Fontainebleau, 2005

28 March 2005
Yesterday I escaped from the claustrophobia of Paris and took a train to Fontainebleau, a large village to the Southeast. Sometimes trains are necessary. To sit in the window with a notebook, to absorb the diffuse light and the scroll painting of landscape.

There is a château in Fontainebleau, built in medieval times, then reconstructed for François 1er in 1528. In the 1700s, it was taken over, like much of the western hemisphere, by Napoleon, who made it his home for a time. I walked through the forest surrounding the castle, singing to myself, sucking up the fresh air, snapping photographs of the grand canal, the anemone flowers, the circular pits in the ground with their tiny canals like uteri and fallopian tubes. I arrived at the palace gardens just as a shower started to tear at my umbrella—it threatened to take off like a raggedy hawk. I laughed out loud and made pictures of the ponds and statues against the blackening sky. The sky closed up, but errant rays of sun hit the sand and rose-colored stone and illuminated the grass—distilled jade.

The empty château had broken windows in some places but was overwhelmingly clean, as if swept over and over by elves. The sun was out by now and I walked through the gardens to a fountain: four deer spitting water and four dogs pissing water from carved dog penises in Fontainebleau. Giant peacocks, lovers on benches, sun on my black jacket, the warmth a hand on my shoulders, pushing me forward.

Eating a panini on a bench a while later, a man in a blue and yellow plaid shirt and gray/brown sweater asked if he could sit down. I said sure. He told me about the area, the different places you could go by car “if you had someone to drive you.” He mentioned his 25 year marriage, how he has two children, how he lived in the Paris suburbs for years but now lives alone and tranquil outside of Melun, how he was out with friends last night and only slept three hours. He wanted me to guess his age. I didn’t want to because I would’ve said 65 and he’s 52, thin and gaunt, longish hair plastered to his scalp, receding hairline meeting bald spot where, in infancy, the skull stays open for months until it fuses together. He smiled kindly and said, “Voilà ma petite vie, c’est tout bête pour tout vous dire.”

In the Brasserie Espérance. Rain on windshields. Cars, cigarettes, couples lean toward one another over small glasses, smoke curls around ashtrays, the red embers breathe travel. The click of a lighter, a sigh, wet fur of high collared coats. Two kids across the room speak American and French, so easily they switch languages. Both of mine are halting, cement in my mouth.

“C’est tout bête,” he had said, “my life is small and stupid.”

The shock of spring, every year, one day it is just there—the dandelions’ silver afros and the heavy tarp of tree leaves.

In the palace gardens, men in wheelchairs played soccer. Two small dogs wearing red jackets tramped along in front of a woman with a cane, refracted like a straw in water, her face thrust forward, eyes closed to the wind. There are horse-drawn carriage rides, and a woman went over to caress the waiting horse; she laughed loud, her grin split her head in half, the sun like a prayer on her hair and teeth.