An invite to breakfast
As a nineteen-year-old in Paris I decided to visit the Porte de Clignancourt Market. Reviews insisted on starting at the crack of dawn to avoid market mayhem, and considering I was the only one of our travelling party with a flea market addiction, it was a solo mission.
I got off the underground and found myself in a gloomy tunnel under an enormous bypass. A group of hooded teenagers were blocking my path ahead. Feeling edgy, I crossed over the road and walked on the heels of a German family. People with kids are meant to be safe right?
The suburbs of Paris aren’t quite as well-kept as the inner centre-ville. There’s a gritty resilience to the worn-out buildings. Hesitantly, I walked towards the only hint of market I could see, a stall with clothes hanging from its roof. As I reached the stall the full hustle and bustle of the market revealed itself and engulfed me, as though I’d crossed an invisible threshold and been sucked into another world. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to get a bit lost at some stage, and would have to awkwardly ask for directions, and thus the a-la local Parisian exterior that I’d worked so hard to mould would crumble. The labyrinth of stalls interwove infinitely like a surreal Escher drawing. Antiques and plush trinkets covered every surface. At the centre of the market was a little green structure with mezzanines and squashed little shelves of treasures. I was shopping in a life-sized dollhouse.
At one of the thousand stalls I found a beautiful hand-made bag. I lifted the bag gently, waiting for the stall owner to come by so I could have a proper look, without appearing a thief. The owner came up to me and enquired whether I wanted to open the bag and check the lining. He was an attractive dark-haired 40-year-old man, who I imagined had an appreciation for the craft he was selling, and a lifetime spent in large workshops à la campagne, patiently making beautiful things with his hands - a genuine artisan. He was benevolent and patient with me, and I was enjoying practicing my French.
Then - he invited me to breakfast.
He said he knew a place not far from here. It seemed like a kind, though perhaps loaded…offer. I also was confused as to why a businessman wanted to leave the stall just as the busiest part of the week was approaching.
A woman stood a metre or so away from me, holding a bag. With a hard glare, her foot tapping and sporadic glances at her watch - it was clear that she was waiting expectantly to be served. Yet, the man paid her no attention. My vision of this handsome, kind, artisanal gentleman began to blur a little at the edges. Why wasn’t he trying to sell? The woman blurted out something to him in French and he replied in a terse tone - she tossed the bag down and, disgruntled, she left.
With that my rose-coloured glasses lifted entirely. He had nothing to do with this stall, he was just speaking to me as a stranger. Without socially acceptable context he’d slipped, like a chameleon, into my day. He was offering me breakfast and polite conversation. But that kind of trust hasn’t existed since the invention of mobile phones. My millennial mind has been trained to be sceptical, and his kindness began to morph into creepiness. I felt vexed at this shattering of my Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday moment. I summoned my most assertive French tone to politely (or not so much) decline, explaining that I’d eaten.
As I was considering my next move a older man with fluffy white-haired appeared. He grunted at us and went to stand towards the back of the stall. He waved me forward to the till and muttered a price. Now this was the behaviour of someone who had been selling these bags for a lifetime, whose passion ran out 50 years ago and who now conducts his transactions with the effort and emotion of a sloth. Although his boredom seemed contagious, I latched onto him. I continued to converse with him despite his silence and turned my back on my offer of second breakfast. Eventually my handsome ‘friend’ retreated, and I tentatively left the stall.
At the end of the path I saw my stranger had moved onto a young girl with an American accent who replied with loud giggles and phrase book French. I lingered, sensing that I should do something - but what? ‘Watch out for this guy - he’s offering breakfast!’
I was still locked in place when four other American girls, clearly her friends, came out from behind a wall of clothes and whisked her away on a flurry of high-pitched giggles. They walked together one way and the man another. I felt relieved, not because the girl was ok, but somehow seeing him speaking to her seemed to validate my curt treatment of him.
It was just an invite to breakfast.
He was kind, inquisitive and not offensive or threatening in any explicit way and yet…my gut went into fight-or -flight mode. Maybe because women my age have been taught to keep our guards up, stay in our own little bubbles - wear ear pods on trains, whether we’re listening to anything or not. It’s likely my instincts were right.
Though if we habitually suspect ulterior motives, we forfeit the possibility of stumbling across and recognising spontaneous and sincere kindness.
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He’d lived in Paris, supposedly the city of love, his whole life. He was in his early thirties and despite his good looks he was aware that genetics had him ageing rapidly - he’d even been mistaken for forty before! Time was getting away, but mostly he was lonely.
His friends were all coupled up. They said he’d find someone. He just needed to be more open, confident and approachable, all those things that friends, well-intentionally, say that make you want to jump off a tall building.
It was market day in his worn yet homely suburb. His grandfather used to labour over his leather bags, toiling away to craft them by hand. He’d then sell them, but only to those who truly fell in love with and would treasure them. Sadly, decades of tourists trying to whittle down the price of bags that he’d poured his heart, soul - and literally - sweat into, had diminished his passion for the craft.
That day the man saw a girl standing by his grandfather’s stall. Perhaps in her early twenties, young - but not too young. Whether she could be interested in him or not, was one thing - the way she was looking over one of his grandfather’s bags, was another. She almost patted it - really feeling the leather properly and following the patterns with her finger. He wanted to talk to someone who could be this interested in his family history.
He walked over and started to speak with her - not French - though she could speak it, just enough. They chatted about the bag, what she liked about it, and about Paris. She seemed like a curious person, interested in things. He wanted to know about her. He liked her.
He mustered his courage and asked her if she’d like to have coffee with him at a place nearby.
She bluntly turned him down, just has his grandfather returned. Humiliated, he left.
On his way out an American girl asked for directions. He tried to explain to her, but his English wasn’t good enough and he’d had enough embarrassment for one morning.