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Authors: Robin Sharma
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rotting contents of the Saints Innocents Cemetery on the other side. Cadavers and bones flooded into the restaurant’s cellar. I read that a mason inspecting the mess contracted gangrene after putting his hand on the remains of the cellar wall.
There must have been a public outcry during those years, but apparently it was that crumbling wall next to the Saints Innocents Cemetery that moved Parliament to close the cemetery and turned the mind of a police lieutenant, Alexandre Lenoir, toward a solution. Five years after the Innocents disaster, government officials acted on Lenoir’s suggestion that the bodies from that cemetery and others throughout the city be transferred to the underground medieval stone quarries. The tunnels that lay south of the city gates were chosen, and the bones from Parisian cemeteries were exhumed and transported in elaborate processions to the newly consecrated ossuary. There was no way to preserve skeletons intact, so instead, bones were sorted by type and stacked and arranged along the tunnel walls together with grave markers taken from the original cemeteries. The catacombs, I learned, held the remains of six million people.
As I read, I looked at a few pictures and was relieved thatAntoine had asked me to meet him after the catacombs had been closed for the day. There was no way that I would be taking a tour. Bad enough to spend time with piles of bones, but small, dark tunnels… I felt a little lightheaded just thinking about that.
After breakfast, I wandered through the streets. By mid-morning the sun was hot, beating down through a clear spring sky. The brilliance and the pulsing warmth reminded me of the “authenticity” talisman—that little sun and moon coin. It was supposed to have some sort of restorative power. How exactly did that work? Did it help you become your truest self? And if it did, how was that healing? As I walked, I looked at the faces around me. I started playing a little game, identifying each person I passed as living their authentic life—or not. The tall young man with his nose buried deep in a Paris guidebook—not. The child clutching a small stuffed dog—authentic. The middle-aged waiter who stood in the doorway of a small bistro, pulling on a cigarette and scowling—not. The woman putting up a display of brightly colored scarves in a shop window—authentic. I kept at this for several blocks before I started to wonder what was making me come to those conclusions. It was, I thought, a certain look of contentment on the faces of the people which made me feel they were living their “real” lives versus constructing some plastic life that society had convinced them to inhabit. A look that suggested they were sure of who they were, what was important to them and what their days stood for. Who else had that look? I think my mom and dad had it. Maybe that’s just a child’s assumption, but even when they would grumble about our cramped house or our clunker of a car, they seemed undisturbed, alwaysutterly satisfied, in fact. It drove me crazy. I thought of a few friends, and then Juan’s face popped into my mind. Not Juan of the most recent years, but the Juan I had met when I first walked through the doors of the company.
J UAN MUST HAVE BEEN in his early forties when I met him, but he had the wise expression and intellectual enthusiasm of an old scholar. During my interview with Juan, he had seemed distracted, indifferent even; so I was surprised when he called to offer me the job. I would come to recognize that, during the interview, I had simply witnessed Juan lost in thought. Apparently he was so impressed with my aptitude tests, my previous work experience and my opening remarks that he was thinking ahead to what projects he could assign to me. On my first day, however, I was greeted with a thoroughly engaged Juan.
“There he is!” he announced as I hovered in the doorway. “Come, everyone,” he said to those scattered around the lab.
There must have been a public outcry during those years, but apparently it was that crumbling wall next to the Saints Innocents Cemetery that moved Parliament to close the cemetery and turned the mind of a police lieutenant, Alexandre Lenoir, toward a solution. Five years after the Innocents disaster, government officials acted on Lenoir’s suggestion that the bodies from that cemetery and others throughout the city be transferred to the underground medieval stone quarries. The tunnels that lay south of the city gates were chosen, and the bones from Parisian cemeteries were exhumed and transported in elaborate processions to the newly consecrated ossuary. There was no way to preserve skeletons intact, so instead, bones were sorted by type and stacked and arranged along the tunnel walls together with grave markers taken from the original cemeteries. The catacombs, I learned, held the remains of six million people.
As I read, I looked at a few pictures and was relieved thatAntoine had asked me to meet him after the catacombs had been closed for the day. There was no way that I would be taking a tour. Bad enough to spend time with piles of bones, but small, dark tunnels… I felt a little lightheaded just thinking about that.
After breakfast, I wandered through the streets. By mid-morning the sun was hot, beating down through a clear spring sky. The brilliance and the pulsing warmth reminded me of the “authenticity” talisman—that little sun and moon coin. It was supposed to have some sort of restorative power. How exactly did that work? Did it help you become your truest self? And if it did, how was that healing? As I walked, I looked at the faces around me. I started playing a little game, identifying each person I passed as living their authentic life—or not. The tall young man with his nose buried deep in a Paris guidebook—not. The child clutching a small stuffed dog—authentic. The middle-aged waiter who stood in the doorway of a small bistro, pulling on a cigarette and scowling—not. The woman putting up a display of brightly colored scarves in a shop window—authentic. I kept at this for several blocks before I started to wonder what was making me come to those conclusions. It was, I thought, a certain look of contentment on the faces of the people which made me feel they were living their “real” lives versus constructing some plastic life that society had convinced them to inhabit. A look that suggested they were sure of who they were, what was important to them and what their days stood for. Who else had that look? I think my mom and dad had it. Maybe that’s just a child’s assumption, but even when they would grumble about our cramped house or our clunker of a car, they seemed undisturbed, alwaysutterly satisfied, in fact. It drove me crazy. I thought of a few friends, and then Juan’s face popped into my mind. Not Juan of the most recent years, but the Juan I had met when I first walked through the doors of the company.
J UAN MUST HAVE BEEN in his early forties when I met him, but he had the wise expression and intellectual enthusiasm of an old scholar. During my interview with Juan, he had seemed distracted, indifferent even; so I was surprised when he called to offer me the job. I would come to recognize that, during the interview, I had simply witnessed Juan lost in thought. Apparently he was so impressed with my aptitude tests, my previous work experience and my opening remarks that he was thinking ahead to what projects he could assign to me. On my first day, however, I was greeted with a thoroughly engaged Juan.
“There he is!” he announced as I hovered in the doorway. “Come, everyone,” he said to those scattered around the lab.
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