The Arcades Project - Operi

ooth with prices of seats posted-would it not, if one opened it, lead one into
darkness rather than a theater, into a cellar or down to the street? And on the
ticket booth hang stockings once again, stockings as in the doll hospital across
the way and, somewhat earlier, on the side table of the tavern.-In the crowded
arcades of the boulevards, as in the semi-deserted arcades of the old Rue Saint­
Denis, umbrellas and canes are displayed in serried ranks : a phalanx of colorful
crooks. Many are the institutes of hygiene, where gladiators are wearingorthope­
die belts and bandages wind round the white bellies of mamlequins. In the
windows of the hairdressers, one sees the last women with long hair; they sport
richly undulating masses, petrified coiffures. How brittle appears the stonework
of the walls beside them and above: cmmbling papier-m&che! "Souvenirs" and
bibelots takc on a hideous aspect; the odalisque lies in wait next to the inkwell;
priestesses in knitted jackets raise aloft ashtrays like vessels of holy water. A
bookshop makes a place for manuals of lovemaking beside devotional prints in
color; next to the memoirs of a chambermaid, it has Napoleon riding through
Marengo and, between cookbook and dreambook, old-English burghers tread­
ing the broad and the narrow way of the GospeL In the arcades, one comes upon
types of collar studs for which we no longer know the corresponding collars and
shirts. If a shoemaker's shop should be neighbor to a confectioner's, then his
festoons of bootlaces will resemble rolls of licorice. Over stamps and letterboxes
roll balls of string and of silk. Naked puppet bodies with bald heads wait for
hairpieces and attire. Combs swim about, frog-green and coral-red, as in an
aquarium; trumpets turn to conches, ocarinas to U111brella handles; and lying in
the fixative pans from a photographer's darkroom is birdseed. TI,e concierge of
the gallery has, in his loge, three plush-covered chairs with crocheted antimacas­
sars, but next door is a vacant shop from whose inventory only a printed bill
remains: "Will purchase sets of teeth in gold, in wax, and broken." I-Iere, in the
quietest part of the side-alley, individuals of both sexes can interview for a staff
position within the confines of a sitting room set up behind glass. On the pale-col­
ored wallpaper full of figures and bronze busts faIls the light of a gas lamp. An old
woman sits beside it, reading. For years, it would seem, she has been alone. And
now tl,e passage is becoming more empty. A small red tin parasol coyly points
the way up a stair to an umbrella ferrule factory; a dusty bridal veil promises a
repository of cockades for weddings and banquets. But no one believes it any
longer. Fire escape, gutter: I am in the open. Opposite is something like an arcade
again-an archway and, through it, a blind alley leading to a one-windowed
H6tel de Boulogoe or Bourgogoe. But I am no longer heading in that direction; I
am going up the street to the triumphal gate that, gray and glorious, was built in
honor of Louis the Great. Carved in relief on tl,e pyramids that decorate its
eolumns are lions at rest, weapons hanging, and dusky trophies.