The misanthrope's corner - reminisces of a trip to Paris, France - Column

National Review, Sept 30, 1996 by Florence King

LAST month the PBS women's talk show, To the Contrary, interviewed some woman who had written a book about traveling alone in foreign countries. I was struck by the deja vu nature of the questions.

Is there a "taboo" about women traveling alone? How are women traveling alone "perceived"? That's an updated version of "What will people think?" but the tone of voice was the same. They tried to put a feminist spin on it with earnest pronouncements that "women travel differently from men," but it didn't work. The telltale signs of female insecurity were evident: the searching look, the eager smile, the too-quick nods of agreement, the little gusts of laughter-as-punctuation. It was the same old same old, going back not only to my day but to Victorian times.

I went to Paris alone in November 1969. I dreamed of going when I was taking French in school, but I couldn't afford it then, nor for years afterward. All I could afford was a passport so I got one for inspiration, something to take out and look at once in a while. I also used it for I.D., since, unable to afford a car, I didn't have a driver's license.

When finally, at the age of 33, I started making real money, I decided one night on the spur of the moment to fly to Paris. It was characteristically impetuous, but airline reservations were no problem in late autumn. Three days later I was there.

The airport bus put me off at the terminal near Les Invalides. I hadn't made a hotel reservation, so I walked around the side streets until I saw a small hotel where I got a room for $5 a night.

I went immediately to the Eiffel Tower. It was too cloudy to go to the top, but I didn't care. I centered myself underneath it and bent my head back and gazed up through the intricate web until my eyes played tricks on me, the hypnotic sensation of being encinctured by those steel bands satisfying my peculiar claustrophilic need to be literally in Paris.

The next day I went to Notre Dame. On the gargoyle roof I met a woman from Rochelle who asked if I would like to see "Le Bourdon," the big bell. It was a lecture given only on request, with a tip to the guide afterward. She seemed to know all about it so I followed along. I didn't catch all of the lecture but the guide's dramatic finale needed no translation. He tapped the bell ever so lightly with his baton, producing a reverberation that made us both scrunch our shoulders.

At the Conciergerie I saw Marie Antoinette's cell. I knew her in high school -- the girls who thought of nothing but clothes and were always combing their hair -- but here in this wretched place she behaved at last like a Hapsburg archduchess. From Stefan Zweig's biography I knew the route her tumbril took from the prison to the guillotine. I followed it on foot, the closest thing to a pilgrimage I've ever made.

Later I browsed a bookstore and bought the two-volume paperback of Autant en Emporte le Vent (Gone with the Wind). That night I saw Midnight Cowboy with French subtitles, afterwards discussing it with the young woman serving behind the lobby bar. It was my most successful conversation of the trip; I managed to tell her how the movie differed from the book, and compared it to the author's other filmed novel, All Fall Down.

It was foggy and drizzling the day I went to Versailles. Three or four other people were in the Hall of Mirrors, but the gardens were deserted. Wishing my old social-adjustment teachers could see me, I sat down on a bench by the statue of Bacchus, utterly content. At last I had a playground all to myself.

Given my constant need for coffee, I had to buy what I didn't even know the name of in English. I told the hardware clerk, "It's shaped like an eagle's claw (le talon d'un grand oiseau)," feeling proud when he promptly produced a "thermoplongeur": immersion heater.

Shopping for shoes was harder. Everything I tried on felt like a 5EEE. I kept saying "plus long, plus mince," but nothing fit. Finally the salesman said, "Vous avez les pieds anglais, Madame." I left on my English feet, clutching my new idiom.

In a tiny restaurant near the Place d'Italie I had beef burgundy for 18 francs. The best thing about the meal, aside from the food, was that it was Thanksgiving and nobody knew or cared. Nobody saying, "I hate to think of you being alone on Thanksgiving." Nobody assuming I was just being brave when I said, "I like being alone." Nobody inviting me to share their tumultuous family gatherings and having to accept because there was no way out of it. Culture shock was now a thing of the past.

IGOT picked up in Montmartre, but my motives were purely linguistic. As we sat in a cafe sipping vin rouge, he leaned across the table and confided that he loved playing pinball machines. I couldn't think of anything to say in either language.

As it turned out, the heart interest of my trip was the hotel owner's son. His name was Marc and he was six years old. You heard me: six. A child. As in "CNN Breaking News." Evidently being in a country notorious for aloofness and formality had a relaxing effect on me, because Marc and I clicked.