Day 3: November 12, 2016, #545
Leche La Vitrine
Luxury items were on display in the windows of a shop on Isle Saint Louis. This 18th century French marchand mercier fantasy was courtesy of the European Decorative Arts Department. Curators had crossed the window dressing line. The mock shop even had a sign that had been made for the occasion. Its bracket was period.
The windows, tarted up with taffeta and tassels, framed a retail dream pitched to a Parisian elite. Snuff boxes, spectacle cases, bottles for the toilette and velvet-lined cases for the finest flatware offered ample surfaces for decoration. Nothing was left untouched: the end of a spoon, the inside edge of a box, the clasp on a briefcase. A gold rim, a silver braid, tendrils copied from Pompeii and tiny portraits of celebrated individuals embellished goods for effect. The massive grounds of the Château at Chanteloup had been reduced in the finest detail to the side of a box only slightly larger than a deck of cards– two marvels in one.
The man I once shared a life with had a place on Isle Saint Louis. It was a signature fact trotted out in moments when details like that made a difference or, at least, got the conversation going. E. had moved to France for a Medievalist still working on his dissertation. They spent weekends driving from church to church. Neither were rich but E. got a corporate job and they bought the small flat. When they split, E. kept it even though he returned to the U.S. He would fly to Paris several times a year to check on it, touch its surfaces and wipe away the renters who helped, a week here and a week there, to make the ends meet. It remained his place, a sign of his attainment in the world. He was known, in a way, as that guy with the French apartment.
His place was special, 17th century at its heart and a bit over decorated because the tall windows made excess easy and it was what renters expected, not unlike the store front. Tucked right behind Notre Dame, Isle Saint Louis is fantasy material. We would land so early on occasional winter trips that when we emerged from the RER, the sky would still be dark and the world as quiet as a church bell without a clapper. The cathedral stood as it had for ages, sometimes with a Christmas tree in front. Then we broke the spell. Our luggage clattered over the cobble stones. I always hated that.
It did not take long for me to bite and claim my own piece of Isle St. Louis by association. I loved knowing about it, and the “lucky dog” looks that sometimes came my way. I got good at saying it. I was the guy with the guy who had the apartment on Isle Saint Louis. During the years we were together, the shops that depended on residents gave way to the tourist trade. The café on the corner, which had reminded me of the places my family would squeamishly enter in hopes of finding jambon on the menu since French classes had left my sister and I choked with fear, had transformed too. The small banquettes were removed, the rec room paneling, too. They always remembered E. with the briefest grunt. In any case, by the time of my last visit, they had changed the shipshape floor plan and installed a television. The son was now in charge.
My relationship with E. suffered from the values cultivated in this museum version of Isle Saint Louis. Beauty had remained on the surface and things were far too contained. We were both so good– to others and generally each other– that we did not know until it was too late that we had tied each other down with golden tendrils. Spontaneity had no room. We had put each other in a beautiful box and set it on the coffee table. We could not get out from under our own curation. The chosen remedy, to make things even more beautiful, could only work for so long.
At the museum, it was late on a Saturday afternoon and not difficult to spot, and envy, the newly minted couples. As they paused in front of each case, they looked like they were already shopping for their registry. A practical woman asked her date if the cases were airtight. “How do they keep the silver from tarnishing?” she quizzed him. I felt my singleness acutely as my eye landed on the lid of a silver tureen. Three dogs were taking down a stag. Life was a numbers game.
The room’s oak storefront, dated 1772, was first applied to a masonry building dated a century earlier. Isle Saint Louis was old. E’s place had dark, exposed beams in the walls. From the get-go, the storefront had been a fashionable veneer. This actually made it much easier to save, sell and ship to America. I loved being with E. in Paris. It was his town. I loved the way he could speak to the older lady upstairs with a complete French which got the job done without pretense. At some point he taught me ‘leche la vitrine’: window shop, but literally lick the glass. In a sense, we had done that with each other.
