Chapter Twenty-three

Contradictoire

A series of emails and messages ping-ponged from Clém to Sandrine, cc-ing me. Clém wouldn’t rest until the situation with Gisèle’s paper was sorted.

On Sunday, Edouard and his beautiful wife, Catherine, arranged to meet me for lunch in front of the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest covered market in Paris, and he found me swooning over the giant selection of cheeses. Gregarious and enthusiastic, he was so excited to meet, like all the family had been, taking me to lunch nearby at a bistro in Bastille. He was friendly and protective — just as Clém and Coralie and their parents and Marie had been — and decisive and funny at the same time. He was unafraid to talk about the family history, about the complicated times in which both our parents lived.

At one point, Edouard moved my bag, which I’d left on a nearby chair. ‘You need to be careful with your bag in Paris, Louisa,’ he said with a frown. He was telling me off, but it came from a place of care. It was like my brother was in Paris.

My salad was delivered with a giant slab of camembert, and I audibly swooned.

‘You like French cheese? That’s it!’ Edouard pounded his fist on the table. ‘We will have a cheese night, at my place.’

The WhatsApp group buzzed with messages from the Australian-French family over who could come and what to bring — and there: it was arranged.

Marie and her partner, Anne, were coming; Laurence and Arnaud, too. Margaux and Maxime — Edouard’s children, who’d been the first to transcribe Michelle’s letters — would also be there.

Cheese. Saucisson. Edouard’s place. Friday night. Another ‘early’ night, I was to turn up at nine.

By morning, Clém had sent an enormously relieving piece of news: Sandrine said she would take responsibility for the mysterious ‘piece of paper’, so Gisèle could return to the Residence.

With the number of pills Gisèle had to take every day since her stroke a year earlier, she needed careful monitoring. The reason she’d been sent to hospital was because she couldn’t remember if she’d taken her heart medication. She would now have a daily visit from a nurse as part of her care. In France, the cost of this extra care was a fraction of what it would cost in a nursing home in Australia.

Clémentine replied to Sandrine before I’d even typed merci, and as I pressed refresh I saw emails from Ayala and Dec. The two had been worried in Melbourne.

Gisèle is family, Lou. What can we get to thank Clém … ?

A little more at peace with the idea of Gisèle, I opened myself up to Paris. The next week passed in a beautiful blur of sightseeing and deliciously unique experiences. I went to poetry in a cave, and read dad’s memoir at Café De Flore, underlining pages before walking off to find the locations like he’d left me a Parisian treasure hunt. I caught the train to Montmartre and retraced the steps I’d taken ten years before, finding a church dad had described and feeling so moved from my time inside that it felt akin to a séance. I drank wine in little bistros at happy hour in Saint Germain and walked myself to the Dali museum. I visited the Bibliothèque Nationale, the most beautiful library on the planet, which reminded me of a sculpture gallery where the books lined gold-flecked shelves. I bought candles and gifts from Diptyque and Buly, and browsed clothing stores that explained exactly why Gisèle had always been so impeccably dressed. The level of detail on the French designs was exquisite.

And every night, Clém and I would catch up on the phone, sharing the latest on Gisèle and my treasure hunt of dad, as well as the details and dramas of Clém’s life, which had me feeling like I’d known her for years.

Laurence took me on a tour of the ancient ateliers of Montparnasse, and we lunched in the Luxembourg Gardens. Circular paths, it all felt, me and Michelle’s daughters and grandchildren, dad and Gisèle, I wondered so many times if he’d seen Michelle again in Paris. It was a dream holiday, a new life, an experience of family and history and returning to myself I hadn’t expected.

I discovered, to my delight, that the first writer I’d met on my 2007 trip to New York — Karen — was now living in Trocadéro, just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. We rendezvoused at Café Carette, where we shared tales of the madness of freelance journalism, and she told me about her new life and medical career in Paris, thankful not to be pitching for work in that exhausting roundabout that is living freelance.

Coralie had Clém and me over for pizza and wine in her apartment, and I went to the national museum of modern art at Centre Pompidou, visited the contemporary photography gallery Jeu de Paume, and promenaded the Jardin des Plantes, the largest botanical garden in France. I got lost searching for the Henri Cartier-Bresson museum, but it didn’t matter, I was in Paris and every other corner held a doorway to wonder and beauty.

Early evening, when the Paris light would start to fade from 5.00 p.m., I’d find myself a spot on Boulevard Saint Germain or Rue Vieille du Temple for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee.

Over a glass of Châteauneuf du Pape sitting at the bookshop bar La Belle Hortense in Le Marais, a French couple told me of their holiday house in Le Lavandou. By the time the conversation was over, they’d offered me their phone number in case I needed a translator when I got to the town.

The French were serious, yes, but also warm and intelligent and interesting and concerned with aesthetics and contradictory about politics, and happy to discuss the various shades.

I saw the lights of the Eiffel Tower glitter at sunset, and swam at Piscine Pontoise, walking home in the rain across the Île de la Cité.

I wrote my first poem in years and queued to present it, adding my name to the list of performers at Au Chat Noir. I went for drinks with an Australian writer friend who’d moved to Paris, and took notes on how she’d done it because I wanted to return for longer.

My visit to Saint Clair was inching nearer, but those three weeks in Paris felt like the preparation for a whole new life ahead of me. Old friends and new family overlapped and intertwined, and I had the feeling, finally, that I’d found not just my family of origin, but a place I fit in. Like a book on a shelf I’d waited years to open, Paris had always been waiting for me.