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By Root 303 0

extravagant display of energy. I am sorry, but I am late. I have no reason to linger here, I think. This street will never commit itself to me, and I will reciprocate in kind. December's overeager shadows may have already claimed the buildings on one side of the street. Those on the other side may appear to glow that much more with light. Attention to such details, though, would be wasted here. It is only a site of business, commercial and mercenary. There is nothing unusual here to see, So move along now, I think, there is nothing here to see. I head toward the direction of the Jardin du Luxembourg and toward my Mesdames, who are sure to be furious. Who made their breakfast for them this morning? A pot of coffee, a plate of corn-flour cakes, a golden tower of crumbling squares, an American recipe that Miss Toklas taught me and that she and GertrudeStein adore. Who packed the basket for their Monday-morning drive? Chicken sandwiches wrapped in wax paper packets, which immediately glow with grease, and puff pastry fritters, delicate shells for the molten apples within. Turning onto the boulevard Raspail, I slow down my gait, collect my racing heart, and reacquaint myself with the things that I know best.

9

BEFORE COMING TO 27 rue de Fleurus, I spent many of my Mondays here, especially when there were no help-wanteds to reply to, no interviews to be rejected from, no benches available in the sun-starved parks of this city. When the moon had risen, when a drink or two had gone down, I would often find myself here as well. I would measure the distance down with my eyes, scan the water's surface for rocky formations, sandbars, and other bothersome obstructions. No, nothing but the moon's reflection. "What keeps you here?" I would hear a man asking. Your question, just your desire to know my answer, is what keeps me, has always been my response. I would then see him smile. I would open my eyes, and I would leave this bridge for the night.

I met him, the man on this bridge, in 1927. I have no recollection of the month. It could have been sometime in the late spring or, maybe, in the first days of autumn. What I am certain of, though, is that we met on a day when this city had the foregone appearance of a memory, as if the present had refused to go to work that day and said that the past would have to do. There was a mist rising from the Seine, and as water in all of its forms is inclined to do it softened and curved the city's angles and lines. The woolen sky, hanging low, dampened all the colors that the Parisians had to offer, robbing them of their carefully coordinated defenses against the gloom. A bright red scarf around a man's neck became a rusty coil. A pink veil on a young girl's hat disappeared into a haze of exhaust and smoke. On a day like that, I know that my Madame and Madame would have requested a stew. No, an organ meat of some kind. Roast veal kidneys, braised sweetbreads, sautéed mutton livers, something from deep inside to warm up their insides would have been their rationale. On the day that I met the man on the bridge, though, I was still many days and two years away from finding my Madame and Madame. This is the first Monday since coming to the rue de Fleurus that I have been back here, hands on the railing, face turned to the river. My days, after all, now belong to two American ladies, and they keep me busy with the culinary bustle that is the foundation of a continually entertaining household. Rectangular folds of puff pastry dough, circles of pâte brisée, bowls of heavy cream whipped with and without sugar, fresh fruit purées, fondant flowers and chocolate leaves, these are the basic components of sweetness that fill my days and someone else's mouth. Believe me, I had every intention of returning to them today, of fulfilling these beginning-of-the-workweek functions for them. But on this Monday, half-wasted, the boulevard Raspail took me here instead. The streets of this city are alive, I have always thought. They know better than I where I need to be, or in this instance who I need to see.

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