… they may be angels in disguise
from an extinct blog called Fiachi, It’s warm enough for me to go for groceries in a short-sleeved shirt. On my bag-laden return, I encounter a man smartly dressed in an overcoat and colourful plaid cap. He has abundant whiskers, white and curly with a tinge of yellow. He approaches me from the porch of the Social Security office to ask if I have the right time. “Ten o’clock”, I reply. At the same time, I can’t explain why, I show him the dial of my watch, as if to back up my assertion. He is appreciative. I hesitate a moment: is this all he wants, or was it a way of testing the waters before introducing some proposition? But he goes back to his vigil of staring through the glass door of the deserted office. I walk on a few yards, but then return on a hunch. The opening hours are clearly displayed: Monday to Friday from 9am. I ask him if he is expecting to be let in on a Saturday. “Oh,” he responds. “Is it Saturday? They owe me some money, you see . . . Oh, well.” He seems helpless against fate. Shall I reach in my pocket, give him all my spare change?
No, I have been tricked too many times by plausible tales, such as a girl after dark who needs a few pence for her bus-fare home: her mother will be worried if she is late. I give her a pound, tell her to phone her mother now. Half an hour later she is still in the same place, trying the same story on someone else.
So I walk away from the man in the overcoat, without looking back.
The title (be not unhospitable …) is the motto of Shakespeare & Co, booksellers in Paris. I stayed there free of charge in 1962, when it was still called Librairie Mistral. I don’t know who invented the motto, unless it were George Whitman himself.
Mei Del said…