March 2019 - Paris - Montmartre
I followed the tour manager and my sixteen students up the hill of the martyr (Montmartre) in Paris. We were avoiding the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) who were protesting economic inequality in France that spring. Word was they were going to flood the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and other major tourist attractions that Saturday, and we wanted to avoid any potential chaos that might ensue.
As we walked, our tour manager explained that Montmartre was home to both the Sacré-Cœur basilica and a thriving arts scene. Established artists pay rent for plots in the main square at the top of the hill, selling their work mainly to tourists.
"But be careful: unlicensed artistes roam the top of Montmartre, and they will try to trap you and get you to pay 40 euros for a portrait of you. You don't have to listen to them or pay them anything."
I wandered through the crowds in that square, thinking I might purchase a small piece to decorate my walls at home, when I was stopped by a gentleman who looked to be about sixty or so. "Please," he said in a thick French accent, "I want to draw your portrait."
I tried to decline. To keep walking.
"You don't have to pay. Just see."
He was so insistent that I relented, and Monsieur Artiste (I can't remember his name) whipped out a board, paper, and chalks, and began to assess my face. I felt awkward, being so studied, and he seemed to know that. He began talking to me, asking me about myself and what had brought me to Paris. He asked me about my life at home, and if I was happy with it.
I wish I could remember the words of our conversation, but sometimes it is better to draw the curtain of memory back and instead look at the heart of a conversation. To remember how it made you feel. Here was the heart of this one:
Monsieur Artiste saw me. He asked me questions about my fears, my hopes, my life. He masterfully maneuvered past my defenses and got to the heart of what was bothering me at the time. He asked questions--the right questions, the real questions--and listened to the answers, making eye contact with me in between sketching on his paper. I've never had another experience to match it.
I can still see him in my mind: curly graying hair dancing around his face in the breeze. Brown coat and navy fingerless gloves that both warmed him and allowed him to juggle his art supplies and a cigarette. His eyes that cut through my façade of "fine-ness" and made me feel less alone in my disappointment with life at the time.
By the time he was finished, I felt like an ice dam had just melted inside me, one I'd foolishly put there myself in an effort to protect myself from negative feelings.
Monsieur Artiste gave me one final glance to assess his work, then grinned and turned the board to me so I could see the result. I almost started crying right then and there: it was as if he had taken a portrait of my inner being. There was my nose, my scarf, my sunglasses on top of my head; there, too, were my guarded eyes, that hint of a smile on my lips, the tilt of my eyebrow that often betrays my emotions. He got it all. And he portrayed it all with humanitarian love. That much was clear.
He signed it with an illegible flourish, and dedicated it: "for Kate à Paris le 16.3.2019".
In the end, I paid him considerably more than 40 euros, and walked away knowing I had just gotten the best deal of my life.
The portrait hangs in my living room and kitchen now, and I often find myself looking at her. The girl in that portrait mirrors my moods, and I have found myself reading her expression as if she's a friend sitting across from me at a coffee shop.
What a gift. What an otherworldly, yet at the same time, utterly human, experience.
Merci, Monsieur Artiste.
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