Le Lapin Agile
POSTED IN Stories June 23, 2015
Le Lapin Agile
It was like that: I walked on the streets of Montmartre, watching everything greedily, exhausting my inner eyes, seeing the surroundings, hearing now and then the voice of my friend explaining things, but my heart was running fast to Sacré-Coeur.
I did not pay attention to one particular house, all of them looked alike to me, charming “maisonnettes”, filled with flowers on their small balconies.
And then I heard: “We should come one night to see Le Lapin agile, it is a history of culture…” and the words got lost again in the tumult of my thoughts.
In the following days my friend stressed again: “when should we go to Lapin agile?”, but it was more a rhetorical question, because he knew exactly what and when to do.
And, one evening, after we ate in a Japanese restaurant, we went on our path of many stairs up the hill which led me to Sacré Coeur in my first night in Paris.
But this time it was different. We stopped in front of a “maisonnette”, one of the many around that street, he knocked on the door as if a secret ancient password would have been needed, and once the door opened, I heard people singing and I saw a mysterious man making a sign not to enter until the song was finished. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, everything would have been possible from that moment. And it was.
The song ended, we entered a darkened room filled with red lamps and people, and suddenly I found myself one hundred years ago, in the Montmartre of Picasso, Edith Piaf, Apollinaire, Modigliani. That was Paris of “l’âge d’or”. Paris of my dreams.
Have you seen “Midnight in Paris”, my unknown reader? It was exactly like that, but instead of a taxi to bring me one hundred years back in time, this time for me it was A DOOR opening to the past, the glorious past when Art was Art, and not just a pale imitation. We took our seats around the table shyly, while people were singing old French songs, songs I knew by heart since my childhood and I found myself singing with them.
“Alouette, gentille alouette”, “Plantons la vigne”, “Les Champs – Élysées”, “Chevaliers de la Table ronde”.
And then the same mystery man came with “la boisson de la maison: cherry brandy” and offered it to us. Amazingly, it was the same drink as in my country, only we call it “vișinată”. Soft, tasty, and I very much liked to eat the fruits! Then, one by one, the Artists performed. On the walls there were Picasso’s shadows and memories. He sat maybe on the same chair, paying for his lunch by painting.
I heard Apollinaire’s “Sous le Pont Mirabeau”.
But my favourite of Lapin agile was a mignone “accordioniste”, who reminded me of Edith Piaf. Not only that she sang Piaf’s songs, but she had something from her smile, her way of being. I don’t know her name, that’s why I keep calling her “L’ Accordioniste”, like the song “de la Môme Piaf”.
That night ended too fast. I was brought back to my century too abruptly, I did not like what I saw in my real world. I left part of me there, in Montmartre and somehow in that “maisonnette” where I found the honest “me”, the one I was as a child, singing French songs without reasons. I know, tourists go to Paris to “Les Folies Bergère”, “Le Moulin Rouge”, because “when in Rome, do as Romans do”, when in Paris, one must see places which were the most famous in the past and now, in our commercial present.
Le Lapin agile is not such a place, used by movie makers, burning with powerful lights to make visual noise about its existence. Le Lapin agile was discreet but known one hundred years ago as it is now. This place means Montmartre, means the real Paris with the mystery of candle light, artists who fight for art like they did a hundred years ago. None of those artists who frequented Le Lapin agile in the past were rich, or famous. One painted for food, another one sang, another one wrote. But now, they are immortal because they painted, and sang, and wrote a hundred years ago to survive, and they survived eternity.
Maybe I am a dreamer, but I have learned something in Montmartre: “the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, it is imagination” (Einstein). Isn’t that right?
Maria Magdalena Biela
2 COMMENTS
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Mag, your writings captivate me and I love to watch your art grow.
Your Mag grew up over night(s), dearest Garnet :)!I’ll always need you, my Paracelsus…Thank you for starting this July 2015 together in spirit…