Geography of the Heart by Fenton Johnson

Author:Fenton Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1996-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

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Paris, July 14, 1989: the bicentenaire de la révolution française—the French bicentennial.

Larry and I danced at the various street bals scattered around the city; we finished up at the bal gai, where the gays and their friends danced to disco music pumped over the quays, while overhead floated the serene towers of Notre-Dame. In the graying light of a Paris dawn Larry led me inside the cathedral, where he stopped in front of a prie-dieu and pulled a five-franc coin from his pocket. I looked at him quizzically. “I’m lighting a candle,” he said. “In memory of your father.”

On our first trip to Paris, Larry had taken me to the Guide Michelin’s three-star attractions (vaut le voyage—worth the trip). Now we set about looking through the two-star draws (mérite un détour—stop by if it’s on the way). We both considered the Cimetiére Pére Lachaise, where Paris buries its notables, vaut le voyage, however the tubby Michelin icon might disagree.

“I have this theory,” I said as we stood waiting for the metro to the cemetery. “About the French. They only speak French to torture me. As soon as I’m out of earshot, the entire nation heaves a collective sigh of relief and lapses into English, which is what they speak all the time when I’m not around.”

“You’re just taking it personally,” Larry said. “Tell me where we’re going.”

“Pare Lachaise.”

Larry set about tutoring me on the particular challenge of the French r. “Père. The tongue against the teeth. Exhale as you say it.”

“Pare.”

“Non, non, non, mon petit entrepôt” (“my little warehouse,” a nickname he’d coined based on our prodigious consumption of pastries). “English is a lazy language—it all happens in the back of your mouth. To speak French you have to work the front of your mouth. Use those teeth and lips.” He demonstrated. “Make faces. If you feel like a fool, you know you’re getting it right. Aa—eee—ooooh—oooo—and eu-eu-eu,” that peculiarly French pursed-lipped eu. He demonstrated, an exaggerated P and an aspirated r. “Pére Lachaise.”

“Pare Lachaise,” I said. “Really, this is hopeless.”

We ate our lunch at Proust’s tomb, a plain flat rectangle of polished granite in the heart of the cemetery, adjacent to the columbarium. Larry had risen early to visit Fauchon, Paris’s highest-brow delicatessen (though the word is inadequate to describe this vendor of the food of the gods). Under the full-leafed horse chestnuts, surrounded by the ghosts of the glory of France, we ate délices de Fauchon and talked about love.

He wanted a commitment to monogamy. I pointed out that since I’d met him, I’d not been to bed with anyone else in San Francisco.

“You had that one-night stand in New York.”

“That was New York. It was a one-night stand. I don’t even remember the guy’s name,” I said, though I did. “I was traveling. I get adventuresome when I travel, it’s what travel is about. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I just like to go out and see how the natives do it.

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