Paris underground

Because we are a one-car family--Denis and I, I make my way around town mostly by Métro--the Parisian subway. It's by far the fastest way to get about town, while driving is one of the slowest. With mostly narrow one-way streets, mostly irritable drivers, and insufficient parking, Paris is pretty much a nightmare to drive in. Even the seemingly most simple journey can take an hour or much more, culminating in endless circling for a parking space.

Adding to the traffic aggravation, the latest innovation of our environmentalist mayor has been the creation of bus corridors in the former right lanes of all the major streets. The immediate result is that all the main arteries of the city have had their carrying capacity diminished by a fourth to a half. Meanwhile, the bus fleet hasn't been augmented to take advantage of the corridors. So traffic is backed up everywhere, just adding to--rather than relieving--the pollution of the city as all those car engines sit around idling. The bus corridors are bounded by dangerous curbing to prevent cars from easily crossing into them. But motorcycles--hey, no problem! The bus lanes immediately became motorcycle speedways. Meanwhile, imagine what happens when you need to make a right turn. The bus lane is to your right, full of motorcycles hurtling at breakneck speed, along with occasional massive bus. It's a nightmare!

But back to the Métro, which is a historic part of Paris. It was originally conceived in 1845 as a network to connect the major railroad stations of the city: la Gare Saint-Lazare, la Gard de Nord, la Gare de l'Est, la Gare de Montparnasse, la Gare d'Austerlitz. But there was a long, very French gap between the conception and the realization--53 years actually, spent arguing about what the layout should be and under whose dominion the future Métropolitain should lie. But the imminence of the World Expo in Paris in 1900 finally forced the hand of the city. The Ligne 1 was (logically) the first completed, fully three months after the opening of the Expo. It was followed in 1903 by my line, the 2, connecting Porte Dauphineto the west, continuing in a great upwards arc, and finishing at Nation at its eastern terminal.

Today there are 13 lines criss-crossing the city, mostly underground, and they do a pretty darn good job of getting anywhere you need to go with no more than two changes of train maximum. The Métro is almost unique in being the only thing that is really clearly marked, and easy to understand and navigate. This is in contrast to everything else in Paris, which seems expressly designed to disguise its purpose or destination and to frustrate and bewilder the poor newcomer. But, newcomers take comfort, Parisians are just as baffled when they're out of their usual neighborhoods.

You rarely have to wait more than 4 or 5 minutes for a train to arrive, and their stops--although frequent--are efficiently brief. Except, of course, when there is a perturbation or semi-strike. That's when the conductors of the trains stage a slowdown on certain lines, usually on Thursdays. They're afraid to do it on Fridays because people would get nasty if you started messing with the beginning of their weekend. Perturbations happen every few months--just frequently enough so you remember how much you depend on the integrity of the Métro system and the goodwill of all those train drivers--which is exactly the point. I--touch wood--have never experienced an all-out strike, and I hope I never will. There was a total strike of all public transportation in Paris which lasted for months, sometime in the '80s or early '90s, which of course paralyzed the city and made life for its inhabitants pretty much unbearable.

The stations themselves vary from sublime (at the Louvre) to fairly grim. Yet I've never felt really afraid on a Paris Métro. Pickpockets; however, are rife in areas where there are lots of tourists. The city is good about announcing on all the trains when pickpockets have been sighted, so that you become extra vigilant. Traveling by Métro involves lots of walking and climbing of stairs. If your day includes several destinations, you've had a workout.

I can't really say I like the Métro, but I do find it interesting most of the time, simply for the sake of observing the variety of human behavior. There's the usual subway phenomenon of avoiding eye contact. But there's so much life in the Métro. So many lives. I'm in awe of the variety of them. Packs of giggling teenagers; foreigners from all over the world; grand African ladies in full native dress and regal turbans; and couples--so many, many couples of so many different sorts. An infinite variety of couples.

Once, in the station Barbès-Rochechouart, I saw something which is graven in my memory. Barbès is an unusual station in that it connects two lines--mine, which runs above-ground at that point, and the 4 line, which is underground. To get from one to the other, you have to climb 4 very long flights of stairs. On this particular winter evening, I had emerged from a train on the lower level. I saw a man in a wheelchair. He actually had only a torso, with absolutely no trace of legs. He was very animated, zipping around with the aid of his powerful arms.

I should interject here for those of you who don't know Paris, that it makes almost no provision for handicapped people. Part of this is because the city is so old; the retrofitting will be a nightmare. There are no ramps, nothing. To live in Paris as a handicapped person takes enormous courage, and frankly, I don't see how it can be done without a constant caretaker.

My protagonist, however, was alone. Because you almost never see anyone in a wheelchair here, for the above reason, I watched him with interest. He zipped over to a total stranger, spoke a couple of words. The tapped man placed a kind and not at all condescending hand on the wheelchair man's shoulder. Then he tapped another stranger, and the two of them proceeded to carry the man in the wheelchair up the four flights of stairs.

These two kind strangers were not connecting, so they walked back down two flights to leave the station. I watched with fascination to see what would happen next. The wheelchair man zipped over to a vending machine and bought a candy bar. Then he waited for the train alone, like everyone else. He waited until the train had pulled up and opened its doors to again abruptly speak to someone, who helped him into the train in a matter-of-fact way.

All this fascinated me. I was amazed by this man's tactic of waiting until the absolute last instant to ask for someone's help. Perhaps this illustrates that he had complete confidence that whomever he helped would be willing. Had I been he, I would have had to carefully scope out my prospects, then make my arrangements well in advance, so as not to feel flustered by the transaction and the transition into the train. He, obviously, was much more at ease than I.

I loved Parisians that night. I was touched by their matter-of-fact compassion which treated the wheelchair man's situation as entirely normal and their own participation as entirely natural. No one missed a beat. I couldn't help but feeling that this was a very strong social fabric, citizens helping each other out and no one getting all emotional or agitated about it. (Please, I'm all too aware of how awful it is that there is so little provision for handicapped people in this city.)

Of course, I've witnessed less grand moments. One afternoon, I watched a young couple get on the train with their 3 young children. The mother squeezed the kids onto one empty seat, then sat across the aisle from them, while the father stood behind her. The couple didn't appear very prosperous, but they were perfectly clean and well-fed. I admired the way the mother interacted with her children, talking to them constantly and repeatedly cautioning them not to inadvertently kick the legs of the passengers across from them (myself included). But while she talked with them so intelligently, she parceled out to them handfuls of potato chips from a bag she held. The kids stuffed these in their mouths, dropping huge drifts of chip shards all over themselves and the people around them. As they squirmed in their seats, they created a giant oil slick on the upholstery. When they got off the train, they left behind an essentially ruined seat which no one could sit in. I was baffled by this incongruity in the mother.

Another time, I saw the daughter of a gypsy beggar woman defecate right next to the steps in the Barbès station because her mother wouldn't leave her post to accompany the child to the public toilet. The gypsies make very hard use of their children in Paris, forcing them to beg and steal--because by French law, children cannot be imprisoned in any way--and of course taking all the profits from them.

All in all, the Métro is an integral part of most Parisians' lives. It has figured in their history, in their literature and music. The poet Louis Aragon spoke of les bouches des Métros, or the mouths of the Métros. This phrase has always stuck in my head as I wander about the city, because the entrances are like mouths, swallowing people down into unknown destinies and then spilling them out again, like so many animated words telling altogether a story of humanity. Most recently, the Métro has featured very prominently in French film (speaking of Amélie, or Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, as it was released here). In the film, delightful intrigue and romance are fomented in the Fotomatons of the Métro, to the tune of becoming the biggest box-office hit this country of film fanatics has ever known.

At the moment, my own Métro station--Monceau--is closed for repairs until nearly the end of March. I nonchalantly watched this happen to plenty of other stops, the trains passing swiftly through the temporarily ghostly station after the requisite reminder that the next station was closed for repairs. When I saw some scaffolding and plywood leaned up against the railing of my own small station, I had felt a small worm of worry stir in my chest. But surely little Monceau--not connecting to anywhere--didn't need major overhaul. Only, yes, apparently it did, and now I have to trudge an additional 10 minutes to and from the next nearest station. Not a big deal when your hands are free, but an exhausting finish when I'm burdened with, say, bags of exotic Oriental groceries from Belleville, about 12 stops downstream from my own. But, schlepping is one of the things Parisians excel at, and they do it without audible complaint. My final, burdened trudge home, with bulging plastic bags cutting into the palms of my hands and the muscles of my shoulders burning--like riding the Métro--just makes me feel that much more a part of the life of the city.

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