Europe Journal 1999
Catacombs and Mauritian Food
November 20
We got up this morning and headed to Montparnasse to see the catacombs. They close between 11am and 2pm on Saturdays, and we wanted to be there early enough to see them in the morning.
The catacombs we originally mines — the stone that Paris was built from came from underneath the city. Apparently at one point there were problems with sinkholes because of collapsing mines, and entire buildings would collapse into the earth. The city of Paris appropriated the mines and fortified them so that they would be safe. This is more or less the form that they take now, with one addition: certain cemeteries were removed as the city expanded, and part of the catacombs because an ossuary for the human remains in these cemeteries.
First we descended down a long, modern spiral staircase (130 steps) into a sort of antechamber (also modern). Although we were now 20 meters (~67 ft) below the surface of the streets, the room we were in didn’t seem any different from a room in any building in Paris. However, exiting from that room into the catacombs proper, it changed.
The walls were stone walls, similar to the stone walls of medieval buildings. The ceiling was a simply shallow arch, sometimes stone, sometimes covered over in cement, in varying heights. Sometimes I had to stoop over a lot; other times there was plenty of headroom. Most of the time the ceiling hovered just above my head.
The corridors were lit by lights placed only every 25 feet or so, and so the area was a little bit dark — and a little bit creepy. And when one is walking in a creepy place, what is the worst thing one might find there? Human bones, I think — and we knew that that was exactly what we were going to see, once we made it to the ossuary.
In fact the ossuary isn’t as creepy as I expected. It’s creepy, but in an over-the-top way that becomes almost funny. The sign above the entrance to the ossuary reads (in French) “Stop! Beyond here is the empire of death!” This kind of black humor was to reappear throughout the ossuary.
The ossuary is in a section of the catacombs which has wide rooms, like cellars, instead of narrow corridors. We entered the first room, and saw that the walkway continued ahead a about the same width as before — but instead of stone walls on either side, the shoulder-height walls were made of stacked leg-bones punctuated with skulls in decorative rows and patterns. The leg bones were all stacked facing inward so that exactly the same joint faced inward, creating a repeating pattern almost like hounds-tooth. This was one reason why the ossuary wasn’t as creepy as I’d expected: there were no skeletons, and the bones were organized so neatly that I could almost forget that these were human remains.
Behind the walls of leg bones were store the rest of the bones, in what seemed like a jumble. Between the ceiling and the top of the bones there was always some space, and so looking over the top we could see how far back the bones went: in some places, only about three or four feet; in others, ten feet or more, like a sea of bones.
The entire tour through the catacombs is almost exactly one mile, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of that is the ossuary: a third to a half mile of bones, bones, bones. Millions of Parisians’ bones lie down there, and we walked by them.
I could help thinking of a song by the Smiths about walking through a cemetery: “With loves, and hates, and passions just like mine | they were born and then they lived and then they died.” But I wasn’t in a cemetery looking at stones; I was face to face with the earthly remains of these people who were once not just bones, but whole humans — whole humans who lived in a Paris very different from the Paris I’ve just spent a month in.
At various points, sections of the ossuary had placards in front of them stating which cemetery they were from (most are from one cemetery, but a number of smaller cemeteries are also represented). Some were convent cemeteries, which gave me a little more information about the remains: these bones used to be nuns.
Throughout the ossuary there are little placards around with proverbs, sayings, and quotes from poets about death: “Live each day as if it were your last” and other such cheerful thoughts. It seems like more of that black sense of humor to have these saying up and around for the visitors to the ossuary.
There were two tombs in there as well, which stands out in an odd way. A stone sarcophagus sits attached to the wall with a name and inscription, while around it are anonymous bones neatly stacked. One is in a space that served as a chapel, though it’s no longer used that way.
There are people who work down there now, as security types. (They were similar to the guard you see in museums, who mostly just have to walk around and sit in rooms, their very presence a deterrent.) They were usually in groups of three (perhaps of those three two weren’t at their proper posts, I’m not sure), chatting in almost incomprehensible slang. What a horrible job, I thought, or at least, what a horrible place to work. These guys didn’t seem like the kind of guys who had employers knocking on their doors everyday, which was no surprise. Would you work in catacombs if you could find another job? Of course, it seemed that mostly what they did was hang around and talk…
Eventually we left the ossuary, and continued along the long route out. Along the way were some places where the ceiling was made of packed sand that had slowly eroded, leaving an impressive high ceiling. Plaques along the way explained what they were, and how they were stabilized. Even though they were stabilized, it was an unkind reminder of the general danger of being in a place so far underground — what if a disaster did strike?
At the end was another staircase, spiral again but this time much older and much narrower. The guidebook said 83 steps, and we both counted as we went up (nothing else to do while climbing, and it took our minds off the monotony, claustrophobia, and fatigue).
At the top there was waiting for us one last guard, whose job was bag control. I suppose he needed to make sure we hadn’t taken any bones. Ew! The very idea! However, there had clearly been skulls missing from the rows and patterns down below, so it must be a problem. I myself didn’t even want my shoulder to brush up against them, much less for me to use my actual hand to pick up and actual bone and put it in my bag, to do what with, anyway?
As I sat down to catch my breath and open my bag for him, a handful of cough lozenges spilled out and onto the floor. Since I was out of breath, I didn’t pick them up, but just apologized and went on. It was embarrassing, and I just wanted to leave.
It was 10:30 when we emerged into the real world, and we had time to kill, to we wandered around the neighborhood. We killed some time on a café, where we both drank coffee and I had a croissant. We left the café and walked some more. We bought some Christmas presents, some wine, some bread, and some fresh ravioli to have for dinner tonight. I put these in my bag with the remaining lozenges.
Eventually it was lunchtime, for which we had planned something completely new: Mauritian food! Mauritius is a little island between Madagascar and India whose connection with France I don’t exactly recall. Réunion, the other major island in the area, belongs to France — either as a territory (like Guam for the US), or as a départment, a full part of France (like Hawaii for the US). The islands seem to share a cuisine (since all the restaurants offer Cuisine Réunionaise et Mauricienne, and not just one or the other), which seems to be related to the cuisine of Madagascar. This restaurant did not claim to offer Malagasy cuisine (i.e. from Madagascar), but another did. Racially, the waiter looked like a mix of Indian and Polynesian.
Anyway, Malagasy, Réunionaise, or Mauritian, it’s not anything you can find in Chicago. (Once working on a project for Berlitz looking for a Malagasy speaker somewhere in the US, all I found was one man in Texas, a French national whose family was from Madagascar.)
The food was very good. Some of it was like Caribbean food, and some like Indian food. First we were given two salsas to eat with bread (and later with our appetizers, one of which was the most unpleasantly hot (=spicy) thing I’ve ever eaten in my life, I think — my tongue hurt for a good ten minutes. Eric found that it was pretty good in tiny quantities, but I stayed away (“once bitten…”). The other salsa was good, and not spicy at all: a tomato salsa with onion, a lot of lemon juice, and spices. Eric had the appetizer assortment, which included: something which looked like a Chinese potsticker, but which was spiced differently; a phyllo-dough-turnover filled with meat (poultry, not beef); a deep-fried fish-cake; a shrimp beignet (like a hush-puppy with bits of shrimp in it); a calamari beignet (containing a whole ring of calamari); two eggplant beignets (with a slice of eggplant in each); and something he couldn’t identify. I had a plate of the eggplant beignets. All the appetizers were very delicious. Both plates came with a sort of African coleslaw in the middle, which was also excellent.
My main dish was fish à la Créole, essentially an Indian-style curry. The fish, which I couldn’t identify, came in round steaks. It was very good. Eric had jumbo shrimp rougaille — oil, tomato, garlic and onion, and various herbs. The dish was delicious, though Eric was a little put out that the shrimp was completely unshelled, so that before he could eat he had to do it himself. On the side came white rice with red beans — a very Caribbean-like thing (and probably also a very African thing).
For desert I had passion fruit sorbet and Eric had chocolate cake. The sorbet was delicious and the cake was good — very dense in texture.