Fussless

by David Benjamin

“We’ll always have Paris.” — Rick Blaine

PARIS — Long ago, during a business junket to Tokyo with a management guru named Fishman, I was diagnosed with a case of “travel fuss.” A very frequent flyer, Fishman noted in me an air of uncertainty, anxiety and confusion. He cited my impatience with the countless petty details that attend any departure from the cozy confines of home and work.

Fishman, who was on the road a hundred days a year, regarded planes, trains, hotels and the food floors beneath every Japanese department store as his home away from home. He had banished travel fuss.

Since my journeys with Fishman, I’ve accumulated thousands of miles on the road and inoculated myself, largely, from the worst symptoms. But this trip, my first since Hotlips and I departed our garret in Paris 476 days before, triggered an onset of travel fuss that set me on edge. I was cranky and abrasive for a couple of days, prone to bursts of shouting that puzzled my beloved.

Covid-19, I realized, had incited angst unique to a global pandemic. I found myself fretting the dread prospect of reaching Charles de Gaulle Airport only to be halted by a phalanx of armored, masked and jackbooted French National Police, holding back packs of snarling, slobbering, Covid-sniffing Rottweilers, les flics waiting to pounce on Hotlips and me, brandishing their machine guns, roaring “Les papiers, les papiers, à présent!”

Of course, although we brought the papers we thought were the ones France required, they would be, alas, the wrong papers. “Papiers,” in France, tend — about 75 percent of the time — to be the wrong papers. Even when you’ve brought the right papers, largely by accident, there’s always a vigilant fonctionnaire to gleefully point out where you’ve written a word on the wrong line in the wrong shade of ink, or prefixed yourself as an “Mme.” rather than an “M.”, thus rendering your whole painstaking document null, void and possibly criminal.

Anticipating rejection, expecting to be cast into a cement dungeon ’neath the leaky bowels of CDG for a quarantine of no certain duration, with certainly no appeal, I’d been ambushed by a new variant of my usually benign travel fuss.

The “papiers” that we had conscientiously added to our usual Travel Checklist included a “VeriFly” QR code, laboriously installed into Hotlips’ mobile phone. American Airlines had insisted that the VeriFly app was our absolute best hope to pierce the serried ranks of the Viral Gestapo and their ravening hounds. Among the more curious documents we prepared was an affidavit composed by the government of France, in which we both promised — cross our hearts and hope to die — that we had not experienced fever, chills, cough, “unusual fatigue,” shortness of breath, muscle aches or pains, headache, loss of taste or smell, or “unusual diarrhea,” nor had we consorted with anyone suffering these afflictions.

But I wondered, how were we to know such things about someone else? How often does anyone introduce into a civil conversation the fact that he or she has a case of “unusual diarrhea,” or even the “usual” kind? Even if I weren’t pressing other folks about their bowels, how was I to truthfully attest to my own health? At my age, aches, pain and shortness of breath are pretty much the story of my life. Fatigue, moreover, is always “usual.”

Beyond all that, there’s a line in this funky form asking applicants to “declare on my honour” that we’re symptom-free and Covid-cleansed. In an era of Donald Trump, Fox News and QAnon, the idea of resorting to an “honor system” to validate one’s innocence smacks of a naiveté childish enough to elicit sarcasm from Pollyanna.

As our trip unfolded, our honor-bright affidavits — which we crumpled up and re-wrote several times to make sure every “declaration” was on the exact same line with Hotlips prefixed as “Mme.” and me as her faithful “M.” (not to be confused with Judy Dench) — were universally disdained. I tried to flash it at Customs. The French agent chuckled dismissively. Junko made repeated efforts, at three airports, to strut and fret her QR code. No agent cared. The employees of American Airlines seemed to have no idea what the hell VeriFly might be.

Curiously, French Customs agents, usually a dour and suspicious lot, seemed rather pleased to see us, waving us through with a shrug, a smile, and a Gallic salute. Among the Covid “papiers” we had assembled, revised and autographed, all they perused was that grubby little Pfizer vaccine card scribbled on by the nurse with the needle at a big garage off Hoepker Road back in Madison. No one in France or at the airline had suggested that we bring the card along. Affidavits, yes. VeriFly, yes. Test results? Yes, no, maybe. But the little card? We only tucked it into our passports “just in case.” Finally, fussless, we came home to Paris.

Felicitously, after postponing this trip from March to April to June and then July, we entered the city on the very day that the Republic of France lifted all restrictions on distancing and indoor gathering. Restaurants and bars, bistros, brasseries, tabacs, cafés and salons du thé were all open, welcoming and — suddenly — bustling with rampant Parisians. The First of July 2021, after Covid had slipped its grippe — had me imagining Paris on the day in ’45 when the last Nazi followed General von Colditz out of town.

As Hotlips and I, fogged by jet lag, explored the altered but familiar streets near our Latin Quarter loft, we lamented the loss of a few stores and eateries that hadn’t weathered the pestilence. But we discovered joints that had sprung up in their place. We learned that thousands of bars and restaurants, their interiors off-limits for more than a year, had claimed larger chunks of outdoor pavement. All through our arrondissement, we found parking space supplanted by sturdy decks fenced by heavy wooden planks — like corrals — where the newly freed people of Paris crowded the tables, drinking, eating and shmoozing with waiters.

We were back. Paris was back. But the tourists?

Usually by this moment in July around place St. Michel, rue St. André de Arts and the chic rue de Buci, you can’t swing a chat mort lest you smack in the chops a pasty white guy wearing Bermuda shorts, brand-new Nikes and an Ohio State t-shirt. Right about now, Americans tend to outnumber natives. Into a city with neither a children’s museum nor a Disney Store, where the typical menu features frog’s legs, snails, wild boar, lapin au moutarde, onglet, omelettes, salade Niçoise, sole meunière, supreme de volaille and pot au feu, American moms and dads bring kids fiercely unwilling to consume anything but cheese pizza and Hot Pockets.

This year, intimidated perhaps by affidavits, VeriFly, the Viral Gestapo and those Covid-sniffing, child-eating Rottweilers, they’re not here — yet. Our first excursion after arrival was to a bustling tavern called L’Hibou (“The Owl”), where — incredibly — Hotlips and I, and our waiter (who served with the nimbleness of a dancer and the charm of an Aznavour) were the only people within earshot who were speaking English.

The philistines are coming, kids in tow. They always come, to climb the Tower, to trample the Champs, to buy the tchotchkes. But maybe later, maybe not — God willing — ’til next year. The shops and bistros, the Customs agents, waiters and maitres d’ will all be glad — for a while — to see them, to hear them talk, to take their money.

But this odd July is that rare interval, created by a disease that has killed millions — rather like the last war fought on French soil — when a liberated Paris belongs, mostly, to Rick, Ilsa and a million Parisians who are pouring into the streets, glad to be alive.