Road to Elsewhere, Excerpt #24*: The Past Isn't Dead. It's a Stop on the Paris Metro

Faulkner's history lesson is included in every ride.

FROM THE MOMENT I heard Madame Chalomet, my French teacher at the Alliance Française in Paris, pronounce the words “Porte de Clignancourt”—translation: the flashing door!—I was eager to hop a Metro out there.

The stop is just south of the Boulevard Peripherique, Paris’s ring road, and provides access to the Marché Aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, the world’s most famous flea market. (Saint Ouen, by the way, is the patron saint of the hearing impaired, not bargain hunters.) Here, all the junk drawers of Paris have been dumped in pursuit of commerce. 

Because M. Chalomet was teaching a bunch of slack-mouthed Americans, she paid excruciating attention to each sibilant and schwa in the entire, delicious name of that Metro stop. Her lip fitness was off the charts. Pronouncing “pouces” requires the same embouchure as kiss-blowing, and I snatched it out of the air each time she said the word. 

Classical French language has 37 distinct sounds, overburdening the usual 26 letters, including four vowels w…