The Weekly Screed (#935)

And here’s to you, 

Mrs. Robinson

By David Benjamin

“He drained his coffee, stubbed out his cigarette, flung down some coins…”

— Robert Goddard, The Ways of the World

PARIS — Wait a minute! Twice, in Robert Goddard’s novel, The Ways of the World, the protagonist, James Maxted, blithely tosses “some coins” onto his table and bolts a Paris café without bothering to tackle his waiter and demand l’additionfrom the billfold-treasury secreted in his gilet. 

Indeed, one of the pleasures of the Paris café is that a patron just having coffee and croissant, or perhaps a quick kir,need not await the check. One can simply leave behind the coinage necessary to the libation. I’ve done this a hundred times. But this neat trick is not as slick as Goddard cracks it up to be. It requires that I know the particular price of my café noir in that specific café, that I know also that the price has not altered recently, and — above all — that I possess the exact change necessary to make my escape without having to corner the elusive and wraithlike serveur. 

An example. Years ago, I arrived at the office of our notaire, Madame Pedinielli, to complete the momentous purchase of an apartment in Paris (where I’m typing this composition right now). My factotum in this closure was our Paris guardian angel, Roberta, a vivacious American from Glendale who had nursed and translated Hotlips and me through the labyrinth of French real estate. But that day, at two o’clock, no Roberta. No vivacity. Just earnest Frenchpeople. The owner was there, his lawyers were there, Mme. Pedinielli was there. I was there. Where was Roberta? 

Everyone present had a schedule to keep, so we commenced. I sat through ten… fifteen minutes of deed-reading, French questions, Gallic nods and gestures, the occasional mordant remark, at which everyone laughed but me. I nodded, smiled, shrugged and mugged, girding myself to sign a series of documents involving a couple of hundred thousand dollars, without understanding more than one (most of them et, laand le), in twenty written words.

Finally, in the nicolas du temps, Roberta flustered her way into the meeting, gushing with apologies and explaining, in a flurry of tangled French and English, that she had stopped for lunch with plenty of time to spare, eaten her omelette and then spent ten, fifteen, twenty minutes peering over heads, past pillars and between lunchgoers for signs of her waiter, waving fecklessly across the room when she glimpsed him fleetingly. She had become a prisoner of l’addition. She could not leave without paying, but she could not pay.

We’ve all done it. 

There is a rhythm to the Parisian café that author Goddard did not see fit to convey in his novel. One arrives without being acknowledged by any staff. One can take any table that suits his or her fancy, in the interior or on the sidewalk. One arranges oneself and drapes one’s garments, takes out a book, a newspaper, perhaps a phone or an infant. One assumes a casual air and occupies oneself decorously, trusting that by and by service will occur. But not right away. One does not expect a waiter to suddenly pounce, apologize for his delay and tell you his name. Paris waiters — until you’ve returned to the same café every day for perhaps ten years — do not have names. There might be a smile and/or a greeting. There might not. The management does not mandate counterfeit bonhomie.

When service finally occurs, it’s cordial, professional and swift. The waiter, somewhat fussily, places on the table every item individually — coffee, spoon, napkin, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, water glass — in precisely the proper order in exactly the right spot. Sometimes, at the end of this ritual, there is a check, sometimes not.

Usually not.

Usually, you have to wait for l’addition. Always, you have to ask for it. To ask, you need to make eye contact with the waiter, who has — for all practical purposes — finished with you. He does not readily brook eye contact. He is, in fact, a virtuoso of avoiding the gimlet gaze of his captives. He floats, he shimmers, he elides and circulates fluidly, blind to all but those whom he chooses to see, and to catch their imploring eye in his own sweet time. He plays a game of cat and mouse as ancient and immutable as the oldest café on the oldest boulevard in Paris. 

There are, it is rumored, dark corners in century-old tabacson the frayed cuffs of Paris, in the 17th perhaps or 20th arrondissement, whose occupants are impeccable skeletons, sitting erect at dust-snowed tables, their crockery held in place by spiderwebs. Each is thrusting forth an index phalange whose mute message, never heeded while this patron yet breathed, is “Waiter?… Waiter?… Waiter!… WAITER!…”

For me, this poignant tableau, perhaps apocryphal, recalls a scene in The Graduate, during which our hero, Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), waves a finger at passing waiters in the lounge of the hotel where he has just rendezvoused with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Comically, Benjamin achieves only disdain from every passing serveur.The embargo doesn’t end until Mrs. Robinson, in a chilly undertone of Napoleonic command, says, “Waiter.” Instantly, a fawning wretch in waiter garb is at her elbow. 

I’m not sure that this scene, filmed in California, would be credible, or even possible, in Paris. French cinéastes would likely pooh-pooh its lack of verité. In all of history, a French waiter has never fawned.

In Paris, I’ve never received service at Bancroft speed. So much alacrity would make me feel rushed and queasy. A few minutes of nesting and resting before ordering my coffee or kir,peeking at my neighbors and watching all the girls (and waiters) go by is a pastime distinct to the French café. 

As for getting the check and getting out of the joint, the ideal solution is to have no plans, to bring a good book or an endlessly fascinating tablemate (like Hotlips), so that you need never betray to your waiter any desire to ever depart Le Depart. For a rare but fictional example of actual waiter conquest, I refer to another movie scene, late in Chariots of Fire, after Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) has won his Olympic gold medal. At a classic Paris bar, he is drunk and triumphant with his coach, Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm). They are almost literally glued to the banquette and indifferent both to their inebriation and to the wee hour of morning. They have no plans. There are the last drinkers. The staff is stacking chairs on tables. 

At last, the waiter circles back to Harold and Sam. Reluctantly and grudgingly, he tells them, in French, that for Christ’s sake, guys, it’s 3 a.m. 

I suspect French moviegoers loved this scene, because it conveys the secret key to finally getting your check: If you hold out to the end of his shift, when he finally has to reconcile his billfold and bring home the lardonto madame,you don’t have to call your phantom waiter. 

At long last, he’ll come to you.