C’est un toilette, ça?
I recently went on to www.pap.fr and found that, like all things fundamentally Parisian, nothing had changed in the years since I first went hunting for a small apartment.**
This time, things began smoothly, with a search page. I agreed that I wanted to rechercher un bien (a property), ticked the appartement box, typed in the postcodes that interested me (75003, 75011, 75019—the 3rd, 11th and 19th arrondissements, my own favourite band of central and northeast Paris), chose a maximum surface (area) of 30 square metres, and my idea of a maximum price for a pied-à-terre, remembering not to put commas between zeros because French websites think they’re decimal points, then hit rechercher and got eleven ads—not many, admittedly.
I immediately realized why there were so few ads—only one of my chosen arrondissements had come up. This wasn’t a serious bug, however, because at the bottom of the list the site tells you how many similar ads are in all the other arrondissements, so you can click there whenever you want.
The first thing I did was trier les annonces—sort the ads, asking for the most recent first. These are marked annonce nouvelle du … plus the date. I knew from past experience that the ones listed as annonce mise à jour (updated) were probably sold, especially as I was looking for the size of apartment with the quickest turnover—there are investors galore looking to put their savings in stone rather than let the stock market evaporate them away, as well as a whole generation of Parisians trying desperately to evict their stay-at-home student kids into an apartment so they don’t have to keep yelling at them for smoking in the toilet.
These days, the jargon*** used in the ads actually means something to me, both the literal meaning of each term and its (often very different) implications.
The first ad needed no translation, however. It was a chambre de bonne with, if I was interpreting the photo correctly, a toilet beneath its only window, right next to the kitchen units—ideal for anyone with digestive troubles or who had recently escaped from prison, but not much else.
The next place was the complete opposite—three times the size of the live-in toilet but only twice the price, near but not too near République (a great métro junction for getting anywhere in Paris in minutes), very pretty, very well laid out. And, when I phoned, very sold, only two days after the ad had appeared.
Browsing further, I found five or six decent-looking apartments of various sizes, and rang up. Each time it was a mobile phone, and each time I had to tell the voicemail, ‘J’ai vu votre annonce dans le Particulier, et je voudrais visiter l’appartement.’
And although I had pronounced my phone number very clearly and didn’t sound at all like an estate agent trying to hassle the owner, only two people called back. The others, I guessed, must have sold already. Speed is of the essence.
Anyway, I finally got a bite, and one Saturday at ten in the morning, I stood outside a grey, middle-class nineteenth-century building near the Père Lachaise cemetery, and keyed in the door code I’d been given. I then keyed it in again. And again. I took a deep breath, tried one more time and phoned the owner to ask for the correct code. Voicemail, of course, but it didn’t matter because as I was about to leave a frantic message, a man came out and held the door open for me. Another deep breath, this time to smell the staircase. Pretty neutral—a good sign. No bizarre food smells, no medieval dampness, no stale cigarette smoke.
The ad had said sixième ascenseur, sixth floor with lift, but I didn’t fancy the look of the minuscule cabin that had been slotted down the middle of the staircase. I once read an article in a French paper about how often lifts break down and how difficult it is to call out the repair people at weekends. Two days standing in a matchbox? Non merci. I opted to go up on foot.
Six floors isn’t bad as long as you don’t expect to speak for ten minutes after your arrival at the top of the stairs, and I soon found myself hyperventilating comfortably in a low-ceilinged, but quite attractive, corridor. It had a varnished tiled floor, making it look as though it was made from large toffees, and a definite artist’s-garret feel, with the water pipes picked out in dark velvet red against the creamy white of the walls.
A ‘romantic garret’ in the 1940s. Today, in the Latin Quarter, this cupboard-sized apartment would cost about as much as a château in Auvergne—and be snapped up instantly.
The owner had told me sixième droite, sixth floor on the right, and although I could see three doors to my right, it was easy to spot which was the apartment for sale. The door was ajar and I could hear a loud voice dictating the address over the phone.
I knocked, noting that the lock was flimsy and would have to be replaced, and, getting no reply, pushed open the door to see a typically Parisian tableau—an open window with a body leaning half out into the street, a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other. The owner, a fifty-something man with longish grey hair and a leather jacket, beckoned me in as he carried on making a date for another viewing. Holding his cigarette even further outside, as if to offer a puff to the pigeons, he gestured at me to look around.
The place was listed as
