Is this Paris?

UNE FEMME TRES CHIC

Is this Paris?

No, it’s New York City on a September afternoon. Walking at my leisure, free to take in the street life, the buildings, the signs, the storefronts, the ornate facades and wrought iron grill work, I see Frenchness everywhere.

WEST 73RD BETWEEN COLUMBUS AND AMSTERDAM

I’ve collected several books of photography over the years that for me embody the signature sensibility of Paris:

1. Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a pioneer of documentary photography, roamed the streets and parks of Paris looking for the iconic scenes and characters who expressed the essence of the city in their dress, their stance, their expressions. He forever preserved the look and feel of “old Paris” in his sepia-toned photographs before the demolition of many old structures and introduction of Art Deco design.

2. Brassai (1899-1984), a Hungarian-French street photographer, captured the vibrant nocturnal underground life in his book “The Secret Paris of the 30’s.” The misfits and toughs, showgirls and gamblers, night clerks and lovers, homosexuals and old eccentrics, all came to life after midnight and scattered at dawn when the workers, the schoolchildren, and the tourists emerged.

BRASSAI – LOVERS

3. Man Ray (1890-1976) grew up in Brooklyn of Jewish-Russian heritage but spent most of his career in Paris. His edgy photographic portraiture and surrealistic/Dada still lifes became a signature of the avant-garde movement. Yet, the human subjects and strangely juxtaposed objects are unmistakably Parisian in their style and sophistication.

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I have experienced two monumental trips to Paris, plus several others of pure pleasure.

On Monumental Trip Number One, in September 1970 at age twenty-six, I accompanied my grandfather to visit my grandmother’s family. 

This was his attempt to leave grief behind after her death earlier in the year and heal in the comfort of her older sister and family. We stayed in the family’s apartment at the intersection of Boulevard St. Michel and Boulevard Saint Germain on the Left Bank.

My grandmother’s older sister Blima Perlmutter (age eighty-two) was the matriarch of the French branch of the family. Her mother tongue was Yiddish but she eventually acquired French as a second language. She lived with her son Beno, a radiologist, and his wife Simone, who hid him from the Nazis after his escape from Poland.

Beno and Simone had a son Francois, a psychiatrist, and with his paramour Viviane of the translucent powder blue eyes, they had a son Clift, six years old at the time. Blima’s daughter Lushka was a cheerful woman who, with her husband Rene of gentlemanly demeanor, owned a small dry goods store near the Sorbonne.

I thrilled at my first visit to Paris, bought myself clothing in the current style of the fashionable mademoiselles (tight turtleneck sweaters, midi-skirts, dark stockings and ankle boots) and ventured out each day to museums, shops and cafes, looking and feeling the part of a Parisienne.

On one of my excursions, I planned to find the poet, Lee Bridges, whom I had met in 1968 in an Amsterdam hostel during The European Tour. I clutched the scrap of paper and tracked down the address he gave me on my folding map of the city.

The solid wood door was at the point of a triangular building. The street number was correct but there were no names on the door, no window to look through to figure out if it was an apartment building, rooming house, or business of some sort. I scribbled a note and slipped it as far as I could underneath the door.

I never heard from Lee. When I think of our encounter in Amsterdam, I appreciate now that he did not pursue me. He was forty and I was not yet twenty-four at the time. That long ago evening stood on its own merits—starry-eyed college grad on her first trip to Europe meets expat African-American poet and adventurer.

On this trip, although I was twenty-six, Grandpa forbade me to leave the apartment after dinner. No amount of entreaty on my part moved him. I did not have adventures in nighttime Paris of any sort.

I had no inkling that when I was out and about, walking miles all over the city on warm autumn days, Grandpa and his sister-in-law were privately conversing in Yiddish over kosher meals and planning their future together. I was not a party to the true purpose of the trip or of the intrigue behind the scenes until months after returning home, when it was announced that Blima would emigrate to America with the blessings of her family to marry my grandfather.

Tante (Aunt) Blima and my Zayda (Grandpa) Mutka married in New York in 1971. Blima was a fine baker like my grandmother but had acquired a more continental aspect to her skills while living in Paris. I imagine that Grandpa enjoyed her flaky and flavorful apple strudel which surely accompanied his morning coffee.

They were together for two years until he passed away in 1973 at the age of eighty-seven. She returned to Paris to live out the last ten years of her life with her family.

I pay tribute to the passion of my grandfather in crossing the ocean to follow his heart, revealing the deeply loving and emotional nature under his gruff exterior.

When I think of what Blima did in her elder years, leaving her children, and her country, for the second time in her life, to marry her sister’s husband and start life anew, I am moved by her brave choices.

I remain inspired by the two of them to this day, grateful for the immense value of this inheritance left to me.

On Monumental Trip Number Two — my honeymoon with Paul in September 1972 — Paris was sandwiched between a week in London and a week in Geneva.

When we reminisced about our honeymoon, Paul often told me, “I never expected in my wildest dreams to do what we are doing together. My parents were born in Europe and never wanted to go back. You opened up my life to the world, you made everything possible.”

Paul’s Aunt Sarah came down to Massachusetts from Utica for three weeks (bless her) to take care of Paul’s two little boys. We brought greetings from America—and from Mutka and Blima—to the Perlmutter family. We stayed at a small hotel on the left bank and reported to Lushka and Rene’s apparel store most mornings before we set off to see the sights.

We observed the way they conducted their business of selling nurse’s uniforms, scarves, blouses, stockings, slips, costume jewelry, umbrellas, and sundry ladies’ merchandise. When Lushka spread various polyester scarves on the glass counters, she handled the materials so carefully and discussed the choices as graciously as if the customer were the Queen of England and the items were of Hermes or Dior quality.

Paul and I also brought greetings from Blima to her kosher butcher on the right bank. He emerged from the cellar with his seriously huge knife and bloodied apron to greet us with such unbridled enthusiasm that we instinctively drew back in alarm.

On the weekends, we stayed at the family’s stucco villa in the town of Grisy, picking up fresh brioche every morning and riding our bicycles on the dirt roads lined with acres of roses destined for Parisian florists.

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More trips ensued over the years, one time as a stopover when our daughter Julianne spent a semester in Barcelona, several others as a stopover between Boston and Tel Aviv — although stopover is not a sufficiently respectful word to describe a stay in Paris, no matter how brief.

We often stayed with my expat cousin Sherry (from my father’s side of the family) and her husband Udoh, both musicians, at their apartment in Pantin, located just beyond Paris city limits to the northeast. Udoh took us to the African market to purchase ingredients and fresh fish from which he prepared a savory stew for his guests.

Sherry brought out the bottles of wine, baguettes with sweet butter, and rich chocolates. We told family stories far into the night and planned the days ahead, including Salade Niçoise and African hot chocolate served with a separate bowl of fresh whipped cream at Angelina’s, near the Louvre.

SHERRY AND PAUL, NOVEMBER 2003

In 2015, my close friend Neila invited me to accompany her for a week long stay at a friend’s Tuscan villa. She was concerned that I needed something uplifting in my life after losing my husband in one year and my mom in the next. I accepted her generous offer and told her that I planned one of those ”stopovers” on the way home to visit my cousin Sherry in Paris. “Neila, have you ever been to Paris?” She admitted that she had not. “Okay, you’re coming along with me!”

I knew that she would appreciate Paris for many reasons, one being the unparalleled level of fashion sensibility. If you know Neila, you will understand my question to her, “What color nail polish will you choose for the trip”?

Sherry and Udoh met us at the airport and accompanied us everywhere, along with the two fabulous Australian women — bodybuilders, no less — we had met in Rome. Delightful times for our crew of six were interrupted when Neila had her wallet and new model iPhone stolen on a tour boat on the Seine. I was close by yet neither of us had any idea when the theft occurred, that’s how practiced are the schools of thieves that prey on tourists.

Yet, I look at photos of my friend and she looks happy, examining artifacts at the flea market, shopping with uninhibited exhilaration in the magnificent Galleries Lafayette, admiring the spectacularly curated Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit at Le Grand Palais, strolling up the Champs Elysees looking for a seat at an outdoor table.

I helped Neila select a buttery golden-yellow leather tote in Florence to match her nails. She encouraged my purchase of a Longchamps handbag last minute at the DeGaulle Airport duty free shop. We were true friends for thirty years and as first time travel buddies, we meshed beautifully for the entire three weeks. We talked of more great times together after putting in decades as colleagues in the legal profession.

That is never to be — tragically, I lost my friend after she succumbed to injuries on a cruise ship accident earlier this year.

BELOVED FRIEND NEILA STRAUB (1948 – 2017)

I haven’t yet been on La Grande Roue de Paris (the two hundred foot tall transportable ferris wheel) or to the Moulin Rouge for some turn of the century entertainment. Somehow, I missed the Musee d’Orsay and the Pere Lachaise Cemetery on all of these trips.

I hope to return to Montmartre on the right bank and the Montparnasse district on the left to take in the sense of literary and artistic history, the bistros and nightlife, in the surroundings full of charm where it all happened. Then, a walk along the Seine at dusk as street lights begin to glow, or a seat at a café with a double espresso to watch the passersby — an exemplary occupation on any afternoon after completing cultural tours of duty in the museums.

But I’m not in Paris today, as much as I can tune in to the snippets of Frenchness that easily transport me while drinking morning coffee at Mille Feuille Bakery on the Upper West Side or sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Lucerne.

Taking in the sights and sounds of an autumn day in New York City, my mind wanders to scenes of Paris – as a young law student in 1970 traveling with my grandfather during his courtship; as a new bride in 1972 with three weeks to explore the city, Fontainebleau Palace, the vineyard harvests in Burgundy, the distinctive architecture of Dijon, then a drive through the Alps to the Hotel de la Paix in Geneva; as a global traveler; as a recipient of genuinely warm family hospitality; and, as a friend on a carefree jaunt to Italy and France.

Paris of my dreams. Paris of my memory. Paris of my heart. And maybe soon, cobblestones under my feet in the city of Atjet, Brassai, and Man Ray, revealing itself to me once again.

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Acknowledgment: to my cousin Sherry Margolin for fact-checking all things Paris. See Sherry and Udoh’s website at chiefudoh.com