My title (be not inhospitable …) 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.
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.
1 COMMENT
- Mei Del said…
- i have enjoyed my morning exploring your blogs which have led to other discoveries on the net, this libraire americaine for example, shakespeare and co, and paris isn’t that far away after all.