Non Fiction
Issue #2
La Nuit Blanche
La Nuit Blanche is the night Paris does not sleep.
As the sun set on 7 octobre 2007, the crowds began to gather. One by one, stalls clinging like barnacles to the Seine closed their lids on caches of rare prints, trinkets, musty tomes and antique pornography. A purple-robed procession wound its way to Notre Dame, entering through the soaring central archway. Inside, air thick with chanting and incense warmed a press of bodies wrapped against the cold, each one straining for a glimpse of the central aisle. Smoke trailed lazily upwards to hover over the crowd like the holy spirit made manifest.
Outside, the shadows were lengthening, bringing with them the chill of an October evening. The streets began to wake, opening a wonderland of artistic events. In a square with a Dali-esque fountain, colourful, twisted shapes rose from the water in sensuous curves and zebra stripes. Around the corner, le centre Pompidou, in all its controversial glory, loomed over street performers battling the fading light. A slender figure swirled a crystal ball from shoulder to fingertips in one continuous, flowing movement. A man on a pedestal, swathed from head to toe in gold, caught the last rays of sunlight as he played at living statue. Mouthwatering scents wafted from a little crêpe stall beside the rows of cafés; serveurs sweeping blobs of batter into circles with a flick of the wrist. Customers warmed their hands around folded pancake triangles oozing chocolate, honey, chantilly cream or fragrant grand marnier as they watched the gold glitter and the ball sparkle its arc.
Behind the performers, neon lights trailed up the Pompidou’s pipe-like extrusions. Visitors wandered through the main doors, drawn in by light and warmth, to find themselves inside the tube, following a series of escalators upwards and upwards. Each level appeared to be the last, a vision of sky beckoning from the top of the tube. Each time, the vision was the view from another landing, from which an escalator led ever upwards. Through transparent walls, the people in the square below became smaller and smaller as the rooftops rose into view. Lights shone out all over the city against a slate-clouded sky. The twilight was thick and heavy, with an aqueous tint, like sunlight filtered through layers of water.
The first door that opened led from the Pompidou’s tube into a gallery. There, a massive, flat contraption of cogs and wheels clung to the wall, black works silent and unmoving. To the right was an open cube, tiled in white like the inside of a swimming pool. A single red rose lying wilting at its centre. Beside it stood another cube, composed of a series of wooden frames covered with gold tissue paper. This had been hacked away and hung in strips and streamers, revealing a path through the cube. One section of the gallery was filled with rows of wire and foam sofas, covered with Persian rugs - an interactive art experience. A corridor lined with screens of film montage led to hidden chambers and alcoves. One doorway draped with a black curtain led to a Barbie room, entirely pink, with a gigantic red stiletto and pink rings the size of dingys set in the floor.
Outside, night had fallen. Between the darkened shops, cafés glowed with music and laughter. In one side street, a looming shop front had been transformed into a giant canvas. In another, coloured lights spilled out into the street from a little chapel, in which the altar crucifix was bathed in bloody scarlet. Rainbow bubbles streamed from the pulpit and bobbed through the aisles. An empty rickshaw covered in hearts and flowers moved in procession through the crowd. It was a hallucinogenic scene, without logic or explanation. There were odd things all over Paris; strange and magical exhibits.
The city was as busy that night as during the day. Everywhere, things glittered and glowed. The cafés were packed with people, bursting with light and laughter. In the gardens above les Halles, Parisiens were cycling, skating and walking their dogs at 01.00. Rows of globe-lamps, like sentinels, warded off the darkness under the vine-encrusted arbours. At the centre of the gardens, the sunken domes of les Halles became a sea of light. Beautiful as this was, it paled in comparison with the lights of the Louvre.
Passing under the Louvre’s Richlieu gateway, visitors peered in through glowing windows, looking down into a world of golden light and marble gods. It looked as though a ghostly crowd of Classical heroes had risen from the dead to walk the halls of the gallery. The legend of the Gorgons seemed, for a moment, utterly credible. Those stone figures looked as though they would move, breathe, speak… At the end of the passage rose the Pyramid - a structure of cunningly lit glass panes, sparkling like sugar-crystal. It threw fractured light across the fountains and flagstones of the courtyard, reflecting in the still waters of the pools. Wrought iron lamps flanked the square, holding the shadows at bay. More lights were set in the ground at intervals, like oriental tea-lamps casting glowing geometric shapes across the massive space.
Through the Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel lay the darkened Jardins des Tuilleries. Above these shadowy forms of trees and twisted stone silhouettes shone the Eiffel Tower, sparkling diamond-gold against the sky, lighting up like a Christmas tree on the hour and dissolving in a shimmer of sparks. These glittered, rippled and were swallowed up by the inky waters of the Seine. The lights of the Place de la Concord were more steady. There, statue-laden fountains were illuminated in brilliant turquoise, the Needle highlighted in a swathe of violet as part of the Klein light display. The square was filled with the smells of hotdogs and chestnuts, intermingled with the cries of the venders. There were stalls where tables stacked high with bottles and cans competed with smoking stoves under draped tarpaulin. A couple of men were roasting chestnuts in a dustbin lid over a fiery oil can, the whole thing balanced precariously on a shopping trolley wheeled around the square. The chestnuts were packed into perfectly-folded cones made from the torn-out pages of magazines. This was entrepreneurship in action; Paris’ homeless leaping into the fray, amalgamating the city’s waste into fast-moving stoves, cutting through the crowds in a trail of sparks and steam.
From the Place de la Concorde to the Arc du Triomphe, a French-American-Australian-International crowd swept up the Champs-Elysées. Some people must have flown into Paris just for la Nuit Blanche. It was a bizarre crowd in which the homeless mixed with the super-rich, everyone merry under cover of darkness. There was a festive atmosphere of excitement and secrecy; the thrill of a child staying up past bedtime, visiting the forbidden terrain of museums after dark. Expensively-dressed visitors queued outside the Grand and Petit Palais, where a large, white sculpture towered above them, like a butterfly made of bubbles. The illuminated windows of the Petit Palais flickered on and off as though the building were on fire. This gave it the semblance of a giant Hallowe’en lantern, leering out at the street.
The Champs-Elysées was much longer than it appeared from the Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel. A trick of perspective shortened the distance by about half. Stranded on a roundabout in the middle of a main road, the Arc du Triomphe was closed to the public after dark. Security guards were on hand to wave any hapless visitor back across three lanes of traffic. The roads were busy at 02.00, as the Parisians made their way home, leaving the international visitors to wander until dawn. They left most streets silent, deserted.
The candlelit remains of sumptuous dinners shone out from the little windows of café-boats moored along the Seine. Aboard one stood a jazz band, still floating haunting melodies out across the gilt-flecked waters. There, beside the Seine, a brightly lit, deserted merry-go-round faced a couple of crêpe stalls. The darkened Eiffel Tower presided over all, looming like an ancient, skeletal guardian. Standing underneath, a visitor can see up into the enormous latticework of steel; so vast, yet so delicate. One single leg of the tower would have been the size of several elephants. Four of them curved up, up into the sky, where the huge, hulking creature became a beautiful fretwork of reddened steel. Only the French could do that - weave iron thousands of metres up into the air as lace. Rivets twinkled out among the beams as though the nighttime stars had caught themselves in that web of metal; diamonds sparkling on a bloodied ruff.
There, the clock struck 03.00 and la Nuit Blanche officially ended. With the museums closed and immoveable monuments visited, there remained only one place to visit. The remnants of the international crowd haunting the Champs-Elysées squeezed themselves into the nearest 24 hour café. People sat, stood and leaned on every available surface. Some chatted in subdued tones, some argued frenetically and others simply slept. This was the last refuge of revellers from the freezing night.
Even 24 hour cafés must close to clean before the morning rush. Those sheltering there were cast out at 06.00 and left to brave the morning air. Many headed for the nearest Métro station, where some of the night’s revellers - a disparate bunch - formed an impromptu choir on one side of the platform. They huddled, singing patriotic songs with passion and joviality. Their performance was imbued with a festive feeling of solidarity. The young, hung-over bourgoisie on the opposite platform booed, glared and stared sullenly. The song finished, the singers bowed and people on both sides of the platform broke into spontaneous applause. With a hushed roar, the métro arrived to whisk them away.
The crowd dispersed, heading for various outbound stations and airports. The next day, they would be all over France, all over Europe, all over the world. Just for one night, la nuit blanche, these people united and took back the world from sleep.
Author’s note: La Nuit Blanche is an annual event that takes place in Paris, Riga, Rome, Madrid, Toronto and Brussels at the end of September/beginning of October.