Such a Big Desk
On Parisian Caves & the Impossibility of Downsizing in Paris (from the notebooks, Dec. 2018)
If you ever live in Paris you will eventually find your cave. You know how American apartments tend to come with a closet or at the very least a fridge? Not so in Paris. A closet is a rarity and a fridge is a privilege, but everyone gets une cave (pronounced with a short O, like grovel). It’s in the renter’s bill of rights or something.
A misleading French property website I found defines “cave” as “cellar,” but anyone who has a cave knows that it’s really where all of your dreams go to die and your unused possessions go to rot. For it to be a true cave, it must have walls so thick no screams will escape, and it must have no working lights. It should also have an extremely heavy door that slams shut behind you. Hopefully you have not ventured to the cave area alone, because a true cave is soundproof, and the door only unlocks from the outside.
We’d lived in our building for seven weeks before we even found our cave. Embassy folks kept asking, “Have you seen your cave?” and I would quickly change the subject, because I hadn’t seen it and didn’t want to. I’d heard stories of the Paris caves, and they all sounded like something thought up by Edgar Allen Poe.