Anyone who has grown up in a town like Pottsville knows that neighbors have a way of becoming part of one’s private life. Houses are close together, and even when they are not, the people next-door are never far away. In summer, we hear the lawnmower, the hedge-trimmer or the grind of a chainsaw; sometimes we hear the patter and pulse of a sprinkler or smell the smoke of a barbecue; on sunny days, we sniff the scent of honeysuckle or sweet william, wafting over a neighbor’s fence.
In the city, it’s different. In Paris, open windows in summer bring in the roar of traffic and only in the early hours of morning, before the first metro of the day, does city air offer respite from the heat. The sounds of summer are jackhammers and the drum brakes of city busses. The smells range from heavenly (in the warm evening air the scent of linden flowers greets commuters emerging from underground) to revolting (a lot of Parisian men, in imitation of man’s best friend, relieve themselves against trees or on the sidewalk, making the acrid stench of urine a typical Parisian smell).
As for people, they are everywhere. In city parks, like Buttes Chaumont next to my apartment, Parisians grapple for every available patch of green. On summer evenings, the lawns are a multi-colored patchwork of picnickers and apartment dwellers overwhelmed by the heat. Café terraces are packed; sidewalks are crowded. When temperatures climb above 90°, as they have this June, the city pours into the streets, seeking relief.
Yet, despite the crowds, we city dwellers remain unknown to all but a small circle of friends. Hemmed in on all sides, we ignore our neighbors, trying our best to block them out. We convince ourselves we don’t hear the flushing toilets, the surge of water pressure when a neighbor takes a shower, the thud of boots, the click of high heels, the shuffle of those too lazy or tired to lift their feet. Nor do we hear the voices; at least we do our best not to listen. Sometimes we can hear every word. When we do run into our neighbors, we nod our heads and say a quick “bonjour.”
On the whole—and this is what we need and crave in order to lead our private lives in a confined space—we prefer to remain anonymous.
In a small town like Pottsville, this is a challenge; in the tiny village where I live, population 1343, an impossibility. I know what I’m talking about. I have become a local specimen, a rare insect, pierced through the middle and pinned to a pinning block, on display.
Not much happens in my village. There is rarely the “pin-pon” of police cars or ambulances, the constant background noise of sirens Parisians live with night and day. Since I’ve been here, there hasn’t been a single fire and the crime rate is blessedly low, though juvenile delinquency is a problem, as is drunk-driving, the cause of some very serious accidents.
Daily events take place with clockwork regularity and they take place on the village square, the true theater of village life. Anyone who enters it to go to the bakery, the pharmacy, the superette, the village café or the post office, steps on stage, both actor and puppet, whose comings and goings belong to everyone.
Let’s say you usually purchase your daily bread at 9 AM. Then, one day, you change. You go to the bakery a couple of hours later, taking a risk because your favorite baguette, the seeded whole grain variety, may already be sold-out. In fact, it is and you are reduced to purchasing an “ordinary” baguette made with white flour.
The shy, sweet boulangère who sells you the loaf notices, as do other customers in the shop. When you step back outside, everyone is already wondering what event was so important that it made you break with routine.
No one (except you) will ever know and no one will ever ask. The pleasure is not in knowing, but in speculating about the myriad reasons that could have made you change. Before you know it (and perhaps you never will), you have a fatal disease, a secret lover, or a serious problem with drink.
As a foreigner, an American (Trump is not endearing us to the world), a Parisian, a woman living alone, when I cross the square, I am transformed into the perfect specimen, an actress in a series destined for a long run.
Already I have been suspected of a liaison with the husband of the owner of the superette. I like to talk to him, which is not a crime, but readers, I assure you, I never drew him to my bed. Browbeaten by his wife, these days he barely says hello, and when he does, it’s without a smile.
I am also a persecutor of the disabled, when in fact the disabled are persecuting me. My immediate neighbors are a couple about my age, the man, an ailing alcoholic; his companion, a woman whose mental problems guarantee her a disability pension and protection for life.
Soon after my arrival, I invited the woman to my home because she begged to see my new kitchen. Though warned by the owner of the local café to never let her in—once she crossed my threshold, she’d attempt to do it every day—I opened my front door and invited her inside. When finally, after too many visits, I stopped, she put her fist through my front window, her hand protected by a sheepskin glove.
I went to the police, I filed a complaint, I divided the village in two: the Montagues and the Capulets, the Hatfields and the McCoys, everyone has taken sides and the final battle has yet to be fought.
When it is, I’ll be ready because I learned the ins and outs of small-town life in my mother’s Pottsville home. From her redoubt, which was also her sunroom, she observed every move on her street through a slit in the venetian blinds. When something happened (a neighbor parked his car in a different spot, another forgot to put the garbage out), she was ready with an explanation meant to reestablish order on the block.
I’ll be ready too, because life has taught me that in small town or village, whether we like it or not, we can’t escape our neighbors, nor can they escape us.
