Another weekend in Paris

My last couple days in Paris, last weekend that is, felt as close to bohemian as I ever may, for superficial reasons but perhaps understandable ones also. We lived out of a friend's friend's studio, with a curtain to separate the bathroom and making pasta every night (it's become a running joke), unintentionally talking into the sleeping hours rather than going out. The daytime, too, does not go as planned, so plans become pointless.

On one day we walk and walk and through Promenade Plantee and other gardens, and the cemetery where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and I'm sure some French people are buried. Wilde's grave was a flowing Egyptian-like sculpture (of a woman I think) on top of a block of stone "defaced" by proclamations of love to the playwright and hearts and kisses. But I really could not tell if it was defaced, or sanctioned by authorities, and in either case, if Wilde wanted this. I don't know how he could. We arrive some time later at Grand Palais hoping to see Dali and Arcimboldo in action. On the way my friend is sure we run into a bit of a celebrity, the ex-minister of culture, who holds open the exit at the subway for us, because he's a leftist and would do that kind of thing (take the metro, I mean). But it's a rainy day so many have the same idea as we do - i.e., the line at Grand Palais is not worth it so we settle for Petit Palais across the street, to see exhibitions on William Blake and the Byzantine Empire / Mount Athos.

On another day we take the rental bikes (a recent innovation in big French cities) to that bohemian stronghold, Montmartre, then walk past the sex shops and Moulin Rouge to the top of the hill, one of the best views to see all of Paris. In another way I've already seen all of Paris, thanks to the host of the other friend I met here. He gave me a quick driving tour of the city, hitting the Place de la Bastille, the Eiffel Tower ("See how the flowers bloom?" he said. "I arranged it just for you."), Arc de Triomphe (he says he's the only person in the city to drive around it twice at times like this), Les Invalides - basically the things I'd only want to see for a few seconds anyway.

That last day, we were lucky because the sun came out, so we could sit on the Seine waiting for our train. Surprisingly I couldn't tell which way the water flowed, but ducklings crept by periodically (five in all I think, or the same one five times), and sadly I think they had lost their mother.

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Reading: Camus, Exile and the Kingdom
Listening to: Janis Joplin

To grandma's house

To make my mom happy, I had simply planned to visit my grandma in nearby Dong Nai Province as another checklist item, so I didn’t know what to think when my aunt (who lives with my grandma) told us to arrive by 8 a.m., in time to go to the cemetery. Long past the stage of surprises, I wasn’t jarred by the request, just curious. Things are seldom what I’d expect.

After an hour-long ride, my two cousins and I reached Dong Nai early and walked through a narrow alley of puddles and cracked pavement to get to the house. As we approached, the street widened and the buildings shortened, letting in the brilliant, peach-colored daylight. Before I knew it, my cousin was walking through an open door as if he’d done it every day of his life. I didn’t follow him far because my grandma was sitting on the ceramic-tiled floor next to the entrance. I joined her, as instructed.

Although it took some time to explain which one of us – me or my cousin – was her granddaughter, this actually wasn’t my first time seeing her. I’d almost forgotten that my grandma had visited us in America several years ago. Then again, maybe I had forgotten because all I ever remembered was how lonely she’d been and how much she looked forward to returning to Vietnam. Seeing her face now seemed right, not in the way that you recognize a face from your past, but in the way that a piece fits a jigsaw puzzle you didn’t realize existed.

She’s ninety-two, I learned at some point. Then, as if she were discussing a noodle recipe, my grandma started telling me about her funeral arrangements.

It wasn’t until 9 a.m. that fourteen of us – cousins, aunts, and uncles I’d never heard of, plus my two cousins and I – piled into a rented van with fruit, rice, chicken, and flowers. The ride to the cemetery lasted almost as long as the one to Dong Nai, but with a better view. Along the countryside, leafy plants formed their own roof-like layer a foot above the ground, and beyond them lay forests, some natural, some, upon closer inspection, comprised of neatly planted rows of shadowy deciduous. Something like a mix between a bus stop and a gazebo, structures of wooden posts and thatched roofs dotted the highway and enclosed several hammocks. I couldn’t imagine how people could live there, but then why else would there be hammocks? My camera batteries had died of course.

Concealed behind a small rambutan grove, the cemetery could only be reached by a muddy path barely wide enough for our van. Among the things you don’t think about until they happen: I’d never really visited a cemetery before. But based on those I passed by or saw in films, it wasn’t hard to notice the differences. Here the graves were packed tightly together in geometric rows, with just enough room for pedestrians. While most graves I’d seen in America were hidden below ground except for their headstones (therefore creating the illusion of space), these tombs included visible, coffin-like boxes I would expect to find in a sepulcher. Standing next to one of them, I thought with dread, could there be nothing but the edge of the small concrete block separating me from a corpse? The anxiety later dissipated when I looked through an opening on top of one of the “boxes” only to find it empty but for dirt. The bodies, then, must have been six feet under.

Except for that lapse, the trip was so absurdly detached as to be worthy of Meursault. My aunts prepared for the ceremony, arranging the food and incense on top of my grandpa’s “box,” while the men pulled weeds from another tomb that had no covering. Weeds and dead grass were commonplace. The grave turned out to be that of an uncle who died fighting for the South. I hadn’t known about him, not because I believed I had no uncles, but because my parents told me little about my relatives. Out of sight, out of mind.

The ceremony, I realized, was just like any cung I’ve had at home. Walk into almost any Vietnamese house in America, and you’ll find a ban tho, a sort of bureau on which families place photos, flowers, and incense to remember the dead. During a cung, families make food and sometimes burn paper clothes and (valueless) money. Just as at home, where the cung is performed out of respect, not mourning, our trip to the cemetery wasn’t meant to be morbid. So while the adults went through the motions, I joined the kids, who had run off to pick rambutan.