The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There's nothing like a bit of adverse adventure to get to know a city. Want to know what a city is like for those who live there? Get into trouble.
We went out to dinner, that first night I was in Paris. The restaurant was on the Rue Croix des Petits Champs. It is probably not there anymore. It was a bistro, with small tables and a smokey atmosphere (they used to smoke in restaurants in those day) but, the food was very good.
It was a cheerful dinner. My friend had invited people that were in rehearsals with her in Peter Brook's adaptation of The Mahabharata, with a script by the famous Jean-Claude Carriere. So, the conversation was lively in French, Spanish, and English. One of the actors who was Greek, sang and Jean-Claude told funny stories about the time when he worked with Luis Buñuel in films such as "Belle de Jour."
After the dinner ended, I walked my friend home and after I left her I decided I wanted another drink. I looked for a bar on the way to my hotel. I saw a couple of warmly lit windows and a sign that proclaimed that it was a Bar named "La Maison Portugaise." I went in.
The place was quiet. There was only a well dressed man at the bar, two couples in as many tables, and a pair of women, looking every bit like French working girls, sitting at another table. They looked very bored.
I sat at the bar. The bar woman (whom I later found out was also the owner) was indeed portuguese. I asked for a cognac. The portuguese woman spoke Spanish so we conversed. She asked me what I was doing in Paris, and I asked her if she had lived there a long time. I had another cognac and then another.
I was about to ask for a fourth when one of the two working girls came and asked if I would buy her a drink. The face of the Portuguese woman looked a bit alarmed but I told her in Spanish that one drink was no problem. As the working girl's drink was being served, the jet lag and the fourth cognac hit me!
All of a sudden my vision got blurry, I felt dizzy, and I lost my train of thought. The working girl kept talking to me in French but I didn't understand a word. The cognacs were wreaking havoc so I said in Spanish to the Portuguese woman that I was leaving. I threw some bills on the bar but the working girl hung on to my coat and asked, or so I understood, that I should stay. I managed to free myself of her and walked out of the bar.
At the hotel I had to ring for the door to be opened. The hotel owner got up yawning and rubbing his eyes. He said something that I understood to mean that I should take my key with me the next time I was planning on staying out late. I nodded and smiled, went up to my room and fell dead asleep.
The next day, I suddenly woke up when an alarm rang in my head. I got out of bed and went to the chair where I had left my coat and pants. I checked my coat and indeed my wallet was gone. Foolishly, I had kept all my Traveler's Checks and my passport in that large wallet. But, luckily I had kept the receipt for the Traveler's Checks in my bag so I could at least claim they had been stolen and I could get them replaced.
I showered and dressed and went to my friend's apartment. I told her what had happened and after she scolded me and her mother wagged her head and said something like "Why am I not surprised?", they advised I should go to the police and report the robbery and then go and claim my Traveler's Checks. I decided to do the latter first.
I went to the American Express office that was, in those days, at the Avenue de la Grand Armée, only to be told that the receipt was not enough. I had to provide official identification, i. e. my passport. So, I went to the police station of the Second Arrondissement, and after waiting for Monsieur l'Inspecteur for an hour, I was led into an office where the Inspector, a tall young man with brown skin and green eyes whom I took to be from the Islands, patiently listened to my story. He said in rather good English that I should repeat my story to his assistant who would write it up in French. Once I signed it, they would go and raid the bar looking for the working girls, and then close down the establishment. All of this would happen in the afternoon when the assistant who spoke English arrived for the afternoon shift. I was asked to come back at four o'clock.
I left the police station feeling despondent. This thing about raiding the bar and closing it down seemed a bit harsh. Paris police were not too keen to follow legal procedure in those days. The poor Portuguese woman was not at fault, I thought.
I went back to the bar. It was already noon so it was open. The Portuguese woman was behind the bar. I sat down, asked for a beer, and told her the story. Her bleary eyes, and dilated pupils (she was probably on something) showed how alarmed she was because they widened and blinked rapidly.
"Please don't go back this afternoon. They will close down the place and I will lose my licence."
"But, what can I do?" I pleaded, "I need my passport. I don't care about the Traveler's Checks. I can have them replaced after I get my passport. The rest of the stuff in the wallet is useless to me and whoever took my wallet."
"Look, I will ask around. I think I know where these girls hang out. So I will send word to them about your passport. Besides," she said, "if you report the robbery and they close down my bar, there will be an inquest and you will have to testify and you will be caught up in this for months."
I figured she was probably telling me the truth so I told her I would follow her advice and not go back to the police station. But I warned her that I would wait a couple of days and if nothing happened I would have no choice but to go to the police.
I went to my friend's apartment and told her about my visit to the Police and to the American Express office. She said that it was probably best to wait and see if the Portuguese woman could do something about the robbery. My friend's mother said that I was progressing from just dropping things to being robbed in strange bars. "You make a more interesting topic of gossip now," she said.
The next day I went back to the bar and asked the Portuguese woman if she had any news.
"You are to go to the Mexican consulate tomorrow," she said.
"What? Who said that?"
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "This is the message I got. Please go there."
"But, what am I to do there?"
"Ask to see the Consul and ask for a new passport."
"But, that will cost money and I have none," I protested.
She just kept drying glasses and said, "That's the message that I got."
So, back I went to my friend's apartment and swallowing my pride I asked her for a loan.
"Ah! Now you are broadening your modus operandi," her mother said, "you are now practicing to be a panhandler. Is that how one refers to your new found skill?"
My friend lent me 100 francs which in those days was like ten dollars. And the next day, I went to the Mexican Consulate. The Consulate was small and hidden in an also small street of the Sixteenth Arrondissement. There were two girls in the small front office and I asked one of them if I could see the Consul. She asked the nature of my business and I said I had had my passport stolen and I needed a replacement so I could claim my Traveler's Checks. The girl picked up the phone, buzzed the Consul's office and explained my predicament. I was told to go into the Consul's small office.
As soon as I walked into the office, the Consul, a small shrewish woman, began to berate me:
"Why are you tourist always losing your passport, or getting them stolen, or who know what you do with them. You just cause us a lot of work, unnecessary work, I might add, and all sorts of trouble. And, you think we don't have anything else to do? Sit down! Now tell me, how did you come to lose...oh, never mind. I will tell you what you will have to do to get a replacement."
As she was berating me, she was opening up her mail, which was quite a large stack.
"Now, the first thing you will have to do is send a telex to your home town and ask the mayor to send you a copy of your birth certificate..."
She opend up a piece of mail, looked at the contents briefly and threw them into the incoming basket.
"You will have to pay for the telex, of course..." she said.
She opened up another piece of mail and looked at the contents. She threw these into a waste basket.
"After that," she continued, "you will have to fill out the proper forms and we will send them to Mexico requesting a duplicate of your passport..."
She took an envelope from the stack of mail and looked at it. Her face showed that the handwriting on the envelope puzzled her. She tore it open and poured the contents onto the desk. It was a passport! She took it, opened it, looked at the photo on the passport, then looked at me, then back at the photo, and then asked,
"Are you Rodolfo Peña García?"
I could have jumped for joy as I left the Consulate. I went to the nearest café and ordered a coffee and a cognac. Then I went to the American Express office and asked for my Traveler's Checks to be replaced. They did so promptly.
When I told my story to my friend and her mother they could not believe my good luck.
"Well, young man," said the mother, "if you promise not to drop and break things, we'll let you hang around so you can keep us entertained with your adventures."
That night, as I was walking back to my hotel, I dropped into the Portuguese bar and café, sat at the bar and as the Portuguese woman was serving me a cognac, I thank her for her help in recovering my passport. She said nothing as she poured. But as she put the cork back in the bottle she said,
"No andes con tanto dinero en la bolsa." (Don't walk around with so much money in your pocket.)
Next in Part 4, getting to know the city by wandering around.
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