A Walk Through Paris by Eric Hazan

Author:Eric Hazan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

© J. Paul Getty Museum

Eugéne Atget, Place du Caire, 7903.

Between the Rue du Caire and the Rue d’Alexandrie, the Rue Saint-Denis borders the Passage du Caire, doyen of Parisian arcades, opened in 1799 after Bonaparte’s return from the expedition to Egypt. The Egyptomania of the time can be traced in the street names – Alexandrie, Damiette, Aboukir, Le Caire – as well as in the proud façade of the main entry on the Place du Caire, decorated with three heads of the goddess Hathor. The Passage du Caire is not only the oldest arcade, it is also totally different from all the other Paris arcades. Whether they are more fashionable, like Véro-Dodat, Colbert, Vivienne, or more down-market like Choiseul or Jouffroy, these are places to stroll, to buy fancy goods or books, to stop for coffee – in other words, as Walter Benjamin put it, ‘The arcade is a street of lascivious commerce only; it is wholly adapted to arousing desires.’8 The Passage du Caire, however, is nothing like that at all. It is not made for the casual walker, and no tourists are to be found. Its activity is the wholesale trade in fabrics, in ready-to-wear, and in supplies for shop windows – models, stands, decorations and packaging, which is not so far removed from its original activities, such as the printing of calico. The trade is solidly maintained by Sephardic Jews, and the only café-restaurant, Le Beverly, states that it is under Lubavitch supervision. The interest of this arcade lies not in its displays, but in its architecture, its glass panels, its complicated arrangement. Although its overall plan is rectangular, its galleries are disposed in a star, and it has no less than six entrances, on the Place du Caire, the Place d’Alexandrie, the Rue du Caire (three in all) and the Rue Saint-Denis. In the mornings in front of these entries you can see Pakistanis and Sri Lankans leaning on their trolleys, waiting to be hired for errands or by the hour to load lorries or shift stocks. It is the client who sets the price, and negotiation is clearly not simple for these new slaves, many of whom are probably without residence papers.

I remember having had one day in the Rue du Caire a kind of hallucination, seeing in the distance a Gothic rose window whose presence was inexplicable and almost disturbing. Glued to the spot, it took me a moment to understand. What I was seeing was the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs – since 1794 the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers – not far as the crow flies but at such a mental distance that it had been impossible to identify it at first glance. Every attentive Parisian has such strange things in their visual repertoire, the most well-known of these being the view of the Sacré-Coeur above Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as seen from the Rue Laffitte. These can be mere optical illusions, such as that which disturbs me each morning when I walk to the offices of La Fabrique along the Rue du Général-Lasalle.

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