Excerpt of Plum Blossoms In Paris by Sarah Hina

Mathieu insists that we walk along the quay first, that the restaurants are empty at this time of the evening, that nobody in his right mind—he’s excepting Americans—eats at ten before seven. He wants me to see something.

The beauty of the evening and the hum in my heart are in such harmony that I readily agree.

It is the magic time of the evening, dusk, when the burnt sun at our backs slips past its horizon, and the Paris sky inflames to a purplish fever. The sky is larger in Paris, panoramic. There are no skyscrapers to choke its view, and like everything in Paris, I have no doubt that it was by design. You have to admire a city and its people for having such perfect consideration for one another. Ahead, rooted to its isle, is Notre Dame, her chameleon sandstone absorbing the last light of the evening and alchemizing it into this fiery façade that glows from within. Like an opal, she is Paris’ fairest jewel.

Mathieu and I walk in silence, our hands joined, the Seine flowing languidly beside us. I marvel at the day’s thread. I have experienced years that unspooled faster, and with less to show for them at the end. I haven’t grown so much as enjoyed many lifetimes. Was it just last night that I called Andy, that schoolboy, with whom sex was as satisfying as a wet sneeze? This morning that I fantasized about a vigilant autonomy, a sacred aloneness? Now I belong to Mathieu, and he to me. I do not feel any kind of sacrifice at the giving. He has not stripped me of my independence, but sharpened every particle of my being until I am downright aerodynamic—a woman made to fly—making more of this thing I call my self than I could have been looking across my balcony, a Juliet without her Romeo.

With no great fanfare, the lights of Paris blink on.

“Ahh,” I sigh, my heart thumping its admiration. Mathieu smiles. This is what he wanted: to flood my darkness with light. The bridge ahead, one of nineteen straddling the Seine in Paris, illuminates as a bateaux mouche tucks under, and the happy couples on board, drunk on life, clap their joy. A lone artist, desperate to finish his painting, fights against the darkness on the quay, squinting into the light above his easel, dabbing color onto the canvas while a thicker paintbrush remains slung behind his ear. He curses under his breath, disgusted with the night’s claim. His painting of slaps and dashes is unremarkable, but his fierce commitment fills me with pleasure. I breathe in his turpentine as we pass. It is the pungent scent of someone following his bliss.

Musicians are out, filling the lovers and flâneurs with song, trading on their talent for the sporadic drop of a coin. It seems a hard existence, until you think of languorous Paris nights, the charm of the open-air concert hall in which they perform, and the deliberate choice to shun convention and embrace a life of unimpoverished poverty. Ahead, the ubiquitous accordion player stands, too stiff-lipped and dignified for parody, and squeezes the sound out of his instrument with the care of a surgeon massaging blood into his patient’s heart. The notes are tremulous and sad, a quivering sob pulled from his fingers. Tears fill my eyes, for when the heart is full, it does not take much pressure to make it burst, splattering the contents in an emotional carnage. I wipe my eyes and scavenge for a euro from my sweater pocket to drop in his case, to repay our earlier debt. If only there were some way of letting him know it’s not charity. I look at him, wanting the connection, but his eyes, including the paralyzed, droopy one, are closed in meditation. He hears the plink of my little tribute and nods gravely, maintaining his inward focus. I come to a realization: these people are not here for our money. This is prayer.

If I relaxed my eyes, blurring the electric lights into gas, it might be a hundred years earlier. This is why Americans come to Paris. It may wax and wane in our collective imagination, but it’s gravity is as reliable as the moon’s upon the oceans’ tides, its effect on us undimmed through the ages. It, like the Matisse, remains the same. It’s we who change.

I look up at Mathieu to find him lost in thought. His remoteness pleases me. It feels good to ignore one another, to reclaim the quiet of solitude, if not its heavy sentence. I want to walk all night by his strong, silent side . . . I want to sail under dark bridges and whisper sweet nothings to the reflectionless water, as we push toward long horizons . . . I want to seize an instrument, any instrument, and pound out the fugue inside my heart . . . I want to swallow time and hold it pregnant within me . . . I want to dance on the graves of saints and sinners . . . I want to suck out all the marrow out of the marrow of life . . . and belch when I am full.

I want to live so deep that I cannot find sunlight.