Benedictions in Paris

Back from Paris. Went to a funeral of a bishop in Notre Dame. He was confessor to the Latin Quarter in the '20s, a parish priest in the occupation and finally a kind of priest trainer. The choir were student priests robed in exquisite turquoise. The hand movements to direct the singers and the congregation were perfectly co-ordinated among several boy conductors. The hands looked like spiralling birds.

It was a plain used coffin. But he must have lived like a king. Nice residence, the seine, artists, song. And other rites.

Then up to Sacre Coeur for the choir of nuns. I was startled by the same hand movements as they sang among candles the soloists sounding like they knew the most frightful secrets.

I went to Montmartre graveyard to get more shots of Nijinsky's tomb for my next book's cover. My hands for the first time don't appear in the shots. But a black graveyard cat does, ruffled by a wind, tail swaying. Then a blue tin sepulchre and next a row of peaked tombs including that of an exiled Romanov teenage princess. There is another tomb with an inner light. The row of tombs resemble exactly the roofs of Paris I had taken earlier from the steps of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre. Snow over blue and green. Perhaps this is a design of some transcendental tourist board.

I also saw an exhibit of Coptic funery items at the Louvre. Pictures of Annubis and Osiris helping a Christian into the grave. Lots of sculpture of sacred hands. There is a whole cult of these. Especially of John the Baptist of course. There are significant things about those number of fingers extended, where are the ones not shown. There are municipal contests about where the 'missing ones' are (as three or two are extended for certain blessings). One finger is supposed to be in St. Jean De Marianne in the Alps where the Savoys come from. I saw the church there last year. John's finger is there. I saw a skull of his at the Sultan's place in Istanbul.

Post-mortuary dismembership must be so disconcerting.


Richard Rathwell