Paris

Just a little while before the long plume of volcanic ash lifted into the air over Europe, I was in its place, on a plane gliding toward Paris, feeling – after the hot chaos of Moscow and the prosaic drizzle of Petersburg – radiantly reincarnated.

At the dopey, unclearly marked little international airport in St. Petersburg, check-in came after a preliminary round of security. I was pulled aside and told to open and search my own bag. I unlocked the lock and palpated my socks. I turned over my t-shirts. I opened my toothpaste. Finding nothing unexpected, I shrugged, stood back, and stared at the dour security woman. She looked from me to my suitcase; she frowned and motioned her supervisor over. They talked heatedly. I waited. Eventually, the lovely lady glanced back up, rolled her eyes, and waved me away. I stalked off hoping that I hadn’t stepped into a Kafka story.

But soon afterwards – after Erica and I confirmed our seats and received our tickets, fidgeted in front of customs officers with our handful of paperwork, and endured a second round of security – we got onto our Air France flight, where the world reversed into one of bold colors and attractive surfaces, soft baguettes with butter and real coffee, and attentive (if incoherent) French flight attendants who knew how to smile. I settled in as we leapt off, hoping that the change was permanent. Incidentally, it was drizzling in Paris too.

Except – unlike that blind, cold Petersburg precipitation – this rain softened and freshened. Everywhere, as we (with one of Erica’s friends, Heather, who joined us at Charles de Gaulle) rode a train (and then metro) through a short stretch of countryside and into the city, the rain worked to coax grass up and buds out; it drew impurities out of the air and enhanced what was left, and so when it stopped just as we emerged from a metro stop near the Bastille, the air swirled with springtime scents and, under the now full moon, my first-ever wide and tree-lined French boulevard gleamed darkly, as though it had been carved out of colored glass.

From the metro stop, we promptly got lost and spent several hours walking in circles, looking for our hostel. Erica spoke the most French, and stopped periodically to ask for directions, but no one seemed to know the street we were after – although one nice couple stopped and, unable to point the way, gave us a spare map. Eventually, we made it, found our fourth comrade (Mary, another of Erica’s friends), and lugged our luggage into the creaking little elevator, which nearly passed out with the effort of getting us to the fifth floor and our room. Later we ate dinner at a streetside café while droll music rolled on by in the background. Later still, in celebration of our first night in Paris, we drank a bottle of red wine out of plastic cups in our room. We were exhausted. We slept.

So that was how we had made it to Paris. There were no interrogations, or deportations to the gulag archipelago. The plane was not delayed by volcanic activity, heavy fog, or terrorist threats. When the new day dawned, I woke up wholly myself (no bug) and real (no dream).

Of course I knew what Paris is supposed to be like long before I got there: proud, beautiful, often antique, keenly fashionable, sparkling, joyous, legendary. But until I got there and saw her during the daylight hours, I didn’t realize just how much she lives up to the hype!

We ate crumbly croissants in our hostel for breakfast. We traveled up a metro line to the city center (our hostel was just a ways out), and strolled up the Champs-Elysees. Japanese tourists snapped photos and gabbed to one another; groups of school children in matching windbreakers swirled around us. After breaking our necks staring up at Napoleon’s triumphant triumphal arch, we bobbed off toward the Eiffel Tower. In the intervening space (greening, airy), we wandered for a while in the web of narrow cobblestone streets. Spring glinted in every tree and off every vibrantly newborn blade of grass. Birds sang and happy Parisians swung down off their bicycles and ducked in and out of little bakeries, singing out “Bonjour!” and “Merci!” as though buying a bit of bread was the best thing that could ever happen to them.

Contrary to what I was expecting (and to Russia), every single person we met beamed at us. We rested on a bench in the sun, drank Coca-colas, and I devoured a giant chocolate chip cookie from one of those (many, many) little bakeries. I felt as though I’d not tasted a good chocolate chip cookie in years. They simply don’t seem to have them in Russia. It was then that we, when we thought of them, started writing down the things which Russia does not seem to have in comparison with France (or the rest of the Western world, at least). For example: toilet paper that is softer than birch bark (and not made from it), drinkable tap water, cigarette smoke-free air, public displays of happiness, flowers, lettuce, optimism, traffic laws, and wine that doesn’t taste like tin.

We found a Post Office (bright, airy) and bought stamps (for postcards) from a woman who almost immediately switched to English and asked where we were from. She told us, after Erica and I explained where we were studying, that she was married to a Russian. We exchanged a few delighted words in that language. Afterwards, all remarking on the friendliness of French people, our little group found the Eiffel Tower, where we jumped on a carousel and rode around and around, and waved at the other tourists. Now that’s entertainment.

Up close, the Tower itself was hulking, brown and awfully ugly. It was the only disappointment of the whole week. I ate a chocolate-filled crepe to consol myself. We walked along the Seine and wondered what it would be like to live in a houseboat with a garden. A few picturesque streets away, in a gentle rain and the translucent blue light of early evening, we shopped in an outdoor fruit-and-vegetable market (fresh strawberries!) and browsed through a small French bookstore (finding Nabokov in a very different translation). After dinner in another streetside café, we bought more wine and whiled away the evening talking under the low eves of our room, with the rain pouring down outside.

We spent almost all of the next day at the Louvre; I smiled back at the Mona Lisa. I think I’m on to her. We saw Notre-Dame at sunset. Inside they were holding a service, and the whole serenely august place was filled with people and sublime singing. And later: two courses worth of crepes at a little crêpery in Montparnasse. Rain on windowpanes. White wine rather than red. Velvet curtain.

The next day, Heather went home to Scotland and the rest of us moved to different places: Mary to another hostel and Erica and I to the center of the city, to the sleek, fifth-story apartment of a friend on the CIEE program.

Now at this point I’d like to say: I could go on trying to conjure every detail of the following days, but I don’t want to: golden memories tend to lose their luster under the glare of an interrogator's lamp. But also, we didn’t really do much. After those first few days, we decided not to go and see anything terribly touristy. We’d caught the essentials.

The rest of the time, we walked a lot (sometimes in the sun and sometimes in the rain, with our umbrellas), made friends of nearly everyone we talked to for more than five minutes, hopped from café to café sipping at long-stemmed wine glasses, dashed in and out of dapper clothing stores, and spent hours in English-language bookstores. One of our favorites was tucked into a bank of colorful cafes and sundry shops on the left side of the Seine across from Notre-Dame. It was called Shakespeare and Company, and it had (in addition to a wonderful selection) a used-books library on its second floor that was open to all patrons.

And one evening, after wandering all day, the three of us stopped in a grocery store and bought pasta, brie and baguettes. Back at that sleek apartment of ours, we uncorked a bottle of wine, set the table, and cooked a meal for ourselves in a kitchen that was – for the first in months – ours to command completely. The dinner meandered by and we talked about our lives in Paris and elsewhere, while Ray Charles crooned in the background. Afterward, we went out onto our apartment’s little terrace, which overlooked a dark courtyard. Just beyond one roofline was a narrow street full of seductive nighttime bustle, but we could not see or hear a bit of it. A cool wind blew through, the stars shone overhead, and now and then strains of Ray Charles still leaked through the open terrace door.

For just a split-second of our brief lives, we are standing high Paris with our wine glasses, living as many people – even Parisians – likely only dream about: luxuriously and without obligation in one of the most expensive cities in the world. We wondered: What made us so lucky? How did we get here? Where are we going?

And the answer to the last question was, inevitably, unfortunately: Back to Russia.