injustice of having been born too late.

For centuries the Fontainebleau forest had a very bad reputation. It was synonymous with darkness and fear, inhabited by demons, dwarves, and witches. Eventually, kings came to hunt in the forest, but people still avoided it, except the brigands, who would hide behind trees to ambush the unwary, cut their throats, and steal their money. At the beginning of the 19th century, entrepreneurs took interest in the rocks of the Fontainebleau woods, finding useful materials to pave muddy roads. The soft sandstone was easily cut, and many quarries were created. The woods lost their dark reputation. Writers, poets, and painters started to praise the Fontainebleau's forest. Footpaths were created and more and more people walked the woods, sometimes sleeping under the oddly shaped rocks. At the start of this century the first serious scramblers approached the rocks, and Fontainebleau climbing was born.

—Baptiste Briand, “The Magic Forest,”
Climbing

COLEMAN LOLLAR

W
E HAD ONLY ONE DAY LEFT IN
P
ARIS.
M
Y FRIEND
F
ATIMA
wanted to go to the Louvre, and since I had other things to do, we agreed to meet later in the day at a favorite café. We were both breathless with stories when we reconvened.

“You won't believe all that I say,” she was saying excitedly as I tried in vain to recite all the accounts of my own ingenious discoveries.

“But the crowds,” I complained.

“Yes, the crowds were fearful,” Fatima concurred, each of us expounding on lines and elbows. Finally we stopped trying to talk at the same time and laughed at the absurdity: we had had the same afternoon—hers at the world's greatest museum; mine at its greatest hardware store.

I had browsed for hours, outlasted the peak-hour rush of shoppers and acquired bags full of trophies at the
BHV
, a sprawling department store on the rue de Rivoli across from the Hôtel de Ville, Paris' city hall. At the
BHV
(the letters stand for the seldom-used name, Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville) my passion for gadgets and gizmos found ultimate gratification in the basement hardware department.
BHV
's management insists that there is more hardware for sale in its
sous-sol
(basement) than under any other roof on the planet. Certainly this hardware junkie wouldn't dispute the claim.

On more than one trip to Rome or Frankfurt—and once going to Addis Ababa—I have booked myself through Paris to shop for hardware (and to eat, of course). I've held off on home repairs until I could get back to the rue de Rivoli and buy just the right faucet or latch among the possibilities that fill a full city block. Some think it's quite mad (or at least pretentious) to go to Europe for hardware, passing perfectly good malls on the way to the airport. And to Paris, yet!—blasphemy to every junior high school English teacher who ever canted that edifying ditty “Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; and Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair.” My Paris has flowers, too—and nuts and bolts and gadgets too inscrutable ever to see the fluorescence of an American shopping mall.

I discovered the
BHV
years ago when a Parisian friend suggested I might find there a little window ventilator like those I had seen in French kitchens. The one I wanted required no electricity—its silent spin was powered by variations in barometric pressure. I knew what made it go, but I didn't know what it was called, and I'd never seen one for sale.

The
BHV
saleswoman listened intently as I undertook to clarify my grail. Was it a fan, perhaps? No, not exactly. A gyrating showerhead? A motor of some kind? Electric? Battery-powered? Windup? Solar? No, not that either (although I was getting the idea that this place had potential). As her eyes followed my finger drawing ever-more-rapid circles in the air, she ignited with comprehension.
“Ah, oui! Un aérateur!”

She led me to a whole wall of
aérateurs
. They came in plastic or metal, in decorator colors and in sizes that ranged from the diameter of a coffee cup to that of a soccer ball. I bought four clear-plastic ones, and they spin to this day.

The
BHV
has just about anything that can reasonably be classified as hardware and countless items that stretch the point—for instance, in the automotive section, just opposite snow chains and some 200 shades of touch-up paint, you'll find the complete
library of Michelin guides and maps. The
BHV
never stocks just one of anything. On my most recent visit I noted more than a dozen styles of gardening gloves; 25 or so versions of the distinctive Parisian mailbox, with racks underneath for newspapers and magazines; perhaps 50 different flashlights, both functional and designer models.

Hinges, locks, knobs and handles fill long aisles, floor to ceiling, with styles that number in the thousands and range from medieval black iron to Louis XIV to
Starship Enterprise
. In the
BHV
's basement you'll find country weather vanes from any French province you wish to restage back home, shoe trees in the wood of your choice, or a bicycle lock that exactly balances your imperatives for security and esthetics. If you can't find a portable cement mixer anywhere else, you can pick one up in Paris.

The
BHV
eschews the usual French word for hardware,
quincaillerie
, preferring
bricolage
—loosely, do-it-yourself. At last count the store stocked more than 350,000 items in its
départment de bricolage
. That figure is even more remarkable when you consider that many home-decorating items (unusual carved moldings, ceiling medallions, paints, and a compelling selection of wallpapers and coverings) aren't included. They're on the fourth floor, with the largest cache of designer toilet seats ever uncovered.

Store statistics confirm what has long seemed evident: on all but one of eight floors—the ground level, where cosmetics and perfumes are sold—male shoppers outnumber the ladies at the
BHV.
Men predominate even in a third-floor kitchenware department that is about twice the size of Bloomingdales'. (The selection of steak knives is bewildering.)

The fact that the
BHV
is a power bazaar might have something to do with its imperial origins. The store was incorporated in 1854 as Bazar Napoléon by a former street merchant, Xavier Ruel, who had been rewarded for saving the life of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoléon III. Ruel chose rue de Rivoli for his Second Empire building (still in use) because he correctly reckoned that it would become Paris' busiest thoroughfare.

More visitors probably stroll past the
BHV
each day than by
both the main locations of the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps department stores. But more might not recognize the black-domed building as a department store. The
BHV
—Napoleon's name was not dropped until 1884, almost ten years into the Third Republic—gives short shrift to “visual merchandising” (a.k.a. window dressing). In fact, some days the iron gates over display windows remain shut, and several window spaces have been rented to street vendors selling schlock. Before venturing inside to search for my
aérateur
I thought the place was a warehouse.

Every Parisian I've asked says he (or she) shops there, but I've seen the
BHV
mentioned in few guides to the city. Apparently the management hasn't noticed the slight. There's a Tourist Welcome Center on the ground floor to help you find things, and bilingual agents at the sixth-floor customer-service department can arrange shipping when you toss baggage allowance to the wind and buy too much. Announcements in English are made over the public-address system, and most salesclerks speak enough of the language to tell you to stand right there, they'll be back with someone fluent.

Once I eavesdropped as two
BHV
cashiers read to each other from mimeographed sheets, practicing the English equivalents of
la plume de ma tante est sur la table
. When one of the grandmotherly cashiers spotted me, I feared I had embarrassed her. But she hoisted her shoulders, smiled proudly and glued together the words: “Hello. Do you speak English, too?” I often tell the story when Anglophones proffer that old (and essentially untrue) cliché that Parisians could if they would, but they won't.