Rentrée

The French word for “back to school” is rentrée, which needs no explanation, yet I didn’t figure out until I saw it on the junk mail fliers that have flooded our mailbox for the past few weeks.

Rentrée is the unofficial mark of the end of summer, and the last summer vacationers seem to have conspired to all come back to Levallois-Perret last weekend. Which means parking on the street is back to being a challenge.

We had noticed that during the course of August, there were even fewer homeless people in town. Now they’re back, too. David has a theory that the French government ships them to the south of France for holidays. Ah, socialism!

Monday evening was mild, and when I got home late from work I opened the windows in the living room and immediately noticed the change. For one, the smell of pizza had returned. Luigi’s back! Dave’s going to be so pleased.

Secondly, the building across the street from us had come to life. Of course you know I wasn’t raised in a city, so the whole concept of neighbor watching is new and fun for me. I felt like James Stewart in the movie Rear Window, except that it was my front window, and I’m not confined to a wheelchair, of course. From my vantage point I could see that the family on the bottom two floors were back from holiday, the kids (they appear to have a gaggle) running through the upper bedrooms, the parents smiling and tanned. I can’t get over how attractive the parents are, and how young they seem to be to have so many kids. While I watched, the beautiful mother and a daughter walked out of the apartment and turned to blow kisses to the father, who smiled and waved from the front door. It was like the cover of a catalog.

On the third floor, the scene was slightly stranger. Normally an elderly woman lives there, and we often see her shuffling back and forth, peering out the windows every 20 minutes like she’s expecting someone. When summer holidays came around, her apartment was dark and shuttered like the others, so I imagined she was out at the seaside with her family.

On Monday, the living room of her apartment, directly across from ours, was full of people. They were all standing and sitting around, concentrating on going through something. Like stacks of letters (I imagined love letters from World War II) or files. They didn’t appear to be removing anything, and they didn’t do much else than study these things all evening.

Ever since that night, the shutters have been open, but the windows dark. Now I’m worried that she died or is in the hospital, but hopefully she’s just been moved to a relative’s house. Or better yet, still on holiday.