One doesn’t have to spend a lot of time in Paris to sense
that it holds many mysteries, but the more time one spends there, the more such
mysteries begin to manifest themselves: occult symbols in the architecture,
centuries-old esoteric societies, marabouts and mystics, a whole secret city. After
a quarter century of frequent visits there, I was flabbergasted that I’d never
before encountered Jacques Yonnet’s stunning 1954 book, Rue des Maléfices: chronique
secrète d’une ville – or, as the title is somewhat more sensationally
translated into English (perhaps by the marketing department) Paris Noir:
The Secret History of a City[i]. It’s
easily the most unusual book I’ve read about Paris and one of the few that has
completely jolted me out of any smugness about my own familiarity with the
place. No, says Rue des Maléfices, try as you might, you’re not ever really going to know this city. But the
door Yonnet’s book opens upon Paris throws an illuminating light nonetheless, permitting
unforgettable glimpses of the city’s most shadowy, ensorcelled corners, “into
the mysterious fluxes that pulse in the darkest secrecy of the City’s veins.”
I hasten to point out that Rue des Maléfices is not,
strictly speaking, a book about occult Paris. I’d probably have skipped it had
it been, and had it not come to me through fittingly mysterious circumstances
(my own visitation from the past, a vanished Paris acquaintance from 15 years
ago who by sheer coincidence showed up again this year living in the apartment
directly above me in San Francisco). Rather, Rue des Maléfices stands at
the unusual intersection of a personal obsession - a passionate interest “in
everything related to Paris as it used to be, and whatever survives of its old
traditions” – and the impersonal Second World War, during which Yonnet, a
journalist and “technical education supply teacher, curious by nature,” worked
clandestinely with the Resistance, relaying radio messages to help coordinate
bombing runs on German positions. Traveling
within a fairly circumscribed area of occupied Paris between the Left Bank
poles of Place Maubert and “La Mouffe,” Yonnet’s orbits roughly parallel Paris’
“lost” river, the Bièvre (now a mostly subterranean stream covered over by the
city’s growth and all but invisible except to the most inquisitive seekers), a
unifying element that emphasizes the hidden past lurking beneath the flickering
present and lends a depth and gravitational pull to Yonnet’s concentrated
portrait of Paris under the Occupation. Many writers might have built their
book around their daring exploits in the Resistance, but Yonnet often treats
his dangerous work as a self-evident obligation and as almost incidental (at
least until its hazards interrupt the narrative with cold violence), and the
war as something of an impertinent interference in his excavations of Paris’
past and depictions of its present.
Recording in charcoal as well as in prose (a few sketches
are included in my French edition of the book, along with photographs by
Yonnet’s close friend Robert Doisneau), Yonnet displays an insatiable curiosity
about the characters with whom he interacts in the bars, cafes, flophouses, and
secret corners of the city: fellow members of the Maquis, gangsters, gypsies, informers,
poets, prostitutes, immigrants, spies, madmen and others from the lower depths:
“a gang of Bohemians of whom [he was] in some sense the key player and prime
mover,” given his genuine interest in their stories and his consequent ability
to win their confidence. Through anecdote, dialogue and historical accounts -
and no small amount of humor as well as horror - Yonnet conveys his portraits in
a narrative that possesses the drive and suspense of a thriller.
Yonnet’s interests range widely, from insightful
explorations of the city’s history to endlessly fascinating casual observations
concerning, among other things, origins of idiomatic expressions, locations of crimes
and of events almost mythological in their power to enchant, bits of Parisian
history spread over a millennium, incidents of bizarre psychiatric phenomena of
the sort one might find in an Oliver Sacks book, opinions on art and craft, a
digression on tattoos, and atmospheric evocations of Occupation life in the bars
and cafes of the area. Among the more memorable portraits is that of Keep On
Dancin’, a ruthless but gregarious and heroic gangster on the lam from the
Nazis and the police, who, when not brutalizing his betrayers, genially shares
with Yonnet his own profound obsession with Paris’ buried mysteries.
Though Rue des Maléfices manifests a particular
interest in the mystical, even cabalistic side of Paris, Yonnet is careful to
maintain a skeptical, empirical mien. His book thus comes off not as an account
by a believer pre-disposed to the sensational and bizarre, but as that of a
sharp observer who has simply left a door open to the possibility of events
beyond comprehension - “fantastic but fantastic on a human scale.” Rue des
Maléfices is filled with stories of coincidence, the supernatural, and improbable,
sometimes inexplicable phenomena: a watchmaker who makes watches that run
backwards for nobles determined to remain young; the apparent transformation of
a human into a fox; an elderly gypsy who with a look stops an attacking dog, leaving
it trembling and sickening unto death; an exploit that involves Yonnet and a
distinguished British professor on a furtive series of inquiries that put them
in touch with a disgraced priest who performs exorcisms.
An openness to the mysterious also serves partly as a
bulwark against the Occupation itself. While Yonnet observes that, “these
days,” a cheap employment of the occult is, after all, useful to megalomaniacs
- “It requires only the slightest sense of mystification to get anyone
acclaimed by any crowd” – his turn towards the mystical acts as another sort of
resistance, a conviction that the monstrosity of the Nazi presence is another
aberration doomed to failure, especially up against the immense weight of history
in a city that has seen as much as Paris.
Part of the mesmerizing power of Rue des Maléfices stems
from this long view, its timeless determination to excavate Paris’ past while a
World War is raging. Yonnet’s attention to the mystical is in part a
consequence of the derangement of the times, a recognition that “the most
innocent words, the most harmless gestures in certain places and at certain
times acquire an unwonted importance and weight, and have repercussions that
far exceed what was intended,” and in part a more personal response given the
necessity of navigating potentially fatal encounters by relying on instinct and
intuition. It’s hardly surprising that Yonnet would place stock in such metaphysics,
exhibited, for example, through his “sixth sense” hunches that invariably prove
right about the dangers of the missions he undertakes. At one point he notes
that “just as a war between men is not a human-scale phenomenon, danger that
assumes a human form and a human quality is much more related to time and place
than to its extremely unwitting vehicles,” and agrees with one of his
compatriots that “…the study of
paranormal phenomena ought to be pursued in depth, especially during the times
when serious upheavals such as the present war were afflicting the planet.”
Like many of the bars and bistrots Yonnet mentions, the “Rue
des Maléfices” of the title actually exists, and in an inquiry typical of
Yonnet’s persistent and meticulous investigatory skill, he digs through
centuries – and multiple transmutations of the street’s name – to arrive at the
street’s tenebrous origins. Tourists who today explore what is now the narrow
Rue Xavier Privas, with its cheap Greek restaurants and souvenir vendors, might
tread more lightly if they were aware of the strange and lurid events that have
unfolded there over hundreds of years. But Rue des Maléfices is perhaps
not a book for tourists; one’s rewards in reading it are magnified by a
familiarity with the city, not to mention an openness to the city’s innumerable
secrets. Yonnet says as much in closing, when he wishes he could one day
“follow on the heels of an attentive reader,” who may find among “all the
‘keys’ scattered through these pages…the key to their own front door.” You may
be that reader. Stranger things have happened.
[i] The English
translation is by Christine Donougher and published by Dedalus Books. Another
French version of the book goes under the anodyne title Enchantements of
Paris.
