Thursday, May 6, 2013

Hotel d’Orsay, 6:45 a.m.

Last night, at the end of my evening with Marie-José, I take a taxi to the hotel, which is not a happy experience: the Chinese-descent driver clocks 2.50 Euros on the meter before I sit down, making some incomprehensible excuse.  Arriving at the Orsay, he harries me to get out quickly, as there is a car behind him.  In my haste and concerned not to leave my Macbook or any of my other belongings in the taxi, I drop a coin in the gutter.  This earns me another indecipherable shellacking.  Once out, I lose my temper and slam the car door.  Not one of my better moments.

Inside, all is calm, but there is to be a comedy of manners: Salim, at the front desk, who arranged my van when I called from New York, greets me kindly.  I ask him whether he knows anything about my walking sticks.  He helpfully searches, indeed, finds a note from David Chevalier reporting that the walking sticks were retrieved and brought to the hotel.  However, they are nowhere to be found in the reception area.  Afraid they have gone missing again, I urge Salim to look in Monsieur Chevalier’s office: no luck.  Stymied, but persistent, I ask him might they be elsewhere on the floor?

“But Madame Varela, you’re not going hiking now, are you?  Perhaps we could look for the hiking sticks in the morning?”  His emollience flattens my anxiety.  (The sticks turn out to be in my room.)

Another comic exchange follows, due to my imperfect French and Salim’s good manners: I ask if it would be possible for me to settle my bill now, as tomorrow I will be frantic to make the train without losing any of my luggage.  Hannibal and his elephants did not carry more than I am, I joke.  Salim agrees to prepare my bill, then asks me whether there are any extra charges to the bill other than the cost of the room for two nights.  I misinterpret his request as perhaps suggesting that he has infrequently prepared a bill the night before a guest’s departure, that perhaps the computer system is not geared to do so.  As a result, I think he is making reference to the tax on top of the room rate, about which I have no idea.

“Well, there would be a VAT tax on the room, perhaps?”

He looks at me, confounded.

“What VAT?”

Eventually, we straighten out the bill, which he prints upside down, then asks whether I mind.  I don’t: it’s legible.  I apologize for bothering him, and thanks him again for helping me with the taxi and for trying to find my walking sticks, explaining that I have so much luggage because I am going to spend almost four months in the Aude, the département where Caunes-Minervois lies.  

Salim thinks I have said that I am going to stay almost four months at Lourdes,  which most of those who go visit for only a day.  I find this absolutely hilarious, and dissolve in happy laughter.  I must seem a particularly curious example of the American tourist.