The tortured trees and
scary waiters of blvd. St. Germain
by David Benjamin
PARIS — The Ville de Paris is destroying the evidence.
For
decades on the boulevard St. Germain, its plucky trees would welcome
the spring by putting out new shoots, slender green tendrils reaching
hopefully toward the fickle sun. And then, in the fall, just after each
of these infant branches had raised its first proud little crop of
leaves, municipal workmen would come along with bucket trucks and hedge
trimmers. They slashed every new growth back to the nub, like black-site
torture artists snipping off fingers and ears in a Turkish dungeon.
What
they left behind, in winter, was a long row of leafless cripples, their
trunks and limbs grotesquely bent and foreshortened, like skeletal
hands thrust from the graves of tormented polio victims buried alive.
Now,
the city is tearing up the trees, replacing them with unsuspecting
sycamore saplings, still too young to be trimmed. The old trees? There
are only three left now between the blvd. St. Michel and place de
l’Odeon. I picture a mass grave somewhere beyond the banlieues,
where sado-arborists with chainsaws reduce the uprooted shade-trees of
St. Germain into three-meter lengths and hurriedly cover them with
quicklime.
As I strolled the boulevard, I bade the last three
survivors adieu, wondering how quickly the city’s shame will reduce them
to stumps and sawdust.
On the other hand, the new sycamores
look nice. Their shade will be denser, their display prettier. They will
better adorn one of the great avenues of the world, the Fifth Avenue of
the Left Bank.
The blvd. St. Germain begins and ends on the
Seine, curving southward while the river bends north. A walk from one
end of the boulevard, at the Assemblée Nationale, to the other, where
the pont de Sully crosses the Seine, is a pleasure both familiar and
changeable. It’s a long, prosperous street rarely crowded, but there’s
always a parade, featuring some of Paris’ suavest swells and silliest
tourists.
On the morning I lamented the boulevard’s tortured
trees, I was bound westward, slowly. My first landmark was an urban
oasis named for its ancient church, St. Germain des Prés. Its most
famous restaurant, Les Deux Magots, facing the church, is where
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvioir — according to legend —
occupied a corner table, billing, cooing and occasionally ripping each
other’s hearts out. But I passed Les Deux Magots, preferring to have my
third coffee at the Café de Flore, which The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik — in defiance of his forebear, Janet Flanner — once declared more hip than the stodgy old Magots.
As I claim a table on the chilly terrasse,
I don’t see Gopnik’s distinction. Both joints cost too much and they’re
packed, in the daytime, with goggle-eyed Chinese tourists, a few
furtive honeymooners from Japan, a scattering of checklist travelers
from the U.S. drinking the cheapest fluids on the menu, and the
inevitable flock of Italians who — for some reason — never travel in
groups smaller than twelve. The clientele on a Tuesday forenoon are
little more chic and cosmopolitan than I — who have all the slick savoir faire of a drunk doughboy on the town in a set of ill-fitting civvies.
Real
Parisians sometimes outnumber the rubberneckers at lunch hereabouts,
but they don’t really claim their turf at the Flore and Magots ’til
‘round midnight. And then, well, maybe Gopnik can tell which crowd is
cooler, but I’m oblivious to such patrician nuances and just glad that
both joints have a bottle of Glenmorangie.
The waiters of St.
Germain have a reputation for snootiness. Tourists — especially
Americans — live in mortal fear of Parisian waiters, some of whom
actually cultivate their scarinesss. But Hotlips and I learned early
that they can be subdued with a measure of chutzpah and a little bit of
comical French.
At the Magots and Flore, the servers are prompt,
polite, multilingual and exquisitely correct. Not cuddly, but not
scary. Scarier, for example, is the fact that the Flore is one of the
few remaining Paris venues with a W.C. concierge. From a comfortable
chair at the entrance, she directs men to the Hommes and women to the
Femmes. In return, she expects a few coins in her spotless little
saucer. She either curses her visitors softly but audibly if they don’t
know what the saucer’s for, or she beams at them with loving irony when
they have no idea of the going rate (no more than 40 cents) and blow a
couple of euros on the privilege of peeing at the Flore.
Hotlips
and I used to know the scariest waiter on the blvd. St Germain,
personally. He’s retired now. He held dominion over a wonderful place on
the east end of the avenue, called Chez René, where the specialty is
the boeuf bourgignon in an ink-black wine gravy that’s been
simmering in the same pot for 100 years. When we first faced him, he
loomed like a headmaster out of Charles Dickens, stern, icy and
expectant. What were we doing in his section? Had we read the menu? Did
we understand — or, more important, did we appreciate — the menu? Were
we ready? Did we belong?
The blvd. St Germain is the birthplace
of existential doubt. This waiter was its apotheosis. If he walked away
and never took our order, would we still exist?
The Scary Waiter
exerted no pressure, of course. That would be improper. He simply stood,
gray and magisterial, posture-perfect, and witheringly patient. We
managed to order, in French, and had the good sense to stick to the specialités de la maison
and drink the sublime house beaujolais. We hoped this pleased him. We
wanted to please him. The waiter — we never learned his name — performed
impeccably, and understood everything we needed by eye contact alone.
But he was not warm.
Not ’til we’d been back to Chez René about four more times.
Then,
one chilly autumn night, perfect for hot hearty meat dishes, we
reserved a table in the Scary Waiter’s section. I was surprised that the
owner, on the phone, recognized my name. When we arrived, around 8:30,
there was the Scary Waiter, greeting us at the door, smiling and shaking
my hand, kissing Hotlips on both cheeks and guiding us to our table.
The owner patted me on the back. His wife hailed us from behind a small
mountain of charcuterie.
Somehow, that evening, we crossed the
invisible threshold and became regulars. There’s nothing better in
Paris. You are as effusively welcome as, before, you felt congenitally
alien and secretly scrutinized. Your table is prime, your favorites are
known. The menu is superfluous. You’re family. The Scary Waiter is
suddenly Santa Claus.
Chez René was our first Paris experience
as regulars. We have a few other spots now, too. But cracking the
scariest waiter on the blvd. St. Germain? Nothing will ever top that.
Then
we lost him. A few years ago, we returned. He was there, but not the
owners. They had retired. New — younger, less rumpled — people were in
charge. The tables were slightly rearranged. The menu had been tweaked.
And the Scary Waiter, who hurried to our table to welcome us home, told
us that he, too, would soon be gone.
He was anxious that night to
assure us that the new owners hadn’t screwed it up. Chez René would be
the same as it was. We thanked him and enjoyed his service all through
our dinner, and tipped him excessively and said reluctant goodbye. But
we knew he was wrong.
Without him, yes, it’s still comfort food on a cold night in Paris. But it’s not the same.
Friday, March 24, 2017
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