‘I don’t know which way to look! It’s all so beautiful!’
Sacha wasn’t sure which way to look either – for a different reason. Ren had raced up the stairs to the lane outside the glowing white basilica and stood precariously close to the edge in her impractical heels. The pavement glittered a warning of ice and he could barely feel his hands.
Yet Ren’s smile and the audible exclamation points in her sentences made him look up and out. The city was laid out before them, a lattice of shadows and glowing light. Beyond the glittering carousel halfway down the hill, the buildings at the bottom were illuminated in the warm yellow of the streetlamps. Rows of slate roofs and clay chimneys spread out into the distance, interspersed with the spires and cupolas of parish churches. Clusters of squat tower-blocks, further south, reminded the world that Paris was just a city, after all, and people needed to live somewhere.
Just a city… That description wasn’t quite right, not for Paris. Sacha gazed outwards, feeling the touch of the past behind him and the prickle of possibility in the air. He’d expected to be eating at Nadia’s tonight – bickering and laughing and slumping on the sofa. Instead, he was standing at the top of the hill of martyrs, with a person at his side who didn’t feel at all like a stranger, as the world rolled out before him. ‘The world’ was a better way to describe Paris – with some hyperbole, perhaps, but he appreciated it.
‘I’ve so rarely been… outside… in the dark,’ she admitted. ‘In a car, yes, or at an event, but never just “out”.’ He could believe it, the way she gazed around her in wonder. She glanced at the two other couples nearby, one in an amorous embrace. She stared until it would have been rude, if they hadn’t been oblivious. ‘No one’s watching and it’s like I could be anyone, do anything. It probably sounds crazy to you.’
‘I began to understand a little when I met your grandmother,’ he replied.
‘You probably think I’m an idiot for letting them have any say in my life. I’m thirty years old, but sometimes I feel like I’m still ten. Grandmama and I… we’re all the family each other has got. And the business is family.’
Sacha considered his words carefully. ‘I don’t think you’re an idiot. But worrying about what a stranger thinks of you is… not ideal.’
She turned to him suddenly, studying his face with too much intensity so that it brought warmth to his cold cheeks. ‘Are you a psychologist?’ she guessed.
‘Wrong again.’
‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I’m not used to being a problem, anyway.’
‘You’re not a problem.’
‘I’ve been nothing but a problem to you since we met. Are you a used car salesman, since that was such a good lie?’
‘No. And perhaps what I meant was… you’re welcome to be a problem.’
She mumbled something like, ‘You don’t know what you’re in for,’ but she didn’t seem to expect a response. Instead, she turned back to the view of the winking lights, linking her arm with his.
He stood stiffly, feeling her arm looped through his. ‘I suppose it’s the right of every human being to be a problem.’
‘Are you an activist? A yellow vest or whatever it’s called? Or was it a blue collar?’ she mused.
‘I don’t think that’s what you meant by “job”. I wouldn’t be Parisian if I hadn’t attended a protest or two, but I’m not a member of the gilets jaunes.’
‘A gang?’ She looked unexpectedly cheerful at the prospect.
‘No!’
‘An undercover police officer?’ He shook his head again. ‘I bet it’s something obscure that I’ll never guess.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, stifling a smile.
‘A chimney sweep?’ she asked with a grin, but he didn’t dignify her joking suggestion with a response. Her gaze wandered the rooftops. ‘Paris in December certainly is la Ville Lumière – the city of light.’
‘Paris,’ he said with a thoughtful huff. Pa-ri, emphasising the silent final consonant. ‘Where I grew up, we had a few different nicknames for it.’
‘Oh?’
‘Paname, Bériz, Soixante-quinze, or Ripa – as I am sometimes called Chassa.’
‘Are you speaking another language?’
‘Paname is from a scandal long ago about the construction of the Panama Canal and corruption in the Paris élite. Soixante-quinze you can perhaps translate?’
‘I think you overestimate my French,’ she said with a laugh.
‘It is a number – seventy-five, the number of the département of Paris, and the beginning of the post code.’
‘Ahh,’ she said. ‘I caught “soixante” and got confused because of your wacky numbers. Sixty-fifteen, right?’
‘Our numbers are not “wacky”,’ he said in mock affront. ‘I understand it is difficult for English speakers.’
‘It’s difficult for everyone! Don’t tell me little kids don’t struggle to say four-twenty-ten instead of ninety? You need a degree in maths just to count!’ She turned to him suddenly. ‘Do you have a degree in maths?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But you’re supposed to guess, not ask me twenty questions.’
‘Is that called “vingt questions” in French?’
‘Yes, but you don’t pronounce the “s”.’
‘Why do you bother with all these letters nobody says?’
‘You should write to the Académie Française and complain.’
‘I might just do that. Are you going to explain Chassa and Ripa?’
‘It’s called “verlan”, from “l’envers”, you say reverse in English? It’s French word play. Sa-cha becomes Cha-sa. Paris is Ri-pa. Irena is… Aneri or perhaps Na-ire.’
‘I like Naire. I could be Naire the night nymph, whose powers emerge with the setting of the sun. I’ll have to swear you to secrecy!’
‘We are already held together by a secret.’ It couldn’t be a good thing that they’d just deceived her grandmother, but the idea of sharing a secret with Ren wasn’t as unpalatable as it should have been.
‘Well, Ripa is ly-love in the ning-eve. Why can’t I see the Eiffel Tower, by the way?’
‘You can probably see it from the top of the belltower, but those trees are in the way, here,’ said Sacha. ‘Why? Don’t you believe it’s Paris without the tower?’
‘Have you been up?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Really? Why not? You live here.’
‘Do you expect I climb up the stairs twice a week for exercise? It would be cheaper to join a gym.’
‘There’s no need to be all sniffy and Parisian about it. You might have gone up once,’ she said defensively.
He hesitated. ‘I never think of the Eiffel Tower as… my Paris. It’s for the clients of an expensive restaurant and middle-class tourists. I’m neither and it’s not cheap to go up.’ There was no way she’d understand, even though she watched him as though she wanted to try.
‘I haven’t been up, either.’
‘Sérieux? Never?’
‘It’s stupid, really.’ He didn’t like how often she used that word, always in reference to herself. ‘Paris was the first city I visited after… well, I had a difficult few years as a teenager with, you know, anxieties and things. When I saw the tower, I thought to myself that I wanted someone to propose to me at the top.’ She laughed humourlessly.
‘Did you tell Charlie?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure. But he didn’t get the message. His proposal wasn’t very romantic, anyway. It was all planned and photographed and pretty much live-streamed. And then, I thought to myself that I’d save the Eiffel Tower for our tenth wedding anniversary. I’m such a chump. Gargh, forget it. I don’t want to go on about this stuff. I’m trying to… live a little and you’re too serious as it is.’
‘Too serious?’ He’d thought he’d made a lot more jokes than usual that evening.
She tucked her arm through his again. ‘You have a perma-frown.’
‘A perma – ahhh, I understand. Perhaps this is the result of your company,’ he said lightly.
‘I’m your bad luck charm.’
‘It must be true that I’m not good at making jokes, because that was one – a joke. I didn’t mean you. I meant… everything that has happened since we met, this comédie.’
‘A comedy of errors,’ she murmured. ‘That sounds right. At least you’ll be rid of me after tonight.’ She sighed, shrinking into his coat, her gaze growing distant.
‘What will you do? With your freedom?’
‘Freedom! Gosh, I don’t even know. I’ve wasted my time so far, watching Disney films and barely feeding myself. But I hope… Paris might be good for me. It has been so far.’
‘There are many more views to discover,’ he said. She looked earnestly up into his face. He cleared his suddenly thick throat. ‘Are we going into the basilique?’
‘What basilique? Oh, you mean this one?’ She twirled to gesture wildly at the edifice in mock surprise, but her smile faded as she regarded the white stone church that looked ghostly in the crisp winter darkness. ‘It’s not like other churches, is it?’ she said softly. ‘It almost looks like it’s made of clouds.’
Sacha shuffled closer, ducking his head in a vain attempt to see the basilica exactly as she did. ‘You are right, it’s unique. This church is not old – not by Parisian standards. It was only finished about a hundred years ago, but the architects rejected many of the fashions of the time. This church was to be a connection to a past that was lost.’
Her surprised look suggested he’d explained with a little too much flourish. But when she said, ‘Go on,’ he couldn’t refuse her.
‘The arches, they are the Roman type. And the cupola is in the Byzantine style – from the east. But the statues are uniquely French: Jeanne d’Arc and Saint Louis – or King Louis neuf, as he was first. This is the dream of French Catholicism. But it was built to carry the nation’s grief, too.’
‘Grief?’
‘All history is change and grief,’ he said with a shrug. Ren still stared at him, as though she was soaking in his words with her eyes. He cleared his throat and continued in a measured tone. ‘This church was a memorial for a terrible siege that saw people eating cats and dogs and even flowers in desperation. And when the siege was lifted and the people could eat, there was fighting again – this time between the French army and the Parisian Communards who took over the city, starting on this hill and ending as martyrs or traitors, depending on your point of view.’
‘You’re ruining the grand church.’
‘You’d rather keep your head in the clouds?’
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to forget?’
‘And have to learn the lessons of the past over and over again? No, it’s not simpler. The world looks black and white when you regard the Sacré-Cœur against the night sky, but it’s not. Just think, by the time they completed this church, only forty years later, there was another war, this time with a different winner, but a terrible loss of life. And it is the indirect reason my father spoke French. Do you think we should forget this, too?’
‘Of course not,’ said Ren. ‘You’ve made your point. Are you sure you aren’t a politician?’
‘Definitely not!’
‘Maybe you should be.’
‘I would not want to be examined so closely,’ he explained, lightening his tone.
‘That, I understand,’ she said emphatically. ‘What war were you talking about, when the church was finished? World War I? What does that have to do with your father?’
‘The Ottoman Empire was defeated and the part where my ancestors lived was taken by France to govern. My father was born in the new independent state of al-jumhūrīyah al-Lubnānīyah in 1946. The République libanaise.’
‘Lebanon.’
‘Correct.’
‘So we’re standing on a bit of your history.’
‘We’re always standing on a bit of our history. The past is set out like the streets of Paris, interconnected, sometimes forgotten and covered up. Where you are standing is an intersection – the sacred hill of Paris, where Saint Denis was beheaded more than a thousand years ago and we still remember.’
‘Ah, yes, I remember that guy. He took his head for a little walk, right?’
‘It wasn’t a little walk. He gave a sermon and went to the place where his followers would establish the city of Saint-Denis – while holding his head.’
‘Good for him. Are you a historian, then?’
‘No.’ He should just put an end to her suffering and tell her, but he had to admit he was enjoying her guesses. She followed when he strode up the steps to the grand portal of the basilica. He made sure she didn’t see him smile.
