Sounds of Paris
Ode to the Noisy 8th Arrondissement, August 2020 (Last Days in Paris, Part 4)
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This is how it is, or was, for our first year in Paris: Every morning at 7:00 a refrigerated truck pulls onto Rue L.M., bringing cafeteria supplies for the few hundred workers who occupy the offices across the street. The truck driver shouts back and forth to the security guards, who open the iron gates of the office building. The shouting back-and-forth, opening of the gates, and unloading of the food truck takes about 45 minutes, during which time the truck idles noisily—first beneath our window, and then across the street.
Just after the arrival of the truck, our upstairs neighbor puts on her wooden-heeled boots and begins readying three of her four small children for school. Between 7:15 and 8:15, she traverses the length of the apartment, back and forth, back and forth, dozens of times, clomping and making breakfast and shouting at the children, who are crying because they don’t want to go to school, and also running from their father, who is angry that they won’t be quiet. Eventually the children put on their own shoes and stomp around for a while, until at last the mother and three of the children leave their apartment, slamming the door behind them, at which point the father begins yelling at the remaining child, a toddler, who refuses to eat his breakfast.
After the door slams upstairs I hear the clattering of the building’s tiny, ancient elevator, up to their floor, down past ours, an elevator so questionable I only use it if I am carrying something heavy to our apartment on l’étage noble, also known as the second floor, although it is actually the third, because in France the ground floor doesn’t count. Then the downstairs door slams, and from our windows facing the inner courtyard I see this young and chaotic family making their way out into the world. They exhaust me, these adorable French children and their impeccable, determined mother.