Paris Was Ours Read Online Free

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    Only last month I met a young Frenchwoman who had spent six years as a successful artists’ representative in Los Angeles and had recently moved back to Paris, her hometown. Reentrywas proving so grueling that she was exhibiting symptoms usually associated with road rage. She became incoherent as she tried to convey to me her vexation at being turned down by a local bank that had refused to let her open a checking account. I was not unsympathetic: that morning I had received a threatening letter from URSSAF, one of many organizations that levy heavy taxes on individuals to offset the cost of paying for the French government’s generous social services. So I understood what she was going through—I understood, yet I refused to feel sorry for her. I knew that she would soon appreciate the irony of it all. Living in Paris is “priceless,” but it will cost you. It ain’t cheap, yet it is one of the greatest bargains on earth. In our day and age, there are only two ways to get free of money worries: either accumulate wealth, lots of it, or move to Paris.

DIANE JOHNSON

    Learning French Ways
    W HEN WE MOVED to Paris, fifteen years ago, I trusted that all I had heard about Frenchwomen—their perfect clothes, dedicated cookery, and elaborate wiles—would turn out on closer inspection to be untrue, and I would find they were just like the rest of us. Instead I learned that there’s a lot to these stereotypes. I was sure of it with the first recipe I tried from the Sunday newspaper magazine, marked “Très facile”: you began by removing the fish’s backbone, rinsing the fish for twenty minutes, then boiling it for twenty minutes with leek, laurel, and thyme, then cooling, straining, and reducing the broth for twenty minutes—all this before you began cooking the fish. It was then that I knew there were some serious lessons ahead of me. Americans at their foodiest don’t employ fourteen ingredients to make stuffed courgettes.
    Much is expected of a French hostess, who presents an exquisite dinner—notice I don’t say “cooks” it. When I gave my first Parisian dinner parties, I would buy
poulet masala
from Marks and Spencer (there was one here then), on the theory that no Frenchwoman would have heard of it, or none would use preprepared food, but I was wrong about that, too. They are not
complexées
(their word) about making things from scratch,and whereas we might cheat but conceal it, they blatantly use frozen food and the microwave with no sense of transgression. Their object is, after all, a delicious
repas
, not competition. My game was up when, therefore, French hostesses also began to serve dishes from Marks and Spencer, to great enthusiasm.
    As to that exquisitely turned-out look, Frenchwomen do shop carefully, buy two or three good things each year, and put them on to go to the store. They do indeed flirt with the butcher, which shocked me no end the first time I went marketing with my friend Charlotte: “Ooh, Monsieur Dupont, je sais que vous avez quelque chose de très, très bon pour moi,” and so forth. Daunting as this resolute charm was, I told myself that perfection ought to be decipherable and imitable. Could I, a somewhat lazy and absentminded foreigner, learn French ways?
    You can almost tell how long an American or English woman has been in Paris by whether she’s wearing a scarf, only the most obvious sign that cultural reprogramming has begun. Every French person wears one, but Americans tend not to at first. Ditto the purse, a preoccupation that steals in on you like fog. You wake up one morning and find they are all wearing a sort of handbag you haven’t ever thought of having in your wardrobe. Last week I noticed that every Frenchwoman was carrying a big, brown leather, rather rustic-looking handbag with wide straps and lots of buckles and studs. The ultimate version is from Bottega Veneta and costs two thousand euros, with Dior saddlebag-shaped ones not far behind. Lancel,