Arrondissement Rendezvous

That haze of Paris in an autumn heat wave, air hanging heavy as a crinoline dress. The world seems still, for once—too bogged down for even a city built on the banks of a primeval marsh, the Marais, the 4eme arrondissement. Gothic spires pierce the sky like fingers reaching through the surface of a lake, and the scent of roasted chestnuts whip the air, soft shells bouncing on hot metal drums before breaking free and landing in cones of yesterday’s news.
It’s in this peaceful blur that the air raid sirens, one by one, like daylilies opening to the light, begin to blare, and my heart, bludgeoning the curves of my ribcage, tries to hop into my mouth. No one stirs. The Parisians only walk as before, step after step like silent spirits, as I shield my ears from the persistent wail.
I see her then, Mme. Gargouille she’s called, in the market tent held high by trembling orchids on the Île de la Cité. Her backbone bends like the flowers’ and her skin’s a crinkled map, lined with rivers or the sinuous streets of the Quartier Latin. Today, she’s made the trek down the eight flights of stairs, walked far from her Passy Haussmann home embossed with balcony bones. She looks at me with a nod.
I step into the tent, and a cocktail of buoyant aromas rush over me, blossoms dancing as I pluck some from deep, glass bowls. Still the sirens ring as I hover noiselessly beside the small woman. She smiles with her eyes and gurgles low.
“I was only a girl in the 8th,” she says, “when soldiers’ shadows, green and flat, marched through the Arc de Triomphe, marched down the Champs-Élysées in occupation… where that same street glitters now with lights like shattered crystal looped ‘round a woman’s throat.” She speaks to me with focus, like threading a needle. “The sirens played then and they play now, once a month, to remind us it’s our home. . . And,” she adds with a fishhook smile, “to make sure they still work.”
And in an instant the noises lift like a swoon and fade in the rising heat.