I read Grisham’s new book Bleachers and though I enjoyed it, despite the fact that it was about a football coach/team, I really miss the old courtroom dramas. Although, I imagine it’s hard to come up with a new formula each time so your books don’t start to all sound the same…wait, they all did sound the same after a while didn’t they. Oh, well, his recent ones are such a departure for him that I find myself analyzing every sentence to see if the ‘voice’ is the same.
It’s been raining on and off for a week and when it’s not raining it’s windy. On my walks I fight the wind going down hill and then as I head home, loaded down with shopping, the sneaky thing switches direction and I fight it on the way up the hill too. Stupid wind. A couple days ago my neighbor Anne and her daughter Carla came by. They store their bikes in our garage since they don’t have one. They rang the bell to let me know they were going around to get the bike. (We gave them a key to our garage door so they could get their bikes if we weren’t home.) I asked Anne how she was doing and she said “Alright except for too much wine.” I was momentarily taken aback until I realized that she wasn’t confessing to being a lush she had actually said ‘too much WIND’. She has a lovely French accent when she speaks. I asked if she would be OK riding in such a wind storm. She assured me that she would be and told me that it will be windy like this most of the winter.
I remember reading in one of the many ‘living in France’ books I’ve read recently, that this is true. They call the wind the ‘Mistral’ I think and tell stories of how it makes people crazy or at the very least, after a couple of nonstop windy weeks, very crabby. I believe it, I’m crabby now and winter hasn’t even begun.
Alright, today we talk about the Post Office Beggar. A couple of weeks ago I went on one of my pilgrimages to the post office for stamps and to mail postcards etc. When I arrived at the front door to the post office (La Poste) there was a very scruffy and odiferous gentleman standing right at the door. As I approached (hesitantly) he opened the door for me and smiled. I smiled back said ‘Merci’ and went in.
(The inside of the post office you have to know is always stifling. Just hot and airless and smelling of all the hundreds of people who have come and gone for years.)
I worried that he was also coming in and would stand directly behind me. I fleetingly wondered how long I could hold my breath or if I should leave and come back later. But he didn’t come in. I surreptitiously watched him as another woman approached the door and he opened it for her too. ‘Oh’ I thought ‘he must be waiting for someone’. I glanced around the busy lobby but couldn’t really see anyone who I believed a likely candidate to be traveling with this man. Finally I focused on one of the women at the counter and something about her disheveled dark hair made me decide that she must be who he was waiting for. ‘Good, he’ll be gone when I leave’, I thought with relief. When her business was concluded …
(I have to interject here that people at La Poste take forever. It’s like they’re up there socializing. Since I don’t understand much of what’s said and if I concentrate hard enough to get the gist they’d all look at me pointedly for eaves dropping, [can you see me standing there staring, mouth hanging open eyes vacant as I mentally translate what they said…] I can only make assumptions based on the few words I randomly catch. But it seems to me that they chit-chat for much longer than is strictly necessary considering the stuffiness and long and pungent line forming behind them. It doesn’t take me that long to say ‘J'ai besoin de 10 timbres de quatre-vingt-dix cent s'il vous plaît’, pay for my postage and be on my way.)
…the woman headed to the door where the man opened it for her. She left, but damn, he didn’t. As the line snaked along, and I began to run out of possible partners for this man, I noticed that he opened the door for every one as they left, men and women alike. I was truly puzzled, I began to wonder if he was waiting for me.
When I concluded my business I headed for the door which he opened for me, I said ‘Merci’ and as the words are coming out of my mouth and I’m moving away toward the steps, I register that in his hand is a tin can with some coins in it. He is a beggar and collecting tips for opening the door for people. Of course by the time this realization comes to me, I’m heading down the front steps. On subsequent trips to the post office at least 4 others in the last couple of weeks, he’s always there. Though I’ve never seen anyone give him so much as a penny and I admit that I haven’t either, he’s still there. What sticks in my mind is the unique approach. Where you usually see homeless people with signs detailing why they are forced to beg, this man is providing a service, a minute service to be sure, but a service none the less. On the other hand it puts me in mind of those men who stand on street corners and run out to wash your windshield at the red light, whether you want them to or not and whether it needs it or not and then have the nerve to be pissed when you don’t tip them for smudging up your window.
Don’t look for a moral to this story, there isn’t one, just a story about my days.
