Across the Endless River (12 page)

With the horses trotting, it took ten minutes to reach a broad square at the bottom. When they turned away from the river, Paul pointed out the Jardin des Tuileries on their right. “These are the royal gardens,” Paul explained in response to Baptiste's bewildered look. “This part is now open to the public,” he added, but Baptiste's confusion was profound and he scarcely heard the words. It seemed impossible that men had shaped everything he was looking at—not just the numberless buildings but the trees, too, like a forest that had been planted. The bare branches and symmetrical rows of trunks were stark in the low February light, and the relentless patterning of their forms took his breath away.
Who thought of this? How did they do it?

As they drove along the north side of the gardens, Baptiste saw narrow streets and crowded alleys. There were far more vehicles now, many of them wagons pulled by mules, and their coachman cried out continually for the right-of-way, cracking his whip and reining the paired horses smartly. Soon they came to an immense structure that rose above them on the right—fully fifty feet tall, Baptiste guessed—its vast stone expanse worked in carvings of larger-than-life scenes that appeared to move even when the carriage was stopped. “That's the Louvre,” Paul told him, “the royal palace.” Half-nude women smiled coyly from above, warriors brandished swords and spears, horses reared, old men glowered from niches, richly carved chimneys towered over several domes. It seemed as long as the Champs-Elysées. When finally they turned toward the river and looked back on one entire side, Baptiste turned to Paul. “That roof is bigger than all of St. Louis,” he said excitedly. Paul laughed as he took in the truth of Baptiste's words.

Paul left him opposite an island in the Seine covered with buildings. Before he disappeared into a nearby building for his first appointment, he pointed out the two towers of Notre-Dame, almost hidden behind the jumble of buildings covering the Ile de la Cité. Giddy with wonder, Baptiste stood against the low stone wall and watched the activity on all sides.

Twenty feet below, at the water's edge, men were unloading wine casks from several boats and stacking them like firewood on the muddy shore. Just upstream was moored an enormous barge, a hundred feet long, with a sign above the gangplank,
BATEAU LAVOIR
,
a laundry boat. The length of the barge adjacent to the bank was covered with laundry hung overhead to dry from a wooden lattice structure. Looking beyond the lightly flapping sheets, Baptiste saw dozens of women bending low, each in an open compartment facing the river, a washboard and stacks of linen at her side.
Women wash laundry in the
Missouri, too,
he thought,
but this beats all.

Small boats passed constantly, most of them propelled by a pair of oarsmen. Occasionally larger craft powered by steam engines, like the ones he had seen in Le Havre, made their way upstream laden with sand or wood. Ribbons of black smoke issued from their stovepipe stacks, and their low chuffing resonated from the embankments.

To his right, two hundred yards downstream, a pedestrian bridge crossed the river, its arches a delicate tracery of black struts on solid piers. Baptiste realized the structure must be iron, and he marveled at how the light showed through the underside, as if it were no more substantial than the branches of a sapling. It led to a formal building topped by a tall and graceful dome. On each side a pair of two-story wings extended back toward the Seine in a gentle arc, as if they were embracing all who walked across the strangely pretty bridge.

The number of vehicles increased rapidly as the morning progressed, and their clatter filled the air. Baptiste could not fathom the number and variety of horses: huge draft animals with hooves the size of a man's head, sleek matched geldings harnessed to carriages, prancing Arabians ridden by dandies, docile nags pulling ramshackle carts, high-stepping mares in front of brightly painted gigs. He thought of old Limping Bear, who loved horses more than anyone he knew.
What
would he make of all this?

People walked by on all sides, some striding purposefully, others strolling in small groups. Gentlemen wore tailored suits and matching high-crowned hats; ladies had fine shawls and elaborate bonnets. The working people all wore head scarves or caps. Soldiers passed in twos and threes, their uniforms like dazzling finery: navy tunics set off by polished brass buttons, red trousers with black side stripes, white canvas belts drawn diagonally across their chests, and tall feathered helmets.

Many of the passersby were headed to the cafés that abounded.
CAFÉ DEUX BILLARDS, CAFÉ GARNIER, CAFÉ DU PONT
, Baptiste read above their big striped awnings. When Paul emerged after half an hour, he suggested they have a drink in one of them. What most impressed Baptiste was the size of the interior—there were thirty tables or more on the ground floor alone—and the constant bustle of activity. Waiters raced about with laden trays, people came and left, and everyone talked as if conversation were an entertainment that could never be exhausted.

That evening Paul took him to the Palais Royal, across from the Palais du Louvre, for what he called a
divertissement,
an entertainment. Organized around the extensive planted courtyard of a palace owned by the king's cousin, it was the center of nightlife for the rich and well connected. The horde of carriages as they approached was another shock to Baptiste; never had he seen a crowd like this. They jostled one another beneath arcades that opened onto the rectangular formal garden, with shops, cafés, and restaurants on the inside. Baptiste saw money changers, boot makers, barbers, tailors, gun sellers, clothiers. Paul told him there were gambling parlors in the upstairs rooms.

It seemed to Baptiste that everyone in Paris was there at the same time, all of them promenading as they inspected one another and bought things. When he and Paul tried to make their way across one of the large interior rooms, the press became so great that they were slowly being carried backward by all the bodies. For an instant Baptiste felt powerless, unable to understand what was happening or why others would seek out such a crowd. A rouged woman with blond ringlets and a low-cut dress caught his eye and smiled broadly.
Did she
nod at me?
Paul grasped his elbow firmly and pulled him to the side, whispering in his ear over the din, “Come, Baptiste, not tonight.”

They returned to Prince Franz's well past midnight, after eating at the best restaurant at the Palais Royal. But Baptiste was too excited to sleep, and for a long while he sat in his room and thought about all he had seen in a single day.

He considered the buildings that Paul had shown him on their drive—the Ecole Militaire, the church of Val-de-Grâce, the Chapelle de la Sorbonne, and many more—all of them calling attention to themselves with carvings and fine tracery. Baptiste had not known that stone could be quarried in such huge pieces, or that it could be worked as if it were river clay into shapes that looked lifelike and supple. He was puzzled when he considered the bulk of all that stone they had driven past, like an endless wall with infinite variations on one basic idea: to make something heavy look light.

He thought, too, of the odd glow from all the gaslight lamps at the Palais Royal, brighter than the afternoon sun, and of how it painted people's faces with seductive shadows. He opened the window and listened for something he knew he would hear, a dim background noise that subsided at night but did not go away. It was strange, and yet exciting in a way he had never before imagined.

Baptiste spent the first few days walking around the city on his own. Paul was immersed in the paperwork that had accumulated at his uncle's household during his eighteen-month absence: correspondence, acquisitions, family affairs, and, as he growled several times when he left the library table piled high with documents, “Bills! Nothing but God-blessed bills from my accursed creditors,” as if they were there only to persecute him. But Baptiste had passed enough time with Paul to see how he spent money: he never calculated the cost of a purchase. In the flurry of nervous activity before they left New Orleans, Paul had bought everything he saw, so it seemed, and left Schlape to deal with payment. Baptiste couldn't square this appetite for acquisition with the surliness that now attended the resulting requests for money. Paul was rich. What was the problem in paying for the things he had so eagerly bought?

Baptiste's wanderings took him away from Prince Franz's house for hours at a time in ever-widening circles of discovery. The tailor had visited the day after their arrival to measure them both for new clothes, but in the meantime Baptiste wore the dark gray suit he had bought in New Orleans for the voyage. Freshly cleaned and pressed, and set off by a white shirt and loose black necktie, his suit passed Paul's muster as “respectable,” though a gray felt hat with a narrow brim was forced upon him with a categorical pronouncement: “A gentleman always wears a hat in town.” He had been offered the use of a horse, but he declined. After the sea voyage, he felt the urgent need to keep his feet on the ground. He also bore in mind one of Captain Clark's favorite pronouncements to his many visitors: “If you want to get to know a place for yourself, your own two legs are the surest conveyance.”

Everything was interesting, every street, alley, window, doorway, courtyard. All his senses were sharpened and attentive to what lay ahead, as if he were hunting back in the Missouri forest. But instead of stalking game, his eyes fed on Paris. He surprised a coachman and servants by staring at the carriage they polished and the paving stones they swept. Instead of the dismissive gestures that he half-expected from his years in St. Louis, however, they reacted with embarrassment, a half bow, and a murmured
“Monsieur”
to acknowledge him. So here on the streets of Paris he was assumed to be a gentleman because he was dressed like one! That was a new and heady feeling, especially since the reaction of others was not the result of Paul's commanding presence. A new Baptiste had been fashioned without his realizing it, and he discovered that he liked it.

On his second day in Paris he walked a good distance east beyond the Hôtel de Ville, City Hall, to a section of the city where neither the streets nor the courtyards were paved. This area was much busier than any of the others he had walked through, with horses and vehicles filling the roadway while pedestrians jostled for room on both sides. The street ended in a substantial irregular square filled with awnings held up by poles. They covered an expanse of wagons whose open beds were laden with more kinds of foodstuffs than Baptiste knew existed: huge brown bread loaves stacked like flattened cannonballs; tables of cheeses in great wheels, triangles, and pyramids; sugar beets piled high in wine-colored mounds; bulky open bags of beans, lentils, and peas in warm hues of green, orange, and burgundy. He had happened upon a market, and its pungent smells and the high, piercing cries from the sellers hawking their goods caught him by surprise.
“Venez,
venez! Approchez-vous, Mesdames, Messieurs!”
He plunged into the noisy crowd.

He was surrounded by strangers, many of them shrill and insistent, yet no one seemed bothered by the closeness or the din. But this was very different from the Palais Royal. Rows of carts on either side made little alleys, and the intersections and crossings were even more crowded. It felt like a festival. Every vendor had his own cry, many in accents and dialects he didn't understand, and their voices rose and fell with urgency. They singled out passersby and harangued them with loud pleas to look, to consider the quality, to buy.
“Regardez,
Madame! Regardez mes jolies pommes!”
The reaction of those who passed was one of nonchalance, as if they had not heard the entreaties directed at them. When they continued on, the litany ceased and the vendor turned and found another mark.

The sellers all had double-pan scales on their carts, and they counterbalanced their merchandise with varied iron weights, calibrating the balance with dazzling speed as they cried out the cost. Watching their deft gestures, Baptiste thought of the card dealers in St. Louis saloons whose mastery had the same mix of insouciance and skill.

He eventually came to the far side of the square, which was flanked by a wall of buildings. Fish and creatures of the deep were spread out in the last several carts he passed. He looked in wonder at their staring eyes, shiny scales, and menacing teeth. The bed of snow on which they were arrayed astonished him, too—snow on a sunny day in the middle of the city! Yet the market-goers walked by as if it were usual. As he ventured out into the sunlight again, he felt in his coat's inner pocket for the coins Paul had cautioned him to hide. The heat of the covered marketplace had made him thirsty.

He walked past several piles of refuse that rose to his own height and from which emerged the fetid odor of spoiled vegetables. At first he thought the creatures sniffing through the market's leavings were dogs, but as he drew close he saw that they were human beings covered in filthy rags, rooting in the garbage for whatever they could find to eat. Torn cabbage leaves, shriveled carrots, half-rotten fruit—their haul was meager, but they clutched their findings close and looked around them with an air of distrust. Baptiste saw two tiny children crawling amid the garbage, their bodies covered with a layer of dirt that looked as if it had been baked into their skin. Only their eyelids, their mouths, and the palms of their hands revealed pink flesh. Baptiste looked around to see if anyone was with the two, but they seemed to be on their own. One of them—it appeared to be a little girl, though it was impossible to be sure—raised her arms toward him and began to cry. He crouched down at once and tried to calm her. But she only closed her eyes and sent more tears rolling down her grimy cheeks. Baptiste fished in his coat for a coin, thinking that the glint of metal would capture the child's attention.