Wow, that was fast.
I mean it. I had planned to spend 6 weeks in Tours: I finished in 3 weeks. I had planned to spend 2 weeks in Paris: I finished in 1 day.
Here's how it happened.
On Monday night, the night before I left Tours, after returning from the archives for the last time (the bus drivers' strike is finally over) I had seen two old acquaintances, by pure coincidence, from the Institute de Tourraine. First, I saw my former Professor of Civilization (yes, that really is his title: if you don't believe me, see this old post) walking, and deeply absorbed in conversation with a student. Typical: I really loved that guy. In truth, 80% of the content of last year's posts about visits to castles were based on his explanations; the other 20% were my descriptions of getting lost and nearly left behind.
The other person I saw was the Institute librarian with whom I spent so much time. She was entering the Carrefour (a grocery store chain) that I was in the process of exiting. She was also in a hurry, but she immediately recognized me, and vice-versa. She only had a moment to talk, but I told her why I was in Tours again, and why I hadn't visited her (I'm not actually enrolled as a student). She took it well, and wished me luck.
Monday morning, I went through my normal routine, which involved taking a brief run by the Loire before leaving Tours. I happened to see grey minivan sitting half-submerged in the Loire. I couldn't see anyone through the windows, so I guessed that it was unoccupied. I saw a French man also looking at the river, and he told me that he was going to the gas station to call the police. On the way back, I saw the patrol car pull up. I hope that it really was empty.
I took the 12:38 pm train to Paris-Montparnasse, and though I tried to read my Kindle, I just passed out and slept most of the ride. Typical.
I took the Metro out to the Parisian suburb, east of the city limits, where my youth hostel is located. It is located in a very poor immigrant neighborhood. Nothing threatening; far from it. Just a lot of people from North Africa, a few signs in Arabic, Hallal restaurants specializing in food from the Maghreb, the Levant, Turkey, and Central Asia. I dropped off my luggage; it was too late in the afternoon for me to have enough time to do anything meaningful, either at work, or at any museum. So I did what I thought was best: I took the Metro to the wonderful Parc Montparnasse, and ate my lunch while reading from my Kindle. My book was about a garden, but a very different kind of the one that I was sitting in. I even saw the comfortingly familiar black swans floating in the pond (I sound like Holden Caulfield, don't I?).
I walked north, along the route that I used to take to the Sorbonne every day. I didn't pass by my favorite bakery: I went into it, and ordered a baguette. I swear, this place has the best baguettes in Paris, and maybe in all of France. Unfortunately, Monsieur le Boulanger (no, that isn't really his name) who knew me wasn't minding the counter at the time: it was the woman, and she didn't recognize me. So I took my baguette, and kept on walking to the Jardins Luxembourg. There I sat, ate my baguette next to the statue of a French queen, looked at the fountain and the flowers, and kept on reading. Someone (you know who you are) has gotten me to read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, of which I devoured about a third on Tuesday, in addition to the other texts I'm studying. It's a crazy, painful, addicting read.
It was getting late, and cold, so after writing a couple of postcards, I hopped back on the RER, and made it back to my hostel. I met my two German roommates, Bjorn and Alex, who are both very friendly, and very excited to be in Paris. I didn't tell them why I was Paris: I didn't judge it politic.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time dealing with e-mail, as I know I'll need to again tonight. I got to bed at around 1:00. At 2:00, our Chinese roommate entered, and threw down his bag at what had been an empty mattress the night before, but was at that time fully occupied, by me. At 4:00, his cell phone went off, and he had a loud conversation in Chinese with someone living in a different time zone.
This morning, I was up around 7:30, and found a nice and secluded spot at the top of an unused staircase for myself. I took the Metro to Pont Mairie, not far from the Institut Charles V, where I spent some time practicing my French skills last summer. The Shoah Memorial opens at exactly 10:00 am, so I read my Kindle for the few minutes I had left. Have I mentioned how much I love my Kindle?
I signed some forms on the fourth floor, and, just as at the Departmental archives at Tours, I was shown a computer terminal, where I could search for the names of individual deportees, and see if there was any relevant information. I looked up the names of dozens of Jews from Tours and Indre-et-Loire, but found very little useful information, other than simple ideas of who was deported, where, and when. One document on microfiche about some Turkish Jews who had moved to the area (there seemed to have been a lot of them) was useful, but there really wasn't much else to learn there. After all, I'm not really studying the Holocaust itself, but it's context.
So, after six hours of concentration, I was all done. I ate, and it started to rain on me. Like yesterday, even though there is light out until late, the museums close too early for anyone to have much to do when he leaves work after 4:00 pm. So I left for the hostel, in order to plan just what I'm going to do tomorrow.
I think that I'm going to take a train to Anjou, and see if I can find any information on the Christiane-Fritz backstory. Who knows? Maybe I'll find something relevant to my research, along the way. If I leave France, it won't be until Sunday morning.
~JD
"Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody
had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet
thing Billy did, and not very moist" (Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five, ch. 3).
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