Amboise Altercation
It all started when I moved the small patio table from the sunshine next to my door to the tree-shaded lawn. The travel guide said that the Loire Valley had perfect weather. It never snowed and air- conditioning wasn’t needed. Given the number of snow-covered scenes on postcards, I guess every French photographer races to the Loire once a decade when that freak trace of snow falls. It was 90 degrees and not even Memorial Day. I pity the fool who books an un-airconditioned room for July or august. Not having air-conditioning isn’t the same as not needing it. I believe it was Descartes who said, “I sweat. Therefore, I am French.”
So, I sat in the shade with my bottle of chilled Vouvray from the nearby caves of Vouvray, a bag of chips from the faraway warehouse of Lays, and a fresh jambon et formage sandwich from a patisserie in Amboise and tenderly prepared by a tall, playful blonde with an English accent. Amboise is where Michelangelo died. He was buried in the chateau chapel grounds with the royalty from the area. When the revolution came, his bones were dug up with the rest and thrown into the Loire River. I believe there is a lesson here for supporters of George Bush II but the directness needed to explain it to them in a manner they could understand is best saved for a Dick and Jane reader.
I looked up from by low perch and offered a glass of wine to a French businesswoman on the second floor walkway. She was hunched over her table drinking bottled water and frantically nibbling cheese like she had to get back inside to a laptop and overdue reports.
“Non, merci.” Was it me or was this the only French person who works overtime? I didn’t have time to contemplate this improbable rejection. Francois, the hotel manager, was hovering and blocking out my shade.
“Bonjour. Excuse me, but we prefer our guests didn’t picnic on the grounds.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see a sign prohibiting it.”
“It is not prohibited but it is discouraged.”
“So, it’s okay?”
“Well, we’d rather you didn’t eat out here. It encourages the other guests.”
“Moving the table was okay, then?”
“The tables and chairs should stay on the walkway next to the rooms.”
“But, again, that’s a preference and not a prohibition?”
“Oi.”
“So, I could wander out of my room with a sandwich in one hand and a glass of wine in the other and step onto the grass and that would be permissible as well as not prohibited?”
“Not preferred. There is still food on the grass.”
“I could eat and drink at the table on the walkway outside my room, just not on the grass?”
His forced smile was gone. He gave me that look I’ve seen before from women and from managers when I was a union steward. It was that look where language fails, that look with exit signs.
“It is not prohibited,” he exhaled, ‘but it is discouraged.”
“I can live with discouragement. I do it all the time. It’s okay, then.”
He turned and walked back to his restaurant. He had dinners to prepare for paying guests who had more money and a better grasp of his English than I apparently had. Tomorrow I’ll leave the table on the walkway just to make him feel better. I’m thinking a picnic on a blanket from the bed is probably not prohibited.
