The metro stop where I got out was a few blocks away, I got lost a little bit, but I was in no rush so it was rather pleasant trying to figure out how to get to the cemetery. It was busy in Montparnasse, as usual. People were leaving the local churches, there were families and couples sitting at cafés getting some sort of Sunday brunch, an art sale in the street...but as soon as I entered the gate and slipped inside the walls of the cemetery, it was quiet. I got a map from an information desk/guard post and looked at the locations of the tombs that I had come here to see. I was ready with my camera, a pen to jot down any interesting thoughts, and my map. I had a little bounce in my step, and I quickly came upon the grave of Marguerite Duras, a wonderful French writer whom my major advisor adores. I looked at it for a while, read one of the notes someone had left for her and took a picture. Onto the next grave...and it was Camille Saint-Saens! (This one was for you, John) He was buried with his family, and there was a tiny altar inside a tomb for them. Again, click, and I took a picture.
But it was at this point on this lovely sunny Sunday that my trip took an unexpected turn. I decided to walk along one of the sand paths between the tombs to feel more as though I were within the cemetery rather than walking on a road. As I walked towards Charles Baudelaire's grave, I heard someone sniffling, crying. A woman who seemed to be in her 50s was removing the dried, wilted flowers on someone's grave and replacing them with fresh new ones, watering ones that had been planted by the grave. She was crying softly and looked up at me briefly to see who was passing by. I lowered my gaze and continued walking, and I suddenly felt that I should tuck my map back into my bag. And then, I really began looking around.
To my left, Mounia Bohoura 1968-2008. Her grave was new. Either her family couldn't afford a stone grave cover or had not yet time for there was a hard plastic cover presented by the funerary home over the earth where she had been buried. Brightly colored flowers and bouquets covered its surface. No words, just her name and the years of her life. And then to my right, Tai Shi Cheung, 1955-1980, only 25 years old, who was buried along with her parents beneath a regal black tombstone with gold-painted Chinese characters engraved into it. And yet another grave on the right, the stone so old and weathered that the name and years had been replaced by dark green moss. I had no desire to check if I was on the right track to Baudelaire's grave, to see where I was in the cemetery. I heard children screaming somewhere in the distance and wondered angrily why no parents had silenced them yet. I emerged once more on the road and something caught my eye.
A grave to my left held a portrait of a young woman engraved into dark stone. 1960-1982. 22 years old. It was not the fact that I saw her face because all of these people had faces, identities. But to the right of the engraving was a small pot of flowers. Cheap, tiny, random flowers housed in a thin plastic pot. But on the outside of the pot there was a small piece of paper taped to it, with the following words:
"J'ai encore rêvé d'elle."
"I dreamt of her again". I think you understand why I began crying immediately after reading that little scrap of text. I couldn't stay there. Screw the map, screw my plan, screw the tradition of kissing Oscar Wilde's grave. I couldn't do it. As I walked briskly out of the cemetery, wiping tears from my eyes, I was annoyed at the starry-eyed couples cuddling and reading under the trees. I was pissed at the groups of scantily-clad high school girls posing around tombstones with massive smiles and silly stances for their photos. I was embarrassed that I had walked through the gate with a fully-charged camera and a celebrity map and that it took seeing all of this to remind me that I was in a cemetery, not a museum. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I had to go.
I walked immediately to the metro station and took it back to my arrondissement. I sat down at a café, ordered a cup of coffee, and I sat. I pulled my cardigan more tightly around my body, my scarf more securely around my neck and I sat. I put the pen and the map to use, but only to write about how I felt on the back of the map. This is why there are no pictures of the letters to Edith Piaf, or the kisses on Oscar Wilde's tombstone.
I will leave you with this.
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