Summary: During his world travels, Clark befriends a cinema student in Paris, France. Is their budding friendship strong enough to overcome their separate fears in the aftermath of an unfortunate encounter?
The usual disclaimers apply: Clark Kent and his family belong to DC, Warner Bros, etc. The original characters are all mine, though. The real ones belong to themselves. This fic was written for fun, not for profit.
Explanatory notes are at the end of the fic. Even though I was born and bred in Paris, some historical research was necessary: Time flies and some details of the city as it was in the 1990s were a little hazy…
All my gratitude goes to Cuidadora, my talented & wonderful Beta.
Part I – “April, come he will / When streams are ripe and swelled with rain…”
Paris (France), April 1991.
Sandrine Demazières seized her shoulder handbag and slipped out of the movie theatre seat. The end credits were still rolling on the screen and the lights were half lit, so she managed not to tread on her companion’s toes as she passed by him. The big oaf would have earned it, she thought uncharitably. Couldn’t he take “no” for an answer? When she said she wanted to go to the movies, she meant just that, not some groping in the dark.
When she had safely reached the central alley, she glimpsed back at him and could not restrain a titter. The picture of an obviously bored Marc still frozen in a daze struck her as funny. Well, he had reaped what he had sown, sitting for nearly two hours in the Action Christine cinéma, for a rerun of Albert Lewin’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. It was one of her favorite movies, and she never tired of endlessly seeing it, every time a Latin Quarter art theatre showed it. Obviously, he didn’t care for 1950s-avant-garde-fantasy movies with Surrealist overtones, no matter whatever he had said before.
Sandrine hastened her pace. Marc wouldn’t be stuck in that daze all day, and she wanted to be as far away as possible when he snapped out of it. The last thing she wanted right now was being stalked by a man who was disappointed she didn’t want him romantically. Where he could have gotten the idea, she didn’t know; in the space of a few weeks, Marc seemed to have transformed from childhood friend into a hopeful would-be lover. All Sandrine wanted was to reminisce about the finest parts of the plot she knew by heart, and delight in James Mason’s charming broodiness and Ava Gardner’s outstanding beauty. She could not have enough of Mason’s velvety voice. So, having instead to engage in small talk with Marc would be no treat for her!
Her musings were cut short when she suddenly ran into a brick wall. She nearly bounced back from the impetus and was held by a solid hand, before she tripped.
“Je suis vraiment désolé! Vous n’avez rien ? [I am really sorry! Are you all right?]”
The “wall” had spoken to her.
She raised her head and saw a half-laughing, half-apologetic face in front of her. The owner of both the face and the hand that supported her elbow released her, as she answered, “Non, non… Tout va bien. C’est moi qui suis désolée, je ne regardais pas où j’allais ! [No, no… Everything’s all right. I’m the one who is sorry; I didn’t watch where I was going.]”
The man’s grin reached his eyes, and he replied in French, “Eh bien… [Well…] We did clash, but not by night.”
He was alluding to a poem written by Mathew Arnold; the one that James Mason’s character, the Flying Dutchman, quoted to Ava Gardner’s Pandora in one of the most moving scenes of the movie: the doomed sailor was about to reject Pandora’s love, because he knew that she would have to die to redeem him and allow him to shed his cursed immortality. The fact that the 1950’s Pandora was the reincarnation of the wife he had strangled in an unjustified fit of jealousy, centuries before, was an added layer in a myths-filled angst-ridden fascinating love story. Sandrine didn’t believe in such supernatural stuff, but such romantic escapism was irresistible; after many viewings, she had memorized the poem.
She laughed and replied in her native language, also referring to the movie: “Yes, we did. Are you a Dutchman, too?”
He shook his head. “Nope, sorry. I’m from Kansas, actually.” The man’s French was nearly flawless.
“Are you? Your French is very good.”
Indeed, she could barely hear the hint of an accent; one she could not really define.
Regretfully, she took a step back. He was gorgeous, sure, and she wouldn’t have objected to some more ogling, but she had to get away. As she looked around the lobby for any sight of Marc, he came in from the crowd which exited the theatre.
Zut [Drat], I’m doomed, she thought. I really can’t dodge him now.
Her uneasy glance may have betrayed her, because the at least six-foot tall, dark-haired hunk she had collided with asked, “Is this man bothering you, mademoiselle?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but I don’t really want to speak to him right now.”
Marc was homing in on them, his brows puckering in jealous indecision. As he neared, Kansas Man told Sandrine, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, “Zank you for shifting our French lesson, Mamzelle. I am zorry for troubling you again, but I abzolutely need a hand for correcting zis gunk. Deadline, y’know.” He vaguely gestured towards the backpack that was hanging from one of his shoulders.
Kansas Man was now speaking in a preposterous, thick-accented French. He sounded like a perfect bumpkin, and even managed to look the part, from his hunched shoulders to his thick olive-colored coat that had seen better days.
“Err, oui, Monsieur Kent. Glad I could be of some help.”
“From what I hear, you really need it!” Marc exclaimed, glaring at Bumpkin Man.
“Oh, stop it, will you?” Sandrine snapped, her patience wearing thin. “You don’t own me, and I never promised you anything. So go home like a nice guy and let me do my job.” Marc’s body language screamed he would do neither. “Scram, I said!”
Marc opened his mouth and, just as quickly, snapped it shut. Puzzled by his sudden meekness, Sandrine looked at her new “student”; he hadn’t moved a centimeter, but he somehow exuded a… something… that wore away any willfulness Marc would have had to tarry.
Shrugging his annoyance away, Marc left reluctantly.
Once they were alone in the cinéma lobby, apart from a few people waiting for the doors to open for the next showing, Sandrine asked Tall Dark and Handsome Man slowly: “How did you know…?”
“—That you’re a French language tutor? Let me show you.”
He opened his backpack, and took out a stash of printed sheets, a large notebook, a copy of Le Monde, another of The Daily Planet, then a worn out copy of the last FUSAC magazine. He shoved back all of it into the battered bag, except FUSAC. The magazine was already opened and folded at the ads section, and hers was circled by a red line.
Well-known to the English-speaking community of Paris, FUSAC offered ads for nearly everything under the Paris sun and articles explaining the finest points of French life for Expats and foreign students in Paris. Sandrine knew the magazine well: for the last three months, she had found some of her best customers from the ad she had placed; the one offering French conversation and tuition for a modest fee. One of her most original and appreciated lessons was discussing American movies with her customers, after a movie theatre séance [screening]. It enabled her to kill two birds with one stone, being a movie buff. Besides, as she always said virtuously, being an impoverished student at the Fémis [the French state film school] didn’t give her a lot of opportunities to increase her income, apart from the occasional babysitting job. That way, her cinematic knowledge grew and her customers were satisfied. The true risk, obviously, was going to the movies with a childhood friend, it would seem.
Gorgeous Man explained, sheepishly, “I could not help hearing you yesterday when you began discussing the latest movie with your charge. I thought you could provide me with a nice story.”
Sandrine let it slide, following her line of thought. “Only Angels have Wings? Are you a Cary Grant fan, too?”
“Not particularly. But it appealed to me.” He smiled deprecatingly. “Friends of mine do fly.”
“Do they?”
Clearly, this was a private joke of sorts, one she wouldn’t be privy to, so she inquired: “So, do you read all the ads in FUSAC?”
“Actually, I do.”
Her stunned expression had given her away, because he added: “All part of the job. Looking for stories, I mean. I got the last one that way. You cannot imagine what incredible tales are lurking sometimes behind formatted ads.”
He leafed through the magazine and showed her a page where the headline stated: “‘Why is it called…? Pastries and desserts’ by C. K.”
“I see.”
“Your ad really stood out. And I couldn’t help being reminded of it, yesterday, when I heard you dissecting Seuls les anges ont des ailes.”
His French was really flawless. He had even given the movie title in the French translation. It impressed her.
“I see,” parroted Sandrine.
Suddenly, it seemed very important to know where the conversation would lead. She thought quickly. A story. He said something about a story.
Before she could have second thoughts, she grabbed his arm: “Come on! You obviously don’t need any lessons, but I do need a coffee. I’m buying. This is the least I can do for a knight in shining armor.”
He went with her very willingly.
***
A teapot of green tea later, Sandrine knew a lot about her companion.
Clark Kent was a journalist residing in Paris. He was freelancing for FUSAC, and occasionally sold articles to other magazines. One of his most recognized works had been the coverage of the anti-Gulf War marches in Paris earlier in January. He had managed to convey the feelings of some of the protesters without losing his objectivity, or so he believed. Obviously, he was quite proud of that.
Clark was currently an au pair [lodger] in the rue Gît-le-Coeur, not so far away. He did some daily house chores for his old landlady, and in exchange, he was lodged almost gratis in her ten-meters square chambre de bonne, up on the sixth floor. He had found the arrangement through FUSAC, of course. Obviously, he didn’t mind climbing all these stairs. He looked very fit under his heavy wool sweater.
“The room is spartan,” Clark acknowledged, “but it is more than adequate. I just sleep there, after all. And this is only temporary.”
“Oh?”
“I travel a lot.”
She felt a stab of envy. Apart from some exchange student sojourns in England, she merely knew a bit of Spain and Italy, and had never set a foot in America, apart from her virtual trips, courtesy of Hollywood movies.
Clark talked with enthusiasm of his trips in Nepal and Australia, of ancient tribes and weird customs, of cultural misunderstandings he managed to keep funny and entertaining, deriding his own naiveté, and of knowledge gained about the relative values of humankind; and then the conversation veered into arcane 30’s and 40’s movies. She could not help being impressed with his large cinematographic understanding, and said so. He reciprocated, and she told him about her cinema studies, including her professional goal, to be a documentarian—not a filmmaker—even if she did like immersing herself in fiction, living the character’s lives and believing in them.
Reality was what fascinated her.
And righting some wrongs with a camera crew, bringing into the light a parcel of reality for all to see, because her storytelling had made it easier for others to grasp.
But there were tricks to be learned to ensure viewers got the message, and the 30’s and 40’s professionals were masters at it. So going to the movies was as much work as pleasure.
He smiled. “A true workaholic, then?”
They were so engrossed in their conversation that, without them noticing, the afternoon died and evening tiptoed in. The deepening darkness reminded them of the late hour.
“Thanks for the tea,” Clark politely said, as he got up and prepared to leave the café on the Place Saint-Michel [St. Michael Square].
“Don’t mention it. You’re a cheap first-rate knight. But I’m glad you didn’t bring the horse, though,” she joked. “Watering your steed would be out of my league.”
He chuckled. “The right answer would be that I left it at my parent’s farm, but alas, we only grow wheat.”
“Your parents are farmers?”
“Yeah.” A shadow passed over his face.
“You miss them?”
“I wish they were here. They always dreamed of seeing Paris in the Springtime.”
“The Gene Kelly Effect, huh? The reality is so much more trivial, and yet, so utterly magical. Anytime I step on one of our bridges crossing the river Seine, I feel like I own the world.”
He nodded. “I understand the feeling. I also felt the same on St. Charles Bridge in Prague. It was so beautiful. One could almost feel the centuries flowing under one’s feet.”
They let silence slip between them, each of them lost in memories of crossing different bridges. Sandrine confidentially whispered: “And, you know, when the wind is blowing hard, I feel like I could fly, and I might reach the other bank without even touching the water. Or maybe having to swim.”
“I don’t advise you to try the latter.”
“I’m not such a fool.” She shuddered. “A man nearly drowned a week ago. During the recent two days’ thaw.”
There had been an unexpected and sudden release of the exceptional harsh weather. For two glorious days, summer-like weather had interrupted the seemingly neverending ice, cold and snow. Yesterday’s snowfalls had left the Paris pavement slippery. The pristine white of new-fallen snow had been replaced by muddy grey after the streets were salted to prevent ice formation.
However, February 1991 had heralded snowstorms, unprecedented in France since 1987. The roads were blocked; aerial traffic was problematic; trains could not ride on frozen tracks. Night temperatures had reached 12°C below zero [10.4°F]. Newspapers had printed pictures of sleigh rides in Brest and even Nice, and horrendous traffic accidents when vans skidded and fell into the ditches. And miraculous near misses on the périphérique ring-road [beltway] which circled France’s capital city.
Sandrine wondered how Clark had endured that kind of climate. Living under the zinc roofs of Paris was notoriously romantic, but it could prove hellishly cold during the winter, and oppressively hot during the summer, depending on the building’s insulation. Rue Gît-le-Coeur was a pretty perpendicular street to the rue Saint-Michel, and conveniently close to the Seine and the Saint-Michel Bridge, but it was also the heart of the oldest quartier [district] of Paris; many houses reached back to the eighteenth-century and their main appeal wasn’t modern comfort, but grace.
She went on with her anecdote: “That drunken crétin [dolt] made a bet with his best friend; said he would swim across the Seine. He jumped from the Pont Neuf [“New Bridge”], and nearly didn’t make it.”
She shivered empathetically, almost feeling this imaginary cold seep into her bones. The water was so muddy and dark; the currents, treacherous – one would be pulled unrelentingly under. The times when people could bathe in the Seine belonged to bygone eras.
As the tale went, the two men were almost dead drunk when they made that bet. The one who stayed dry had even taken photographs to document the bet, while his friend almost died, drowning.
The photographs published in Le Parisien were blurry, having been taken in the evening after sunset. But it was still possible to see a dark dot surging from the water, in one of the pictures. And in another, the flabbergasted expression of the suddenly stone cold sober man, sprawled on the parapet he had originally jumped from.
Both men rambled on with confusing tales of guardian angels and UFOs, while the police had merely issued a request for witnesses in order to close the file. A few days later, as winter came back with a vengeance, the foolish swimmer wouldn’t have made it, even with a forceful nudge from his putative guardian angel. That jump into the Seine water would have been deadly, if you added shock to cold exposure.
“Clark, this is too bad you weren’t around. This would have made a fine human interest story for you. This kind of fait divers [short news item] is attention-grabbing.”
Clark fidgeted. “This isn’t exactly the kind of articles I’m writing.”
“You may be right. There’s nothing newsworthy in inherent stupidity.”
Sandrine rose and picked up her coat. Clark hastened to her side and helped her slip it on. She smiled at him: “You are a preux chevalier [valiant knight], Clark. Not many men, even French ones, do that anymore.”
“My pleasure.”
She hesitated, suddenly shy, and in a rush, probed: “If you do… I mean… I’d like to see you again. That is, if you want someone to show you around. Or go to a movie, I’d be delighted to…”
Zut, she was babbling like a school girl. She was pathetic. He was just being polite, drinking tea with her, and he even never got his story.
“If… if you think there is a story in my séances de cinéma, well,… I’m all yours.”
She nearly bit her tongue in mortification. What had possessed her to blurt that aloud? I did, my Girl, her subconscious sneered.
Thankfully, he didn’t even blink. Chivalrous to a fault, even to a slightly bulky, short haired, 22-year-old brunette with a taste for cheap ethnic clothes with bright colours.
“I’d be delighted, Sandrine. Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is showing next Tuesday, at 2:30 PM at the Action Christine. Care to join me? I’ve never seen it in a theatre.”
“Gladly.”
Thus began their friendship.
***
Part II – “…May, he will stay / Resting in my arms again…”
Paris (France), May 1991.
Years later, when she looked back on May 1991, Sandrine understood that all the evidence was there for her to see, scattered like the pieces of an unsolved jigsaw puzzle. Despite what she had told Clark, she hadn’t been able to identify and assemble them, revealing the full picture. However, she had been able to sense some ominous undercurrents… which she dismissed as existing merely in her imagination.
Snippets of unrelated events would flood her mind: like her then-delight at the appointment of a woman as French First Minister, domestic annoyances—like where was her misplaced jade earring—and most of all, worry about her Fémis movie project.
As part of her curriculum, Sandrine was supposed to write and direct a movie which would testify to her artistic and organizational skills as a director.
As every fourth-year student had to, she’d also be one of the crew for her fellow students’ efforts. This would be a pleasure to be involved with some of them, but she didn’t look forward to taking orders from Marc, as they were at the time barely on speaking terms.
Their childhood friendship had been shredded. Nothing was left of it. Now each of them had erected a wall of silence to protect their shattered feelings: Marc of unrequited love, and Sandrine of the loss of their childhood understanding. Yet, they had been as close as fingers in the same hand, their nearness reinforced by their shared dreams and successes. All these years had been obliterated by two hours of sitting side by side in a movie theatre... Nowadays, they were acting worse than strangers, only because Marc’s ego was doing its best impression of “jilted lover”. How stupid of him, not to have the good sense to leave matters as they stood!
Well, that was Marc’s loss. And hers, too, if she were as honest enough to admit it.
After many restless nights, Sandrine had chosen to weave the restoration of the historic rooftop near Clark’s place into her fiction. The skill and precision of the workers and the sheer romance of it appealed to her, and she believed she could manage to convey the thrill of the centuries-old gestures without her film being too cliché.
Clark had already agreed accepted to let her cameraman use his chambre de bonne as a starting point. She would begin with a tracking shot from Clark’s doorway, right through the window placed high in the slanted ceiling of his room, so the audience’s point of view would soar in the sky and focus on the Paris skyline, and then…
At that point, Sandrine had stopped talking and gesturing, settling her half-filled cup carefully back on her saucer, before the brown liquid overflowed on the tablecloth.
“And then?—,” Clark inquired.
Sandrine shook her head. “It would spoil the surprise to explain everything, wouldn’t it?”
Clark neatly folded his paper napkin near his plate, and leaned back on his chair.
He had finished drinking his hot chocolate, and a few crumbs remained on the china before him; they reminded Sandrine that Kansas Man, as she still privately named him, had consumed a Saint-Honoré and a religieuse au chocolat without strain.
How could he eat so much chocolate without feeling awfully sick?
She had barely managed to drink half of her cup. Angelina’s hot chocolate was renowned for its potency on weak stomachs, but still, she had wanted to introduce Clark to the delights of the famed salon de thé [tea room] where posh grandmothers and neatly-attired children still mingled with tourists, snobs and chocolate gourmets.
Clark’s faintly caustic voice cut into her chocolate-induced heaviness. “So, you managed to draft the Police nationale into it? Good for you. Helicopters will add a lot to your masterpiece, I’m sure.”
She removed her chocolate-stained napkin from her lap, crunched it into a ball and threw it with unerring accuracy at Clark’s chest. “Stop teasing me, will you?”
Undeterred, he went on, “And Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Walkyries’ will enhance your big tracking shot along Paris rooftops nicely.”
“Not Wagner. Mozart. Mozart’s Elvira Madigan concerto, to be specific,” Sandrine told him smugly.
“At least, I know you’re listening to me.”
“Not to you. To Mozart.”
Showing appreciation for her guided tours of some out-of-the-way places, Clark had invited her to a concert in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Their seats had been on the upper tier, but they had savored to the full the beautiful 1930’s architecture, the sensual piano playing of Maria-João Pires, and Sandrine’s first real outing in classical music. She had previously thought Classical music stuffy and snobbish, but Clark had persuaded her to the contrary. It was a long shot from her usual Indochine and Téléphone rock bands obsession, but she was gingerly beginning to explore some of the Austrian composer’s masterpieces. And, icing on the cake for their evening, she had also enjoyed window-shopping on the Dior boutique on the Avenue Montaigne, laughing at the idea of wearing such eccentric dresses.
“Helicopters and Mozart don’t go together,” asserted mock-seriously Clark.
She deliberately frowned. “No use, Clark, I won’t tell you. You’ll have to see it.” Pause. “When I’m done.” Another pause. “And there are no helicopters in the mix.”
“Even when I let you loose in my chambre?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Clark, your place is so cramped we won’t all fit in here! Not you, me, the cameraman and the camera! Don’t take it personally, but in this instance, you are the superfluous one.” Clark’s face fell with comical dismay. “Don’t worry. I promised you we won’t trample your bed. Too much.”
Too bad they’d have to stand on it to open the window and film the opening shot she had envisioned.
Clark looked down at his empty plate. “I knew it. I’ve been bribed.”
“Yes, you have.” Sandrine sipped her chocolate. “Want another gâteau [pastry]?”
“No, thanks. I’m full.”
Sandrine raised her right eyebrow, or at least, tried to. Flûte, this was harder to achieve than Leonard Nimoy made it look.
Shrugging the thought away, she asserted, “At least, think of it as your contribution to Art. When I’m famous, I’ll give you an exclusive: My Long Road to an Academy Award. People will fight for the honor of interviewing me. No, better still: when I’m running for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival, I’ll invite you at the Carlton, so you’ll have first pick of the peroxided starlettes. Interested?”
The joke fell flat. Clark didn’t show any enthusiasm at this idea. Most males would have.
Sandrine added, more seriously, “Thank you for your help. You’ll be credited for the soundtrack idea and the sky above your window…”
Clark snorted. “I won’t let you film it if you don’t tell me what you’re using it for.”
“Relax, Clark. My movie comes with a ‘No Sky Was Harmed During Filming’ label,” Sandrine retorted, capitalizing all the words. “Besides, everyone is entitled to keep secrets, from time to time.”
“You still haven’t told me all your little filming secrets?” Clark’s face was so innocent it could have belonged to a two-year old.
Sandrine blushed. Quite a bit.
Truth to tell, she had been inordinately open with him; much more than a bare month’s acquaintance warranted. Some part of her knew that she had somehow elected him to take Marc’s place: best pal, confident, sounding board, surrogate brother. But she would have to be careful: someday, Clark would leave Paris, and she would stay here, coping as she could with the redoubled loss of friends.
And yet, Clark’s leaving was also one of the reasons Sandrine had allowed him to become such a good friend so fast: talking to him was like baring one’s heart to a complete stranger while traveling by train. The odds of seeing each other were so astronomical low that one could confide without damage.
So she unburdened herself with him, and he with her; their easy and natural relationship founded on shared movie buffs tastes, curiosity and shared openness.
They had compared their upbringing, as both their families came from “redneck” areas –him from Kansas, her from the Creuse– and their cultural shocks when they moved to the Big City for college and university. And they had talked about everything under the sun. With Clark, what you saw was what there was. This quality was one Sandrine had enjoyed finding in many American people she had met and befriended. Some of them had even become regular pen friends after they went back home.
Sometimes, Sandrine almost believed that they were intimate enough to metaphorically hold each other close, protecting each other against professional hardships and drawing strength from their closeness. Not that they ever did. For all his friendliness, Clark had a very American upbringing which prevented the light touches and physical proximity Sandrine had so enjoyed with Marc, when he still was her best friend.
Clark’s intent look reminded her she had not answered him. She hastened to say, “Of course not!” She smirked. “As if you told me all your secrets!”
“Now… Sandrine, you already know about my embarrassing myself in Tokyo—”
“—Good blackmail material, by the way—”
“—And about my kindergarten girlfriend—“
“—kissing you full on the mouth. Really yukky—“
“—and, what about, oh,” he lowered his voice, “my stepping on the foot of a Nigerian Princess while waltzing?”
“It happened only once. Not secret enough.”
He made a show of thinking, then offered in a more thoughtful tone, “Is my sending out resumes in London enough of an admission for you?”
Sandrine inhaled sharply then hastily drank some chocolate to hide her disappointment. Despite herself, she couldn’t help being sad, knowing he would not stay much longer in Paris. She would really miss Clark.
“Will it be your next stop?”
“I’m not sure, yet. My piece on the Iraqi refugees was picked up and could be sold in syndication. It will help me finding a more permanent job. FUSAC was fine for a while, but...” He sighed. “A source implied there is something big brewing, a national health scandal or other… However, in France, I don’t have the network or enough weight to enquire into it. I drew a blank.”
Sandrine put her hand on his arm and patted it. “Hey, don’t you worry. You’ll have your big break. I’m sure of it.”
“’Hope so.” He seemed dejected for a split second then smiled. “Till then, I’ll keep out of your sky. When do you plan to start filming?”
“Will next week be okay?”
“Fine with me. I’m planning a short trip to Montpellier. Madame Leroy will lend you the key. She’s quite excited by your film. You’ll have to credit her, too; technically, it’s her chambre… and her sky.”
***
Tendrils of rose-colored streaks were expanding in the sky, barely covered by grey clouds when Sandrine locked Clark’s window. The sun would soon plunge behind the horizon, darting its last rays on the rooftops. The weather had gone on inclement as before, the frozen air spreading other shades into the illuminated silver rooftops.
Sandrine’s surroundings were as bare as their current lodger had intimated.
A single bed, a cupboard whose shelves were half bare, a small desk and chair, a battered suitcase with “C.K.” initials embossed on the side, clothes hanging behind a drawn curtain. The bed was sagging in the middle, and not because she had jumped up and down on it. From the look of it, many previous occupants must have stood in the same place, stretching to maneuver the opening of the window, facing the rapidly darkening sky. Someone–Clark?– had pinned a photograph of the Taj Mahal palace on a wall, and another picture of a formal French garden on the one facing it. A framed small picture of a older couple sat on the desk. In a corner, an electric hot plate sat on top of a small fridge.
Olivier had already left, carrying the heavy bags containing the camera and all the technical stuff. The staircase was so narrow he had had some trouble negotiating the curves.
God only knew how the bed frame had reached its destination. It might explain why this battered bed was still there. Madame Leroy’s au pairs would not complain, as they were the beneficiaries of her generosity; lodgings in Paris were quite expensive for students, and having one almost free rent, one would not look a gift horse in the mouth.
A sudden slithering sound echoed above Sandrine’s head.
She froze and tried to identify it. Something skidded on the rooftop. No cat, then. No pigeons, either. ‘Here be Dragons’, she irrelevantly thought, as she hastily picked up her bag and left, feeling somewhat nervous.
As she went down the staircase, her mind was still trying to identify the sound.
It had almost sounded like footsteps. How could it be?
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman is a 1951 British movie directed by Albert Lewin, starring Ava Gardner and James Mason. It mixes several myths or fantastic stories, like (of course) Pandora’s, the Flying Dutchman’s and inserts into them some reincarnation and Shakespearians subtexts, along with surrealist’s images. Man Ray and Giorgio De Chirico had a hand in the imagery of this masterpiece. It has recently been restored in a very good copy.
The poem alluded to is “Dover Beach”, a poem by Matthew Arnold. The relevant part is: “Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
“Why is it called: Pastries and Desserts” is a real life article. It can be found here. Clark is such a trivia collector that I figured he might have written something along these lines.
According to Wikipedia, a chambre de bonne is “a type of French apartment consisting of a single room in a middle-class house or apartment building. It is generally found on the top floor and only accessible by a staircase, sometimes a separate "service staircase". Initially, these rooms were intended as the bedroom for one of the family's domestics, and the name originates from the colloquial name for such maids: a "bonne à tout faire"”
The harsh 1991 Paris weather is documented.
La Fémis is the main French film school training future professionals. Note that the fourth-year students spend their last year fulfilling an individual end-of-studies project and taking part in their classmates' projects. See also Wikipedia.
Rue Gît-le-Coeur: the name of the street (meaning “Here lies the Heart” in French) is a phonetical corruption of “Gilles le queux” [Giles the Cook].
Pont Neuf [litteraly “New Bridge”]: it was the first bridge constructed in stone in the late Sixteenth Century. Another novelty was that no houses stood on it. The previous bridges were built of wood, and many burned down, or were washed away in flood. See Wikipedia (One may see houses on the other bridges, on the 1615 map.)
Part II
Angelina is a reputed tea room and shop, on the Rue de Rivoli, in front of the Tuileries Gardens, and not far from the Louvres. It was founded by Rumpelmeyrer in 1903. See Wikipedia and Trip Advisor page with pics.)
A St. Honoré cake looks like this and a religieuse au chocolat looks like this. (There are coffee-flavoured and chocolate-flavoured religieuses. Both are divine.)
The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, built on the Avenue Montaigne, is a beautiful Art Deco theatre which offers operas, concerts and plays. It is very near the Champs-Elysées Avenue.
Clark’s piece on the Iraqi refugees relates to the “Provide Confort” operation, held in April 1991. One may assume Clark was near the Turkey frontier before he went to France.
The pianist Maria João Pires did perform Mozart sonatas and concerti at the Théâtre des Champs Elysée in 1991, which was Mozart Bicentennial Year.
The French national health scandal developed into the so-called “infected blood” scandal. See Wikipedia.
Indochine and Téléphone are two French rock bands. You can listen to some songs on and .
