Overheard the other day on Radio France Internationale, a kind of literary commentator of daily life, telling the following anecdote: He found, in a newspaper, a classified advert which said ( I am telling from memory): “Dear unknown Miss, I am the young man who was sitting next to you in Restaurant… last Saturday. On that day, like every Saturday, I took my grandmother out for lunch. While she was talking to me, my attention wandered to you, you were the tall brunette dressed in (…) who was sitting at the next table, and were reading a novel. and while you were on your way out, you had the waiter pass to me a note which I found very touching. I would very much like to meet you again. Signed (…)” Isn’t the whole story touching, said our commentator. One imagines the young man, neatly dressed for the occasion, coming to pick up his grandmother, as on every Saturday. She herself is her best clothes, with a drop of cologne behind her ears, and started eagerly waiting for him a quarter of an hour before the time he usually comes. They go out, she probably chooses the same restaurant half of the time. She has ordered a lamb chop maybe and a Tarte Tatin, and is telling him for the umpteenth time how she met his grandfather on the eve of the feast of St Jean, in a provincial town. He, grown a little absent minded from the retelling, lets his eyes wander to the tall brunette, absorbed in a novel in the table next to them. He believes that she has not noticed him, but later on a note comes to his table, while she is on her way out. One would like the handwriting to be a beautiful cursive, so film-like , or novel-like it all sounds.

Touching indeed, and so classy. It must have happened in one of the provincial towns. Paris struck me as being such a mess, its people rude and tense.

As long as there are young men who take their grandmothers out for lunch every Saturday, said our commentator as a conclusion, and who afterwards pine for brunettes who left them some mysterious note, there is reason to hope about life.

It is the kind of story which made me long so much, in my youth, to go to France. Whatever disappointments I’ve had later on, I guess I’ll always love France for some things. The other day, I happened on the website of a not –too-well known, I guess, French publishing house, called l’Asiathèque, devoted to things Asian. Just on their literature section, these guys had published such books, all in French, as a collection of poems by two 18th century Korean poets, an epic poem by an early 20th century Turkmen, or what is Uzbek poet, another one by a modernist Bengal poet of the 1930’s, a collection of folk tales from an ancient Chinese writer who was interested in the subject, a sort of Andersen of his times.

And it just went on and on like this. Then there was the philosophy section, and still others.

That reminded me of walking near the rue des Ecoles, in the Quartier Latin, and coming on an old Armenian bookstore, like in a film, with a bearded old man wearing wire rimmed round glasses, and shelves crammed full of old Armenian books, but also travel books in different languages, and old bilingual dictionaries. Later on, another library I came upon was doing a special event on Octavio Paz and there were first editions of his works lying open on the front window. In the background, a big ornate hotel particulier was holding an exhibition on “Birds in sacred Western African Art”.

It’s all so densely packed. Everything in Paris is crammed, the culture, the business, the politics. It’s fascinating but impossible to live in, in the long term, unless one was born a Parisian. There is too much of everything, and it’s mostly ridiculously expensive. But thank God, it’s there. The world would be an awful place were it not for the French, you have to allow that to them. But if only they could spread out a bit out of Paris…