Every day while walking my dog through my Paris neighborhood I glance into the living room of a ground floor apartment through a stained glass window, with a pattern of roses, pale yellow and deep red, with rich green leaves. The window is a little beauty mark in an otherwise utilitarian dog walk.
An old couple lived in the apartment. I used to see them from time to time in the street. He was a robust looking man, but he had that old man’s shuffle that gets slower and slower with time. Eventually, he needed a cane. Later still, the only times he went outside he was accompanied by his wife. Wiry, brown like a wren, she stuck close to his side, ready to prop him up, to help him over a rough spot or catch him if he fell. His face had a grim set to it; these carefully supervised walks were surely not a pleasure, more like a duty he knew he had to do to keep going.
Then I stopped seeing the old man out on the street. I saw him only between the roses of the stained glass window, sitting in an arm chair, watching television. Early morning, mid-afternoon, night, each time I walked the dog, he was there, with the television always on.
Today there is a For Sale sign on the apartment, on the window of a little study adjoining the living room with the stained glass. The arm chair is empty. The round-the-clock television is dark and silent.
I mourn for this old man though all I knew of him was that he appreciated the beauty of a stained glass window in a neighborhood of anonymous clear glass panes.
I hope whoever buys the apartment will keep the stained glass window of the living room. There are so few beauty marks along my daily dog walk route.
© 2013, Alice Evleth
This vignette, which was first published on France Revisited, appears in Alice Evleth’s collection of memoir vignettes Half a Lifetime in Paris, and Counting (2022).
