French Letters 003

Here I sit in the departure lounge of Roissy Charles deGaulle airport Terminal One. It’s a bit surreal to recall that when I first traveled to Paris circa 1969, both Dulles airport and Roissy were sparkling new facilities, the pride of 2 nations. Now both are in the midst of massive upgrades and refurbishment, although Dulles is simply expanding, while Roissy, in perhaps an attempt to separate the elite from the savages, has build new terminals for Air France and it’s airborne buddies.

Last summer the city of Paris purchased and installed some 20,000 bicycles, each locked into racks and extricable with a credit card. It was originally speculated to be part of the Mayor’s plan to thin the population, but so far there has been only one reported death, and the official Velib website notes only that “the number of bicycles used in Paris is growing constantly while the number of bicycle accidents is remaining stable.” But I see several heart-stopping near-misses each day, and notice that the hair of many city bus drivers has gone completely white. I also observe that racks at the high points of the city are often empty while those in the low areas are overflowing. Could our fitness-focused friends be coasting downhill and riding the Metro back up?

The worldwide press is often breathless in its haste to skewer big business, and French journalists enthusiastically hop the bandwagon. My TV screen just shrieked “(has Capitalism gone crazy?) and of course there is a rush to blame the U. S. (that Bush guy again) for the current crise economique. But remember that the first casualties of the sub-prime debacle were 2 hedge funds run by BNP Parisbas, so there’s enough blame to go around. And now a commentator has ascribed the 6 billion Euro fraude at Societe General as “the greed of capitalism.” Interesting that the idiot (genius??) who masterminded this stood not to personally gain a sou. It appears more to have been a game of outsmarting the bureaucracy, which he certainly did for a long time.

Just to show I had no hard feelings, I returned to the Taverne on St. Germain des Pres where I got food poisoning 2 years ago. It was the occasion of a delightful long lunch sitting inside a glass-enclosed porch, watching the city on parade. Two of us ate totally different meals, not even tasting the other’s selection, and both came down with serious gastric distress. I spent most of the next 3 days in the smallest room of the apartment where we stayed. On this visit I had a beer. It tasted a bit flat.

When I first came to France so many years ago I was horrified to find that it would take 6 to 18 months to get a phone installed. Friends at the Embassy were aghast and envious that the apartment I finally rented came with a working phone. No matter that I had no one to call, the phone was prestige, like driving a Mercedes.

Today everyone has a “mobile,” old ladies on the bus who jump and fumble when it rings, and speak loudly “j’ecoute, j’ecoute” (I hear you, I’m listening), and teenage girls trading secrets and giggling, so consumed with their conversations that they bump into fellow pedestrians. Last evening in a small restaurant I saw a young couple dreamily gazing into each others eyes, she massaging his arm sensually with one hand while holding her mobile in the other, carrying on a muted conversation with her cinq a sept perhaps?? (old fashioned slang for the amorous carryings-on of (usually men) in the period after work (cinq or 5pm, and sept, 7pm), after which they return to their wives and children.

Several days ago I gave directions to a Frenchman. It felt so good, and perhaps marked a watershed in my 4 decade struggle with the language. Of course the poor fellow may still be walking in circles, but I think I did him right. Yesterday I watched a young Japanese girl with a suitcase twice her size staring at a large bus and Metro map. She seemed frozen, transfixed, and although it is not my style to become involved in the affairs of strangers, I approached with a tentative “ou allez vous?” (where do you want to go). As my Japanese is limited to ordering beer (beer-u) she pointed to a far-out Metro stop. Luckily the #11 line was only 2 blocks away. I escorted her to much bowing and what I took to be enormous thanks and immense relief. It occurred to me that in the years I visited and lived in Paris as a single man, not a single attractive young female required my assistance.

The next time we meet I will be somewhere else…the adventure continues…