And yet, everything had gone well for this movie theater at first. Named for its proximity to the airport, L’Aviatic had opened between two wars: behind a splendid façade decorated in bas-relief, huge crowds packed an immense theater seating twelve hundred and which, thirty years later, was renovated for the projection of 70-millimeter films and which, ten years later, had been demolished to make way for a three-theater complex and which, twenty years later, had shut its doors forever and which, today, bought up by the adjacent brasserie of the same name, was now in a state of such abandonment that one felt like crying: histoire du cinéma.
Meanwhile, along the same sidewalk as the police station, I had also passed the church. It seemed to me quite difficult to talk about Le Bourget’s church, consecrated to Saint Nicholas; difficult, because one wouldn’t want at all to seem unkind. But it had to be said that it was a crummy church, really crummy, so crummy that it became touching. Very discreet and almost unassuming, it even seemed so conscious of its ugliness that one could feel nothing but affection for it.
When I drew nearer, to my extreme surprise I saw affixed to the left of the church entrance an official sign proclaiming it a historic monument. At first I wondered through what string pulling, influence peddling, and dark machinations such a homely building had managed to be thus classified, obtaining that prestigious designation — until I learned that it had seen quite an eyeful, this church. Like the Cinéma Aviatic, it had had its adventures: built in the fifteenth century, dedicated to Saint Nicholas in the sixteenth, fallen into ruin and demolished two hundred years later, rebuilt then remade into a Temple of Reason under the Revolution, dedicated to the Supreme Being by the Convention,5 pillaged in 1815,6 bombarded during the War of 18707 (during which it served as a fallback position for French and Prussian soldiers in alternation — witness the bullet damage to the tympanum over the church door), reconstructed two years before the one of ’14, the church had well deserved a bit of a breather and, quiet at last, to achieve the title of monument. But it was closed. One couldn’t go inside. Its fate moved me. I phoned the curé.
That is how on the following Sunday — the fifth Sunday in liturgical Ordinary Time — I went to Mass at Saint-Nicolas du Bourget, along with my ballpoint pen and Colombian notebook. It was extremely cold and, out the train window, what did I now see that I hadn’t seen before? A mushroom-shaped water tower, a bulk paper recycling plant (where, I happened to reflect with some melancholy, this notebook might end up): not much, actually. But above all I was able to verify that what I had taken for a slum was one, in fact, right by the headquarters of Paprec, a leader in the collection, recycling, and valorization of waste — and of that proximity, make what you will.
So having arrived at Le Bourget, I went directly to the church and along the way I spotted a stela that had until then escaped my notice, standing in front of the community center. It was a stone parallelepiped, carved with palms and a broken sword, with this inscription at its base (capital letters and Roman numerals):
Bourget October 30 December 31 1870
They died to defend the fatherland
The sword of France broken in their valiant hands
Will be forged anew by their descendants
I went on my way.
The church was almost full, a good half of those present being African or West Indian, or Guyanese, perhaps. The five paintings decorating the side walls presented grim episodes of the Franco-Prussian War, one of which was set inside the church itself, with a toppled confession booth in the background. In bellicose echo, the altar decorated with what must be described as incrustations bore only two inscriptions, the dates 1914 and 1918—because there is more to life than 1870. Three figures stood there, as they often do: Joseph, John the Baptist, and Mary. She, in bas-relief, appeared here as Our Lady of the Wings, protectress of aviators, in homage to the town’s aeronautical past. She had wings like an angel and — doubtless to fly even faster — was framed as if in parentheses by two big plane propeller blades, one of them rather primitive (frankly, rather board-like), and the other more classically shapely. As for the rest, the stained-glass windows weren’t terrible, being vaguely coloristic abstractions of the kind popular in the mid-nineteenth century, while near the ceiling five (out of ten) heaters barely of more recent vintage seemed to be in working order. They labored somewhat in vain, actually, functioning so little that I couldn’t stay there more than forty-five minutes, I was so cold, but still I did wait until the end of the homily. It was well done, the homily, typical but well done.
Leaving the church, I was almost as hungry as I was cold, but, no sandwich on the horizon. A winter Sunday, late morning, northeastern suburb: empty streets, few passersby, even establishments still ordinarily open were closed. Giving up on my sandwich, I turned right, heading back toward the station and walked to the cemetery at a brisk pace in an attempt to get warm. The cemetery was farther away than I’d have thought and I even almost lost heart but I persevered. I found it, I went in and I was all alone there when, after a few moments, no: I saw a lady appear in the distance with a watering can. Like the church and the entire town, the cemetery bore definite signs of having been affected by both war and aviation, sometimes in combination: the graves of soldiers and pilots, funeral plaques showing images of medals, busts topped with helmets or kepis.
The place wasn’t too bad, but soon a few broken and gaping tombs — I’d never seen such a thing — began to make me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t venture to peer inside their dilapidation, I walked away. Then I noticed a full-size statue of a soldier in the war of 1870. Its face half corroded by erosion, it had unwillingly become a frightening effigy of the gueules cassées8 of the following war, men with monstrously disfigured faces, and there, beneath that icy sky, something like a sickening feeling came over me: I left without looking back. I went toward the station and tried to think about what I was going to have to eat. On the way to the train I saw hardly anyone. The church, by that time, must have been empty. L’Aviatic was deserted. Police headquarters was all shut up. And this cemetery, in the end, was of hardly any interest save that — not so slight — of being ingeniously located on an extension of Rue de l’Égalité, where equality is extended to everyone.
CREDITS
These stories, now slightly modified, were published in the following works or periodicals.
Marie-Paule Baussan provided the idea behind “Nelson”: Le Garage, no. 1, 2010.
“The Queen’s Caprice” (“Caprice de la reine”) was written for Jean-Christophe Bailly: Les Cahiers de l’École de Blois, no. 4, January 2006.
“In Babylon” was commissioned by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants to mark their recording of Handel’s oratorio Belshazzar in October 2013.
“Twenty Women in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Clockwise” is included in Sophie Ristelhueber’s Le Luxembourg, Paris-Musées, 2002.