Stop!

May 30, 2015

     Even before I departed for Paris my back and one of my knees had been giving me trouble.  It's partly because I gave my body no rest while in New York, combining my usual approach of walking everywhere with "spinning", along with packing my schedule to accomplish every task I had on my "to do" list before I left for what will be a long stay abroad.

     While Paris may not seem to many a place where it is possible to enjoy solitary pleasures, I found one yesterday and today pursued another: a day at a hammam in the Marais, Les Bains du Marais.  The baths are located on rue des Blancs Manteaux, off rue des Archives.  On a walkabout through Paris years ago, I discovered both the baths and an outpost of Mariage Freres, the French tea company.  Mariage Freres in the Marais is on rue Bourg-Tibourg, a few blocks from the baths and near the Bazaar de l'Hotel de Ville ("BHV" to Parisians).  I'd returned to the area to shop at BHV many times and always thought the baths exquisite, with their Moorish reception hall and crepuscular lighting.  However, it was an expensive luxury, compared to New York's plebeian 10th Street Turkish Baths, with their  $18 admission.

     Thursday, on the way back from my lunch in les Halles, I changed my mind, and made a reservation for a massage at noon today.  "I can always cancel", I reasoned thriftily, and went about my business for the next two days.

     Waking up this morning feeling black-and-blue, it seemed a stroke of genius to have made the appointment.  Staying up until 3:00 a.m. to write the last post, morning did not smile on me.  Gnarly, sleepless, I dressed and got myself out the door and headed for the baths, a 45-minute walk away.

      Upon arrival at 11:25 a.m., I asked for mint tea, which I was told would be brought to me.  I was led downstairs to the baths by a Maghrebienne --perhaps Algerian, perhaps Moroccan or Tunisian-- with eyes lined with kohl.  She explained the layout and took me on a tour of the hammam, which featured Moorish arches and in the largest space, a steamy courtyard.

       Putting on my bathing suit, I walked to the hottest room, a steambath off the courtyard.  I sat on the highest steps and immediately found the heat soothing.  There was only another person, a stocky middle-aged man, there.  I closed my eyes and enjoyed the quiet, which was interrupted by the entrance of his friend: I opened my eyes to see a pair of firm buttocks beneath a broad-shouldered, short, trim body, upper body thrust forward.  The man did not seem to know that Saturday was "co-ed", so swimsuits were required; or, if he did, he didn't seem to care.  A scrappy Frenchman from a working-class background, from the look of him, I wondered whether the repose I was hoping to find would turn out to be a chimera.

      I need not have worried.  The two men left, and for a long while, my only companion were the mists.  At noon my masseur, a Tibetan named "Lopsong", came to get me and take me upstairs to the room reserved for my massage.

     Lopsong and I had a brief conversation before he began his work.  Je suis en panne "I'm out of order"), I explained.  And for an hour, Lopsong fixed me.  He never massaged my muscles, as massage therapists usually do; rather he rubbed oil into my skin in long, soft strokes.  Within ten minutes I was asleep.  --Which may not sound unusual, but is in my case.  I have no idea what technique Lopsong used, but after his ministrations, I had no more discomfort.  I stayed in the steam rooms another two hours, alternating my visits with naps in the other large room at the baths, a cool room lined with divans and pillows whose purpose was sleeping.  Respectez le silence ("Respect the silence") said the sign outside the door to the room, and for the most part, the few people that crossed its threshold did.  I lay down on the divan with glass after glass of mint tea in my hands atop my stomach and napped freely, stopping only to return to the hammam to warm myself again.  By the time I had had as much of the baths as I wanted, it was three hours later.

     The hotel had made a reservation for me at Mariage Freres and it was there I went next.  Mariage Freres' tea room is intended to take clients back to a French Indochinese Eden: the waiters are all young, epicene men whose uniform is an ivory linen three-piece suit worn with a matching bow tie.  The men's hair is very well cut and well groomed, their skins smooth and fine.  I had a Snob Salad (shiitake mushrooms, green beans, artichoke, quinoa, shrimp, sashimi and foie gras with "green tea toasts") and a Green Tonic (fruits and vegetables flavored with ylang-ylang) to start, followed by perfumed green tea and a raspberry tart.  It is an extravagance, but nothing better after the baths.  I feel restored and walk home amid the throngs that have invaded Paris.

     It occurs to me as I do that Paris is so close to so many western European places and flights are so cheap that people can visit for the weekend the way someone from Westchester or Bergen County comes to Manhattan for the day .  Which is not to mention the Chinese and the Koreans, who are everywhere, buying up French goods en masse here, where they are much cheaper than at home.  On the streets, Bangladeshis sell all of them bottles of water for 1 Euro.  The multitudes don't venture beyond the traditional places --Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, boulevard Saint Germain, the Champs Elysees.  I don't have the sense that they learn much about Paris either before, during or after their visits: it's all about accepting the experience in front of their eyes and recording it on a selfie, preferably taken with a Zuckerberg Selfie Stick.  The subjects --not infrequently women traveling alone-- smile at themselves in front of some beauty spot.

      Here I am in front of Notre Dame.  What a beautiful day.  Isn't Notre Dame beautiful?  --Oh, you've seen it?  Did you take a photo of yourself?  You couldn't --at least not one like this one?  Too bad.  Next time you'll have to have one of these sticks.

     Crossing over to the left bank, I encounter a bookseller, a bouquiniste with an interesting print of a 19th century connoisseur of wine exercising his discrimination.  One eye closed shut with the other wide open, his look registers that infinitely critical disposition which is so very French.  For 3 Euros I think it will make a nice thing to hang on the wall of my kitchen in Caunes.  The bouquiniste is a youthful looking man dressed in a tweed cap covering blonde hair.  His blue eyes are full of fun, as he suggests I might be interested in another poster, a suggestive one.  "That might be for you, but not me", I riposte, and we are off to the races.  It turns out he is a former chef who quit the metier at 40 and turned to his present occupation.  He is fifty-four and amazingly youthful-looking, with sparkling blue eyes and a ready, mischievous smile, not tall, but engaging.  Mais vous etes beau! (--But you're handsome!) I can't resist telling him --and telling him again.  We have a laugh about this, I pay, and I'm off.  The crowds engulf me.