Sitting in the Café de la Mairie, the pedestrian catches conversations on the fly:
—…and with the Republican Guard.
A couple in their twenties walk past the terrace and we guess that he is talking to her about the opening ceremony the night before and the performance of Aya Nakumara with the Gendarmerie military band.
Another man, sitting in front of the window overlooking the Place Saint-Sulpice, advises the woman accompanying him:
—Stop flagellating yourself…
The collective and the personal; the political and the intimate. After days of nervous anticipation for the opening ceremony, Paris is Paris again. The boys and girls talk about politics and life, which in France are one and the same, and, once the fences and police checkpoints have been removed for the ceremony, everything returns to normal.
There is a Paris that, if we had not been told that a few hours ago there was a grand party just a stone’s throw from here, and if a giant screen had not been installed in this very Place Saint-Sulpice to follow the competitions, would not have known that the Games have just begun and that for 15 days the eyes of the world will be fixed on the city.
The pedestrian, with a café allongé on the table and a little book that will serve as inspiration this Saturday, writes in his notebook: “A postal van passes by. On the sidewalk, a man in a matching blue T-shirt with a blue bucket and a mop in his hand. A dog. Two bicycles. A taxi. A woman jogging.”
The little book on the table is called Attempt to exhaust a Parisian place, and was written by Georges Perec, an author who liked to impose difficulties on himself when writing and for example wrote a novel without any words with the letter andIn October 1974, Perec sat in the same café and set out to describe: “What we generally do not notice, what we do not see, what is not important: what happens when nothing happens, if it is not the weather, people, cars, clouds.”
The pedestrian agrees that this is what can really explain the secret of a city, and not the other: the millions of tourists expected these days, the 45,000 policemen and gendarmes, the more than 10,000 athletes and thousands of volunteers, and the scenes that seem exotic in Paris, like the Mormon couple he saw the other day on line 8 of the metro, wearing white shirts and ties, or the general predisposition to smile and chat with strangers.
Sitting in the Café de la Mairie, the pedestrian continues to write: “An overflowing rubbish bin. It starts to rain and it gets cold, pedestrians take out their umbrellas.” And he thinks that, after the ceremony, Paris has returned to being Paris, but it is a Paris that, for a few hours now, has been a little more friendly, relaxed. As if a weight had been lifted from its shoulders after a rainy opening ceremony, but without the feared attacks. A wild celebration of an open and universal France. A shot of self-esteem for a country in permanent depression. “Impressive,” headlines Le Parisien. L’Équipe: “Beyond the clouds.” And Le Monde: “Magical!”
Everything could have gone wrong and everything went right: France needed it and now it seems that a loud and expressive collective “ugh!” can be heard on the Place de Saint-Sulpice and throughout the city. In French, the word is written ouf, and has a double meaning. The interjection of relief. And, in slang, madness.
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