Femme du monde

Fat, face the color of blanc on blanc, smelling of cheap tobacco and many unwashed garments, from the other end of the car, the unmistakable melody of La vi en rose scratched against tender ears of Parisian commuters. "Not La vi en rose again", said the young Frenchman facing me. I understood every word he said. The old woman singing was no tiny sparrow, no waif. Her corpulent canine companion was equally uncouth. She sang Piaf's signature song with a hostile gusto, each syllable enunciated loudly. We sniggered as the singing voice came closer. So close we began to sing along, conspirators, smiling. And we welcomed the doleful silence at the song's inevitable end. I gave her a centime or was it two? She deserved it. Was she blind? Did it matter? As for me, I am weary of speaking shattered Spanish with Argentinean intellectuals and outmoded American slang with the Moroccan grocer and his cousins on the Boulevard Saint-Michel near rue du Val-de-Grâce And I cannot seem to count past the number, sept! Gloved hands push apart the Metro's doors. It is journey's end. I try singing Piaf's mysterious refrain, grateful for my own soulful silly version on the walk towards the rue Henri-Barbusse, a short slice of street named for a revolutionary or was he a pirate philosopher? Tired and cheered outside my American language, I am puzzled with the battered glamour of this city built for electric illuminations, swift flirtations, as I follow the paths to dead poets shaped in solemn statuary harboring the austere lawns of the Jardin du Luxembourg.