A varying cast of fellow Christmas orphansrolled through Bar Vaudeville, including one young woman who sat with a coup of sparking rosé, staring dreamily at the young bartender for a solid hour. I sketched her while Sophie finished her cross-stitch of Morris. She was the only person left at the bar when we packed up to leave.
I have no idea how long she stayed there looking at him. As far as I know, she could still be there.
A man out front approached us asking for directions. He was speaking Dutch, and we were neither French nor Dutch speakers. We apologised and shuffled along while he mumbled something to himself and attempted to light a cigarette in the wind.
Sidewalk Sulker
Two days before, a man with a similar disposition in a hat and long green coat was scoffing loudly at his wife, who was feverishly poring over a map of the city. He stood and glared into the gutter, sulking. He couldn’t have been less interested in helping her find what she was looking for. He had a newspaper tucked under his arm but it was all smudged up, like he’d picked it out of a puddle.
As the sun set over the Seine…
…we toddled along Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle towards Le Grand Rex— the biggest cinema complex in the area— to take part in our annual Christmas Day tradition. With its enormous flashing spire and confusing crowd control, this felt like the most popular location in Paris for anyone who remained in the city.
As we approached the small ticket counter, we heard a small girl in the long line tell her dad things were not going well for her. She was in dire need of a toilet, and aside from the theatre there were none to be found for blocks. He heaved her up onto his hip and walked out of the line into the night, the cold fog picking up his deep sigh.
To ruin the great day we were having, we decided against watching something good and bought two tickets to the latest thing flushed down the tubes from DC Entertainment: Aquaman 2. In French. (And 3D!)
The interior of the cinema was the antithesis of the film: Well-made and memorable.
An Art Deco mural lined the tidy walls of the theatre filled with clean, dark red velvet armchairs. Unlike the US cinemas, there were normal human-scale popcorn buckets and small plastic flutes of champagne on offer. Viewers didn’t talk during the movie, and nobody was rustling loud plastic packets of candy (although that would have been fine; the movie was so bad it could have been improved by becoming completely inaudible.)
After the movie, we looked into the crowd filing in for the next screening to see an old woman in a red coat and matching hat, who looked like she’d fallen straight out of the pages of Ronald Searle’s Paris Sketchbook. I took off my 3D glasses as she held up her hand. Then, the crowd seemed to part, Moses-style, before she slowly walked forward, vanishing into the cinema complex.
Mrs. Moses.
If you haven’t picked up Searle’s Paris Sketchbooks (and you enjoyed these posts of mine) I’d highly recommend it. You can still find them around the place.
