Paris: A Love Story

PRAISE FOR
PARIS: A LOVE STORY

“Must-read . . . enthralling”

—
Vogue

“Like the others—Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and Abigail Thomas, to name a few—Marton defies the conventional wisdom that good writing is Wordsworthian emotion recollected in tranquillity; she seems to be writing the story as it is happening. The book, short and intimate, reads like the wind from the urgency of the opening scene . . . . Great writing is often about yearning, yearning for a lost place, a lost love, or just a lost moment in time. Marton knows a lot about longing for the past . . . . This book feels like her way of keeping Richard Holbrooke alive if only on the page. It works.”

—Susan Cheever,
Newsweek/The Daily Beast

“Kati Marton is a writer of great clarity and grace.
Paris: A Love Story
is a revealing memoir about the contours of her own humanity, rendered with precision and honesty. It is a memorable story of love, loss, and landscape that is as expansive as her remarkable life.”

—Steve Coll, author of
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

“A great read—the lightness of love, the drama of war and sudden death—with Paris in the background.”

—Diane von Furstenberg

“Kati Marton has written movingly about her love, loss, and the healing power of an elegant city. She takes readers on a journey, as she writes, to find a place where there is joy in remembered joy.”

—Diane Sawyer

“A frank and fascinating memoir of loss, love, and, ultimately, reconnection with her own self-truths.”

—
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Marton shares her deep love for her family as well as her grief . . . striking both the author and the reader at odd moments with extraordinary force.”

—
Shelf Awareness.com

“A slim and touching memoir . . . . Kati Marton is trying to create a future by recapturing the past . . . . She pulls it off with . . . flair and élan . . . . There are lots of things to like about
Paris: A Love Story
.”

—
The Washington Times

“Paris provides a backdrop for this absorbing memoir of love and painful loss, played out on the larger stage of world politics . . . . On a first-name basis with the political movers and shakers on a global stage, Marton has observed world politics in the making and makes space for readers on her catbird seat.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

Part I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part II

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part III

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part IV

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part V

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Photographs

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Questions for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Kati Marton

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Richard with love

If there is any substitute for love, it is memory. To memorize, then, is to restore intimacy.

—Joseph Brodsky

Like a human snowplow, I surge against the flow of chanting, banner-waving students pouring into the boulevard St.-Germain. I am determined to get to the Café de Flore before Richard does. My husband has flown all night from Kabul on a military plane. I am merely crossing from the fifth into the sixth arrondissement. As he shuttles between Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad, we have little time together; minutes matter. But this is the Latin Quarter, and it is October, the season of student
manifestations. Les manifs
are a routine feature of my Parisian neighborhood, and I usually enjoy their high-spirited revolutionary theater. Not today. The students have blocked traffic on St.-Germain and prevented Richard’s car from reaching our apartment on the rue des Écoles.

Hot and sweaty, I arrive at the terrace of the Flore. Richard is already there and, as usual these days, he is on the phone. As he is looking up, his smile momentarily lifts travel fatigue from his features. “You’re late!” he says, a hand covering the phone. He hangs up, and we kiss. Then we exhale in unison from sheer relief that we are together—and in Paris! That is how it has been for the past two years. Days stolen from a devouring job.

Richard takes out his frayed wallet to pay for our
citrons pressés.
“See,” he says, “it’s still here,” a faded Polaroid of the two of us in the Tuileries Garden taken in 1994, wearing matching expressions of goofy happiness. “And I still have this,” he says, proudly extracting the torn corner of a phone message pad with my sister’s Paris telephone number. In 1993, he tracked me down with that number. His
amulette.
“You are a ridiculously sentimental man,” I tell him.

Holding hands, we navigate between the green street cleaning machines that are already vacuuming up the debris of the street protest, as we make our way to the rue des Écoles. We have one night together. He will fly to Brussels the next day for a conference he has called on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On this balmy fall afternoon, we are not thinking about that. It always feels right to meet in the city where we began our life together. Paris is also roughly midway between Washington and the world’s bleakest conflict zone, Richard’s diplomatic beat. Climbing the narrow, creaky stairs to our pied-à-terre reminds us of other lives we have lived—and lives we planned still to live. In Paris, we wrap our little apartment around ourselves like a blanket, and keep the world outside, barely leaving our village tucked in the shadow of the Pantheon. Tonight we have to.

I am in Paris not only to see my husband but also to launch the French edition of my new book. My book party at the American Embassy is the next night, and it will be the first such event that Richard will not attend. On this, our only evening together, we are dining with Ambassador Charles Rivkin and his wife, Susan Tolson, the hosts of my book event.

Entering the Left Bank restaurant a few hours later, we smile at the sight of a giant poster of my book cover on the glass front door. Several diners acknowledge Richard’s presence with discreet nods. He and I exchange looks of mutual pleasure and pride.

I recall a lurking feeling that things were going too well for us last year. My new book had the best reviews I ever had and I had been named a National Book Critics Circle finalist. Our children were leading productive lives, Lizzie working for the United Nations in Haiti, Chris writing his first book, Richard’s sons, David and Anthony, grown, with beautiful children of their own. Richard had the toughest assignment of his career, but it was work he loved.

I am not a prayerful person. But I recall praying in mid-2010, Please God, don’t let anything bad happen to us. This is my superstitious Hungarian side, that you are punished if you are too happy. When my late-night fears circled, my first thought was for my children. My husband was indestructible. He would always be there to pick up the pieces.

The distant war reaches out for Richard even during dinner. His phone rings and he leaves the table to talk. His soufflé—the restaurant’s specialty—is cold and flat when he returns. His phone rings again and he answers again. This time I scold him. “You are being rude.” He glowers at me and squeezes my hand hard. “You have no idea what’s going on,” he answers. “There is always something going on,” I protest. The ambassador notes Richard’s grip and shoots his wife a look. My husband catches himself. “Try this.” He offers me a forkful of his freshly remade
cheese soufflé. A peace offering. I shake my head. “Oh please, it’s so good,” he coaxes me. I relent and he does not answer the next call.

Walking home from the rue de Sèvres, we stop in front of the beautiful Romanesque church of St.-Germain-des-Prés, which anchors this neighborhood. But his phone rings again and I am left to remember alone when I first learned about Romanesque churches from Richard, seventeen years ago, when we fell in love in this city.

•   •   •

I get up early the next morning. He appears a few hours later, looking sheepish and like an unkempt boy. “You are so disciplined,” he says, finding me with my nose in a book, taking notes. “I have to be,” I answer. “I am not as quick as you. Come,” I say, patting the couch where I am sprawled. “Let’s read together.” Richard has two books in his briefcase, which have traveled back and forth to Afghanistan with him for months: Rudyard Kipling’s
Kim
and John le Carré’s
Our Kind of Traitor
. “No, I’m going to buy you a new outfit for your book party,” he announces.