Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris

Hanging in Paris with Gertrude and Alice.

I lived right around the corner from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris.

They were at 27 Rue de Fleurus, and thus, directly on my escape route from the Alliance Française, at 101 Boulevard Raspail, to the Jardin du Luxembourg, a few charming blocks to the east.

OK, granted, Gertrude was long gone (1938) and also dead (1946) by the time I showed up (1978), plus I had no clue who they were back then. I had read little and lived less. In complete ignorance, I strode past the marble tablet that commemorated their ghosts,

which is one privilege of youth: Not to know or be encumbered by the past.

But as their pal Ernest Hemingway noted, in regard to his writing, even the stuff that went missing from a manuscript in his dogged pursuit of true sentences, maintains a kind of pulsating presence, even in its absence. And so, Gertrude and Alice were still there, somehow, when embryonic Peter walked those streets.