LETTER FROM PARIS #3 - old haunts, new pleasures

Our waiter said he spoke five languages. If you work around Montmartre you have to. Everyone is from somewhere else. We sat at one of the dozens of helter-skelter sidewalk bistros and there were people from everywhere. There was a gang of the kind of fun-rowdy kids you see when too many of them get together. Americans I think and full of spirit showing each other the pencil drawings they had sat for. Beside us, first a German couple, then two very pretty young women from Denmark. Two tables down a youngish couple whose total weight had to be close to 500 pounds. Definitely not French, although I have seen a few Gallic fatties.

As our meal progressed (I am elevating it to that status because I don’t want to tell you how bad it was) people came and went. Suddenly the square resounded to jungle drumming. (It may not have been jungle, but for us tourists everything should be exotic.) A group of Africans, one drumming enthusiastically, the other banging a tambourine and two others doing acrobatics. They worked hard, but it was a tough crowd. The tambourine player came around using his instrument as a hat and asked for contributions. I was ready to drop a few coins in, but he didn’t seem either to understand or to have the patience to wait while I rooted around in my pocket. I watched him stop at a table where two youngish women dropped some coins. He looked. He reached into his tambourine, and disdainfully gave the coins back, with what sounded like “here you need this more than I do.” {Public solicitations can be testy. On an earlier trip to Paris, I passed by a musician in the Metro. He was pretty good. I had a pocketful of coins. I didn’t know how much. Obviously it was not enough because he came charging after me and in no uncertain terms told me the contribution was an insult and handed me back the money. I was startled. He was insulted. I kept walking. He kept playing.)

Naturally, as we soldiered through a dry crouque monsieur and tried to use enough ketchup to make the half-cooked frites palatable, Shirley pointed across the way to another restaurant offering prix fixe menus where you get it all for very little. All was an entrée, then some kind of lamb, followed by dessert all for 19 euro.

Montmarte is always a treat. Getting there is almost as much fun as being there. From the Metro stop at Anvers you cross to a street that is a literal honky-tonk of clothing bargains – the stuff heaped on tables and being rummaged through by dozens of bargain hunters. The street slopes upward to the funicular that relieves you of the last 100 metres or so of a lot of climbing. The car seemed to be packed with people on their first ever trip to Montmartre and to Sacre Coeur, what the Parisians call the big frosted cake. (Or something.)

What were two experienced, I might say – jaded – travelers doing in the most notorious tourist part of town? We came to see the Musee Dali. We were not disappointred. It is a must-see, with its many biblical references, from Moses to the 13 tribes of Israel to the heavy bronze depiction of the master’s famous drooping watch. For me Dali is the ultimate illustrator. Yes, he was a charlatan who knew his audience and pandered to them, not only with his surrealism but with his personal lifestyle and bravura moustache.

All that aside, could that man draw! Never mind all those other guys like Jean Arp and Man Ray, and Rene Magritte. Dali may have been a flamboyant poseur, but his sense of line was impeccable. It could arc across a page flawlessly, thin as a human hair. It could swirl and soar. His body shapes seem perfect to me. He does the toughest thing (for an artist) hands and feet that float like magic.

Part of the museum is a gallery with signed work for sale. I was surprised to learn that for as little as 600 Euro you could walk away with his Abraham Lincoln, a face done in cubes, the kind used by TV to disguise a person who shouldn’t be recognized. There were masterful bronzes, but we are into the plus 20K Euro here. He was a master. His presence in this most visited part of Paris is almost a contradiction. He is too pure. The rest of the place is simply too gaudy. But I wouldn’t ever want to miss it.

(I commented in a previous "letter" that Montmartre was once a place where Dali would be among friends. Matisse lived there. Honneger composed there. It used to be "the" place for artists, just as Les Deux Magots used to be the place for writers.)