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Page 59.

29. High City (Old City)

"This will give you a little flavor of our city. It will keep you away from us and out of danger for a few hours," Romain said as he steered his compact but powerful late model white Audi with gray interior along the Avenue Foch, back along the Boulevard Marie-Thérèse that they had walked on, and onto the Boulevard Royal. At the intersection near the Adolphe Bridge on their right loomed the famous Savings Bank tower across the Petrusse Valley. On this side, among more modern buildings, the thin spires of the Cathedral of Our Lady, Consoler of the Suffering, hovered directly ahead.

Hannah sat in the passenger seat, and Rick in the rear with his backpack.

"The Romans had a fort here about two thousand years ago, and before them the Celtic people, and before that there were people living here since Stone Age times," Romain explained. "A gunpowder explosion in 1554 leveled the old city hall. Two huge cannon bombardments during two sieges in the 1600s and 1700s leveled parts of the Haute-Ville or High City. Therefore, you see very little older than the 1600s, and that is the period to which the cathedral dates. Most of the fortifications around the entire city, extending as far out as the Gare, were demolished by a peace treaty in 1867 when the Prussian army pulled out. They had been there since Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815."

He regaled them with some more historical information as they crept along the narrow street between stone and stucco walls.

"I am driving on the Rue de Notre Dame," Romain said. "I will let you out in front of the Cathedral, and you can walk around the center of the Haute Ville or High City, the oldest part of the city. I'll phone you in about two hours and pick you up back where I left you off, and we'll head straight to Echternach to get our business done."

Within ten minutes, Rick and Hannah stood alone together, holding hands. Like any two tourists, they hurried along to peek into the cathedral. In the gloom, which was lit inside by sunlight leaking through brilliant red and yellow and blue stainless glass, there lay a faint aroma of incense from a recent service. In the vestibule was a shrine filled with symbolic crutches and other metaphors for suffering that the afflicted had left here as an offering over the generations—cured or relieved of sufferings.

Rick and Hannah crossed the narrow street—everything here was narrow and tight—old but tidy.

They strolled always holding each other. Every minute, he fell more in love with her. Sometimes they stopped to embrace and kiss. Nobody much cared as people streamed around them. One or two other young people were doing the same. The atmosphere reminded Hannah a bit of Paris, where affection was as freely expressed as the annoyance of waiters, the impatience of metro conductors, and the sheepish trudging of first-time tourists.

They climbed a mossy old flight of stone stairs and emerged onto the Place Guillaume, dedicated to a long-ago Grand Duke William. His statue, complete with duke sitting on horse, stood on a pedestal. This was the true postcard square with shops and cafés all around. They took a walk around the square, promising themselves one day to return for a leisurely café-au-lait or ice cream. They made some quick detours through cobblestoned pedestrian alleys of stylish shops.

Their walk took them to the grand-ducal palace with its patrolling soldier in dress-green uniform. Past the palace, they walked under a little overpass into a very old area (Fish Market) with cobblestone alleys winding about. They took a quick look at MUDAM, the Museum d'Art Moderne, without entering the glassy front with its current exhibit—a wild expo of wavy paintbrush colors on neo-surrealist canvases.

Back in the Place Guillaume, they passed a modern McDonald's at the corner of a side alley leading yet higher into the old city.

Mélu had advised Hannah on some other interesting points. Hannah towed Rick along by the hand. They crossed the Rue du Curé, walked a block, and entered the Place d'Armes. A few blocks further, in a pedestrian zone on the corner of the Rue Beaumont and the Rue des Capucins, was the Patisserie Namur, the oldest and most elegant surviving tea rooms of earlier centuries. The store name in large gold script was displayed above the heavy wooden entry way on a background of glossy royal blue. Signs above the plate glass windows read Confiseur and Patissier.

"Rick, look," Hannah said, pointing to a sign on an easel just inside one of the the tea room's display windows. "Isn't that amazing?"

"I can't believe it." Rick leaned close to read. The owner had gotten his start, of all places, in 1850s Sacramento, California! (*Endnotes #5)

"I wish I had some appetite left," Hannah said. "Looks yummy."

He took her hand. "Tell you what. Let's just step inside and smell the chocolate."

"What a great idea. Low-calorie pastries."

They stepped through the elegant wood and glass swinging doors and entered into an atmosphere that smelled of coffees, chocolates, pastries, and fillings.

"Oh-my-gawd," Hannah said. "Let's get out of here before I gain twenty pounds from just smelling the air."

They started their walk back down to the Rue de Notre Dame.

Over an hour had passed.

Rick stopped into a little corner shop and bought a burner phone. He bought Hannah a small cloth flower and pinned it on her jacket lapel while she stood beaming.

Arm in arm, they sauntered across the Place Guillaume.

"Let's sit for a few minutes, just you and me," she said. She pulled him to a bench in the shade of a small, leafy tree near some vegetable sellers.

He obliged, and sat with her. He hovered by her side, facing her while she sat with her hands folded in her lap. He put his arm around her back, and laid his free hand over hers. "Any regrets?"

"Not a bit." She looked at him frankly. "You?"

He shook his head. "We're having a crush."

She said with some certainty, "I'd know a crush when I feel it. I've had crushes before."

"Yeah, I know. Me too. This is love, I think. Are you scared?"

"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "I have nothing to lose. You have nothing to lose. We have nothing. Just each other. And—."

"Yes?"

"When we were together last night, I felt good inside for the first time in a long time. I felt all dark and angry until I was with you on the train. I already started feeling this balmy, goofy warm…" She ran out of words and looked into his eyes questioningly, to see if he knew.

He gave her hands a squeeze, feeling a certain luxury of time and place. The minutes and seconds were moving more slowly, as on a watch dipped in honey, whose works slowed down. It was a time warp, a love warp, an emotional playground within a fence that kept the world out.

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