All Is Given Read online

  Who ever heard of a moon in daylight, I whispered, with my mouth impolitely full, to the northern-hemisphere moon. Begone, moon, until it’s properly dark.

  It was 9.30 pm and still light. But the moon was out in a kind of optical illusion conjured up by the same kind of creative mind behind Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, the type of mind that loved contradictions and quirkiness and putting moons in inappropriate places.

  Despite my intermittent telling-off of the moon, it was still a beautiful way to have dinner, serenaded by accordions as I ate my roll at the window ledge, looking across the rooftops of a city whose rooftops had so often been memorialised by poets, artists, photographers, philosophers and filmmakers.

  Enough has been said about you, I whispered to the chimneys of Paris, as I picked some shredded lettuce out of my teeth. There’s nothing more to say. I will just enjoy you in this moment without making you a memory.

  I had eaten like this – and conversed with the white moon and chimneys and rooftops – almost every night since I’d arrived in Paris from a sweltering New Delhi three weeks before. I’d had memorable adventures in India and left Delhi reluctantly, even though there’d recently been bomb explosions in a crowded bazaar a few doors down from the hotel where I was staying. In contrast, Paris had felt safe, though unseasonably cold and surprisingly empty. Despite its relative security I missed the teeming chaos of the subcontinent and felt strangely bereft as I walked the quiet streets during my first weeks in the city.

  A couple of nights after I first heard the music from Amélie, I heard it again. I was perched like a bird at the window and realised that the accordion apartment was hosting a gathering that night – a small group of friends, I assumed, judging by the clinking glasses and laughter wafting through the air between their apartment and mine. I imagined the scene as a French filmmaker might have depicted it: a party of casually elegant Parisians, dressed in shades of grey, blue, beige and black (which I’d already noticed were the classic colours of the city), while a woman sitting alone, looking at the Paris skyline, listens to the party from across the street. What is she thinking? What are her dreams? Will she find a way to cross the divide between herself and the Parisians at the party? Will she stop scolding the moon and find true love? Or at least a palatable philosophy – or a small, bearded philosopher perhaps – with which to make meaning of her solitude?

  People often assumed I was lonely when I was alone. But travelling to new places made me feel as if I was ensconced in a fresh embrace and I felt restful sitting there. Paris could feel like a tranquil oasis, an oasis of music, what’s more. Since I’d been in the city I’d noticed it everywhere, an urban soundtrack that had become the compensation for what I missed from India, whose melee of sounds had been absorbed into my skin so deeply I was in withdrawal for days after my jet lag had subsided.

  The music of Paris came from India too, but also from other places – Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Japan and China. It was alternately rhythmic and melodic, and old-fashioned in its own way. But that was Paris too: a conservator of antiquities, an archivist of what might otherwise be discarded. It cared about culture, and while the world raced ahead with its cutting-edge technology, abandoning its legacies in the process, Paris elegantly brought up the rear as it gathered up the sounds, the art, the stories of everywhere, and carried them back home to display in its museums and galleries, to read in its bibliothèques and bookshops, and to perform in its clubs and bars, conservatories and concert halls.

  The city seemed to nestle the music of the globe in its arms; it gave space to a prodigious array of sounds, even that of the bearded philosopher with his homemade bicycle-powered instrument who pontificated on Pont Marie every weekend. I liked to roam and wander in search of music, and in Paris the odyssey uncovered a feast to be savoured, often randomly, in the streets, along the boulevards, on the trains, across the bridges, and through the cafés and restaurants. And now, as I could hear, in the homes of ordinary Parisians.

  The sound of the accordion was pure and resonant as it travelled across the air: the speakers playing the Amélie music were obviously of very high quality. Or so I thought. Halfway through one of its most wistful phrases the music stopped. Perhaps a glitch in the CD, or a fault in the machine, I thought. Cutting off a melody unresolved always has an abrupt effect on my body and nervous system. I felt jangly and on edge: I had been halfway through a bite of my roll when the music came to a halt, and I felt unable to move until the music did.

  The sound of the party increased a little. I imagined someone trying to repair the flaw and restart the music. Then I heard something quite unexpected. So unexpected that I still couldn’t continue eating and hovered with my mouth wrapped around my dinner. Across the way, as if in surprise too, a small flock of pigeons took flight from the rooftop opposite. And down below a group of children began a game of catch on the footpath.

  Mon Dieu! I called out telepathically to the birds. What are we doing here? Re-enacting our favourite French film montages?

  What had so surprised me was the sound of the accordion going over some notes. I heard it again, then again, as if it were trying to gear itself up to begin afresh. It stopped once more and went back over a phrase, this time a different phrase. Then another. I recognised that sound. I had played enough live music to know what it meant, that mumbling of notes, that tentative repetition, those sketchy stumbles. I knew that the music wasn’t coming from a CD player at all, but a real person playing a real accordion.

  I dropped my felafel roll on the floor as I leaned out the window to listen. For some reason I was incredibly moved at the thought that I had been listening to a live musician playing a perfect re-creation of a CD recording.

  Who does that? Who spends the time doing that? I whispered to the moon, which had the good sense to leave my question unanswered.

  I didn’t know that much about Paris yet. I had only been there for a relatively short time. But I felt I was experiencing something very particular about the city that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  I wondered if the accordionist lived in the apartment. Or was a visitor. Whether he or she played anything else but the music from Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. Some Edith Piaf perhaps. Or music from further afield, an Astor Piazzolla tango maybe. Or if the music from the film was a private, very particular obsession, one that sometimes happens when an instrumentalist falls in love with a piece of music so deeply that they feel they and it are made for each other and spend hours, days and sometimes years making it theirs.

  I stayed at the window late into the night, vicariously enjoying the party of Parisians and the live accordionist in their midst. I also spent some time whispering to the pigeons who sat on the ledge devouring the crumbs from my dishevelled dinner, which I’d salvaged from the floor soon after the music from Amélie started up again in all its melancholy, uplifting glory.

  The next day I had arranged to meet Sebastian, a fellow musician I’d met in India, outside Notre Dame for a spot of busking. After the elation of the night before, I’d had a luxurious sleep-in and arrived at our pre-arranged meeting spot over an hour late. Too late for Sebastian, who was nowhere to be seen. I felt bad that I’d missed him but I didn’t mind not busking that day. People love the idea of busking in Paris, a city in which it has such significance. But I’d done my time busking in Sydney’s Kings Cross and I wasn’t in any hurry to take out my violin here. I wanted different experiences now.

  I sat down to rest for a few minutes before heading up to Rue de Rivoli at Saint-Paul to get the bus back to Ménilmontant. I was in no hurry. That was my present to myself that summer – to be in no hurry in Paris. To let my days and nights unfold simply and easily. To not try so hard. To just be an audience for the things that might happen around me every moment. It had become a kind of discipline, this way of meeting experience.

  Sometimes a city is the kind of place
where, despite being on your own, you are never alone. Where sitting under a statue or leaning over the stone balustrade of a bridge is an invitation. You have to discern very quickly, though, who might waylay you, who might waste your time and who might be, like you, a pilgrim of the imagination on a voyage through change. But if your antenna is working properly, the chance encounter with a stranger might bring you something you need at that particular moment in time, something that might not come in any other part of the world, but exactly where your sense of wonder and curiosity has led you, across oceans and skies, out of safety into the unknown.

  That summer in Paris, I’d already met many people by not hurrying, by taking my time, by resting next to a river, a statue, a gallery, a fountain. Or a cathedral, as I did that day at Notre Dame.

  Fabian had come to play at Notre Dame as well. Not to busk like Sebastian, I fantasised when I laid eyes on him – à la Amélie Poulain – but perhaps to work on a song he was composing on his flamenco guitar, to while away those creative moments in the warm sun, to shape a melody among the soundwaves of the city rather than alone in his head, back in a tiny studio on the Left Bank.

  He had found his spot to do that on the bench adjacent to where I was sitting with my violin case beside me. I had heard him before seeing him; heard the shimmer of strings as he strummed a few arpeggiated chords, the click of long flamenco fingernails on the banged-up wood of his instrument, his low breathy growl of a voice. I didn’t have a clue what he was singing about, but the way he sang made me curious.

  From the side I could tell he was tall and lanky enough to stretch out his legs and lazily cross them one on top of the other as they rested on his guitar case, which he had laid on the ground. On top of his angular profile a mop of curly brown hair, slightly flecked with grey, cascaded around his shoulders so that he looked both serious and carefree. He was dressed all in black – no surprise there, I thought – but on his feet he wore a pair of scuffed pointy blue suede shoes, as if he were ready to dance at any moment. All in all he looked like a grown-up pixie. A male Amélie, I thought delightedly, with an equally fabulous destiny that might, just then, for a few wondrous moments, intersect with mine.

  I liked men who looked like spirit creatures with an intellectual bent and an adventurous approach to life. I liked the bravery that those qualities implied, the courage it took to always meet the new and unexpected. It never bothered me much what someone’s physical appearance was like – I didn’t really have a type; spirited men come in all shapes and sizes – or what nationality or age they were, or what they did for a living. What impressed me most was how they moved through the world. And from what I could see of his physicality and his body as he played music, I could tell that Fabian moved freely and, despite his angular roughness, with elegance too.

  I didn’t approach him though. Nor did I wait for him to approach me. I was quite happy just to notice his qualities and move on without ever speaking to him. I sat there quietly taking in my impressions of that iconic place, letting him breathe in his own space as I was breathing in mine, waiting for circumstances to move us closer together or further apart, without exerting too much will or effort. That was how I gauged if I was ‘meant’ to meet someone. In a world of travel and its endless possibilities, these little rules of engagement kept me centred and free from too many random entanglements.

  You going inside, he suddenly called over.

  Mmm? I asked, surprised out of my reflection by his deep French-accented voice.

  Ooh là là, I thought to myself. Now there is a voice. I could write a song about a voice like that. I could write a song with a voice like that.

  No, I don’t think so, I called back.

  Don’t want to join the sheep then? he teased, laughing.

  I like the outside. I laughed too.

  Sorry? He swung his guitar up over his lap and leaned towards me so he could hear what I was saying over the hum of the crowds.

  I like the outside … of things. Of buildings. Of monuments.

  It was true. Since I’d arrived in Paris I’d hardly set foot inside a monument, but I’d spent a lot of time sitting outside them. Watching. Listening. Observing. Delighting. Enjoying the formations of people moving in and out of iconic places. Noticing how their faces changed from before they went inside, with all their dreams and fantasies, to when they emerged again into the light, blinking in wonder. During the last three weeks I’d sat outside Notre Dame, Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. I’d also walked around the Palais-Royal and the Musée d’Orsay, but I’d never gone inside. It was my summer of peripheries, I’d decided. My peripheral summer.

  Mon Dieu, I said silently to the stone cathedral. I am becoming an eccentric with my whims about entering things.

  I didn’t quite know how to explain any of this to Fabian, but he was a musician like me, so I gave it a try. I like to see and hear what’s going on outside the centre of things. Outside the institution.

  Ah. You are a philosopher, he said humorously.

  Depends what kind, I teased back.

  I don’t know, he replied, amused. If you like the outside then maybe you are working on a philosophy of peripheralities. At the Sorbonne perhaps.

  I don’t know how to describe it.

  You’re in Paris. We’re good at categorising things.

  Doesn’t everybody like to think they’re un-categorisable?

  Mmm. Let me try. I am sure I can label you in a few moments.

  Bet you can’t, I challenged him.

  He looked me over – in a friendly way, I was pleased to notice. You are a violinist?

  Used to be.

  And now you just like to carry around a case. Like a prop.

  No, there’s still a violin inside.

  So you used to play.

  I used to play … inside places like this. I waved at Notre Dame. In churches and concert halls and opera houses. But then I walked outside and started playing on the streets and kind of never went back in.

  Ah. You are a refugee. He was teasing me again. I didn’t mind.

  Not really, though I suppose once you do go outside, I mused, there’s really no way back in.

  What did you leave? And why? No. Don’t answer. It’s not important. Well, you have come to the right place. The right city to wait for your documentation. Sooner or later most refugees come to Paris. They’ve been coming for centuries.

  I laughed. I don’t need documentation. It’s just my personal whim, I suppose. What my parents used to call my wilfulness. It’s creative, not political.

  Of course it is. Music. Thoughts. Work. Love. Philosophy. You are in Paris now, ma chérie. Everything is political.

  And with that pronouncement he strummed a few chords on his guitar and made me laugh again as a musical elf might, with a hint of mischief to come.

  Ooh là là! I hummed along with his spontaneous song. Here’s trouble! Just like my grandma would have said as she warned me off such a roguish boy. With a capital T!

  Fabian didn’t have a studio on the Left Bank. He was staying with friends at the Cité Internationale des Arts just across the Seine, which was on the way back to Saint-Paul and my bus home to Ménilmontant. So there was time to chat a little further before we parted. I found out that Fabian was only passing through Paris on his way to Marseilles and Barcelona, two places I’d never been to. He was on a musical odyssey, as I was, though mine was much more personal than his. He was following the gypsy trail inspired by the film Latcho Drom, which traced the journey of the Romani people through the musicians and dancers of India, Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, France and Spain.

  He was intrigued to find out I’d come from New Delhi, where I was scheduled to return in September on my way back to Kathmandu, two cities he was yet to visit, and where the gypsy trail of Latcho Drom led in the other direction.

  As
for his fluency in English, which was remarkable among all the French people I’d met so far (except for Estelle, who was brilliantly bilingual), Fabian proudly explained he’d spent four years in high school in England and was therefore fluent in every English vulgarity known to humankind. As we walked I also discovered to my great amusement that Fabian seemed to have some kind of photographic memory, or at least a catalogue in his brain, about places in Paris and their history. When I told him I was staying in Ménilmontant, he reeled off an array of information about the area: that it was affectionately called Ménilmuche by locals; that it was the birthplace of Maurice Chevalier and the next suburb along from Belleville, where Edith Piaf used to sing on the footpaths; that the main character of Les Enfants du Paradis, the beautiful tragic Garance, comes from Ménilmontant; and that The Red Balloon, which was still shown to new generations of children, was filmed there in 1956, as was, years later, a chase scene from The Bourne Identity.

  What are you, a Wiki nerd? I joked.

  Of course not. In France we chop off the heads of such superficial researchers. But though I sometimes hate this city I love it too. And like an attentive lover I want to know all about my lady. So now we at least know you are in the right place for music and for dreaming, he assured me as we stopped for crepes near Pont Saint-Louis. And what exactly are you doing here?

  Nothing really, I said, unable to define it, and concentrating for the moment on devouring my crepe, which was soft and sweet and dripping in honey. Maybe I’ll write some songs; that’s what I usually do when I’m staying somewhere new.

  Ah, you’re a singer then. Une chanteuse.

  Not particularly. I mean I don’t sing anything but my own songs. I only started singing so I could sing my own songs.