sans son

I've always liked the title of the Simon and Garfunkel song, "Sound of Silence." Sure, the tune is a little heavy-handed, especially with the pregnant pause in the chorus: "and touched the sound............of silence." But silence--and those vibrations closest to it--have always been my favorite sounds.

Last night I heard the deepest Parisian silence yet. I was out late in the Marais with some friends of the family who were in town on vacation, and I had a long haul back to my bike, which was parked near Champs-Elysees. Metro was closed, and the lines at the taxi stands and night bus stops were extremely long, so I decided to walk.

It was an intimidating hike. I started off on Rue de Rivoli, which runs in a straight line along the Seine above the Tuileries. The road is the second longest in Paris, and it seems truly endless. The balconies and arcade arches are identical as far as you can see, in a perfectly straight line. Whether Napoleon intended it or not when he built the road, it seems a perfect metaphor for his imperial aspirations.

This is starting to sound like another late night misadventure story, but it's not. Rue de Rivoli is straight and long, and I walked the whole thing. I passed dozens of small groups of people waving in vain at every packed taxi that passed them. After seeing the lines at the taxi stands a mile back, I pictured the hailers there in the morning, still waving, perhaps one or two of them slumped sleeping on the sidewalk. (Of course I didn't tell them about the taxi stands. If you can't figure out which way to walk after fifty cabs pass you by...)

At Place de la Concorde, I passed the obelisk's silhouette and headed down Champs-Elysees. At Avenue Montaigne, I turned left, then right, then left again, unlocked my bike, and rode over the Pont de l'Alma to the Left Bank.

I wasn't far enough away from home to have to look to the Eiffel Tower for direction, so it wasn't until I was just about under it that I noticed that its lights were down. (New York is the city that never sleeps; Paris needs its beauty rest.) The tower was still beautiful. The 3am winter sky in Paris is flaky charcoal, and the tower that leans back on it like a pillow is pure slate.

The Left Bank was almost completely silent. I say "almost" because I don't believe there is such a thing as pure silence. Otherwise, I would say it was completely silent. Unbelievable. Not one sound, beyond the rattling of my junky bike, which I dismounted when I was a few blocks from home so as not to disturb the sound....

....of SILENCE. [insert fingerpicking of ominous minor 7 chord]

Once into my apartment, I discovered another uniquely Parisian sound. I could actually hear myself going broke. I thought abstract concepts like the exchange rate and cost of living were silent, but I was wrong. The smallest demonination of Euro printed on paper is 5. Denominations of 1 and 2 are coined. This means more jingling in your pocket early in the day, progressively less during the day and into the evening, and a mocking tinkle on the bedstand when you empty your pockets before getting under the covers.

After reading about the development of Paris, the tinkling of my own change became much less significant, and the silence outside my walls grew louder. In my neighborhood, silence is the sound of gentrification. When Haussmann demolished old Paris to make way for his wide, tree-lined boulevards and stately apartment houses, Paris's legions of poor were forced to the outskirts of town, where they remain for the most part today. You can only face the cavern of silence for so long before truth rushes in to fill it up.