After the 2 hour wait outside in the sun, I passed through the entrance turnstile and descended the narrow, winding staircase. Down, down, I went, and with each rotation of the stairs, the dizzier I got, the more disoriented I felt. With each turn, I thought I would come to the end, but I went round and round and round, farther and deeper into the underbelly of Paris. The damp, the cool, the chilled exhalations of the dead began to grip my skin.
And though I knew there were other people in the catacombs with me, I could only hear the distance echoes of their footsteps, their hesitant whispers, their cautious continuation. For stretches in front of me and stretches behind, I was alone. Alone with my feet on the uneven ground, alone with the dripping sound of water, alone with my imagination. I was alone with the dead.
The corridors were low and narrow, smelling of the damp, the must, the old. Having always loved this smell – the earthy, the raw, the cold – I was comfortable, I was at home. I purposely paced my walking so I could avoid anyone down there who might have a functioning heartbeat.
I was so enthralled with the initial portion of my visit that I almost forgot why I had come: the bones. Soon, I arrived at the gateway to the world of the dead. I paused, I contemplated, I crossed myself. Then I entered The Empire of the Dead.
I found a far away sense of romance in the detailed placards stating the bones’ origins – from which graveyard and from when. I loved that the bones were meticulously piled and stacked, and indexed with a sense of care and love.
Words of poetry I could barely understand punctuated the rows and stacks and innumerable naked bones. Occasionally I stopped, read, attempted to grasp the meaning of the words. With my passable French, I could glean meaning here and there, and mostly I found beauty, or truth about death.
As I walked on, the volume of bones was overwhelming. Just like the stairs, I wondered when it would end… if it would end. My imagination briefly took me to places that made me wonder what I got myself into in coming here, but the distant echo of other life forms like me was reassuring. There were other lost souls down here.
At the end of the tunnels, there was another narrow, winding staircase, this time transporting me back to reality. Still, I was similarly disoriented ascending to the land of the living.
A French man sitting on a plastic chair, listening to his iPod, greeted people arriving at the end of their visit. He smiled and nodded at me. There was no ceremony, no gift shop, no sense of finality apart from the doorway out into an unsuspecting Parisian neighbourhood. Before the sunlight bleached my vampire eyes into blindness, I asked the man for directions to the nearest metro. He kindly directed me, and then I was on my way. With one foot outside, I stepped into a part of Paris I would never have otherwise found, a quiet neighbourhood where people live, visit cafes, go for quiet walks. I was on my way, saying goodbye to the dead.
For now.
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PS – Happy Halloween.