15 August 2010
Bruce JacksonPont des Arts
I.
Near the Louvre end of Pont des Arts, the 200-year-old footbridge crossing the Seine between Institut de France and the Sully wing of the Louvre, a young woman approached us, a wide yellow wedding band in the palm of her hand. She pointed to the ground, as if to say she’d found it. She pointed at me. It was not dissimilar to my wedding ring and at first I thought she was telling me it had fallen off my finger and she’d picked it up. I thanked her and started to reach for the ring she was offering me, but then I saw that my ring was still in place. I withdrew my hand and said, “No.” She put the huge ring on each finger of her left hand in turn, showing me it was far too big for all of them: she had no use for it. She offered it again. I again said “No,” and walked away.
By then I’d realized it was a scam: she’d ask for a little reward, perhaps, because now I had this valuable ring and she’d freely given it up, and later I would learn that the ring, which we both knew wasn’t mine, would turn out to be brass, worthless. If I offered her something without her asking she’d thank me, then let me know it really wasn’t enough, how about a little bit more? It was, after all, a very large yellow ring.The police couldn’t arrest her because she wasn’t committing a crime. She was just standing in the middle of a popular footbridge across the Seine, saying nothing, holding out a pretty yellow ring to this man, then that one.
“She didn’t get you to go for it either,” a British tourist nearby said. “She tried us a few minutes ago.” By now, the young woman had attached herself to another couple just coming onto the bridge from Quai François Mitterand. Near the middle of the bridge I saw two other women working the same same game, one about the age of the woman who’d approached me, the other considerably older.
II.
Unlike the two venerable bridges bracketing it—Pont Neuf and Pont du Carrousel—there are no motor vehicles on Pont des Arts. The only wheeled traffic is bicycles, prams and occasional wheelchairs. All day long and through much of the night tourists, painters, photographers ordinary Parisians and the Gypsy scammers move and linger along the bridge between Quai de Conti on the south and Quai François Mitterand on the north. Students picnic there (École des Beaux Arts is close to the foot of rue Bonaparte, only a few minutes away from the Institut side) and older residents of the pricey Sixth arrondisment have long conversations or just hang out in the sun on the bridge’s wooden benches. Since there is no mechanized traffic and it has some of the most beautiful views to be found of that part of Paris, it is perhaps the most laid-back of all the Parisian bridges. Beyond Pont Neuf you can see part of two towers of Notre Dame, which is on Île de la Cité, one of the two natural islands in the Seine. The island has been continuously inhabited at least since the Parisii, who lived there when Julius Caesar battled with the Avernian chieftan Vercingetorix in 52 B.C. In the other direction, over and beyond Pont du Carrousel, you can see the upper part of the Eiffel Tower. Pont des Arts isn’t the most beautiful of the Paris bridges, but it has the most beautiful views in all directions, which is why, among other things, it has a recent film named for it, was a key site in the final episode of “Sex and the City,” and was the location of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous portrait of Jean-Paul Sartre.
III.
The deck is thin wood planks in strips of three. It is pleasant to walk on, even in winter, like an old-fashioned boardwalk. The walls of Pont Neuf, Pont du Carrousel and the other nearby bridges are cement and stone, but all that keeps you from falling into the river from Pont des Arts is wire mesh in steel frames. The result of this is wonderful visibility wherever you stand because if you’re on one side and you look across to the other side, the wall you’re looking at is clear and open but for the wire and narrow bars. Since you don’t have to worry about being hit by a car or truck or motorcycle or scooter, you can freely cross back and forth watching river action: for example a boat or barge as it emerges from one of the arches of Point du Carrousel to the west, approaches and then disappears under Pont des Arts, and then as it emerges on the other side and moves downriver, takes the left or right fork around Île de la Cité, then passes under one of the arches of the two sections of Pont Neuf.
IV.
In the past few years a new tradition has sprouted on Pont des Arts. It shares, I suppose, lineage with carving initials in a tree or writing graffiti on walls, though it is less invasive. Lover inscribe their names, initials and sometimes messages on padlocks, which they then attach to the bridge’s wire mesh. All the way across the bridge, on both sides, are hundreds of decorated and inscribed padlocks, brass and steel testaments to love everlasting. Or at least for now.
Copyright by Bruce Jackson, 2010
