The secrets of Paris are the secrets of love.
IN PARIS, MEN AND WOMEN LOVE WITH THEIR INTELLECT AS MUCH as their emotions. This is in fact a deeply romantic approach to love, one that sees the lover as the most worthy adversary in the world, worthy even of trying to persuade. Of course we are talking about Paris, so the persuasion involves panache, aplomb, and attitude—plenty of attitude.
A young couple enters the Café St-Germain on a November afternoon. His leather jacket is open over a white t-shirt; her heavy gold sweater sets off a mane of black hair. They are beautiful to look at, and clearly in love. They sit, smoke, and drink coffee in a room of spidery mirrored walls and brown marble tables. In fact they sit at the next table and the café is not crowded, so their discussion quickly becomes more interesting than the afternoon newspaper. Love in public is public love, n’est-ce pas?
It turns out the young woman is attempting to convince the young man that their relationship should proceed to the ultimate intimacy more or less immediately. Not tomorrow, not tonight, but today, now. The young man sits back in his chair and listens, which means he is resting, marshaling his own arguments for the rebuttal to come. It is a tender scene of young love, in Paris.
There is a famous photo of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, who shared one of the great romances of this century, in Paris or anywhere else. They are sitting at the table in La Coupole where they dined daily for many years. She looks off to the side with a half smile on her lips, he looks down reflectively. What discussions they must have had, I always thought. One day it dawned on me that they didn’t go to the same café for 40 years to agree with each other. They went to discuss, to disagree, to argue. In fact, their lifelong agreement on where to go for dinner saved invaluable energy for what happened when they got there.
Never have I felt so forcefully that our lives have no meaning outside of our love, and that nothing changes that, neither separation, nor passions, nor the war. You said it was a victory for our morality, but it is just as much a victory for our love.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, in a letter to Simone de Beauvoir
I don’t mean they argued as in “had a fight,” which you almost never see in Paris, but an argument as Aristotle thought of it: a coherent series of logical reasons, advanced to prove a point. What could be more Parisian than that?
The young woman in the café takes the young man’s coffee cup from his hand so he cannot hide behind it. It was not religion that invented love, she asserts, leaning forward. It was not your school or your parents, she continues, eyes afire. It is men and women who reinvent love together, and if we two do not make love, love is not made in this world. She crushes out her cigarette and throws her hair back over her shoulder in a flourish of valedictory passion.
You don’t have to be Parisian to appreciate this kind of romance, or to participate in it either. An American woman I know spent years trying to convince her Provençal boyfriend that they should leave Paris and live somewhere, anywhere, else. Katie is a professor of economics, a discipline in which so little is actually provable that the ability to persuade is paramount. The discussion about leaving town should have been over in a month. They remained for years. How could this happen? They were in Paris, and in love: the argument illuminated their happiness like a bonfire.
Another Parisian love story, that of Mimi and Rudolfo in Puccini’s opera, La Bohème, has made millions of people weep. It makes the Parisians I know squirm. They prefer the scenes between the second couple, Musetta and Marcello. I once asked a Frenchwoman to explain this to me. (Of course I started by stating a logical case; I was secretly in love with her, and we were in Paris.) Both Mimi and Musetta leave their artistic lovers to be kept by wealthy men, I argued, so one is no better than the other. Mimi has far lovelier arias, more vulnerability, and one of the most touching deaths in all of theater. Why do you spurn her?
It’s not her, the lady said, rolling her eyes. (She was reversing the usual procedure by opening with attitude and then hitting home with logic.) It’s the story, she said. Rudolfo and Mimi meet in his room at the beginning, then she dies in his room at the end. But where’s the rest? With Musetta and Marcello you get to see them argue a little, so they express their love. The other two, they split up somehow, but we never see it. The real love is all offstage!
Right now, on-stage in the café, the young man reaches for a cigarette. He lights it thoughtfully, blows out a cloud of grey-blue smoke, and considers the intelligent face of his tablemate. I cannot disagree with anything you say, he begins softly. This does not melt the young woman. She is in Paris, and in love. Instead her back stiffens a little.
Even Paris itself, the physical city, is an argument for romance Parisian style. Baron Haussmann’s broad boulevards and great monuments argue eloquently that Paris is not like other cities, and its inhabitants not like other city dwellers. Why then should they love like others, with more feeling than reason? Even recent civic “improvements,” such as dropping a glass pyramid into the lap of the Louvre—Europe’s most romanticized museum—appear intentionally designed to stimulate passionate argument.
The first time I took a woman to Paris, I discovered things about her—and her attitude about our relationship—that were previously unrevealed by years of polite American passion. We were sitting in the cozy corner of a small restaurant in the rue de l’Echaude, savoring winter soup and crisp Sancerre, when she said casually, “This is working out better than I ever thought it would.” I believed she was praising either the dinner or my management of our trip, and asked which she meant. “No,” she said, “I meant us, the whole thing.”
The Louvre was wonderful. I spent three hours sketching one of Michelangelo’s slaves. Afterward I hopped on the Métro to try to catch the Rodin museum’s last admittance. My luck, it was pouring rain and only the garden was open. Funny how fitting it is to view Rodin’s work in the gray Paris mist, soaking cold, the rain tapping softly on black umbrellas.
I missed you as I watched the water fall on the glassy surfaces of fountain pools framing beautiful bodies. His passion touches me the same as the memory of your kiss—like swallowing ice cubes—that sweet, dull ache.
—Gina Granados, “Dear Patrick”
I do not remember any of the courses that followed, nor how we got back to our hotel. I’ll never forget the argument that erupted, however, or the heightened passion of the remaining years we shared.
The young man retrieves his coffee cup and gazes into it. When we make this change it will be glorious, he says softly, as if thinking aloud to himself. Our essences will be mixed, our destinies joined in a way that cannot be described, or reversed. He shakes his head slowly at the immensity of it all.
The young woman’s body is still wary, but her face is beginning to soften, her eyes to glisten. The young man puts down the coffee cup and takes her hands. He continues speaking to her with such persuasive sincerity that even I am willing to believe anything he says. But what of today? he asks. Once we leave this moment we cannot return to our passionate innocence. When at last we make love, the wanting and waiting will be over, but they will also be gone. Then we cannot go back, he says. Ever.
There is a long moment in which neither of them moves. The sun slides away behind the buildings, and afternoon becomes twilight. An older couple enters the café to warm greetings from other habitués; on the sidewalk a man in an elegant overcoat sweeps a woman in furs into his arms; inside, the bartender is talking on the phone with one hand and gesturing dramatically with the other. Yet somehow all is silent, waiting for love to decide the argument.
Finally the young woman extracts her hands from his, sits back, and luxuriously smoothes her hair. It is not clear whether she is savoring victory or accepting defeat. A moment later, the two of them go out together. Do they go to her place and make love, or walk the Seine in silence for hours, arm in arm? Which one of them has prevailed? This is Paris, this is love. The argument continues.
Thom Elkjer is wine editor for Wine Country Living and editor of Adventures in Wine: True Stories of Vineyards and Vintages around the World. His work has appeared in Wine Spectator, WINE magazine, and many Travelers’ Tales volumes. He is also the author of Escape to the Wine Country and a mystery novel, Hook, Line and Murder.
Numerous writers have depicted the famed City of Light as a woman, and I must agree that she is definitely a sensual, voluptuous, sometimes loving, often laughing, playful spirit. She can also be cruel and cold in her sophisticated way, seeming to say, “I am all that is romance and splendor of the past, but if you do not respect my ancient history and try to understand my deeper mystery, then I will show you only one side of myself...the flat dimension of glittering night life, champagne and sequins, the odor of expensive perfume and cigarettes. But I will not unveil my inner beauty that lies within the cracks of every statue, depicting the glory I once knew. You will slumber in a drunken paradise, unable to keep the vigil as the sun rises on wings of fire that kiss the breasts of my monuments to the past. Because my light is invisible to the naked eye, it only touches and blesses those travelers who continue to dream and believe in their own muse with all their heart. For them, I will shine brightly through their tears of pain and infinite joy.”
—Carole Brooks, “A Love Affair with the City of Dreams”