DOROTHEA STRAUS
R emembering
J
erzy Kosinski
There is a certain street corner, a sidewalk cafe, a special table with a
particular view on the Quay Voltaire in Paris that, just as a monument
commemorates a patriot, brings back to me the Polish writer, Jerzy
Kosinski. Paris is divided in two by the Seine, and as you sit at the Cafe
Quay Voltaire, in front of you, across the river, you look at the Right
Bank: the dignified government buildings, the Louvre in the formal paths
of the Tulieries Gardens and beyond, the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli.
This elegant cityscape is haunted by the shades of the
bel epoqlle,
the
nouveaux riches
on display in their grand equipages or strolling among
the geometric flower beds in the park, the ladies in long rustling skirts
carrying parasols, the gentlemen, high-hatted, in swallowtail coats.
At your back, that maze of streets is the Left Bank, where you might
fancy that the priest, whose cassock sweeps the dusty cobblestones, has
stepped out of the Middle Ages. Here the ancient houses huddle, shabby
and somber, mourning for their aristocratic tenants beheaded in the
Revolution. A peoples' market, frequented by students and artists, per–
meates the atmosphere with the odors of vegetables and fruits. Adjacent
to the cafe, there is a small hotel, where Oscar Wilde languished in in–
quisitorial banishment. I have seen no guest going in or out, and the
fil–
igree balconies resemble the inscriptions on a headstone. To your right,
the flow of the Seine leads you towards the sturdy twin towers of Notre
Dame, joining the two continents of Paris more surely than the spans of
its many bridges. But if you draw close to the Cathedral, its bastion
contours are obscured in a welter of tone gargoyles - all manner of u–
pernatural shapes that seem to be saying: Right Bank, Left Bank, are one
- and evil lurks in cities, the creations of man.
On a fair spring afternoon in the 1960s, my husband and I were
resting at the Cafe Quay Voltaire from one of those long, aimless, irre–
sistible rambles. I was content to sit indefinitely at the white-clothed
table just watching the pedestrians pass by. Suddenly, the crowd seemed
to go into slow motion and a single figure emerged, highlighted. When
this stranger stopped at our table, I felt no surprise; the encounter had
happened before - perhaps, in another existence - it was a
deja
VII
in the
city of
deja
vus.
Where had I seen that swarthy face, with its hawk-like
nose, the crest of hair, luxuriant and glossy as a raven's plumage springing
