With my family, we took the Montmartre Free Walking Tour in Paris. Montmartre is a large hill in Norther Paris primarily known for its artistic history, the white-domed Basilica the Sacre Coeur, and lively nightclubs.
In the middle of our tour, we reached Rue Norvins, where Marcel Ayme, French writer and satirist lived and died. Once a village boy from the
outskirts of Paris, Ayme wrote short stories and plays. One of his most famous
short stories Le passe-muraille, or The Man Who Walked Through Walls, gained him unprecedented fame.
Inspired by the same story, Parisians built a statue of a man, who got half of his body out of a wall, at the same quarter that Ayme lived. I was lucky enough to visit the statue and learn about the funny story behind The Man Who Walked Through the Walls.
At the age of 43, Dutilleul, who’s been locked out of his home, suddenly discovers that he has “the remarkable gift of being able to pass through walls with perfect ease.” First disturbed and worried, he eventually learns that the ability to “walk through walls,” is not very bad.
He uses his new skill to walk through walls of banks and jewelry shops to commit burglary. He then walks through prison walls and escapes every time he is captured.
One day, while walking the Rue Lepic, not far from where the statue is today, he encounters a beautiful woman. He instantly falls in love with her. But, she is married. Her husband keeps her in a locked house all day long. Of course, that is no barrier for a man who can walk through walls.
The woman and Dutilleul manage to meet a few times. “And of course, these weren’t innocent meetings,” our guide told us.
In one of their meetings, perhaps the last one, Dutilleul has some small trouble getting through the wall. But, he thinks little of it. It is not until he is halfway through the garden wall that he realizes he can’t go further. And so there he remains to this day, trapped half in and half out of the garden wall.
With savage humor, Ayme criticized the death penalty in his plays.
He remains hugely popular in France both for his novels, a dozen of them turned into films, and his children’s books told stories of talking farm animals that included an ox going to school or a pig that thought it was Peacock.
After moving to Paris, Ayme stayed at Montmartre. I could see why he loved the hill. Montmartre has a Bohemian atmosphere, known for its cobblestone streets, nightlife, a big white church, and the artists who found home there.
Many big painters including Picasso, Dali, Renoir, and Van Gough had studios or apartments at Montmartre. Our tour guide kept bragging about being a native of Montmartre.
While inviting us to appreciate the statue of The Man Who Walked Through Walls, “Maybe you think twice when you want to visit someone’s wife,” she said sarcastically. Everyone laughed.
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