La Marche

If you are trying to recover from a tragic romance, Paris is the perfect destination; but if you are trying to forget a dog, it's not the best choice.

A few weeks ago, after completing mountains of paperwork, my daughter Hortense was finally able to schedule her civil union with Victor, her copain (which means boyfriend, or else meat cleaver, I'm not sure.   My French is not so bon ).   In France, the "Pacs," ( pacte civil de solidarité ) is, according to the website I consulted, less advantageous than marriage but more supple and fiscally more interesting than concubinage (my translation ).  

It is also a bureaucratic nightmare--as my father pointed out, the word "bureau" is French--and it took Hortense months, and two trips back to the States, to amass all the necessary documents.   She happened to mention to me that a Pacs might be in the offing at precisely the point at which I had been sobbing for two weeks straight over the departure of my dog Henry (see last month's column, "Impeachment").

"But it's no big deal," she said.

"If you were gay, it would be a huge deal," I said.   "It would be the only deal."

"I'm not sure even there's a ceremony," she said.   "I think you just sign something."  Then she mentioned that she was thinking of wearing a veil.

By the time I heard the word "veil," I had already booked my ticket.

When I told people I was going to Paris, they all asked me to buy things for them.   Recalling that I had seen a fountain of liquid chocolate pulsating somewhere in the vicinity of Rue Mouffetard during my last visit, I made rash promises to bring back chocolate for everyone.

On the flight over, I felt my angst about Henry subside.   While I've had failed romances before, the breakup with my canine companion was the worst I'd ever experienced, but by the time Hortense and Victor picked me up at l'aéroport , I felt positively giddy.   We dashed off to court for the Pacs, which consisted mostly of signing documents but was adorable, and then to a café for champagne, where we merrily toasted the Pacsies (we were told this was the appropriate term).

I had forgotten, though, that Paris is full of dogs.   At our restaurant that night, a man and his canine companion dined together at the next table.   On the streets, every other person was walking a dog, or vice-versa.   Dogs waited outside stores for their owners, peering in to see what transactions were occurring.   I saw a boxer pressing his nose against the glass of what appeared to be a betting shop and barking something about the Tour de France.   Paris was dog heaven, and I could only think of Henry and how I had promised to be his person forever but had given up on him.   We could have worked it out, I now thought, if only we had lived in Paris.

But though there were dogs everywhere, the eruptions of chocolate that I remembered were nowhere to be found.   Hortense cautioned me about the Left Bank, where I had seen the fountain on Rue Mouffetard. "Too many Americans," she said.   I pointed out that she is taking a class on the Left Bank, but she said she hadn't been there in ages because the protests had closed the whole place down.   I tried to get her to explain the issues, but her lengthy political analyses made no sense to me.

Victor attempted to clear things up, explaining that the social safety net that protected France's quality of life was in danger because of globalization.   Villepen, he said, had tried to sneak legislation through without going through the proper channels, and people objected to his high-handedness.  

While I still didn't quite get it, this made me kindly disposed toward the protests, since I had come from a country whose social safety net is in tatters and whose government has turned high-handedness into an art form.   But I was still hoping not to run into them.

By the day of the big strike, my last day in Paris, I had still not bought any chocolate.   I announced to Hortense that I was going to Rue Mouffetard.   She said she needed to do some work, so I set out alone for the Left Bank.   The entire way, as I strolled through town and across the river, I saw not one sign of la marche , i.e., the protests.   All I saw were signs of le marché , i.e., commerce.   The shops and cafés were teeming with people and dogs having les bons temps .

On Rue Mouffetard, I found the bounteous chocolate shop that I remembered, got what I needed, and headed up Boulevard St. Michel, then took the Metro to the other side of the Seine.   I wandered past the Pompidou and through the medieval streets of the Marais, and still I saw no signs of social unrest.

It wasn't until I reached the large boulevard that borders Hortense's neighborhood that I began to see police units swarming like wasps.   In the distance, I could hear sounds, and as I approached, I saw that the street I was headed toward was packed with people carrying large signs and yelling things I couldn't understand.

I approached what used to be called "gendarmes" but are now "police" and asked if it was possible to cross the street; or else I asked if they liked aardvarks--whatever.   " Non!" they exclaimed, so I turned back and called Hortense.   "What should I do?" I demanded.   "I can't traverse la rue ."

She made a tsking sound and said, "You lived through the Sixties.   You can do this."  

Hortense was right, and anyway, there was no other choice: I turned back toward the throngs on the boulevard.   When I got there, I found myself alongside a vast sea of people that showed no signs of ebbing.   As I made my way across the street through the center of la marche , a group of cheerful, dancing teenagers parted so I could pass, and people smiled at me and nodded as if they sensed my sympathy with them about whatever the heck it was they were protesting.   In the epicenter of the roaring crowd, I felt their exhilaration, and when a week later, Chirac and Villepen finally admitted defeat and withdrew the legislation, I cheered, though I'm still not quite sure what I was cheering for.

All I know is that while we sit home watching distorted news coverage on our hundreds of cable channels, the French are paying attention to their government's attempts to chip away at their civil liberties and quality of life, and they're pissed off enough to take to the streets.  

Since I've been home, in the wake of the most recent scandals in the Bush administration, too numerous to mention, and the nightmarish, psychotic talk of nuking Iran, I've read a spate of articles asking the question, where is the outrage?   Why are we Americans just sitting still while our deranged, bellicose government threatens and alienates the rest of the world?

The outrage is, apparemment, where the chocolate flows like wine and the wine like chocolate, where the dogs gambol like spring lambs in the streets: in Paris.

http://www.mariage.fr/article/sengager/intro_sengager.cfm

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