38. Take a Cemetery Stroll
The city of lights and death in equal measure.
I re-read Les Misérables in its entirety every couple years because a) it's one of my favorite books, b) I remain a fan of Hugo's undiagnosed ADHD, and c) I still get a thrill when I read it and come across the name of a street or a church right next door to me.
A few years ago, we moved to the 15th arrondissement, and I walked past one of those cast iron Histoire de Paris plaques, stating that the giant high school I was standing in front of was built on the former site of the Vaugirard Cemetery. All of my fellow Les Miséra-bros know that cemetery was the site of one of Jean Valjean's many escapes from Javert, so this fact was most pleasing to me...
...until later, when I returned to our old apartment, which faced the back of the high school. Further Internet sleuthing showed that our building also stood atop of the former cemetery. I normally try not to be too, you know, woo woo about certain things, but at the time, I was pregnant. I was very hormonal. And very woo woo.
I've always loved walking through the many beautiful cemeteries of Paris, particularly Montmartre Cemetery, which is overrun with cats, as well as the dog cemetery near Asnières-sur-Seine, which is also the eternal home to a monkey and a sheep. Maybe I'm low key a goth or I just listen to too much Belle & Sebastian, but I've always loved a good cemetery stroll.
But then the pandemic happened the same time I got pregnant with my first kid. The trips to the cemeteries abruptly came to an end because there was already too much death going around. I didn't want to push my luck by actively hanging around tombs and ghosts. I thought I was being slick, but when I realized our apartment was literally atop a cemetery, I knew there was no use in trying to avoid death in this city. It's everywhere, and there are plaques and memorials and signs everywhere to rightfully remind you.
Les Misérables drives home this point further. People die left and right in that book -- in one paragraph, Hugo offs an entire student rebellion. When I found out our apartment stood on the site of the old Vaugirard Cemetery, I sought out my paperback and re-read Hugo's words on the graveyard. According to him, it was "a faded cemetery" with "very lugubrious lines about it." In short, it was considered the shabby alternative to the more glitzy option that was Père-Lachaise.
Since now I knew there was literally no way you can escape cemeteries and graves in the city, I made my peace with where our old apartment was situated -- I don't think the baby minded either. Later, when she was born, I'd take her out in the stroller on plodding walks around the promenade on avenue de Breteuil, which faces the back of Invalides, yet another tomb (of whose inhabitant Hugo didn't particularly care for). But now I don't really care about any would-be spectres hanging over us. Not in this city, at least.
Beside, you'd think someone who's read Les Mis as much as me would've known better by now to fear one of the city's many cemeteries. Hugo himself wrote that "the tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare." Once again, I agree with him, and that's why I'll never turn down a good cemetery stroll, especially on a sunny day.