A deep, luscious red began making its way down my pant leg, one that resembled less of a spill and more of a Rothko painting. While I didn’t mean to nudge my glass, I had only myself to blame- it was a blazing June evening in Canal Saint Martin, the 10th arrondissement of Paris, and I was woozy. My deepest mental illness, one where I simply must walk ten to fifteen thousand steps a day, was in full force, taking me from Montparnasse all the way to my destination, Chez Prune. I was nearly fainting by the time I sat down, and in my infinite wisdom, decided it was a good time to kick back a drink or two.
The woman waiting on me didn’t help either- big, ocean-blue eyes, with an extremely French haircut; auburn down to her jawline and effortlessly cool. She looked like a mix of Emma Stone and Maude Apatow, and she spoke nearly perfect English, veiled in an accent she pensively told me was “like your Redneck, but for France”. I laughed, and asked her exactly where it was she was from. Orne, a small department in Normandy, was her answer. Before I could make out even the slightest reply, she deadpanned once more and said: “It is home of the Camembert Cheese. You must have heard of this cheese.” I silently nodded. “Very messy. Like me.” I laughed just a little bit, the kind of chuckle you make when you’re not sure someone is finished with their story or not. At that precise moment, she began howling at her own joke, an unbelievable display of jovialness in this otherwise exceedingly stone faced French woman. She said she would bring out the cheese for me to try, as well as a glass of local Merlot that pairs well. She also gave me her name: Olivia.
Olivia dropped off a wooden slab with a sizable slice of camembert, half a baguette, and a dozen dried cherries. I gazed over the now menacing glass of Merlot, hypnotized in its warm, glow. Immediately, I began to sweat. Not the normal, everyday sweat I’ve been dredging through in the French summer heat, but an advanced, faucet-like perspiration. A nearly comical level of sweat was beading down my face, and I believe that the man one table over saw what condition I was in, and decided to step in. As he got up, I turned to look and immediately knocked my glass over- spilling the lovely Merlot all over my white carpenter pants. The man and I stared at each other for what felt like a lifetime.
France, and especially, especially Paris, has a reputation for being hostile to outsiders. They can spot a tourist from a mile away, and they will immediately shift into one of a couple gears: stonewalling you, pretending they don’t understand you, or, the simplest and perhaps most French of them all- fundamentally ignoring you. That’s the stereotype anyway, and in my nearly half dozen visits to Paris, one of those attitudes has always been a staple, whether in a bar, restaurant, museum, or cab.
So imagine my surprise when this gruff, mustachioed man nearly leapt from his table to give me his glass of water. Now, there were a few red flags about this glass of water. Number one was undoubtedly the number of lemon slices. One slice of lemon? Absolutely, a kiss of flavor to any beverage. Two slices of lemon? Alright, I respect it, you have a love for infusing a good bit of citrus into your drink. But this man had seven slices of lemon in his glass. Where was God hiding when this man requested seven whole slices of lemon for his water?
The next red flag was a dash of paint on the lower half of the glass, which I surmised had to originate from the hands of the man who offered it. He had splotches of white, blue, and green, but it seemed that for some reason, the white had not completely dried. But I was running on fumes, and I did not deny the water, nor did I ask any questions. I grabbed the glass, nodded, and chugged the entire thing down in one single, satisfying gulp.
I set the glass down, but before I could say thank you to the man, he began clapping. “Bravo! Bravo!” he began shouting, at a decibel that was perhaps one level too high for what was actually happening. I laughed, and thanked him both for the water, and for his evaluation of my performance. In a thick French accent, the man replied:
“Performance… Yes, yes, that is exactly what it was. And it was the role you born to play!” He held his hand out, still a bit blotched from paint, and introduced himself.
“My name is Jean-Paul, and I am a clown.” I looked at Jean-Paul, and my mind began to unravel, as it does in surreal moments like these.
“I graduate from the most famous school- Ecole Phillipe Gaulier! You have heard, yes, yes, you must have heard of this.” I sadly shook my head, telling Jean-Paul I had never heard of the school, but I had the utmost respect for the craft of clowns everywhere, especially those who were classically trained. He laughed, and put his shoes up on the chair that separated us. I felt only a tiny bit cheated when I saw that they were a simple pair of black boots.
“No no no, this place, Ecole Philippe Gaulier, not like American, the clown for France is much different. Clown is not just to make you smile, clown is the priest, clown is a healer.” Jean-Paul became serious after saying all this, his expression turning from jovial to hardened, deathly serious.
“What is a man like you doing here?” Jean-Paul asked, squinting his face.
“I’m a bit lost. I’m here with some friends but we separated for the day, just to explore. I love them a lot but wonder if we’ll all stay friends when we’re older. My girlfriend and I are doing great, but there’s a feeling in the back of my head”, I slap the back of my neck so Jean-Paul understands, “that things are going too well. I guess I just have a lot on my mind, but that’s life right?”
Jean-Paul began studying me, as if I had said something deeply moving, or on the other side of the spectrum, highly offensive. He rubbed his mustache for a few seconds before taking the glass full of lemon and slamming it down on the table. (How it didn’t break, I will never know. Perhaps this was a class taught at Ecole Philippe Gaulier? How to dramatically slam objects without actually breaking them? I’d believe it, honestly.)
Jean Paul leaned over the table, and announced: “My friend, you are in need of a lesson from a clown. Come, and I will show you.”
There was something like a warmth about Jean-Paul, one that I still remember, years later. There was a curious absurdity to him as well, one of my favorite traits in people. As we started to leave Chez Prune, he said “Ah! But I know the owner, I come back and pay for everything.” I laughed and shook my head again, and told him there was no way, we should pay for everything now. “Mister America, you have passed the test! Of course we must pay. Now I can trust you with my whole life.”
After putting down 20 euro to cover the both of us, Jean-Paul and I started making our way up the block, then another one. The streets progressively got steeper and longer, until we reached a park. The sun was just starting to set, and he motioned to a bench. We sat down and began talking again.
Jean-Paul, nearly immediately, began to tell me what it was like growing up without a father, the hole in his heart when he saw other kids getting dropped off at school by men in labor coats & sports jackets, men who provided, but most of all, men who were simply there.
He told me of the other school kids, who had no mercy, and taunted him nearly everyday, poking and prodding at him. In his small town to the south of Strasbourg, outside school, he would have trash thrown at him, alluding to the way the people thought of the boy with no father. On one particularly bad day, the boys in his class got together and decided to throw him in the Rhine, the river that cuts through Northern France into Germany. Jean-Paul put up a good fight, but he was eventually bested by the mob of a half dozen boys. After throwing him in, the boys immediately scattered, and Jean-Paul began struggling against the current.
Were it not for a strategically placed rock along the edge of the river, what Jean-Paul called “proof of my God”, he would’ve drowned. He made his way back to town, soaking wet, delirious, and badly bruised. It was a long walk, in heat Jean-Paul described as “like we have right now in Paris, but times one million.” As he approached town, he decided to take a different way home- he couldn’t recall why, but suggested it was perhaps just one of those things that children do for no reason. Down an unfamiliar narrow street, he spotted a man in frills and white make–up. Jean-Paul emphasized that the man had no balloons or tricks, or anything Americans might associate with a clown. “Just him. Only him. Nothing to…” Jean-Paul said something in French and began making vigorous hand movements. I understood him, however. It was someone thrown into the arena- an arena they themselves chose to be in.
Jean-Paul approached the clown, and for the first time in his young mind, someone was smiling to see him. The clown did his normal routine of entertaining and bewildering, but most of all, Jean-Paul remembered his genuine concern for the boy afterwards. “Why you are so wet!” Jean-Paul said he was asked, and he told the clown how he’d been thrown into the Rhine, nearly dying just a short while ago.
The old clown studied Jean-Paul. “So…. you are reborn!” The clown replied. The young boy sat motionless on the cobblestone street, and then spoke up. “Yes! Yes! I am reborn!”
They both began laughing, and the clown sent him off with a replica coin modeled after the Roman Empire. Jean-Paul still has the coin, but the childhood dream of running into this specter of the past never materialized. He spent the next few years desperately searching for any sign of him, after school, during holidays, even enlisting his mother to ask around for the man. But he never saw the old clown again.
He assumes now that the old clown was just passing through, either going from town to town, or making his eventual way to Paris, where we were now. After the chance encounter, he decided to not only embrace what the old clown had said, but how he made him feel. After convincing his mother that this was his calling, he went off on dozens of crazy adventures acting and eventually learning the craft of the clown. Jean-Paul describes this time as “Like a Don Quixote, but French, so much sexier.” He bellows a laugh at this, and I do as well.
“Clown have this saying, it is our famous saying. Maybe you know. People have no memory of what you say. The memory is how you make them feel. Your friends, girlfriend, family, is going to be okay. Always will be okay. Because for important people it will always be about memory of the feeling.”
Jean-Paul and I chatted for a bit longer, until the sun came down. I told him I had to go, but I wouldn’t forget our conversation. Indeed, perhaps the words wouldn’t be exactly right, but the feeling I got would stay with me.
As I got up to leave, he shouted “Wait Mister America! I give you this!” He put his hand in his pocket, took something out, then tossed it to me by flicking it with his thumb. It was a 1 euro coin, obviously fake, with an engraving of a clown on the backside.
It wasn’t from the Roman Empire, but it would do just fine.
