Behind
11 February 2008
The world we see and touch and hear and smell and taste is just the surface. There is more.
That's why you know what someone else is thinking, that someone you cannot see is looking at you, that you are about to hear a sound already echoing in your imagination.
The waterway in Gdansk - Danzig as was - is lined with old-fashioned painted façades, behind which hide rebuilt houses. But that isn't exactly what I mean. I'm talking about the stories imprinted by time on the stone - even on the air or the echos in the air.
Take the corner of Cambon and Saint-Honoré ...
During the famine of 1870, when the Parisian Communards were blockaded by an alliance of French loyalist and Prussian troops, the menu at Voisin, the 'best restaurant in town', included elephant soup, bear ribs and kangaroo stew, all animals 'liberated' from the zoo. Du Pont brought Léonie's mother Marguerite here to show her off to his bourgeois friends. Now the only place to eat on this intersection is the charity kitchen at the Polish church.
Take the covered gallery off the Boulevard Haussmann, the Passage des Panoramas ...
The Passage des Panoramas is an atmospheric shopping arcade, named for an early 19th century attraction showing panoramic views of great cities installed at one end. Today it is intriguingly crowded with stamp and postcard shops, restaurants and the legendary Parisian printer and engraver Stern, present in the Passage since 1834. I am certain that this is where Anatole had his calling cards printed.
These are the things I perceived behind the paint and stone.
Now they are all trapped in the Sepulchre.
