“What a way to spend a day in Paris!” is what he’d like to say. Did, in fact, say. He speaks French. Has started a conversation with a white-haired guard who offers himself as our informal guide. So we move slowly, the three of us, along row upon row of graves. Everyone, it seems, is here. It’s quiet, and hot, and the street sounds of Paris can’t reach. The guard wants to steer us to the grave of the man who invented the submarine, and Maurice Chevalier’s grave. And the grave of the 28-year-old singer, Nonnie, covered with a mound of red roses. I want to see the graves of the writers. My son sighs. He doesn’t want to see any of it. Has seen enough. He’s passed beyond boredom into resignation. Guy de Maupassant; Sartre; Sainte-Beuve; Gautier; the Goncourts; Paul Verlaine and his old comrade, Charles Baudelaire. Where we linger. None of these names, or graves, have anything to do with the untroubled lives of my son and the guard. Who can this morning talk and joke together in the French language under a fine sun.
