There’s a part of Wednesday that we haven’t written about. We’d decided to concentrate on the area around Montparnasse. When I lived in Paris that year, 1952-53, I lived, along with my classmate, Maria Cristina Orive, in the family of Mme. Solignac at 10 rue Jean Baptiste Dumas, near the Place Pereire, up in the 17ieme arrondissement. Group meetings and Mlle. Saleil’s office were at Reid Hall, in the Rue de Chevreuse, right off the Blvd. Montparnasse. Most of our classes were held down that direction too. We traveled back and forth on our bicycles in good weather, but mostly by bus.
Over the years, Tom and I have visited Mme.Solignac, introduced our children. Her daughter, Ginette, too, welcomed Tom and me in 1979 with a lunch for friends and a wine we will never forget, it was so perfect, put down by her father probably near WWI.
Now they have both died, and Reid Hall is owned by Columbia University, but it rents space to Smith and other colleges that run study programs in Europe. After a visit to the top of the Tour Montparnasse, and lunch up there in the clouds, a glass of wine from the little cafe there, and our picnic of leftovers, we spent a few seconds on the windy rooftop, and then descended. (Hester’s friend Reidar Østgård passed along these thoughts: “The view from the Montparnasse Tower gives you the best view of Paris, because from there you cannot see the Montparnasse tower!”)
We went along just a few blocks to Reid Hall, buzzed the buzzer and got let in, and were welcomed by the people who run the present day program.
Somehow this morning, this poem of Tim Nolan’s, so gentle and real, seemed to fit into what occurred for me that day.
My Dead
By Tim Nolan
They grow in number all the time
The cat, the Mother, the Father
The grandparents, aunts, and uncles
Those I knew well and hardly at all
My best friend from when I was ten
The guy who sat with me in the back
Of the class where the tall kids lived
Bill the Shoemaker from Lyndale Avenue
The Irish poet with rounded handwriting
They live in The Land of Echo, The Land
Of Reverb, and I hear them between
The notes of the birds, the plash of the wave
On the smooth rocks. They show up
When I think of them, as if they always
Are waiting for me to remember
I drive by their empty houses
I put on their old sweaters and caps
I wear their wristwatches and spend
Their money. So now I’m in six places
At once—if not eighteen or twenty
So many places to be thinking of them
Strange how quiet they are with their presence
So humble in the low song they sing
Not expecting that anyone will listen
Jeanne Saleil, who directed our group that year, was a remarkable woman, a scholar, with many intellectual and artistic friends in Paris. She hired some to be our professors, enlisted others to come and speak at our monthly group meetings. I had been named “chef du groupe,” and it was my job to introduce the speakers. The one I remember best was Nadia Boulanger, the already famous musical educator and conductor.
Mlle. Saleil introduced us to Les Deux Ploucs, two Breton potters, from whom I eventually commissioned a set of plates and bowls.
I found a man on our street at the end of the year who would make me a crate to ship the pottery home in. The set remains, unbroken, six each of bowls, big plates and small plates, at our house in Portland.
So our day spun out, past and present, voices from the past echoing very really around us.
Right nearby, just on the rue d’Assas, we found the Musee Zadkine, a lovely restored house, garden and studio of that artist. A friend of Hester’s had urged her to seek it out, and it was new to both of us.
No plan, no definite appointments, but perfect. It was not even spoiled by the rain that fell now and then. After all, the Paris I knew best was often cold, windy, and very wet.
Friday, our last day. We will miss our little apartment on Rue Tombe Issoire. Two flights up a winding staircase, a cozy and comfortable studio with a tiny kitchen, right on the RER train line, which runs from about 4 am until 1 am. We got used to the rumble at night, though really never got our time change figured out, and often were both awake reading at odd hours.
We had our picnic in the Tuileries sitting in green chairs, at Dad’s request. He has a funny memory of an early morning run-in with an ardent gendarme (who may have been imbibing on the job) who blew his whistle and made Dad put back the green chairs that he had moved to a better spot. We were not hassled today.
Mum then took a cab home and I made my way to the home-now museum, of Eugene Delacroix, just off the Blvd. St. Germain. We are struck by how all the artists in Paris in the early 1900’s knew and were influenced by and supported each other. Many of the exhibits we saw developed that theme, and their stories really enriched our experience and understanding. I picked up dinner makings on my way home and we ate in. I then went out as I have most evenings, to the local café, Le Comptoire, for a last glass of wine and some internet time. Hard to leave!
Thursday we knew we would be out late so we divided our day. After admiring puppies in the window of a pet shop in our neighborhood, we spent the morning in the Musee D’Orsay. Though Mum has walked MILES in the tunnels and stairways of the Metro, she is 83 after all, so we took advantage of a free wheelchair (chaise roulant–new word) in the bigger museums.
Crossing the Petit Pont, greeted at Notre Dame by a carillon of bells at five o’clock. Mum cried! I took her to the Jewish Deportation Memorial at the head of the island, which is centered around a long hallway of 20,000 lights, each one signifying a life sent to the death camps–France’s biggest shame. So moving and respectful. A pedicab got us to St. Chappelle in time for an early music concert that we so looked forward to, and it was astounding, not only beautiful, but in such a place! Dinner and home to bed, glowing.
Wednesday
From Hester
I’ve spent the last 48 hours making soap: readying scale, pot, crock, wooden spoon, box lined with a dish towel, weighing the accumulated fat from the last year. When the fat is melted, you add it to a lye-and-water mixture and stir. You go on stirring (on and off during the middle of the day); pouring, when it looks about ready, into the linen-lined box, the now honey-colored, thick mixture. It all involved maybe 45 minutes of actual activity/work.
Every year it varies, and I don’t know why. One year, it was ready to pour in half an hour, and I was taken by surprise. This year, I did puzzles, Tom and I ate lunch, a half day passed before it was ready. There’s a chemical reaction happening, and a cooling process, but what the relationship is between these and the nature of the six pounds of fat you’ve started with, I don’t know. Over the year you’ve collected from roasts of all kinds, bacon fryings, etc. some of which included some oil, this fat, boiling it up, letting it rise and harden, skimming off the sludge, freezing it in cakes so it wouldn’t become rancid, wondering why your freezer was becoming so crowded.
This last is the last two bars of last year’s soap. It’s unscented, very mild. One batch even floated.
Journey in Old Age 