Many years ago, a friend was visiting me in Paris. I wanted her to see the quotidian side of the area where I lived, not just the chic cafes and shops.  We were walking down Boulevard Saint Germain, past the Cluny Museum, on our way to one of my favorite places, the Maubert street market, said to be one of Paris’ oldest.

All of the market’s producteurs (vendors) had crowded around the small, oddly shaped – maybe trapezoidal – place Maubert. The place was covered with their stands and tables of fruit, vegetables, cheeses, meats, bread, and products from the countryside, like soap and lavender bouquets. Other days of the week, the place was simply a paved crossroads where people went to and from the metro Maubert-Mutualité. During market days, it came alive in an entirely different way.

We arrived early, with the French shoppers, for more choice and less crowd. It was the ambiance of the market that I wanted my friend to experience: the bustle and lively chatter between the merchants and shoppers, the smells of roasting chicken and potatoes, of the fragrant fruits — fall apples and mirabelles —  of the breads. And every stand arranged like a work of art, a “regal de l’oeil,” a gift for the eyes!

We chose some autumn specialties to cook with at home: the mushrooms — cèpes, girolles, and trompette de la mort for a fricassée or an omelet; apples from Normandy for a tarte tatin;  figs, brussel sprouts, and fennel, some of my favorites; and a baguette, of course.

I noticed a particularly tempting fromagerie stand and took my place in line.  I could introduce my friend to new flavors, too.  When it was my turn, I greeted the fromager with the requisite “bonjour Monsieur,” a lovely acknowledgement that begins every conversation in France, and asked about the particularly strong-scented seasonal cheeses in his display: Roquefort, Fourme d’Ambert and Epoisse, called “the king of cheeses.”  “Any others?” I asked. I liked new tastes and I liked to hear the vendors’ enthusiasm for and knowledge of their products.

I listened and the fromager talked.  Realizing I might have left my friend alone for too long, I asked him to wrap my cheeses and paid for them, saying “au revoir, monsieur,” the ending of all conversations. I turned and walked toward my friend. I apologized for the time that had passed and launched excitedly into a description of the man and his cheeses and what she and I would eat at the end of that night’s dinner.

She cut me off abruptly, saying “Debby, do you have to form a relationship with everyone you talk to?”  I can hear it even now. Confounded, I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t.

In the days, weeks, and years that have followed, I’ve thought often of her question.  In that moment, I realized something about myself: that I had a taste —  a fascination — for people, their stories and their uniqueness. And without my interest in those brief conversations, all that experience would be lost.

I look back now at how this aspect of myself has evolved. I remember asking directions from a tall policeman in a Florentine market using my freshman- year Italian, my father teasing me in the background. “I thought you spoke Italian,” he said, as I struggled for the right words. Then there was my apology in a Taiwanese market using gestures instead of words to a woman whose child I had photographed without first asking permission. Despite our lack of a shared language, I didn’t want to walk away having said nothing. There were failures, too: most notably trying, every week, to engage the people in the post office downstairs from my Paris apartment. Every week, I got a stony face and stamps.

Thanks to that angry comment 30 years ago, I recognize and appreciate something in myself. I see the many ways in which my life is richer for it, as it is populated by people I might never have known, had I not formed those momentary relationships.

Visit Maubert Market : Place Maubert, 7 am – around 2 pm, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; Paris, 75005, along the Boulevard St. Germain and the rue des Carmes.

Deborah Slavitt ’69 developed a curiosity — a taste — for travel, languages and cultures from inventive family trips, planned by her SC 1936 mother, Mary Lewis Slavitt. After college she had a bee in her bonnet about going overseas and so began her peripatetic life. She has lived in Chile, France (twice), Germany and Taiwan and visited many other countries, about 15 years in all. Her languages and her taste for knowing people have led her to many surprising conversations.

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