I smile at this, suddenly aware that I haven’t even bothered to look for the Eiffel Tower yet. “Thank you,” I say. I stand, not sure whether to feel disappointed about the lack of records here, or hopeful because this Olivier Berr might be able to help.
“Bonne chance,” Carole says with a smile. She reaches out to shake my hand. “Good luck,” she says, looking me in the eye.
Carole Didot’s walking directions take me through a few side streets, onto the crowded rue de Rivoli. I pass the Gothic facade of the H?tel de Ville on my left and continue down a strip of storefronts—H&M, Zara, Celio, Etam—that would be at home on Newbury Street in Boston. Several French flags whisper in the breeze, their crisp red, white, and blue blocks of color saluting as I walk by. The few trees that dot the sidewalk have blushed deep red with the coming of autumn and have begun to drop their leaves on the sidewalks, where a steady stampede of people tramples them.
I do as Carole directed and turn left just as I begin passing the enormous Louvre museum on my left. I emerge into a sprawling square surrounded on all four sides by the walls of the museum itself, and for a moment, I stop in my tracks, breathless. I don’t know much of the history of France, but I remember reading that the Louvre used to be a palace, and as I look around me, I can almost imagine a seventeenth-century monarch striding through the square, trailed by his attendants.
Emerging on the other side, I see the pedestrian bridge Carole told me about. She had explained that the rails of the bridge are lined with padlocks, put there by lovers to declare the sealing of their relationships. It’s a romantic thought, but I know that padlock or not, relationships are temporary, even when you believe in them with all your heart.
I look to the right as I cross the bridge and smile to see the tip of the Eiffel Tower soaring over rooftops in the distance on the other side of the river. I’ve seen it in photographs a thousand times, but seeing it in person for the first time that reminds me that I’m really, truly here, thousands of miles away, across an ocean from home. I miss Annie terribly at that moment.
It’s not until I’m halfway across the wooden bridge that I’m struck with a sudden sense of déjà vu, as if I’ve been here before. It takes me a moment to realize why, and when I do, I stop in my tracks so abruptly that the woman behind me runs directly into me. She mumbles something in French, shoots me a withering glance, and makes an exaggerated, wide loop around me. I ignore her and turn in a slow circle, my eyes wide. To the right, beyond the glittering Seine, the tip of the Eiffel Tower slices through the blue of the sky in the distance. Behind me, the Louvre museum looms, palatial and enormous, on the river’s bank. To my left, I can see an island connected to two bridges. I quickly count the arches. Seven on the left bridge; five on the right bridge. And ahead, the building Carole had called the Institut de France looks a lot like a second palace, as if it and the Louvre were once halves of the same royal kingdom.
My heart pounds, and I can hear Mamie’s voice in my ears, telling me the fairy tale she repeated so often that I knew it by heart by the time I was Annie’s age.
“Every day, the prince walked across the wooden bridge of love to see his princess. The great palace lay behind him, and ahead of him was the domed castle at the entrance to the princess’s kingdom. He had to cross a great moat to get to his one true love, and to his left, there were two bridges leading to the heart of the city—one with seven arches, and one with five. To his right, a giant sword cut through the sky, warning him of the danger that lay ahead. Still, he came each day and braved that danger because he loved the princess. He said that all the danger in the world could not keep him away from her. Every day, the princess sat at her window and listened for his footsteps, because she knew he would never disappoint her. He loved her, and when he promised he would come for her, he always kept his word.”
I’d always thought that Mamie’s stories were simply fairy tales she’d heard as a little girl, but for the first time, I find myself wondering whether she’d made them up herself and set them in her beloved Paris. I shake my head and begin walking again, but my knees feel wobbly beneath me. I imagine my grandmother as a teenage girl, walking across this same bridge, taking in the same buildings, the same current beneath her, imagining that a prince was coming for her one day. Had her footsteps fallen where mine fall now, in this very same place, some seventy years earlier? Had she stood on this bridge and looked for the stars to appear to the east, over the island in the middle of the Seine, the way she waits for them to appear now from her window each night? Had she regretted leaving it behind forever?