Chronicle

On the metro you have to pay attention. There are more than three hundred stations, and they all have similar names. They are named after saints, obscure dead politicians (Ledru-Rollin, Jules Ferry), and long-forgotten battles (Eylau, Rivoli). If you are not careful, for example if you are reading a book, you will pass your station right by. That is why I didn't surface again at Place de Clichy, but at Porte de Clichy. I stood amidst the noise of the Boulevard Périphérique and in the shadow of the Tribunal, the courthouse of Paris. It is not an impressive temple to the goddess of justice, like the Palais de Justice on Île de la Cité. It inspires no respect for the wisdom of the law, but awe for large-scale bureaucratic efficiency. Since I was already there anyway and am curious by nature, I went inside. I walked into a random courtroom. The defendant, who lived in the 19th arrondissement, had struck his neighbor on the head with a bottle. The prosecutor made a key point of the fact that it was a glass bottle and therefore practically a murder weapon. The defendant's criminal and social background was thoroughly examined. He was born in Senegal and had lived in France long enough to be sentenced to six months in Bordeaux in 2004 for attempted robbery. He also had a number of thefts to his name. In between he had done regular work most of the time, but since 2015 he was on welfare. His lawyer had little faith in it. He did not deny that his client had made a mistake, but made a big deal of the constantly rising cost of living and the high unemployment, which particularly affected the 19th and 20th arrondissements. He started to recite statistics, but the prosecutor interrupted him and said that unemployment in France was not that bad and that she, too, was suffering from high prices, but that it had never occurred to her to bash her neighbor's head in. The suspect and his victim did not speak themselves, the former probably on the advice of his lawyer and the latter because he was still in the hospital. The three judges of the tribunal also remained silent. You couldn’t say for sure if they were listening attentively, as all three had a computer screen in front of them. They did make a serious impression, however, so I do not think they were playing digital versions of solitaire, gallows, or Battleship. I was curious to see how the verdict would turn out, but the wheels of justice turn slowly. The hearing was adjourned, and the bottle man was escorted away by a stern-looking guard in a dark blue uniform. I walked to the courtroom next door. A group of people came out with in their midst a pityfully weeping woman. Here something serious had happened, but I missed it. The guard at the door stopped me and said that the court was closing. The courthouse hall is large, high, brightly lit, and bare. The floor is sparkling smooth and clean, footsteps sound hollow, and voices are muffled. You feel like a very small little human as you walk toward the exit, and you breathe a sigh of relief when you are back outside. But the tribunal's intimidating radiance does not extend far. On the square in front of the building is a metro entrance. There, just like at all stations on the north side of the city, a few boys are selling duty-free, smuggled cigarettes. Letter from Paris 2, published in Dutch in ARGUS Magazine in August 2026

Père Lachaise worked in education, but he owes his fame to his side job as confessor to Louis XIV. He lived with a pack of Jesuits in a large house on the east side of the city. The revolution not only made short work of the monarchy, but also of the Catholic Church's real estate. Napoleon had the Jesuits' vegetable garden ploughed up and turned it into a public cemetery. It is only a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment, and I pop over there every now and then to visit Proust and Oscar Wilde. If you get lost—and that is a pleasure among the large old trees—you sometimes bump into Chopin, or Modigliani, or Jim Morrison. One afternoon, as I was looking for the exit, it occurred to me that the cemetery is so famous that if you ever want to be buried there yourself, you have to think ahead a bit. I assumed there would be a substantial waiting list and that it was high time to put my name on it. I hoped you would be able to indicate a preference. I could, after my death, live with idea of having Proust or Wilde as a neighbor. Or with Edith Piaf; she’ll probably keep her mouth shut in the evenings now. Preferably not Morrison; I’ve always thought he was a pretentious loudmouth. Most of all, I would like to lie next to the Mur des Fédérés, in a corner of the cemetery, where the last Communards gathered in late May 1871 after their attempt to turn Paris into something socialist had failed. They held out to the last man against the government army. That was heroic, and practical too. They could be buried right there on the spot. The cemetery’s office is on all sides surrounded by gravestones, so you can get used to the idea. And there is no waiting list. At first, I misunderstood that. For a moment, I thought you could just knock on the gate when the time came. That seemed a reassuring thought to me, and of course, it was too good to be true. The official on duty, a friendly man who gave the impression that he often talked with people who think about death, explained that you had to call to ask if there was a spot available. One may only call if one lives in Paris, he said—which seemed quite logical to me at a municipal cemetery—and if one is dead. In French, you can get away with that; “on” is much more versatile than one —so he didn't understand why I had to hold back my laughter. A waiting list, he concluded, would be unfair. Every citizen, rich or poor, famous or obscure, must have the same chance. During our conversation, he received three calls and had to turn people away each time. ‘Do you ever have funerals here?’ I asked. 'Certainly, monsieur ‘,’ said the official proudly. ‘Many families have thought about the future and have a grave with some space left. And sometimes someone who calls gets lucky; that happens too. Moreover, there is always room in our crematorium.’

In the autumn of 1980 I traveled by train from Holland via Osnabrück and Hanover to East Berlin. I was twenty-six at the time. On the way I read "The Berlin Stories" by the English writer Christopher Isherwood, who was riding the same rails exactly fifty years earlier, when he was twenty-six.