Roundabout
Mange
BY K A THAR1NE WHITEHORN
THE French Government's at- tempt to keep more people in Paris in August has apparently met with complete failure. There is nobody in town but de Gaulle and his would-be assas- sins—even the Americans are fewer than before, thanks Partly to the Kennedy squeeze and partly to the fkillig that France is becoming a dangerous Place. The few people who remain greet each Other like companions in a siege and furtively exchange as if they were sources of dope the nhmes of the few decent restaurants still open. They tend to look a bit grey around the collar, 109, as their laundries often shut for the annual holiday with everybody's shirts inside; and one couple I know even had their hot water shut clown for three weeks, while the man who heats it heated himself in the south instead. Parking is the only thing that is easier in this city of the dead and even that has its problems. One man came exulting into a bar saying he had parked °Pposite Figaro for the first time in his life—only to.rush out again as he realised he had left it unlocked. You get into trouble for leaving an Necked car around, since people are so apt '131.1t 4 plastic bomb inside—even, such are the iktnies of French politics, outside the offices of al.st4tight-wing newspaper. That Right-wing news- 'Per, anyway. This was the same man who pro- wl, eed the best comment on the French one-way s
Ittiem I have heard: to the cry 'How do I get ■
(11:t of this?' he answered: 'Throw a double six.' 35 ,,,LA lot of present-bringers must by now have Z,§eovered that in terms of gratitude achieved for :calks spent, bottles of My Sin and tins of `Ired pate are a waste of money compared to 4Sr, much simpler things: particularly the small domestic impedimenta at which the French excel. Small machines for taking stones out of olives or cherries; glove-stretchers, known to the victorians but oddly hard to get now; even a
naturally cheaper in its country of origin
--all these go down well. There are obviously Plenty of housewives who go in imagination straight from a blunt knife to an electric mixer: these intermediate blessings really do come under the head of acceptable gift (unacceptable gifts, Presumably, including St. Bernard puppies, rude corkscrews, colour-slide projectors and black nightdresses from men you hardly know).
But what to take back to France? It is appar-
eklY necessary to distinguish sharply between the'things that make a Frenchman's mouth water and things that merely moisten the eyes of ex- patriate English. Stilton in jars, smoked salmon, °6K.1 tea and good ham on the bone are ap- parently acceptable to both; and, I am told, vAglish bacon; but as the man who recom-
C3ril Ray is on holiday
mended the bacon went on to advise English sausages, one can only suppose that patriotism had got the better of him. And he wanted Gentle- man's Relish, too. Another thing you can't get in Paris: cheesecake.
The stained-glass windows that Chagall has made for a new synagogue in Jerusalem, which have been a key source of critical delight all summer, are, quite apart from their artistic value, a splendid example of what a good stained-glass window should do. And one of the things it should not do is be too darned explicit. It should be a pleasant blur of colour as you settle into your seat, something to puzzle over and wonder at during the lengthier parts of the service, only finally and at length suggesting something serious about the universe. Stained glass that tells you something about the universe as you sit down is usually a spent force by the end of the litany—or, in this case, the kaddish. The Chagall windows seem first just eddies of wild colour; later, they separate out into sym- bols—a globe, like a bulging fruit, all the rounder for not being a mathematical sphere; horses grazing on a parched glass prairiet. a sun from the angry beginning of the world, tossing on a sea of blood and fire. The windows are actually boilt up from the symbols of the twelve tribes of Judah; but all the same one is reminded of Chesterton's definition of Gothic, where all the grotesques are acceptable if piled up in praise of God. Chagall's absurd horses with their weird heads and occasionally hands and wings have the endearing oddity of gar- goyles. The windows are displayed in a card- board-sided marquee with gravel on the floor; it says an immense amount for them that they seem as compelling in this context, and even at ten in the morning, as even that well-known P. G. Wodehouse prayer-jerker, the Sunday evening sermon in summer time.
One reason why such journalists as are left in Paris tend to look haggard just now is the debili- tating game of putsch-spotting. Every now and then a journalist is visited with a conviction that the putsch will be tonight, and stays up all night crouched over his typewriter hoping to be the first to report it. Nothing whatever then happens.
One possible way of determining a putsch might be to look up the telephone directory and see if by any chance there was some date that has not so far had a street named after it. That would be a good date to choose, obviously. Any town that can quite seriously call a street Passage de la Vierge can obviously call a street anything; and there are reflections, once you look, of just about every political situation you care to name.' What about Impasse du Mont Tonnerre for every summit meeting there has ever been, or, for the French Parliament, Rue de l'Ancienne Comedic? The impossibility of portraying Princess Margaret in the popular press at • the moment could be regarded as an Impasse de la Photographie—and heaven knows what situations are envisaged by Impasse Poole, Rue des Tennis and Avenue do Square. Rue drr Pas-de-la-Mtde seems appropriate enough for Berlin, but even there an impasse does better : Impasse des Beni/s, I suggest.
Previous page
