The Hotel of Dieu was billed as location, location, location. Well, I will have to give it that, it is just within 50 yards of Notre Dame. Tourists, tourists, tourists. But in our cell block on the 6th floor of the oldest hospital in Paris and still a working hospital, we were far away from the tourists. We could hear the bells chime and hear the street musicians, but we could not hear the tourists. In fact, I swore that there was no one in the hospital/hotel but us, the attendant on duty (and sometimes even he or she was not there) and the two security guards way over at another entrance, not even the one we used. Occasionally I would see someone cross one of the passageways in the distance, but seldom. The elevator was a freight elevator with stuff falling from the ceiling on the ss level where we boarded. Pigeons flew in and about the hallways. Our room had a double bed and a single bed and a card table with two unmatching chairs. A skylight was our light and air and we could not see out it except see the sky and the birds, definitely no view. Our surprise came when we found out that it was 150 pounds a night. Do the math, it is not pretty. The bath was unfinished tile with no shower curtain but a hand held shower head. Ah, Paris.
Add to our lovely accommodations hoards, billions, millions of people who were crazy. They would stand in line for hours to climb 400 steps at the tower for Notre Dame…it was a four hour wait. Seriously folks, the view would not be worth it after only minutes to see it and you have to climb back down 400 steps. Insanity. I did go to mass at Notre Dame, it was easy to get in and then I could sit down and hear the fabulous organ and hear the prayers rather than walk about among tourists to view the sides and ceilings of the cathedral.
My best afternoon was browsing through the shops on the Isle de Louie just next to the isle with Notre Dame. Stopping in for a glass of wine at this bistro and down the lane stopping in to another. There was a theatre production: “Invitation au voyage” at the little Theatre de l’ile Saint-Louis Paul Rey. Baudelaire wrote the music and the text was writings from Noelle Hersart. Three women: Antonine Bacquet, soprano; Marie Jouhaud, piano; and Charlotte Testu, contrebasse; played, sang, and spoke the words of Hersart. It was a small theatre; forty chairs crammed into the seating area, no wing space, no grid, the light booth was behind a curtain with the fan. It was all in French, but wonderful. The pacing, the music, the passion of the words came through loud and clear. It reminded me of the time I heard Joseph Brosky read his poetry first in English and then in Russian. I understood what I didn’t understand. And now that I have Brosky in my mind, I remember his poem about Belfast.
Belfast Tune
Here’s a girl from a dangerous town
She crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
when someone gets hurt.
She folds her memories like a parachute.
Dropped, she collects the peat
and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot
here where they eat.
Ah, there’s more sky in these parts than, say,
ground. Hence her voice’s pitch,
and her stare stains your retina like a gray
bulb when you switch
hemispheres, and her knee-length quilt
skirt’s cut to catch the squall,
I dream of her either loved or killed
because the town’s too small.
Leara Rhodes 