Story: Inarticulate Hour

***

This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

*

1

If someone had been watching him from above, he thought, he would appear as the only moving thing in the silent world he was walking through. In the direction he was moving at the moment, after turning one corner coming down the long hill from the university, there would be on the viewer's left the park rolling out from the grid-pattern of streets around it. There would be the hill above and the tops of the houses he was walking by, with their steep, shingled roofs ranged properly in their neat rows back from the gray lawns in front of them. The houses were pretty tall for just houses, two and often three stories, and if the one above was not looking at just the right angle, Jon himself would be hidden behind them. Except perhaps as he crossed the street.

He always walked along the same route, climbing up the hill in the mornings to keep office hours or to type something since he his typewriter at the university instead of at home, to check into the library, or attend a graduate seminar; and wandering back down again in the afternoons, just before it was late, after class. He taught two sections of freshman English and paid that way for his books and his apartment and his food. It was the third year he had done that.

"Perhaps she will call me," he thought.

He walked the same way everyday, enjoying the feel of being regular like that for no reason at all except it was fun; but in the mornings he found himself on one side of the street and then later crossed over, and in the afternoons, he would take the other side, sometimes even walking in the street.

By now he was proceeding along the street that touched the corner of the park. He walked the street on the park side, just beyond the soggy leaves that filled the gutter. He didn't like to get his feet wet because it ruined his shoes and because he refused to buy rubbers, as everyone else did, in a kind of denial that the weather was all that bad. It was all that bad anyway, of course, despite what he tried to make it by not buying them. His influence in such matters was not great.

"But why would she call?"

Among all the trees in the parkway at his side which stood there shivering above their dropped leaves like trembling virgins naked for the first time before a man, there was one old codger of a tree whose bark was thick and rough and which, now that the leaves are gone, attracted one's eye only to its trunk, stubby and stout, twisted slightly to one side and further deformed by huge lumps that bulged out of its sides in two or three places. That tree inspired him with confidence. Everyday when he went by he picked it out from the others and tried to absorb some of its sturdiness. Before all the birds had flown off to the South, they had crowded around those trees and hopped along the ground.

It was the time of day then, however, when everything was quiet. There happened to be no wind. It was late enough that all the children who lived around there were home already from school, and cold enough that they weren't playing outside. It was early enough that not too many people had started home yet from work, so that there wasn't any noise up by the park from the big boulevard at the bottom of the hill. He could hear nothing besides his own footsteps; and they, of course, weren't much.

But she might call, just the same," he was thinking.

He enjoyed teaching because it broke up his day, and he was not unpopular with the students. He graded hard (though of course he was fair) and besides, didn't expect them to do too much work. He always had a few students, every semester, who got very interested in the course and worked very hard. At the end of the term a few of them might come up to him when they handed in their exams and say something awkward about how much they had liked the course. He enjoyed it even more if they were really embarrassed and hesitated a little or stammered, because he thought that showed they were sincere. It was still early in this particular semester, however, and he had just gotten to know the students' names.

Beyond the corner of the park, a little farther down the hill, was a flight of steps, leading him down to a steep street slanting toward the boulevard and his "place" (as he thought of it) just beyond. He always bumped his briefcase on his knee or shin going down the steps, or behind him (as he just did again) on a step at the turning. The street way going so steeply down like that opened up the sky more to his view, and he could see quite far across the city where another hill rose, spotted with crummy frame houses that he thought must be as bad close up as the ones he was walking by.

It was Friday afternoon, the end of the month, and the weekend spread out before him like a great plain filled with cold and lifeless garbage he would have to pick his way through--but that would over-dramatizing it.

He crossed the street to the broken sidewalk there, swinging his briefcase out before him and back. It certainly was better going down than going up.

He imagined ahead of himself that when he would be opening the door--No, it would be some time later after he had settled down in his window niche on the comfortable chair with something to read, his Leconte de Lisle perhaps. The telephone would ring and he would wonder who it was, going over to see, letting it ring twice or so. He figured it all out as he walked along.

Hello. Is that Jon?"

He wouldn't know who it was, you know. He never had been much good at recognizing voices over the telephone even after hearing them several times. And this time he would have heard the voice only once before on the phone anyway. He would say that it was Jon, though, naturally.

This is Emily," she would say, and, sure enough, he would recognize the voice once he knew who it was.

Emily Lukas was his co-teacher in one class of freshmen. She had just come out from the Midwest that fall, four weeks before or so, and at the university now they were trying to "train" the new instructors by putting two classes together and having the new instructor and a "veteran," as they called him, teach the double-class together. It wasn't much of an idea, of course, and the sixty students or so they had in that class were already restless; but so far Jon was enjoying it.

Emily didn't have a telephone herself. She had called him not long before the semester began so that they could plan what they were going to do. She had come up to his apartment, in fact, because she had a car and he didn't, of course, to talk it over one night. They both seemed to have a good time and went on with it until late.

"Hiya kiddo." He might even say that back to her when she called again.

"Listen...," she would say in preface but would then fall silent. One thing you were conscious of talking on the phone was the warmth you somehow generated between your ear and the receiver. And then, just breathing over the mouthpiece that close to your lips, that too gave it a kind of intimacy.

He knew right away that Emily had some kind of trouble. But he didn't know what sort or what she wanted to do about it. That was all right (or would be, you know, if this thing really happened)--that was all right because he always had been able to get people to talk to him.

"I was thinking about you just now." He might as well boldly say that to her (which would be true, of course, since he was thinking of her at that very moment).

If he had wanted to think about it, he would have been struck again, as one is periodically, by the amazing speed of his mind. He was walking along all this time down the curving street toward the boulevard, which was not very far to go. Only about one block and a half or so compared to most streets. And yet he had already begun in his mind all this telephone story. He was even having time to sort through several possible things that could happen--for example, he almost had Emily say, "May I speak with Jon, please?" and almost just now had himself say, "What's up?"--and still confident of finishing the whole scene before he got to the stoplight at the bottom of the hill. You could go through a scene like that much more quickly in your mind than you could walk down the hill.

"You were?" Emily would really wonder about his thinking about her, but would add in a lower tone, "About the class?"

"Well, no, not really," Jon would say. "I was wondering what happened to you over weekends. Not really knowing too many people here yet."

"Oh... Listen," Emily would say again. "I wondered if I could come over and see you."

"Well, sure," Jon would say. "Would you rather I came over there? I could take the bus..."

At this point, he didn't even know which he wanted to happen... He was prepared to skip that part of the conservation.

Emily was small and girlish with delicate limbs and fine features. She wore her hair, just any-old brown, cut very short, lying flat on her head, barely fingering down onto her neck and wisping a little around her ears. She didn't wear make-up--as no insecure, intellectual, and "arty" girl from a Midwest college would--but her features were regular enough and lightly enough formed that one didn't even notice. She had brown eyes that didn't require punctuation, and her lips, though thin and her mouth small, were well-defined and yet not hard or cold. Her voice was low and musical.

She dressed what she must have called sensibly. Plain wool skirts, longer than the fashion, and simple blouses. She hadn't really made friends as far as anyone could tell, and didn't say much in her seminars. Some thought her an amazon of sorts, but most didn't notice.

Emily, you see, was the reason why Jon was enjoying the semester so far. He had begun to go over to her office more and more before class began because, as they got to know better what the course was going to do and what they could expect from each other and so talked less and less about classwork, they talked more about each other. Emily had been born and raised in Atlanta, for example.

But it wasn't what they talked about, you know, but how it happened to get said. He would be sitting on the desk across from hers in her office, swinging his legs a little and leaning on his hands at his sides on the edge of the desk; and she would be at her own before him. There was a little smile that kept getting mixed up in everything she was saying; it kept playing around her smooth cheeks and lips, and sometimes they would both laugh, more just because it was pleasant than for any reason.

That was the first weeks when she was happy.

By the time he had arrived at the stoplight, where he had to wait for several cars to pass, he had finished the scene. The last of it had to be pretty vague since he couldn't really invent anything definite to be bothering Emily. Or if he could, he didn't want to. It didn't really matter after all, or even interest him. And as he crossed the street and went on toward the house where his apartment was, he was filled with a sense of his own strength to face the difficulty and kindness and tact. She had come to him not to solve the problem or to wish it away, but for the quiet she needed to gain the strength to face the difficulty and perhaps to set about snuffing it out. He thought he could manage that.

She had even mentioned one time in the office how happy she was to be there and to be setting out anew again. As if she had to say it in words. She mentioned that it was especially good to be living alone again. Jon himself hadn't had a roommate since sophomore year.

The last week or so, however, had been slightly different for Emily, which had prompted Jon's most recent daydream. Emily had always received a good many letters--one couldn't help noticing since all the teacher's boxes were right next to each other and Jon and Emily most often went up to the office for mail together before class. Her mother was involved in a divorce suit; she had mentioned that but didn't seem to be very much concerned (it was not evidently her father involved). And there were letters from someone who wrote in a huge, scribbled hand on wide-line tablet paper, which came from the town where she had been to college. More of them had come recently.

When she and Jon talked together, she had a languid air about her--mostly because of her warm and mellifluous voice--but she smoked a lot and now and then her hands would flit nervously over the top of the desk in front of her. Sometimes too her movements as they walked to class would suddenly become angular and awkward, and her face would freeze for an instant at his side.

He didn't speculate much on what people did not tell him about their lives, perhaps because so many told him more than he was interested in knowing. But he expected vaguely that the letters from the Midwest came from a hopeless and sick lover she had been living with before moving East. He was a little glad to hear she was tired of that kind of living because that would have made it impossible for him who couldn't get that involved. But he was glad to think also that she had had that kind of experience.

2

He had moved into many other scenes by the time he reached the door of his little apartment. He had found a few in the fifty yards or so between the boulevard and his house, several more on the porch and in the red door there, and in his empty mailbox many others which he moved through incoherently as he climbed up the stairs. His apartment was fairly long and narrow; it was rounded on the end that faced the lawn before the house, where the roof just above made the ceiling slope down. At that end, there was a small window set into a niche of its own, just wide enough for a disreputable sofa chair with its slipcover falling off, which required an old pillow punched inside it because of the stuffing that had died within. At the other end was a microscopic kitchen and the bathroom.

But the room itself was filled with other lands and other times, crowded with people he had known or read about, and with new faces and scenes he met there everyday. All English graduate students have a lot of books. Jon's especial boast to himself was that he had read all the ones he had. Except for a few selections in anthologies, most of which he knew.

So he was sitting in the window niche, because natural light is so much easier on your eyes, and this time was strolling around the silent, sunlit fields outside of Paris with "pere Leconte"--when the telephone rang. He had only had a telephone for a few months, and it always startled him when it rang. He moved quickly across the room. He let it ring twice.

"Jon? This is Dr. Thompson." There were two striking things about that. First, Dr. Thompson, a Shakespeare instructor and the director of Freshman English and so Jon's immediate superior at the University, never spoke to him except addressing him as "Mr. Arcott". Second, and even more interesting perhaps, Jon had never spoken to Dr. Thompson on the telephone before, but he had immediately recognized his voice, just after "Jon?"

"Yes, sir. How are you?" He didn't like to speak on the phone because it seemed such a cold and distant way to communicate.

Dr. Thompson went on: "I wanted...Well," and he started over again. "Do you know where Ms. Lukas is?" he said.

Jon had wondered himself what happened to Emily on weekends and hadn't seen her since their class together early in the afternoon. He didn't notice anything peculiar in Dr. Thompson's calling to ask that. Perhaps it was a special-delivery letter, or just some administrative detail.

"Let me tell you why I have to ask," he said. "I have received a note from her--I just found it in my box this afternoon; no one knows when it was placed there--the note saying that Ms. Lukas is sorry but she just can't stay here any longer." He paused there for a moment to let Jon acknowledge his surprise. He did that because he knew Dr. Thompson was waiting, but he didn't bother to say anything, just making a nonverbal sound.

"She apologizes profusely and says she's sorry she didn't have enough nerve to come in and tell me in person. I don't mind about that, however."

Jon just wanted him to go on.

"She says that she has been very happy here, and especially she has some very good words to say about you, Jon. She says that she especially regrets that you will probably have more work to do now because of her leaving."

Jon wanted to speak then, about that was unimportant, but Dr. Thompson was going on.

"Now, I called to ask...I am sure that you realize that I am asking only to help get my bearings here. And I am still hoping I can catch Ms. Lukas before she leaves the city. But what I wanted...Do you know her at all personally?"

Jon couldn't really help much, of course, and Dr. Thompson said he was going to drive over to Emily's apartment, since she didn't have a telephone, and he would call Jon again if there was anything to report. Jon did mention her mother's divorce and tried to suggest too that Dr. Thompson should especially call if there was anything he, Jon, could do to help. And they hung up. Jon didn't know if he had made himself clear.

3

He went back to the sofa chair and sat down, turning it as he did so a little more toward the window. He thought that probably there was a note from Emily in his box, too, but the office would be closed before he could walk up and get it. He wouldn't see it until Monday. What could it say anyway? Perhaps she would tell him that she had enjoyed working with him and was sorry to have to leave. Maybe she would even tell him what it was that was making her go away. But that was just curiosity.

Would Dr. Thompson find her before she drove off? No, that would mean that she would really have wanted to be stopped, since she was not so unintelligent as to think no one would care. And if all she had wanted was sympathy, she would have called him instead. Or told him after class. She wasn't weak, anyway; he had known that all along.

What would become of him now?

His apartment was on the third floor and the house across the street was only two stories high, so that when he looked out his window, he saw above it into the quiet clouds moving slowly across what was left of the weak, orange glow on the sky. It was very quiet, the cars going home on the boulevard somehow distant and muted.

As he sat there watching the vague clouds, he began to wonder who those letters had been coming from that were written on the old tablet paper. She had broken away from all of it; she must have felt that firmly and confidently when she had arrived. Just buying new books and moving into a new apartment, and seeing a new campus even if it wasn't much, and even knowing him--even if he wasn't either. Just being new would have been enough. Jon knew what it was to break out and start again; he knew the joy of feeling old ties and old burdens slip away. One doesn't make all his burdens himself, after all, and sometimes you have to shrug them away. Jon had realized that before.

But old ties and burdens you haven't created yourself, perhaps one is responsible to them after all. Perhaps that doesn't even matter, because perhaps the old ties are not ever really broken.

Emily had flown whole and strong, though tiny and delicate, from the shells cracking around her and into a kind of ether she hadn't felt capable of breathing in. It must have been a great joy. In fact, he had seen her eyes cool and calm, and had heard her laughter. So he knew.

She must have had to fight herself free; perhaps in fact it was an old part of herself that she had been leaving behind, broken and falling from her. An old woman who had cheated her and hurt her and tied her to insane neurotics and irresponsible mental invalids in order to hurt herself, to bind her down.

And now, Jon saw, the frail and invisible arm that had thrown her into the air, the gossamer bond draped lightly about her foot, had reached out for her again, had pulled her inevitably back toppling blind into the depressions she had hollowed behind her in the past.

He would take over her other class, at least for a time; there was no doubt of that. He would make her going as easy for those left in place as one could. But it seemed an empty gesture.

Perhaps one day she would write to him to say what it was, or merely to invite a word from him, and he could show somehow that it wasn't her going...It was her having to go, that left him nodding solemnly in the window, watching, concerned, and resigned, in the shadows of the evening. Perhaps if he could say it right, she would know for certain what she surely must feel somewhat already, and perhaps even hope, that her going and the bother it left him in his work was not all, though that would be what he would say.

4

It might have been a telephone line that ran from the top of his house across the street, slanting down just over one corner of the frame the window made of his seeing. It was growing dark even behind the line now in the West, but Jon could see in darkened silhouette at least a sparrow, perhaps it was, or something else since he didn't know much about birds. It was sitting on the line just at the edge of the picture the window made him, turned toward him, he thought, but couldn't know for sure in that kind of light.

He wondered why that bird hadn't moved on to the South by then. It was cold enough by then, and the days were short. He said to the bird in his mind to fly away, to go on down where its instincts must be telling it to go. He didn't command, but coaxed in a sympathetic way as an experienced teacher will sometimes encourage a bashful child to speak.

Go on, he said.

But when he had settled back into his chair to gaze more into the wide, dimming sky, the bird had not flown away to the South, where the other birds would be nesting now, and making love.

***

Reminisence: My French Bank

***

1

When I arrived in Lyon in September 1969, I was under the impression that I needed to establish an address before contacting the Fulbright Commission who had hired me for a teaching fellowship. The day after I moved into my little house-keeping room off the Place des Terreaux, I sent a brief letter to the Embassy in Paris informing the Commission of my new address. (I had no telephone; few people did.)

It seemed like immediately (it must have been the next day) when I received a telegram expressing some urgency that the Commission had been waiting and waiting for me to tell them of my new bank account so that they could send me my first paycheck (which they apparently thought I would need to get set up), and saying that I should hurry to the Post Office to pick up my first pay in cash!

Well, indeed I did hurry right over to the Poste, which I had noticed only a couple of blocks away. There with a minimum of hullabaloo, I picked up this wad of French bills. I was much impressed with the Commission’s concern for my welfare as well as the efficiency with which they had solved their problem.

But as I emerged on the Avenue, I began to realize that now the problem was mine. The door to my little room was about as thick as the cardboard of a sturdy packing box – that is, not secure at all. I didn’t know my neighbors (and never did, by the way, although I lived there for eight or nine months). “Were they possible thieves?’ I wondered.

Nor did I want to be walking around the streets with such a big wad of bills in my pocket. It seemed like more money than I would or could spend for a month or more: what could I do? Well, I needed a bank account for the Commission’s convenience anyway as they wanted to transfer my pay each month from their account to mine.

It happened that right across the street from the Poste was a Banque de France, with an inviting doorway flanked by a well-armed and solemn-faced guard. “What could be more safe and secure?” I asked myself.

Sure enough, as I strolled toward the door, it seemed to me that the guard nodded respectfully. Once I stepped into the large open room – which was recognizable as a bank, with a large counter in the center for customers to fill out their deposit or withdrawal slips, and ringed by tellers’ cages – I saw an inside guard, also with a sidearm, who was actually coming toward me smiling pleasantly. (I must have looked inquisitive if not bewildered as to where to go.) And he asked me what I wished to do at the Banque de France.

I showed him the wad of cash I had just been given at the Poste, which my employer had sent me. I felt I could not trust that my little room was secure – (Ah, he nodded with sympathy) – I didn’t want to be walking around with that much… (Non, non, surtot pas, he seemed to say).

“A new account is what you want,” he said; “Step right to that desk there. Mlle. ________ will be there shortly.”

I went over to the desk, and after a moment or two a young woman did indeed appear. She asked me pleasantly what she could do to help. “Well,” I said, showing her the wad of bills, “I have just received this payment in cash from my employer” – perhaps I mentioned the U. S. Embassy – “who would prefer from then on to simply transfer my monthly compensation.”

Ah, she began to look through her top drawer. “AND even more urgently,” I started – she looked up – “My little room cannot be securely locked up, and I didn’t want to be carrying around all that cash, so…” Oui, oui, she indicated she got it. Just to be sure, I said, “So I need an account to put this money in so it will be safe.” “Yes, yes, Monsieur. You want to open a new account!”

So she got out paperwork, took a lot of information from my passport, with care took down my local address which I told her… Everything seemed to be going well; I relaxed. Even here in this most imposing of banks, people were sympathetic, helpful, even intelligent. Even among the French, I had been told, Lyon was known as “the city of high walls” – that is, where non-locals were shut out. That just wasn’t true, I was thinking.

After a few minutes of her filling out one form and then another, of various sizes, she looked up. I took that as my cue to hold out the wad of cash. “Oh, no, no, Monsieur,” she said, “you need to see a Director. Be pleased to come with me.”

She rose and walked toward the back, going right behind the tellers’ cages, waving me along behind her. At an office, she looked in, softly said a few words, looked encouragingly back at me, then went in with my passport and all the little papers she had been filling out.

When I got to the door, she was tell M.________ that I, Monsieur Derrique, needed an account into which my pay could be transferred AND, more important, I had a sum in cash – I held out my wad of bills – which I could not feel secure leaving in my little room or… Ah non, M.________ indicated that he understood. The young woman went away, after shaking hands. M._______ indicated a chair but shook hands before I made myself comfortable.

“Boy,” I was thinking, “what individual attention I was getting, just a single guy walking in off the street… And this was the Banque … de … France!"

M.________ asked me some questions, apparently checking me out, seeing if I seemed respectable, had nothing up my sleeve. I was impressed by the level of caution. “Would my money ever be safe here!” I was thinking.

After only a few minutes, Eh bien, Monsieur Derrique, he said with a warm smile. I held out the wad of cash again. O non, monsieur. “The cash will go to the cashier. Please follow me, and we will establish an account for you.” He rose and led me to an adjoining office and introduced me to Mme.________. “This young man,” he said, “needs an account; will you take care of that, please?”

“Yes, yes. Monsieur Derrique, please sit down while I fill out a few forms.” As she busied herself, she started a little conversation. “Where in the USA did I live?” And that sort of thing. So it seemed natural for me to mention that I had just arrived in town and had that very morning just received from the Poste my first monthly pay – I held up the wad for her to see – and my room was not a good place to leave it…

Unlike the others, Mme.______ became excited at hearing my story. Leaving me for a moment, she called to M.________ in the office on the other side of her from her boss’s office, who appeared, shook hands, heard my story from her. Ah! he responded, as though I had done something especially brilliant. He waved at one, then two other colleagues, who clustered outside Mme._______’s little office. “This young man,” he explained (proudly, I thought), has a certain amount – I showed my wad of bills – but his room (sympathetic murmurings), his room is not secure.” Yes, they understood, showing equal enthusiasm. “No, his room would not be safe.” “Yes, yes.” “Well, how interesting.”

Mme._____ came forward with my passport and her papers. I figured this was not yet the time to offer my wad of cash; she did not seem to be the cashier. The crowd parted enough for us to make our way back toward the open area; she indicated I should go there while she made arrangements with the cashier.

I went out front.

Mme.____ spoke quietly to one of the men behind the cages and then nodded in my direction; she gave him the paperwork and beckoned me to step up to his window. I now realized that his window was the only one with thick Plexiglas around it; he was indeed the cashier.

And he was all business. He slipped my passport through the little opening under the Plexiglas. He looked up – I held up the bills - yes, he nodded. I began to stuff the bills through the opening. He straightened them, and after counting them two times rather carefully, he wrote in what looked quite a bit like a checkbook. It was! After a moment more, he slipped the checkbook under the window to me and said, “Monsieur, you now have a comte etranger (foreigner’s account) in the Banque de France!"

As I headed for the door, the guard nodded cheerfully. I had the sense that the guard outside too, knew that now I was legit.

The telegram saying go directly to the Post Office had come barely more than an hour before, and now I (me!) could write cheques on the Banque de France! Wow, I thought as I headed across the Place des Terreaux and up the stairs to my little, much maligned room. Did that feel like an accomplishment, or what?

2

In Lyon in those days, there were actually two mail deliveries each day: one about 9 a.m. and one about 4 p.m. Boy, was I surprised when at 4 that day, there was already a letter from my Banque de France. Wasn’t that efficient?

Sure enough, it was a letter signed by the Directeur himself (not the lesser person I had met, apparently) confirming that I now had a checking account in his bank. But it went on to say there was a certain problem, so would I please come to the bank at my earliest convenience.

What could it be? I wondered, not really concerned since I had succeeded in opening the account. But I did hurry the one or two blocks down the Avenue and entered my new bank with about 30 minutes to go before 5.

I did not really recognize anyone, strangely, but I went to the older woman sitting with a small stack of papers at the desk where I had started that morning. I showed her the letter. “Oh,” she seemed a little concerned – perhaps disturbed because she knew I might be concerned myself – and hurried off toward the back where the private offices were.

In a moment, a nice-looking slender man in a handsome suit came out to me, introduced himself as the Directeur, and invited me to his office. His was a bit larger than the others I had seen, and it had a window. “Monsieur Derrique,” he said…

He seemed embarrassed that the staff had made a minor error when I was there earlier; he did not apologize but explained carefully. It seemed that I had opened an account in which one could not deposit cash.

“You can understand, Monsieur, I am sure. As a foreign national, you are entitled to the comte etranger that you now have, and we look forward to receiving your pay from Paris. We French, you see, cannot allow a situation in which a foreign national deposits cash – French currency – and then writes a check to someone, or some bank, in another country. “O, non non, the economy would collapse! I am sure you understand that, Monsieur.”

Ainsi (and so) “we will have to return to you the cash that you deposited with us this morning and await your next paycheck from Paris in a month.”

I must say, the Directeur seemed satisfied with his explanation – which I had to admit was succinct and clear – “But, but,” I explained in turn, “the reason I came here at all, at least today, was because I had this wad of cash which I had just received at the Poste, but my little room is not secure, and I didn’t feel comfortable carrying around that much cash… It could be stolen, I was afraid.” I may have been somewhat animated.

“Ah yes,” he said, “We are a banque, you know; on the cash matter, we cannot help you.”

I didn’t want to seem uncooperative to such an important man, but I persisted a little, out of sheer annoyance, explaining that I had told the very first people I had met on his staff what I wished to do. I had shown them the cash and said I wanted to deposit it…

He pointed out that at their level we could not expect the staff to understood that cash cannot be deposited in a comte etranger, and with that he was leading me back to the cashier behind the Plexiglas. A different man there from the morning’s cashier had a stack of bills ready, which he counted out and then shoved to me under the glass barrier. I took it; I may have even said, “Merci, Monsieur.”

3

As I walked slowly toward the door of the Banque de France, I noticed that the older woman at the first desk was looking sympathetically in my direction. When I came over to her, she asked if I had concluded my business satisfactorily.

Well, no, Madame. I had not, I confessed and could not stop myself from telling her the whole story. I showed her the new wad of cash and pointed out that my pitiful little room was not safe, and I couldn’t just carry around that much cash – a whole month’s salary after all – All I had wanted to do was to leave it somewhere safe, but in my type of account, the Directeur had told me, I could not deposit any cash!

“Un comte etranger?” she asked. I nodded. “Mais oui, a foreign national could bankrupt the state that way.” She was proud of knowing and understanding the compelling reasoning behind the Banque de France’s sound and wise policy.

“But what am I to do with this money?”

Ah oui, I see the probleme. That had not occurred to her, any more than it had to Monsieur le Directeur. She turned to the woman at the next desk, calling her by her first name. She came over. The older woman explained that I had come in to deposit some cash – I indicated that I was holding a little stack of bills – but of course, I could not deposit cash in a comte etranger.

Ah oui, je comprend, this younger woman said, apparently pleased that she had understood the g-d policy.

“So now,” I interrupted their little tete-a-tete, what am I to do?” I said, holding up the bills again.

Both women were at last engaged in trying to help me solve my problem.

After a moment, the younger woman’s face brightened. “You know, Mme. _____. You know what I would do if I had some cash to deposit?” The older woman seemed interested.

The younger woman looked sideways at me and said, “If I had any money to deposit, I would put it in a Caisse d’Epargne!” That sounded like a savings account. Mme._____ was not sure but did slowly nod her head.

Emboldened, the junior staff member spoke directly to me. “I would go just across the street. There,” she pointed. “To the Caisse d’Epargne.”

4

It was still a few minutes before 5.  I said “Merci” and hustled outside. Sure enough, there was a little office in a store-front next door to the Poste with the letters above the door indicating it was a “Caisse d’Epargne.” Frankly, I have to admit I was skeptical. After all, that young woman in the Banque de France was just a junior clerk …

But I scurried across the street and opened the door across the way. The room was crowded, and there were three or four people already forming a queue.  My heart sank a little further. But the line moved quickly, each person taking only a moment or two. Three or four people had gotten in line behind me. “How long would it take to open a new account?” I worried.

When it was my turn I handed over my passport, saying something like “I need to open a new account for this money,” still again showing my wad of bills. (I did try to shield view of it a little from the others in the room.)

Oui, Monsieur. Attendez une seconde. “Yes, sir. Wait just a moment.” Another clerk appeared and started waiting on the other people in the line, who appeared to have no interest in me or my business. The person who took my passport went to a desk with a typewriter and slipped what looked just like a passbook at a Savings and Loan into the typewriter. She consulted my passport, and after only a minute or two she returned and said, “Now, on this account you will earn interest at the rate of --%.” She handed me back the passport and the little book she had typed upon and gestured that I was next in line.

The other clerk did not really meet my gaze, so intent was she on serving those of us who were waiting. After taking my cash, she wrote something in my book, noted something on a ledger in front of her, stamped my book with something – which turned out to be the date – and handed it to me, looking at the next person in line.

This whole thing had taken no more than fifteen minutes or so. Back on the street, I saw that the little book said I had deposited the correct amount and had a lot of blanks on an empty grid to record future withdrawals and deposits.

So, now I had two bank accounts, and all was well again.

The experience was already beginning to seem… well, funny!

***