ABSTRACT
The scent of chestnut trees in summer, hot chestnuts in winter, coffee at all seasons, the unique aroma of the Metro—which has its own hold on memory and time—these are the author's small pleasures. The days seem longer here, even in winter. As Hemingway said, “One’s an ass to leave Paris.” Marton writes, In Paris the author live more intensely in the present. The pearl-gray light on winter mornings, molting briefly into apricot and violet just before sunset, moves him as much as when he first arrived, an unformed girl. At the other end of the spectrum, he find a group of men in middle age who more or less abruptly abandon their wives and seek another fantasized woman, whom they seldom find. These men usually cannot easily explain the motivation for their search at the cost of the dissolution of their domestic and financial lives.
