Old lady:

The morning lingered in the fog. I walked along the Boulevard de la Madeleine toward the old Opera and went to the same café as the previous morning. I ordered an English breakfast with a café americano—which was basically a double espresso, a fried egg with toast, and a pat of hard butter. The cocky waiter didn't give me a smile, although I was sure she remembered me. I had been generous with tips, sat at the same table for several days, and always ordered the same thing. The choice of table was influenced by the view of the busy street.

Next to the café on the sidewalk, there was a discount, market-style sales counter where you could get cheap household necessities for every need. Towels, bags of all sizes, toys, electrical supplies, socks, underwear, or even an old-fashioned table clock. It was like a little flea market.

The woman wore a lace-trimmed jacket, a black brimmed hat, a large red leather bag, patterned shoes, a scarf pleated over her hand with long rainbow-colored fringes, and a ruffle on her collar – the overall tone was dark. I had never seen an elderly person so dignified and beautiful. Her clothes seemed to be from the fifties, perhaps even before that—custom-made and unique. Probably a top designer's creation of the time, made from the best materials that still held their shape.

It was as if this elderly person had stopped time at some moment and lived only in it, not caring about the changes in the world. The outfit was like mourning attire to which, over time, colored streaks of life had returned without losing the memory they sanctified. The woman's body language was not submissive, but dignified, aristocratic, and self-consciously intellectual. What she had allowed for her dress, she had already allowed for her memories; her large gold earrings told this to everyone.

I forgot about the breakfast and egg brought by the waiter while observing the woman. The delicious, soft yolk had cooled into a sticky lump, and the cold coffee tasted bad. The waiter watched from her spot by the door, staring at my forgotten breakfast and realizing the reason. When she noticed I saw her, she came over to me and said in a low voice: – "She comes every weekday and buys something small – we call her Émilie. She always wears that same ancient outfit with lots of black and a brimmed hat."

I answered: – "I think she lost her fortune and her husband a long time ago. All she has left is a large apartment, a small pension, and children who knows where. Maybe she also had a spectacular career in fashion or the arts, or maybe just as a seamstress. First, an invitation-filled pre-World War II social life, then the occupation and shortages."

The waiter enthusiastically joined my imaginative game: – "The items Émilie buys are the cheapest rubbish, meant for the Algerians living at the top of the street and Black people from the colonies. She is a woman for whom one could imagine a wide range of life stories and historical realities. Probably her true story overcomes them all."

The waiter smiled with a melancholy glimmer in her eyes, as if she were in love with her own thoughts. She cleared the breakfast at the same time and said she'd bring a new portion if I promised to eat it right away. Our kindred souls, both poetic with associations, had met.

I still wonder how everyday life is never as romantic as our fantasies—wars are cruel and big cities are relentless. I'm sure if I went to stand next to "Émilie," the smell of urine from incontinence underwear would waft into my nose.

Enchantment 

I was wandering, lost in thought, turning down random street corners. I inhaled the pungent aroma of cheese shops, the scent of perfume from women passing by, and the smell of yellowed paper from the book stalls along the Seine. Behind Notre Dame, in the Jewish quarter, a young woman was playing the cello in the bright daylight.

The woman is beautiful like the Madonnas of altarpieces, with her hazy eyes following the musical notes. Her slender fingers climbed up and down the neck of the instrument, paused to sustain a note, vibrato rippling through the air like gravity does space. The bow presses harder against the strings, and the cello responds, deepening its voice. In the woman's expressive body movements, an inner dimension is transmitted from the instrument around the house corner like a rustle of wind.

In my imagination, with her eyes closed, she follows the melodic patterns, traveling the secret paths of her soul as if caressing herself. The woman who is playing glances in my direction as if hearing my thoughts. I am still in the twilight liminal state of reality that began this morning, and I experience connections to what I hear as if I were wandering in an image-free and wordless universe of spiritual understanding. The sound of the cello designs reality into paths and landscapes, vibrating in the dimensions of the strings curled inside the atoms. I experience the strong pull of subconscious mind currents to the beyond, the mind floats in music.

The enchantment shatters when I am about to put a coin from my pocket into the hat in front of the woman who is still playing. In my pocket, I encounter the bony hand of a pickpocket, instinctively grab it, and swing behind me with my other hand without seeing the thief. A high-pitched girl's voice screams, and I release the hand in shock. A ragged girl escapes through the crowd to somewhere. The cello has become silent as if in fright, and everyone around me is staring at me. A moment of confusion, with no one knowing whose side to take. I put the coins saved from the thief into the hat and leave in embarrassment behind the nearest street corner, my eyes searching for the girl to make amends for what just happened.

A moment that slipped away 

In the stairwells between the floors of the Musée d'Orsay, there are heated stone benches on the landings where it is pleasant to doze off for a moment. A strangely peaceful place amidst all the hustle and bustle. Near me, a woman leans against a wide marble balustrade, reading a book; on the museum's far wall, a massive, ornate station clock counts down unhurried moments. The last train left the station decades ago, taking the rush with it.

The woman's reddish hair, curled into spirals, cascades far down her back. The hem of her black coat, which reaches almost to the floor, is lifted slightly, revealing a foot resting on its toes in a thick-soled shoe. The arrangement is like a thought forgotten into its surroundings, to which the daylight—filtered into a haze by the smoky glass wall at the end of the museum—adds a borderless enchantment. The harmonizing atmosphere of colors makes the moment feel like one of the museum's own paintings.

Now fully awake, I feverishly check my camera settings and kneel as inconspicuously as possible on the stone bench, as if praying that the woman won't move. Everything must be captured exactly as I see it now. I frame the subject to match my mental image, steady the camera as much as possible, and hopefully press the shutter. A magical blink of an eye, untouched by the slightest doubt. The woman does not notice my presence, and I slip away with my picture like a thief.

I hurry up the stairs to the next floor and stop to look down over the railing into the former station hall. Camera in hand, I admire the gorgeous image of the woman on its digital screen, happy with my success. As I fiddle with the camera, my grip slips. The camera falls two floors down, crashing onto the marble floor and shattering into pieces—and the model doesn't have a removable memory card. All that remains is a rapidly fading afterimage in my mind. Perhaps, as a dream image, it will never truly vanish, and someday I will paint a picture of it.

Mind Wandering

I pass by the Shakespeare and Company bookstore at the edge of the Latin Quarter in the flush of a blushing morning. I've always wanted to visit, but it's permanently overcrowded. I can't bring myself to step inside just to feed my writer's soul—a soul stained by life and prone to adventuring in its own associations.

A new day, and everything outside is drenched. A night of continuous rain has washed the streets of Paris, sweeping away the stench of urine, dog waste, and rotting food scraps. It has watered the park trees, budding with a fresh green, and the daffodils pushing proudly up through the soil. Paris is in spring bloom, like a teenage girl. A certain restlessness is visible everywhere; people are driven by instinctual urges that throw life off balance once more, making the light brighter and the shadows deeper. From the early hours, the sounds of hammers and jackhammers echo from every direction, and there isn't a single hotel without paint-splattered workmen loitering out front with their gear. It is spring.

I walk toward Les Halles and onward to Rue Saint-Denis, where prostitutes are already idling in the doorways of shabby hotels this morning. Some are old and heavy-set; the youngest come, without exception, from Africa or Asia. What they all have in common is tacky, revealing clothes and exaggerated, smudged makeup. An unvarnished sexuality vibrates in the air like molecules rising from hot asphalt.

As I pass, my attention is caught by a beautifully aged French woman holding a small dog in her arms, her eyes gentle. I am certain she has plenty of regulars, all in love with her for the exact same reason. I slow my pace beside her—if only I had the courage. She smiles with her eyes, as if reading my thoughts, and whispers in a voice raspy from cigarettes: "One hundred euros." The illusion vanishes. Love is not a commodity to me in that way, and a gap in a woman's teeth, smashed in by some angry fist, is not sexy. Reading the shift in my expression from infatuation to revulsion, she sighs and turns away. Tomorrow, I will take a different route.

At the top of the street, I turn toward the old opera house, intending to see Chagall's magnificent ceiling painting, which I've previously known only from pictures. My legs are already aching; Paris is devilishly huge, shrunk and trivialized by the map in my hands, tricking me into walking further. The culprit is my desire to see and experience it all—a packed metro and changing trains just isn't the same. Stopping at cafés for a glass of wine and a bite of baguette keeps me oriented, and my lifted spirits make up for the increasing clumsiness of my steps.

In front of the opera house, a Romani woman lies on a dirty blanket with a hungry, wailing baby before her, and another on the way inside her swollen belly. She begs with her hands clasped in prayer, a cliché image of the Virgin Mary by her side. On a nearby bench sits a man with a attack dog between his knees, watching to ensure she doesn't secretly hide any alms in her rags. Hesitantly, I drop a coin into a cigar box containing a few cents left as seed money—otherwise, I would have spent the rest of the day dwelling on my own hard-hearted stinginess. The distress is real.

The opulence of the opera house is a cruel contrast to the misery outside, but Chagall's ceiling painting somehow blurs that contrast in my mind. Head tilted back, I stare at the ceiling, at its joyful colors and whimsical figures, and the surrounding grandeur loses some of its gaudy air, as if melting into the essence of Paris.

Coming outside, I give the begging woman a five-euro note, for she is now nursing her child at a sagging breast. At the street corner, I glance back and see the man with the leashed dog emptying the cigar box.

The fire to write, kindled by Shakespeare and Company, has begun to find its substance.

Jazz at Caveau de la Huchette

The multicolored neon tubes of the Latin Quarter began to glow, humming their temptations into the crowding street. Everything was exactly as it had been the night before, and every night before that—complete with pickpockets, scammers, and the touts outside the Greek restaurants loudly bickering over hungry passersby. Just the right ingredients for a traveler's adventure, the kind that yields a colorful tale to take back home—and perhaps a few bruises, a bout of food poisoning, or a missing wallet to spice up the memories. You all know how mishaps turn into invaluable stories, provided, of course, that your life and health are still intact after the experience.

One of Europe's oldest jazz clubs is a dirt-begrimed, smoke-stained medieval cellar vault, packed tight with intimately rubbing human flesh. Intrigued by the place's reputation, I push my way into the crowd. The saxophone ground and wheezed thick tones, the drums pounded out some strangely-rhythmed improvisation, the double bass thumped along to its own beat, and a large Black man, raspy-voiced with spit in his throat, channeled Louis Armstrong. A sweet scent of marijuana drifted through the thick smoke hanging in the air.

The band is on fire. I grab a beer and wedge myself next to a button-nosed girl to scout for a vacating table at the edge of the dance floor. It has been overtaken by a jovial, drunken crowd. A curly-haired man leans forward, wildly drumming rhythms against his knees with dinner spoons, chasing after every single note. Every now and then, his neighbor howls like a wolf. The floor sways and writhes, losing itself to the beat of the music. A drunk, scrawny man gropes a busty woman. Jazz is alive. With a laser-sharp gaze, the saxophonist rips into a passionate solo, sending the room into a hypnotic, swaying trance. The button-nosed girl coughs, offering me the burning joint she just hit, smiling as if I were suddenly her type.

I shake my head, patting my chest as if I have a lung disease, and take a long swig from my beer bottle. At the same time, I try to signal through the noise that anything else goes, pressing close against her in the crush of the crowd. The cellar of Caveau de la Huchette is no place for talking, so I point a finger toward the ceiling. She nods, takes my hand, and begins leading the way up the stairs toward the exit.

We find ourselves out on the street, gasping for fresh air after the smoky cellar. Testing the waters, I ask her:

"What now?"

She laughs and says in unmistakably American English:

"Don't be silly. I know just the place to go, and I'll hold your hand if you're scared."

She links her arm through mine and adds:

"After all, this is what you wanted."

We buy a bottle of red wine, a baguette, and some cheese from a food kiosk, and sit down on the pedestal of a nearby statue to eat our rations. The day is cooling into a chilly night, and we huddle side by side, shivering like the pigeons surrounding us, begging for baguette crumbs. I'm starting to get into the idea. The girl is much younger, and hey, it would be quite something to prove I've still got it.

The girl looks at me for a long moment, pursing her lips thoughtfully.

Then she says:

"A hundred bucks, and you can have me. Otherwise, no deal."

I burst out laughing, pull a fiver out of my flat wallet, stand up unsteadily, and say:

"Thanks for the company, keep the change. That saxophonist is really something, and I think I'll just head back to square one."

I didn't go back down to the cellar of Caveau de la Huchette to look for lust my own age. Instead, avoiding the dark alleys, I walked back to my hotel with the image of a man playing the saxophone in my mind, listening for possible footsteps behind me. The unlit, empty streets of a metropolis can be treacherous to a lonely, drunken man.

All the photographs were taken by (c) Markku Lindroos and edited with the help of ChatGpt AI