Here’s a new year story from the French newspaper Libération:

“Good luck. A few minutes from the new year, a few metres from the Arc de Triomphe. A taxi waits. The driver combines a pleasant tone with sad words. ‘Customers sometimes come out of a corner,’ he says. ‘In the end, you never know. You just have to keep hoping. We always say the last journey is the best one. He agrees with that saying. He may have to wait a long time. Apart from his fellow drivers, ‘there’s only the cops and journalists.’ The man misses the tourists who normally invade the area. ‘We never see more nationalities than we do at this exact time of the year,’ he continues. Midnight strikes. No other sound, no sign of life. The driver, still good-natured, turns his car round towards home, towards the outer suburb of Bry-sur-Marne. In exchange for ‘Happy new year’ he offers ‘Good luck.’”

No customers, of course, because of covid restrictions. But as a former Parisian resident, the idea of Paris silent is sad, shocking. I’ve never waited for a late-night taxi near the Arc de Triomphe. But there was another story in the same edition of the paper about empty night buses in the Avenue Victoria, near Chatelet and the rue de Rivoli. When I lived in Paris from 1990-95, I did wait there, and there were queues for buses throughout the night and no lack of them. Before I found out about the night buses, I used to walk home to Montmartre at 3am on a Saturday or Sunday from the gay quarter, Le Marais. It took about an hour and a half: straight up the Boulevard de Sébastopol to the Gare de l’Est, then turn towards the Gare du Nord and then go towards Barbès. Some people were worried about Barbès. They said it was a dangerous area to walk through, you’d probably be robbed or worse. They said this about my bit of Montmartre too, around the Porte de Clignancourt, and for the same reason: the area boasted a large North African population. I never had a problem. The problem where I lived was the local police station, from which North Africans were often taken to hospital and at least one, to my knowledge, died. Anyway I found out about the buses and crowded on to them with everybody else. And it’s hard to envisage what it must be like now with empty buses and no queues, a deserted Avenue Victoria.
All this has reminded me of Samy. We met, during my years in Paris, in the Quetzal bar. He was a tall, good-looking man in his middle to late twenties, with a slightly worn face which somehow suggested that life so far hadn’t always been easy. He was from Réunion, off the East African coast, one of France’s overseas territories. After our first meeting, we met, unplanned, about every couple of months for about two years (for a number of different reasons we never exchanged phone numbers). Whenever we met, he came home, either on the metro or, if it was late, on that night bus. In between, we didn’t pine for each other but when we did meet up – or, rather, stumble into each other in a bar – the electricity between us switched on and it was immediately understood, without a word being said, that he would come home. We talked, drank, laughed and made love. It was uncomplicated and quite wonderful.
The first time we met, I went home with him. He lived near the Place de la Bastille, not far from the Quetzal. He explained that he worked as a security guard for a company and because he had an early shift the next day he would have to get the metro early – about 6.30. So the following morning, we slouched towards Bastille station. Line 1 at Bastille had a mural on its wall depicting episodes in French history. As we walked the length of the platform Samy pointed out scenes and characters on the wall: “Here’s Marie-Antoinette, that’s Napoleon, this is the storming of the Bastille …” Perhaps that’s why I was so taken by him: he took the trouble, at 6.30 in the morning, to give me a quick lesson in French history.
Anyway, in these dark times, and as a result of reading in a French newspaper about taxis and buses with no passengers, I suddenly thought of Samy. I hope he’s OK. I hope he’s staying safe and healthy.