Stones and Artichokes

Sitting in the Closerie des Lilas in Montparnasse, my friend tells me two stories. The first is about her grandfather, who arrived at Gare de l’Est after the Shoah, in which all forty-two members of his family were killed. He was hungry, maybe even starving, and took a seat in the restaurant of the station. The waiter handed him a menu and, speaking only Yiddish, my friend’s grandfather pointed to an item at random. The waiter went away and returned with an artichoke. My friend’s grandfather looked at it helplessly. He had never seen an artichoke before, that strangest, most stubbornly hermetic of all things humans have deemed edible. A mute and mutual incomprehension settled between the artichoke and the man who was the sole survivor. The waiter saw all of this and understood something. Tenderly, careful not to insult the dignity of my friend’s grandfather, the waiter sat down across from him and taught him how to eat the artichoke. A people willing to teach a Jew how to eat, my friend’s grandfather thought, and at that moment he decided to spend the rest of his life in France.

The second story my friend told me was as follows: when she was seventeen, fat and unhappy, a boy who belonged to a very chic group of young and beautiful people invited her to a dinner party. My friend had always been in awe of this group, having watched them drink champagne many nights at the Closerie des Lilas, where her father brought her along with his model girlfriends. She was overwhelmed by the invitation. When she arrived at the dinner party, there was a large round table set with eight places, and she, it turned out, was the ninth guest. The host suggested she pull up a chair behind the others, outside the circle. That night my friend – who until then had lacked ambition – swore silently that she would make something of herself and have her revenge. She became the most famous artist in France. Most of the people at that dinner table are now dead.