Meeting Monsieur Pacôme
We were trying with great difficulty to narrate in French that we wanted to travel to Nice. Unlike other subjects taught at university, here was one curriculum we were finally getting to practice in real life. When we couldn’t, we would complain that the pedagogy was too theoretical. When we could, we realised - ooh la la - we had landed in Paris! Too late, mon ami, too late!
Back in the days without Google Translate or Triplingo, life was not a cinch. Correction - talking to the snobs of Paris was not a cinch. They didn’t give a damn about English or Esperanto - rule number one to enter the hallowed halls of the bourgeois Parisiennes was to speak French. It was then a daily struggle to query about the simple things of everyday life - travel directions, train times, food, anything
Hey, monsieur, is that rabbit meat or horse meat? My friends here are vegetarians...no no, not beef either - no boeuf, monsieur, no viande ! Vegetarian, vegetarian!
And then you would get something with loads of cheese and snails. If you were lucky, there would be stinky sardines staring at you with bulging eyes. If you would protest and try to explain, King Louis from across the counter would give a smile and say, ‘C’est la vie, mon ami.’ This is life, my friend! (No wonder KIng Louis was guillotined).
This was everyday Paris. If asking for cakes gave you bread, imagine the ardour of explaining your tour de France to the ticket seller at one busy, bustling, rambunctious station. Yes, yes, you would rather have gone to Expedia, but it was not a big thing those days. So we did the next best thing and went to the Gare de l’est station (The East Station) with a Collins dictionary.
But imagine our surprise, when on asking for tickets to Nice in broken French, the response came in slow but clear English, ‘Nice is beauuuutiful, are yooou suuuure yoooou require return tickets?’
Enter Monsieur Pacôme, the redeemer of our roving times.
With a heavy bulky frame, a chubby face and half moon spectacles,, he was smiling at us and calmly sandpapering his ‘t’s and ‘d’s to speak in smooth, buttery, elongated English. We couldn’t believe our luck. He spoke English, tears-in-our-eyes English! Had any of us been the Pope, we would have canonized him there itself -after all, if this was not a sign of Divine Intervention, what was?
So we went on rambling all the hotspots for our sojourn to the south of France. After all, now that we could get our tickets to Nice instead of Nantucket, why stop at Nice - out came Cannes, Monaco, St. Tropez and then all the way to Marseilles. This part of the trip was planned, and Monsieur Pacôme patiently underwood our itinerary and checked for tickets. The last stop - to take a break from hectic tourism - was to be at a nondescript but peaceful little countryside town. That was not fixed and we were wondering whether to stop at a bucolic Mediterranean town or to go to the Atlantic on the western coast. Montpellier or Biarritz, we were discussing among ourselves.
‘Go to Biarritz,’ Pacôme suggested. He seemed to have taken a lively interest in our tour planning. Whether it was just to help us out, or because he was keen to make suggestions to show the best of his country, we wouldn’t know that day. But that he was patiently giving us so much of his time (the queues were long and very busy) made us feel as surprised as we were grateful.
We were still confused, when Pacôme went on to describe further, ‘You will see a lot of the Mediterranean in Nice and Cannes. The waves are small there.’ And he drew a straight line with his hand. ‘Go to Biarritz, now that place has waves, it is a surfing super-destination. Waves, big big waves,’ And he drew a large sinusoid with his hand.
‘But we are not surfers, ‘ I said.
‘Even better, nothing to be scared of. Biarritz it is!’ And he thumped on his computer to print the tickets, as if he were a judge pronouncing his sentence with a gavel.
And that was our first encounter with Monsieur Pacôme, counter no. 3 at the Gare de L’est station.
We had a great tour that week - our first experience of backpacking in Europe was filled with charming weekend markets, doner kebabs and falafels and green fairies (no, didn’t drink it), Mediterranean hikes, black pebbly and white sandy beaches, glitzy casinos and the memories of Grace Kelly - but that can wait for another chapter. This one is for Monsieur Pacôme.
We went back to counter no. 3 in a few weeks’ time, this time to travel to Belgium. When our turn came, he recognised us immediately but then amazed us yet again. He swayed his rotund torso to his side, and looking at the customers queued behind us, politely asked them to go to the other counters as this one would take some really good time. We were really impressed - this one man was redefining French hospitality for us.
But he was not glad this time. The jingoist in him did not like the fact that we were going to neighbouring Belgium. Brussels, he understood - albeit with cringing eyes and nose - but the others, he simply could not fathom!
‘Ghent, what is there in Ghent to see?’ he asked in his typical buttery smooth singsong English.
‘There’s a big castle there,’ we responded with touristy interest.
‘Big?’ He was surprised, ‘You see my station here - this is bigger than your Ghent castle. And Bruges, why are you going to Bruges, it’s a movie set!’
Well travelled, and well informed, he was referring to the movie ‘In Bruges’ that had recently been released and had increased global tourism interest in this little medieval town.
‘There’s a basilica there which apparently holds the blood of Jesus,’ we explained.
Pacôme held out his forefinger, dipped it in an imaginary bowl of the Holy Blood, and put it in his mouth, ‘Tasty, but people prefer the ketchup with the fries of Belgium.’
Lastly, we were going to Oostende (as part of our plan to stop at a calmer less touristy place to relax before returning to Paris for another week of grilling lessons). For Pacôme, it was unforgiven. Taking off his glasses, clutching his head, he muttered softly but respectfully, ‘Oostende, who goes to Oostende, it is so bleary at this time of the year you will return with a bout of depression!’
But we were adamant, and we had our list of cities and countries to tick - so off he banged his gavel and out came the tickets, neatly packed in a white envelope. By now, he knew more of us and we would chat like friends. He knew we were in Paris for only a few months to study in an exchange program, and would return home very soon. Perhaps he was trying his bit to help us make the most of this little window in time.
What he didn’t realise was that he had already done a lot, even without the travel advisory. That he was spending well enough time, trying to help us out - when the nearby patisserie didn’t care to explain if there was beef tallow in the cakes - made a lot of difference. Perhaps not to the unending complications of the universe, but at least to a bunch of nerdy college students, with not so deep pockets, and yet with a deep desire to see more of the world.
Pacôme became a local friend to us like no other in Paris (the grumpy kebab and fries seller at our university canteen would come a distant second). In every meeting thereafter, he would give us a lot of his time, and try to help us out, in his typical chiding attitude, ever so friendly, yet openly cynical and Pacom-ishly funny.
In one instance, we had come up with the only girl student in our travelling entourage - she was more interested in Corporate Valuation than in Cordoba or Vienna, and would only occasionally join us (especially when her room mate would quarrel with her and threaten her with a jhadoo). On that occasion, she wanted to come back a day earlier to us to join her Corporate Valuation classes at the University. Of course, when it came to discounted cash flows and complex ratios, who on earth would care about the champagnes of Bordeaux and St. Emillion?
I tried to explain this to her at the counter in front of Pacôme. But I was a bit loud, when Pacôme interrupted us - having seized our attention, he bent deep into the drawers of his table and brought out what was the largest stapler we had seen - it was perhaps large enough to staple one’s hands to the crucifix.
Handing it over to my friend, Pacôme calmly instructed her, ‘Go ahead, you can hit him with this if you want. In our country here, we respect women…’
Such was the man - strange yet funny, dispensing lessons and tips openly and mostly with large dollops of sarcastic humour.
One of my friends from the group keeps saying that it is always the people who matter, not the place or even the event. People indeed - perhaps then, the memories of Paris will never be complete without the people, both the snobbish bourgeois King Louis types, counterbalanced so well by the likes of Pacôme. The latter make the world so much better - no wonder, even after all these years, I cannot forget his helpfulness and cheery character. I will also remember the lessons - yes, to be more polite lest I be hit by a giant stapler - and also to be more helpful to people when they most need it. Even if they cannot speak your language. Even if they are not dressed in Louis Vittons, and are just a bunch of dishevelled friends from a faraway place, trying to explore that extra step in miles and miles of an unknown world.
If I ever go to Paris again, I will want to stop at Counter no. 3, Gare de L’est station and ask around for a cheery and rotund person, wearing half-moon spectacles who knew the country and the continent like the back of his hand. I know the answer, but this one would be for the lost travellers, and a helpful hand, from many a year ago…
6th March, 2021
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