One Way

I bet it belongs to him, the one with the big goofy grin from ear to ear, sitting at the back of the café’s terrace. He moved his eyes to look up at the waiter and nod thanks for the cup of coffee he had just brought him, then turns his face back this way, toward me, but not at me. He’s looking at the car, the one with no driver, his car, nose to nose with another in the middle of the narrow street. I had noticed them as I was walking up and thought maybe one was getting a jump start from the other. But I see the hoods are down, no cables, both cars are idling, and the driver of the other car is reading a newspaper, holding it so high it brushes the roof. I looked in his window as I passed, but he didn’t see me or didn’t act it. He just reads the paper or makes a good show of it. The street must be a sens unique, but which way it’s one way I didn’t notice as I walked around the corner. I like this: it makes no sense. 

The grinning man looks as if he’s doing everything he can from his face down to the seat of his pants to keep himself from bursting out laughing, unless he has to pee now and badly. He sees me looking at him, claps both hands over his mouth and puts his head down: no, it is laughter, not the bladder, I think. He looks up, then puts his head down again. I accept his invitation and wander over toward him, looking back at the newspaper-reader who hasn’t moved a muscle, nor turned a page, I’m pretty sure. I ask if I may join him. He starts to say je vous en prie, but gets no farther than the first syllable before he covers his mouth with his right hand and gestures to the seat next to him with his left. 

“I was wondering what…” No, won’t do. Even if he hears what I am saying, I’m not sure he’ll be able to get an answer out while keeping his laugh in—and I don’t want him to hurt himself trying. I try again with another approach. “I was wondering if you moved around and didn’t look over at the cars if you might be able to give me an idea, you know, and I promise I’ll keep on eye on your car for you…” He hears and after nearly choking—evidently I have said something almost as funny as whatever it is he is trying not to laugh at—shifts around the table. The waiter passes, I ask for coffee, then decide this is worth a glass of wine, and wait until he brings it to let my new friend settle down. I also suggest to him that he shouldn’t look at the reflection of the cars in the glass front of the café: agreeably, he looks down. Wine in hand, I silently toast the good fortune of finding a strange puzzle in the middle of the most unstrange of streets in a very unstrange quartier, then ask my pal what’s going on. 

He tries. He speaks with the stricken closed throat you hear when a Frenchmen taken to a Tex-Mex joint for the first time figures the hottest chili on the menu is the only way to go native. I give him my wine, figuring his hot coffee is not going to help and wave at the waiter for another. “Merci,” he croaks, much more distinctly or at least intelligibly, “that was a good idea. Thanks.” Je vous en prie, I answer by way of showing him the phrase really can be uttered. “Well, you see, I was laughing already. You could tell. But when you said you’d keep your eye on my car, I thought it was too much for me. Look at it! C’est une chignole! Who’d want it?” It’s not much, I agree, but not a total piece of crap, his aging Peugeot, and by Parisian standards must just getting its second wind. 

So what happened? “Well, you can see the street is narrow, so of course it is one-way.” Which way? “Not mine,” he says. Did you know that when he started driving down the street? “Of course.” Of course? “Bien sûr because I drive on this street all the time. It’s on the way to my aunt’s house, and she is a very good cook. Also, you see, she worries because I am an orphan.” Sorry to hear that. “Merci, but I have had a lot of practice. Thirty years. My parents died when I was at the university.” Of course. “But auntie Cunégonde…” You’re making that up. “No, my grandparents on my mother’s side were very taken with great literature, especially Voltaire. My mother was Clytemnestre.” So sorry. “Well, yes, but it’s better than Mrs. Waters. They liked Tom Jones, too.” Understood. And tata Cunégonde? “She lives over that way, three streets. But if I go on the streets in the right direction, it adds too much time and traffic and I have to go around several blocks. Not convenient.” So that’s why you drive the wrong way on this street? “Bien sûr, as I said.” And this doesn’t happen? Didn’t happen before? “Never, because, you see, it’s the bollards. They’re new. Must be. I was here just a few days ago and I don’t remember seeing them. Maybe they were here, but there was no traffic the other way anyway. There almost never is. This street doesn’t go anywhere.” 

Bollards in Paris are not the same as those in Washington where they are part of the siege defenses in the city, ornamental cast iron shells, about a metre high and eighteen or twenty centimetres at the base, supported by a solid steel rod sunk into six feet of concrete. They are made to stop tanks and trucks full of dynamite and terrorists. In Paris, they are hollow sheet-steel tubes, with no ornament save a rounded top—probably to shed water and not really ornamental—painted the characteristic brown-black of Parisian street appliances, less than half the diameter of Washington’s, seventy-five centimetres high—just right for catching you in the crotch if you’re not looking. They are made to keep the sidewalks safe for pedestrians by keeping cars and their drivers in the street. 

Before the bollards, what did you do if there was another car. “Voyons, monsieur, what do you think? We’d both get up just a little on the sidewalk. A little, not much. And slow down, of course.” Bien sûr. “It worked. When I would leave chez tata Cunégonde, I’d come the right way down the street and if someone came the other way, I’d do the same. Up on the sidewalk, and no complaint. Everybody smiled. But today, there’s another car and he drives right up to my bumper. Well, I see the bollards, really, I tell you, for the first time. Bien sûr I stop…” Of course. “…and I’m getting out of my car meaning to explain to the man. Negotiate with him. But as soon as I am on the street, I look at him through the windshield, but all I see is his newspaper.” You mean he didn’t want to talk with you? “Exactly. He wouldn’t. Of course…” Bien… ah. “…he was waiting for me to get out of his way.” Why didn’t you just back up and out of the street? It’s not far and he had le droit de passage. 

“You are right, but you see, that’s why I wanted to negotiate with him. It’s not as simple as you seem to think, though I don’t blame you. I don’t blame him either, because he couldn’t know and you couldn’t know either.” What couldn’t he know? “That’s why I started laughing more. My car doesn’t go very well in reverse. It barely moves. It’s difficult to park, but I can manage that. I don’t think it could go thirty metres down the street. I’m afraid to try.” So it really is a junker. “I told you, it’s a piece of crap. It would be all right, but my mechanic can’t get the part, so he says. I wanted to explain to that guy. But he gave me the cold shoulder.” Well, really a newspaper. “True, kind of interesting when you think about it. No one ever did that to me before, not in a car in the middle of the street. Maybe in a café. When he did that, I said to myself I am not in a hurry, why not sit down have some coffee—and I really think the wine was a better idea…” Je vous en prie. The price of admission and worth it. “…and I insist on paying. But anyway, I thought I’d stop and see what would happen. When he didn’t even look at me or pretended not to, I thought it was hysterical and that’s what you saw.” 

Well, monsieur is still in his car reading the paper… no I don’t think it’s safe for you to look just yet, you might hurt yourself, and I’m sure he probably has a book or a magazine just in case. He looks like the type who is always prepared. I’m not in a hurry either, so why not have another glass of wine? We can treat each other. 

“Bien sûr. Good idea, merci.” Je vous en prie. 

© Joseph Lestrange

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