THE PUNCHINELLO FROM JUGURCITO

Paris, 1973

Over 45 years ago we were in Paris with the objective of learning French, although when the need to communicate became urgent, it was easier to talk in English.  Needles to describe Paris, but at that time for instance the metro worked with paper tickets, really little pieces of cardboard that had to be inserted in a punching machine, and once punched supposedly they were useless, as the rules said use one time only, but when one wants to save some money or simply have fun cheating the system, and with the age that allows to be so daring… well the punching operation is repeated as many times as possible, until you are caught or there is no more paper to punch.  I managed 17 punches in one ticket, and even if the savings were not negligible, the best was the daring.

We were a group of young people of many nationalities and cultures, with the same official purpose of learning French and that coincided in Paris at the same time. Paris was “our” city, where we could do what we wanted and later on Paris has never been the same since Paris without those friends is not really Paris, it is only a big city with nice things.

The Paris where we spend the long hours at Le Dome, to speak of classes or concerts, at La Cupole trying to catch some of the well known bohemians of the time, mostly without success but hoping always, Paris with free entry to museums, trying to buy tickets for concerts, the city where we listened to Rubinstein, wonderful pianist that although was not perfect in his performances instilled a very particular soul in his music, where under the coats we hid a small recording machine, forbidden of course then and now, with the hope of rendering immortal the concerts, the visits to the Jardin de Luxembourg with its fountains.  Also was the city where the tartes aux fruits were wonderful, and still are, but now they taste different. Is that due to time passing??

The residence of the Alliance Francaise was a special place, with rather small rooms and conservative rules, considering the time and place.  The building had 7 floors; the first three were for men/boys only and the upper one for women/girls.  The lift, of course, did not stop in the floors for boys and the stairs had a connecting door that remained closed under lock and key all the time. It was strictly forbidden for the boys to visit the girls in their floors, which of course made this far more attractive.  It was not easy, we had to coordinate the button of “arret” so that it stopped in the desired boy’s floor so they could get on, without noise and on arriving to our floor hope that there would be no girl that would squeal, but once we made, it was so much fun!!!  It could be said we never did anything “bad” but oh boy, we had fun, the number of tartes aux fruits and bottles of wine we had, as well as other great food we enjoyed together, listening to music or talking about books read in mixed groups was absolutely fantastic.  After our parties, coming down was not less dangerous, probably if we had been caught there would have been a punishment of sorts, but nobody could take away the fun we had had.

In the residence I also learned what the “family of romance languages” meant, since as already mentioned there were boys and girls from all over the world, and among the “all over the world” you could include of course people from Romania, the Romance part of Switzerland, Spain, Latin America, Italy, Portugal and of course French.  Once we carried out some kind of multilingual experiment, where each one of us members of this “family” spoke in his or her own language and were all surprised to realize that we could understand almost everything. Babel tower to hell, at least in this “linguistic family”.

In Paris I also learned that if at any one time in the future I visited South Africa, I had to carry my Mexican passport with me all the time since the colour of my skin did not allow me to move freely, without the risk of being taken for “coloured”, word used then to refer to people rather with darkish skin or of Indian origin.  That was proven right later when I visited that country, but that is another story. I remain thankful to Malcolm for the warning that saved me from many uncomfortable moments.

Paris is also Galleries Lafayette, a very big department store where you could find anything and everything, but with staff that for the most part were not really pleasant.  There I got my degree as thief! One day I wanted to buy some sawing little things and was queuing in different cashiers over 30 minutes, the speed of the staff was worst than snail pace slowness and the number of customers waiting grew non-stop.  Finally in total desperation I just put the stuff in my purse and left the store as is nothing had happened, so far I have not been caught.  I am not really proud of the theft but when one has many other things to do, besides waiting for the cashier to consider if she really wants to work… Rififi and his band of robbers, count me in.

At the end of our stay in Paris some of us exchanged little presents and I got a Punchinello from my friend Jugurcito, who is still one of my dearest friends.  He is turning 70 in a few days, I will follow suit next year but the Punchinello is still in my bookshelf as a reminder of the time in Paris, wonderful, that will never be the same again.