Indieoma

“The Eiffel Tower is a glorious structure. It is a big structure. Cleaning the Eiffel Tower is a hard, long job. Hour by hour more anti-rust paint coats are applied to the tower. It is a good thing that these coats go on. If the anti-rust paint did not go on, the tower would rust and collapse.”


-Excerpt from a Brandon Goffrey essay (Brandon is a fifth grader at Pleasant Grove Elementary. He loves animals.)

Yesterday afternoon, after giving a couple of English lessons at La Défense, and before reading Brandon Goffrey’s essay on the internet, I went to the Eiffel tower. I’ve been living in Paris for a year now, and have otherwise avoided this visit. As pretentious as this sounds, the truth is that it had always been just iconic enough of a monument to merit my total disinterest. As I approached it, surprised that I actually did find it quite impressive, I only wondered one thing: Who washes it? Who washes the Eiffel tower?

I stood still in front of the massive, shiny phallus, in a swarm of agitated tourists and their agitated tourist babies. Tourist babies that screamed themselves plum red in every language: Chinese screams, Spanish screams, Italian, German, Korean, English, Japanese screams, etc. screams. Screaming tourist babies and their stressed tourist parents with gorgeous fanny packs, Oakleys, khaki hats, and digi-cams.

I decided that the tourists would unlikely be able to answer my question as to whom, if anyone, washes the Eiffel tower. The most promising resources would be the people that worked on the premises; people that were there every day. I started with the security guard at the entrance of the stairs going up to the first floor of the tower.

“Excuse me, sir, have you worked here long?” I asked with a politician’s inflection that startled us both.

“Yes,” he said hesitantly. He was mustached, with slicked grey hair. He wore a navy-blue, SECURITY windbreaker, and the stature of a bull.

“Can you tell me who washes the Eiffel tower.”

“Excuse me?”

“I say you probably know who cleans the Tower.” I pointed up at it.

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I’m just security.”

“Are you here everyday?”

“Yeah, but I don’t watch that stuff, I just look at security stuff.”

“You never look up at that stuff ?” Again, pointing to the tower.

He glanced up at it, then back at me, and shook his head with a smile, “never.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I strolled over to one of the concession stands that line the perimeter of the square: little carts with cotton candy, popcorn, caramelized nuts, and Eiffel Tower lollipops. At random, I chose a cart. The woman inside was reading a fashion magazine. She had tanning-lotion-orange skin and wore a brilliant white visor and matching tank top. She wore silvery-mauve lip-gloss, and either she or the cart smelled like roller skates. A French woman trapped in a Floridian’s body.

“Excuse me madam. I wanted to ask you a question, if you don’t mind. Have you ever seen anyone washing the Eiffel Tower?”

“Washing it?”

“Yeah. Maybe someone on some kind of pulley system with a sponge or brush?” here I dropped my politician’s cadence and played the role of journalist, showing her that I would jot down whatever she said in my note book. This makes people feel that what they say is important.

She squinted her eyes questioningly at me. I was evidently breeching the usual tourist to concession-stand-lady rapport.

“I don’t know.” She glanced down at my notebook to see if I would write that down. I didn’t.

“Do you work here everyday?” I asked.

She sighed, “Yeah, everyday.”

“And you don’t know if anyone cleans the tower?”

“No. Yes. I think I saw someone clean the base once. Those concrete parts over there that support the legs. But I couldn’t say if I’ve ever seen someone cleaning the metal stuff.”

The only thing that her cart gave view to was the Eiffel tower, framed perfectly by her window.

I nodded my head and wrote “metal stuff” in my notebook and underlined it three times. I thanked her and decided to approach one of the French soldiers, patrolling the square on terrorist watch. The one that I picked was a redhead, holding his M-16 like an M-16. He couldn’t have been a day older than 18.

“Excuse me, sir, can I ask you something?”

He nodded his head with austerity.
“Have you ever seen anyone cleaning the Eiffel tower?”

He looked at me, waiting, as though there must be more to my question.

“You’re here everyday?” I added. He nodded yes, maintaining perfect seriousness.

“So–– if you had to guess, would you guess that there is or is not someone who washes the tower?”

“What’s the problem exactly?” He was making his voice deeper than it naturally was.

“Problem? There’s no problem, I’m just curious,” I responded.
He blinked at me a couple of times then turned around and meandered over to his colleagues. They whispered things and glanced over at me conspicuously. I decided to take a lunch break.

On the square that boasts the Eiffel Tower–– amongst tourists, soldiers, concession-stands, and security guards–– there are about a hundred immigrants, mostly African, selling key chains: silver and gold Eiffel Tower key chains. They walk around with a large metal ring in each hand, giant clusters of the key chains dangling at their sides. They sound like reindeer when they walk. Every half an hour or so, a police officer on a bike rides onto the square. Someone shouts the warning call, and all of the immigrants sprint toward the bridge across the street that leads over to the 16th arrondissement. Once in the 16th, the officer is out of his jurisdiction and they are safe. It’s a real spectacle.

I approached one of these guys, a giant, lanky man with a bright smile. I asked him if he worked here long.
“Six years.” His French was difficult to understand.

“Oh, great. So, let me ask you, have you ever seen anyone cleaning the Eiffel tower?”

“French, I’m French.”

“Okay, but do you know who cleans the tower?”

“I am French from six years.”

“Good. Okay, so listen. When I wash myself, I take a shower,” I mimed taking a shower. “How is the Eiffel tower,” I pointed to one of his keychains and then up at the real tower, “Washed?”

“8 o’clock.”

“It’s washed at 8’oclock?”

“Yes, 8’oclock, the lights are on.”

“Okay, but what about the cleaning of the tower, does anyone clean it?” I tried one last time.

“Yes, very nice, thank you.” He smiled at me and withdrew from our unsuccessful conversation.

“Okay, thank you too,” I said and went to another key-chain guy and asked the same set of questions.

“I’m not here for that,” he responded. He was squat and balding, maybe 40. “I don’t have time to stare up at the tower, I’m here for work.” The question seemed to irritate him slightly. In effect, the only things that he had any reason to pay attention to were potential customers and the police.

I then resorted to doing what I hoped to avoid, and waited in line to ask the ticket clerk my million-dollar question. I waited with the screaming tourist babies and their exhausted parents for 39 minutes. When I got to the ticket window, an old lady with a grave smoker’s voice asked me if I wanted a ticket for the elevator (13 euros) or for the stairs (6 euros). I said, “No thank you. I would just like to know if someone cleans the Eiffel tower.”

She chuckled at my visible despair. “Yeah, there’s a whole team of people who clean it.”

“Where!?”

“Inside. Would you like to go in?”

“Oh, but they only clean the inside?”

“Of course. No one cleans the outside.” She didn’t hide her laughter.
“No one? Ever? Like, since 1889?” I asked.

“No, they just repaint it. Every 7 years fifty or so little men climb up the sides, scrape off the old paint and apply a new coat. It takes nearly two years to complete.” She lifted her eyes off of me and looked at the crying Germans behind me. My time was up with her.

I went home, and consulted the internet to confirm what she’d said. That’s when I discovered Brandon Goffrey’s Essay. It was short, concise, and complimented nicely what I had learned that day: “…a hard, long, full time job. Hour by hour more anti-rust paint coats are applied to the tower. It is a good thing that these coats go on. If the anti-rust paint did not go on, the tower would rust and collapse.”

I think that it’s the word ‘hard’ that strikes me as so poignant in Brandon’s essay. It resonates with that long disconnect between Eiffel tower and Eiffel Tower employees perfectly. For the employees that I spoke with yesterday, the Eiffel Tower is a structure in the background of their workspace. Yet, for 13,999,745 tourists last year, the Eiffel Tower was part of their vacation’s ‘must-see’ list. It would be trite and redundant to underline how relative everything is, to write about the necessary imbalances in order to cater to the privileged, to contrast Brandon with the lanky African who swore that he was French; let’s assume that we know about all that and don’t care to talk about it, instead, we simply want to imagine everyone holding hands.

Let’s imagine Brandon’s oval face smiling up at the tower, wearing a Minnesota Vikings T-shirt stained by a chocolate éclair, holding hands with the orange-faced concession lady, and she holding the hand of Brandon’s father, and he linked to the jaded security guard, and then we see Brandon’s mom and sister, and here come the young soldiers, the jingling immigrants, the ticket sales men and women, the 50 little men, all the tourists, and all of their plum-red babies, making a giant circle around the Eiffel Tower, swaying and singing hopes of unity and hope. Here, in our John Lennonesque imaginations, no one resents anyone, no one’s jobs depends on anyone’s whims, no one and nothing is invisible, and the Eiffel Tower is the center piece of a moment of pure philanthropy.



Links to the other Voting with Your Wallet posts:

Johnny – Fishy Business

Farryl – Sustaining Fair Trade

Mike – Think, create share, consume, share, create: Liberalise creative freedom. Free Liberalism.

Ric – The Credit Crunch

Gala – Italian Cultural Finance [Italian and English]

Open Ideas – Truth Machine- Free Stonhenge