43 bis villa d'Alésia

The year is 1972. We’re young, Alex Jones and I. In our mid-twenties. We have decided to travel through Europe for as long as our money will last. We’ve quit our jobs and emptied our meager bank accounts. We have no responsibilities. We have enough money to travel for a year, at least. We have our shiny, unbroken backpacks. We meet up in Greece and travel through Eastern Europe that summer, storing up adventures and encounters.

Sometime that summer, as we are tramping along, Alex says, “We need to live in Paris.”

I’ve never been to Paris, so, I think—why not?

When we arrive, we go to the American Center where they have listings of apartments for rent by Americans for Americans. We find one for an apartment in the 14th arrondissement, wherever and whatever that is. The address is 43 bis villa d’Alésia. The short description sounds promising. It says it’s a studio apartment. That means small to me, but I decide to have a look anyway. I go there alone. The apartment is located on a pretty little curved street that is cobblestoned.

Villa d'Alésia, Paris

I knock on the door, and it’s answered by Dorianne Lee, a young American woman from Hawaii who teaches English in Paris. She leads me up a flight of stairs to show me the apartment. I encounter a huge room. It has door-high windows that open to the street below. I almost gasp. I’ve never seen a place like this.

“I’m looking,” Dorianne says, noting me carefully, “for a female roommate.”

I realize this is an opportunity that must be seized. Oh, no, you aren’t, I think. You’re looking for two guys. And those two guys are Alex and me.

I return with Alex. He’s from Tennessee, and he can charm a spoon with his beguiling southern speak. So, after one or two hours of flattery, promises and little white lies, not to mention traveler’s checks, we convince Dorianne to accept us as roommates. I wonder, now, who was looking out for us? Someone, somewhere, I’m certain.

43 bis villa d’Alésia. At the top of the stairs, a door opened into the kitchen, which was spacious, friendly. Then, to the left, a doorway that led to the main room. It was a huge, light-filled room. It had been a painter’s studio. Thus, the description in the listing. Think of it: we were living in a painter’s studio in Paris! That was out of a book. Or out of a dream I was too inexperienced to have.

The vast room’s ceiling was two floors in height. The wall that faced the street was made entirely of glass, floor to ceiling. The glass was opaque. You couldn’t see through it, but a profusion of natural light entered the room. In the center of this glass wall were those two large doors, also of glass, that opened to the street. We threw them open in good weather, inviting all of Paris into our room. Sounds, smells, conversations, footsteps on the cobblestones below, the songs of birds, all became part of our every day. Not to mention the Parisian air, lightly traced with diesel and life.

Looking up at our apartment at 43 bis. Alex (center) and Do (right), 1972

Upstairs was Dorianne’s room and, beyond that, a second bedroom. From Do’s—everyone called her Do—room, there was a balcony from which you could look out onto the large main room below. This often became a stage where one of us, usually me, created manic, improvised, often interminable theater after dinner for everyone below. There was a round table in the atelier where we ate and talked and laughed and told stories and where guests sat when they came to eat Do’s wonderful food. Because Do was a wonderful cook.

The author at the entrance to 43 bis, 1972

There were times when I’m sure Do might have regretted her decision to let these two rogues into her life, much less into her apartment. She was gracious and calm. We were coarse and boisterous. In the morning, on her way to work, she would inevitably encounter a half dozen empty wine bottles on the table and ashtrays heaped to overflowing with Gitanes and Gauloises, those harsh-tasting French cigarettes we smoked incessantly. She might have said no to us and saved herself from several near nervous breakdowns. But, years later, she’s still talking to us.

We had our place, our street, our neighborhood, our shops, our Métro stop.

Everything was new to me, and different, and had the ring of a place that was very sure of itself. I’d never been to a city that had nothing to prove. I saw different cars. Renault, Peugeot. What were these curious shapes? I saw workers in blue jumpsuits. Blue? Why? Street cleaners with brooms made of twigs.

My ignorance was bliss. It put me in a state of wonder and of learning. It threw me back in time to when I learned things for the first time as a boy. This time, though, the learning was thrilling.

At one moment, I don’t recall when, I knew. Perhaps after I’d had a jambon-beurre, a sandwich with ham and butter on half a fresh, crusty baguette that is not only cheap but scrumptious. Maybe it was when I saw that French money had pictures of artists on their bills, Saint-Exupéry, Debussy and Delacroix, and it was beautiful to look at.

Jambon-Beurre

Or maybe it was when Alex and I sat in a bistro and were served our wine by men with long white aprons that stretched nearly to the floor with a confidence and surpassing dignity. Or maybe it was when I saw that buying things in shops, especially food, was far more than just a transaction. That it was a ritual of courtesy and patience.

The glory of tradition

I don’t know. But I do know that a young man in his twenties suddenly knew, even if he couldn’t express it at the time in words, that people in Paris knew how to live. That this was a way you were supposed to live, how you were supposed to feel walking through the day, that life was to be lived well and fully and richly, every single moment of it.