Chapter 3 #2
We got off the Métro a couple of stops early so we could walk to the Louvre his favorite way, through the most human-made park I’d ever seen.
I was used to the slightly wild parks at home, the ones that looked like they’d just randomly grown that way and someone had said, “Hey, let’s make that a park.
” This one had been planned, from the pristine rectangles of obsessively clipped lawn to the trees and shrubs spaced with military precision around the perimeter and pruned to exacting specifications.
The flowers looked like they’d been placed with the aid of a ruler and compass.
They looked like little ranks of infantry.
Back home, people flopped all over the grass in parks.
But here, in a park filled with people, signs warned you that the grass was “forbidden,” like some exotic treasure that you were supposed to enjoy only with your eyes.
Instead, everyone promenaded on the gravel walkways under the shade trees or sat primly on metal chairs at the outdoor cafés.
We continued down the wide walkway, and shrubbery replaced the trees, politely but firmly fencing off the lawns from anyone who might be tempted to step on them.
Ahead of us stood an enormous buff-colored building as stiff and regimented as the plants in the park.
Not even the tiniest sprig of green showed against the unrelenting expanse of architecture.
“The Louvre,” Nick said, gesturing like a salesperson.
It bordered three sides of a paved space the size of two or three city blocks.
Arched openings marched along the ground-floor facade.
Smaller rectangular windows, centered above the arches, pierced the floor above.
Triangular hat-looking details crowned the windows.
Youssef would tell me later, after he quit laughing about “hat-looking,” that they were called pediments.
The next floor had even plainer, smaller windows, capped by a gray roof.
It wasn’t an exciting building, or a pretty one.
It looked like it had planted its feet and pulled its shoulders back and was standing up straight.
Taking up space. Intimidating the opponent.
The main entrance, a big glass pyramid crouched in the center of the plaza, clashed hard with the old-fashioned stone.
It didn’t belong, yet when I tried to imagine the space without it, the palace looked smaller and weaker.
I guess the tension between them kept both strong.
“I feel like we’re looking at a standoff,” I told Nick.
“My friend Youssef says pretty much the same thing. He thinks the architect was a genius to build something that fights the existing building so hard. Old versus new. Modern versus historical. Triangle versus rectangle.” We crossed the street and entered the courtyard, where a student tour group engulfed us.
They wore matching yellow neckerchiefs and followed a guide holding a giant yellow sunflower on a long staff.
She was not quite shouting, and her voice had that weighty cadence you hear from teachers that says, This is an important fact; it will be on the quiz.
I shivered. If I’d been in that group, I would have gone AWOL at the first opportunity, even if I’d had to crawl out a window.
“Never fear, mademoiselle,” Nick said, noticing my reaction.
“You are seeing Paris with the Nick Wallace Tour Company. We offer personalized, neckerchief-free, off-the-beaten-track adventures, with no annoying tour-group members, the flexibility to stop for a snack whenever you want, and no stinky bus bathrooms. In fact, no buses at all. Also, the Nick Wallace Tour Company believes that any cultural outing must first be preceded by dumb fun. Or replaced by. This way, please.”
He steered us toward a golden King Tut figure standing nearby.
When we got closer, I realized it wasn’t a mannequin advertising a special exhibition, like I’d thought, but an actual person, encased in stretchy gold fabric, wearing a King Tut mask and standing as still as a column.
Nick dug a coin out of his pocket and tossed it into a little pot sitting on the ground next to the immobile pharaoh.
As the coin chinked against the others, the pharaoh bowed very, very slowly from the waist. Then he straightened up again very, very slowly.
I looked at Nick, grinning. “That was spectacular!”
He grinned back. “Dumb fun, at your service.” He took out his phone.
“Go stand next to him.” I stood beside the pharaoh and tried to imitate his serene poise.
Nick took a photo, and I looked at the pharaoh and said, “Merci,” dropping another coin into his bowl.
He nodded once, gravely. I trotted back to Nick and looked at the photo.
My hair looked cute, which made me happy.
Portland’s humidity usually made it look feral.
“Send that to me, okay? Mina and Lily’ll love it.”
He texted it over. “Mina and Lily?”
“My best friends from Portland. We were on debate team together.” I was just about to tap Send when I noticed a red-clad figure behind me in the photo. His hooded cape hid his face, and he seemed to be pointing at me. “Look at cosplay dude,” I said.
Nick stared. “That’s weird. I didn’t see him when I took the picture.”
“Ooh, spooky.” I grinned at him. “Maybe it’s a ghost. Do you have that new phone with the special paranormal camera?”
Nick laughed. “Maybe it’s the famous Red Man of the Louvre.”
“Who’s that?”
“Some queen had her own personal assassin. The story is, he enjoyed his job so much that he turned into a vampire after he died. If you see him, it’s supposed to mean that somebody’s going to die.”
“Another vampire? I did not realize Paris was the City of Vampires, Nick Wallace Tour Company.”
He smiled reassuringly. “It was probably just another busker. They dress up as all sorts of things.”
“Okay, but now you double have to show me the Mona Lisa, in case a vampire bites me and I die.” Nick shepherded us through the line standing and the ticket buying while I concentrated on not letting the crush of tourists separate us.
Once we got into the galleries, it wasn’t as crowded, but then we had to walk for miles.
You’d think they would put their star attractions closer to the entrance.
“Here it is.” He ushered me into a large room just off a hall filled with endless portraits of saints.
People crammed in, pointing phones at a surprisingly small painting.
My heart beat faster. This was it. The painting that everyone went to see when they visited Paris—even people who didn’t like art.
We nudged our way through the crowd until we stood in front of her.
We were the only people who didn’t have our backs to her, holding up phones for the iconic selfie.
The title plaque called her La Joconde rather than the Mona Lisa, but it was her, all right: the famous smiling woman.
I examined every crackled inch, expecting at any minute to see the magic.
Mona appeared entirely ordinary, just a woman in a three-quarters pose, her long hair parted down the middle, her hands folded gracefully on her lap, looking like she was trying to remember where she left her car keys.
I turned to Nick, trying to work out why I was so disappointed. “I’m not getting anything here.”
He shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I like Renaissance paintings, and I’ve never gotten why this is the one. It’s okay, but I don’t think it’s worth special status.”
I considered it again, looking for anything I might have missed. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” I said. “And it looks just like the T-shirts.” I stuck my phone into my pocket without taking a photo. I’d just get postcards at the gift shop.
“Yeah, it moves me deeply, too,” Nick said.
We turned away. He led me back down the hall of saints, pointing out the funny ones, like a very annoyed Saint Peter, apparently because of the cartoony cleaver stuck in his head.
Then he navigated us to a ginormous room of ginormous sculptures, which were so perfect they were lifeless.
He watched my meh response, nodded to himself like I’d passed a test, and took me to a different part of the museum to see a pair of immense winged bulls with men’s heads.
I fell in love with their serenely amused expressions and elf ears.
“Can one of these guys please be my emotional-support statue?” I asked. “I feel I need one by my side at all times.”
Nick chuckled. “Deal. One for you and one for me. What would you like to see next, mademoiselle?”
I thought for a minute. “I want to see your favorite thing in this museum.”
He didn’t stop to think but led me to a room in a different wing and pointed to a small painting of an old man sitting behind a desk in a room full of wiggly kids.
It was called The Schoolmaster. A couple of the kids were playing on the floor, and one little guy was trying to climb out the window.
Some of the others might have been doing schoolwork.
Or running a preschool numbers racket. It was that kind of chaotic.
“Okay, why?” I asked, trying to discern any Art-with-a-capital-A aspect to it. “It’s cute, but isn’t it a little, I don’t know, minor?”
“It’s a view straight into the past,” he said.
“This is how schools used to look. Can you imagine how hard it must have been to learn anything in a roomful of kids presided over by one exhausted old man? They didn’t even have books or enough tables and chairs.
Things like this make the past a real place. I think that’s magic.”
I loved that he’d trust me enough to show me a funny little painting and tell me the truth about why he loved it instead of picking something famous and safe and blathering about composition or artistic whatever.
As we rode the escalator under the pyramid up to the exit, Nick said, “Well? What do you think? Did you like it?”
I gave him my biggest smile. “You’re definitely getting a five-star review on Yelp.”