Europe @ 2.4 km/h (33 page)

It is quarter past ten when I arrive. A ‘special needs’ customer liaison is sent out to explain that under French law I will not be permitted to go beyond the first level owing to the risk of fire. I protest the unfairness of this policy and ask whether she couldn’t come up with a better reason for denying me
égalité
. Well, the officer says, there are 600 stairs between the first and second levels. ‘That’s more like it,’ I say. When the steel-cage lift reaches the first floor, the tourists troop up 27 steps. I know. I counted them while bumming my way up to the mezzanine-floor lift the ‘service’ officer would rather I’d not known about. Peering up through the criss-crossing girders can be every whit as exhilarating as gazing on this city of a million lights, where blues, greens, reds and yellows sparkle and glisten. But the view, let me tell you from experience, is better from the second level.

985-987 km

On the Île de la Cité, where Paris began, you can find Sainte-Chapelle, part of the oldest remains of the first French kings’ palace. What makes my visit truly memorable, though, is that I get to tag along with a group led by the best tour guide I have ever met. Vicki-Marie does not just describe Ste-Chapelle. Her voice rises and falls as she invites you to share her fascination with it. And her questions throw a searchlight on the motivations of key, but long extinct, personages.

I cannot improve on her delivery — even her longest sentences are crystal clear — so let me just quote, ‘The year is 1226. The Crusades are not yet over. The throne falls to Louis IX but because he is just eleven years old his mother, Blanche of Castile, runs the kingdom until he comes of age.’ Vicki-Marie’s eyes dart around the group to see we are all following her. Until now France has been an alliance of convenience involving Burgundy, Toulouse, Blois, and sundry other duchies and counties.

The Seventh Crusade, from 1248-1254, is the making of King Louis. First he gets taken prisoner, then pays a ransom and at the end of the Crusade returns to France, faith undimmed and in possession of a prize worth more than victory itself. In exchange for his king’s ransom, the Emperor of Byzantium has given him the most precious relic of Christ’s Passion, the Crown of Thorns.

‘So, now, the king brings himself to the Capuchin monks’ domains in a simple white tunic, on foot, barefoot, all the way here with pieces of the tablecloth from the Last Supper, pieces of the Holy Cross containing the nails that pierced the hand of Christ, and — most symbolic of all — the Crown of Thorns; and he is going to tell the vassals giving him trouble that he has a letter from the Pope stating that these are sacred objects and that the holder of these objects is in good favour with the See of Rome and, as the See of Rome derives its authority from Jesus’ promise to Peter to build his Church on ‘this Rock’, he is in good favour with God Himself. Now who are they to argue with that?!’

We are now at the door of the chapel itself. ‘You walk in. Your eye goes to heaven.’ The ceiling indeed seems to float, the star-filled sky of its gold and azure design hovering over the lancet windows below. Physical pillars of the church represent its metaphorical pillars, the Apostles.

‘This and Chartres are the two most exceptional examples of stained glass in existence,’ says Vicki-Marie, and to see what surrounds us is to believe her, ‘the first traces that have come down to us of French stained glass.’

Just my luck, there was a go-slow at Pigalle Post Office today where I went to collect a parcel from Australia at poste restante. Only later do I hear of it, but the collection of poste-restante mail is supposed to be exempted anyhow. Two counter staff riffle through the registration book while I am thinking, Three weeks should be long enough for it to have arrived in a First World capital. Both of them miss the entry, which on their second attempt I happen to read upside down (a skill acquired during my salad days as a journalist when proofreading hot-metal galleys required it). Stung by the absence of an apology, I jest that perhaps I should be paid for detecting the item in question, and one of the staff turns snooty, insisting, ‘We have helped you.’

994-1003 km

Now at the d’Artagnan hostel, Hiroyuki — a Japanese roommate newly arrived in Paris for university study — apologises when introducing himself. ‘My English is very dangerous … ah, difficult.’

At precisely 2.02 Paris time (12.02 GMT) on 2/10, I stop and reflect. I have now pushed exactly 1000 km since my journey across Europe began 154 days 9 hours 1 minute ago. Which averages out to 6.5 km per day. I am on the Avenue de l’Opéra, and mark the occasion by photographing King Edward VII (or rather Edouard VII, the hotel) directly opposite.

Dusk finds me at the Quai des Tuileries waiting for the Batobus, a River Seine cruise vessel. A couple of sharp-eyed passengers respond to my gesture of helplessness — there are a couple of dozen steps down to the gangplank — and ensure I don’t miss the boat. As the lights of Paris come on, a thunderstorm rumbles its way towards us and raindrops are soon spattering our watercraft. We pass under spans which gleam romantically, and our passenger liaison, Viviane, recites an enchanting nursery rhyme, even if it does lose something in translation, ‘And she flows, flows, flows; And she flows night and day; For the Seine is a bèloved; And Paris is her lover.’
²⁹

1014-1016 km

It’s only a twenty-minute push from the hostel to Père Lachaise, the world’s most famous cemetery. An information board near the entrance that lists 107 numbered ‘personalities’ is dedicated to the memory of ‘those who have passed away’, as you would expect in a cemetery, before adding ‘please respect their memory’. Why do they feel the need to say so?

Two young guys, who at a guess have no romantic attachment to anyone but share a fierce love of music, stand looking at the board, each holding a bouquet. I can’t help asking, ‘Who are they for?’ but the answer comes as no surprise. ‘Jim Morrison.’

Escoffier, the famous chef, lies here, a man who — heresy though it is to say so — almost certainly brought more pleasure to more people than Morrison, but no bouquets are left for him.

And so to the first resting place of Oscar Wilde … and, yes, the last. The dozens of red hearts and kisses on his modernist tomb could be seen as playful and loving, but the feeble attempts at wit — ‘L’importance d’être Oscar’ — are not.

One of the dead here is not a ‘personality’ at all, but notable nonetheless for having been born at the
fin d’un siècle
and died at the
fin d’un autre
: Martha Bourgeois (1900-2000).

As I clatter along the cobblestones trouble lies ahead. In the lowest nook of the cemetery, far from any exit and with all the graves up impassable rises, I accept the impromptu offer of an English visitor to find and photograph Edith Piaf’s tomb, and hand him my replacement camera. Do I
regrette rien
? Well, I almost regret something. After five minutes, with the Englishman lost to sight, I call out guiltily, mindful of the need for respect, and only after an anxious minute does he reappear. (Piaf’s tomb is difficult to find because it has no inscription, not even ‘Piaf’, but French visitors guided him to it.) When I express relief that he didn’t steal the camera, the man replies nonchalantly, ‘Yeah, I realised I could have nicked off with it and there was nothing you could have done. But then I thought about it, and realised I’m not that type of person.’

1023-1024 km

When it comes to punctuality I haven’t found SNCF, the French railways, any worse than Die Bahn. My Amiens train leaves the Gare du Nord bang on time. At Amiens I am met by David. It was he and his wife, Pauline, whom I met at breakfast in that Rotterdam hotel more than 500 self-driven kilometres ago; and they will be my hosts this evening at their
pension
in the Picardian village of Bellerive.

We adjourn to the local bar. In a French bar, at least in Picardy, new arrivals come up and shake hands with those there already. David likes this social rite, agreeing it creates a much nicer atmosphere than you often get in an English pub.

In ten years here David and Pauline have built the old farmstead up from a state of acute dilapidation. Poultry appear at the window, the garden nestles beneath a lightly trafficked road and countryside which, from here due south to the capital, consists largely of wheat and cornfields. This is how you imagined rural France would be. Homely. Welcoming. Happily not Paris.

1025-1029 km

This misty morning I visit the Clearing of the Armistice, 7 km from Compiègne — surprised to learn there was a second armistice ceremony here, on 22 June 1940, attended by Hitler. Inside the building an exhibition commemorates France’s answer to Baron von Richtofen, air ace Georges Guynemer (1894-1917), elevated to the Legion of Honour at 21 and killed on 11 September 1917, at age 23.

At this sombre spot on this sombre day, my mood lifts only on seeing that a signwriter has misplaced a crossbar in the last word of a public notice nailed to a tree, changing not just a C to an E but the whole meaning of the notice, which now reads, DON’T LEAVE VALUABLE OBJECTS IN YOUR EAR.

A historical explanation board in the charming Amiens district of St Leu underscores the importance of canals to the local economy. In the 19th century, watermills (
moulins
) were established all along one canal, it states, which was flanked by houses belonging principally to tripe dealers, dyers and fishmongers. ‘Bath-houses upstream,’ we are informed, ‘were used for both hygiene and adultery.’

1031-1036 km

Like Ste-Chapelle, the 13th-century pile of Amiens Cathedral was built as a showcase for relics, or in Amiens’ case a solitary relic, ‘part of John the Baptist’s head’, brought back from the Fourth Crusade. For 800 years it has been venerated here. A church booklet says ‘a thorough inquiry has been made by historians and scientists to warrant its authenticity’.
But how could
they be sure?

A Frenchwoman, I think she was, about 60 — certainly old enough to know better — ignoring the sign saying NE PAS TOUCHER, FRAGILE kicked the outer tile of a recent floor covering with her shoe. The tiles had been laid to reflect the window and wall above. Whether she thought, Touch doesn’t include kick, or that, being of recent vintage, it was not due the same reverence as other objects in the church, I couldn’t presume to know.

But I chided her, ‘
Ne faites pas ça
. You see the sign?’

‘It is nothing,’ she countered.

‘Not nothing. It is terribly wrong.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Not if I say so. The church authorities say so.
Il faut les respecter
.’

At which stage a thunderbolt cleft the ceiling — one of Europe’s loftiest — in twain, striking her dead. Her body toppled on to the pristine tilework, smashing it to pieces in eloquent testimony of God’s special wrath reserved for elderly illiterate peasants and avatars of the avant-garde art world alike.

Now that’s what should have happened … Actually, she turned on the heels of her well-exercised brogues and departed in audible silence.