“Don’t you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone must take off his mask?” Søren Kierkegaard
As of Saturday evening, January 16th, France has entered a new phase of curfew, beginning at 6 pm nationwide. Lecouvre-feu should not be confused with confinement, although they obviously overlap and to many citizens must look damn near identical, the difference being that they are « allowed » out of the house for necessities, to travel to and from work. For many, this third round is the toughest, and is taking a psychic toll.
Scenes like the one in the photo above were taking place all over Paris. Nevertheless the image is deceptive, so be careful before you draw conclusions.
A reader asked about masks. Does France have angry yahoos running around, refusing to wear them and loudly denouncing stores that insist upon it ?
The short answer is no. The violent reaction to masks, which protects others from what I’m carrying, so far as I have seen in and around the Paris, does not exist. The French are too clever for that. That doesn’t mean they like it but they’d rather laugh, like the song Merde Mon Masque by Fred209 does.
Hit the bottle way too much, had too much fun
Throw my sneakers on, I’m ready to make a run
Should have passed on that last mojito
The Migraine knocks me over the head on my bike
Breathless it’s off to the boulangerie I go
To buy some pastries for Sleeping Beauty
I push through the door to buy her croissants
But the counter girl stops me in my tracks :
Tell me, chum, Isn’t there a little something you forgot ?
Merde, mon masque.
Since you can’t smoke with a mask on, many people stroll past police officers with theirs tucked beneath their chin, puffing away. It provides, besides the pleasure of the smoke, the frisson of giving authority the finger. This is a country where people smoke, where my doctor greeted the announcement that I put away three fags a day with That’s Nothing, and one of their great songwriters, Serge Gainsbourg, famously observed, God is a smoker, an excuse we sinners cling to like true believers. (Smokes English, God, or is he a rolling man ?)
The situation is more complex than that. In Paris, we’d say compliqué, but in real life everything is tricky. France is a country where there’s an official version – an order, a control, a regulation – and another reality on the ground. The libraries reopened in December, a blessing this writer is especially thankful for as I live in small quarters. I was able to return to Sainte-Genviève, home over the years to writers like Joyce and Beckett, so long as I booked in advance, wore a mask and observed social distancing. Done.
The reality is a little different. While many do indeed observe the rules, and leave when their hour is up, the library is in the heart of Uni-territory, where the students are. If I break the rules by staying after my time is up at 5, I do so because there’s plenty of room : the kids begin their exodus in the afternoon. Others, once in, stay all day and simply move to the next available desk, preferably next to their boy or girlfriend, sometimes socially distanced, sometimes not. It’s impossible to police a situation like that and in any case, it’s not the librarian’s job. The great hall fills up. It’s a soft rebellion.
You may be bewildered and say, aren’t 70,000 dead in France enough ? No sense of going in search of tangential explanations. Virus or no virus, you have to live in the meantime. You want to carry off your rebellion so after work you go down to the Seine to have an apéro – a drink – with friends. Of course you’ve got your mask but your little infringement is a social necessity, too, a risk for the sake of sanity. Many of us are teetering on the edge of extreme fragility, after ten months of deprivations, curfews and confinement. You need to have a laugh, spill some wine, let the animal spirits out. Like the poster below says, Give us this day our cocktail.
And so students hoisted aperos every day around 6 in Place Contrescarpe. Hemingway territory if it matters to you, where he lived and worked when he first came to town. A scene I watched unfolding in many parts of Paris as I motored around on my not-precisely-legal Long Strolls. It’s possible to have a range of sanity-inducing social interactions without making anyone sick. Heading to Père Lachaise, I found a large organic, urban reclamation project I had no idea existed. I met the people who ran it. No one violated anything, alas.
I take a short stroll around at midnight when I kill that last cigarette. The skies are incredibly clear now, in wintertime, and with so little traffic overhead, the stars are pulsing. Magnificent.
It is precisely this attitude in its good and bad forms that Premier Jean Castex was after when he announced a single curfew for the country last week. As one of the LREM honchos said on television, they were striking out against « l’effet apéro ».
Curbing a few irresponsible students offloads the trouble onto others. The evening after the gathering in Place Contrescarpe showed up in the press, a police van was unglamorously parked where convivials had been.
We’re in unprecedented territory now. What if the numbers don’t come down, what if the new strains overwhelm both hospitals and the new prohibitions ? A friend spends his evenings in tears, lamenting the vivid Parisian life he knew. Gone. He lives alone, goes to work in front of a huge computer screen, and then turns around, day after day. The fate of many millions all over the world now and for the foreseeable future.
Authorities here, who did not impose measures like short ‘circuit breaker’ confinements in September or November, are keen to make the distinction between a curfew and confinement. But for anyone who commutes this is worse : they must travel, work and turn right around. That precious one hour of freedom – shopping or picking up the kids – just vanished. The notoriously thin-skinned President doesn’t admit to mistakes.
Reactions have been swift. A bit of Twitter back and forth gives the flavor :
« At six o’clock, we’re running around on errands, not drinking! »
« Try to be serious! Don’t take the words of scientists and researchers out of context, talking about bars and restaurants that have been closed for months! »
« You’re a bit off there. Under the pretext of take out, many cafés and bars offer beers outside, while you wait. The 15th arrondissement of Paris is full of them every night from six to seven. »
« No worries, I’ll have my apéro at 3 pm then. I’m getting tired of all this.»
« When is this starting ? Here in Albi we’re getting ready to celebrate the end of Castex’s press conference. So our apero tomorrow will be at 3 pm, just so we abide by the rules. But where ? »
Meanwhile, new restrictions announced in Madrid mean that restaurants will have to start closing at ten p.m. Cinemas are open, everything carried out with social distancing. Politicians don’t follow science so much as culture and what they think the social contract will bear. In France, they sound better than the English jokers across the channel but the strategic outcome is too close to call. Pols, one eye on the electoral clock, are bumblers in sharp suits, using Covid 19 as a cover to advance a Global Security agenda. With Sars mutating and spreading at an astounding rate, the virus is the only player who goes without a mask.
I think stringent regulations re Covid are commendable. I salute the French.
Here in America we are suffering precisely because people won't wear masks and won't social distance.
Furthermore, as soon as we make any improvement, we relax our health regulations and that serves as just another impetus for viral resurgence. For example, new case counts have been declining in the US for the past three weeks and now Gov. Cuomo wants to re open indoor dining. I am furious at him for that.
Americans often say that they won't wear a mask because this is a free country and they want to exercise their freedom. However, I find this a curious and troubling way to prove that one is free. It is a petulant, pouting, infantile negativity that is the freedom of very weak people. When one says that one will be free by not wearing a mask, one is saying that one cannot express one's freedom by writing a couplet or singing a song or fighting to defend someone who is being oppressed. One cannot express one's freedom by doing something good because one does not know how to do anything or is too lazy to do anything. Ergo, one will express one's freedom by refusing to do a very simple think which can stop the transmission of a deadly pathogen.
Brilliant. The writer reveals the passion that is always in Paris. In the best of times and the worst of times. I love the mask at midnight part.❤️😊