Return to Harry's Bar (Paris)

I worked my way through some middle-aged, slick-haired folk and asked the blond barman, “Is there a spot for one person?”

He indicated a table in the far corner, blocked by people sitting on either side.

“Scuse me.” I spoke inaudibly, hoping they would sense my presence. At last I swallowed and just shoved through. As I was squeezing past, the barman arrived to ask the man on the right if he could give me room, and to take my order.

“We don’t serve wine." He didn't like my order.

“What do you have?”

The only things that sounded appealing were champagne and cognac. I chose cognac. Two fellows sat in front of me, and a couple to the right. They all stared at me, as if requiring some explanation for my presence.

“I was here once eight years ago,” I said.

The man who wouldn’t move, a thick-lipped, heavy-lidded man whose every part seemed a bit too big for the whole, replied, “The place hasn’t changed, and neither have you.”

Suppressing an inward yawn, I got out my book and started reading. The same guy said, “You look like Jody Foster.”

“Thank you.”

"We mean it.” His small friend nodded. His friend was almost the opposite of him in looks – dark-haired and sharp-featured. “You look like her in her good days. Good for you. Not for her.”

I smiled wanly. They chatted in French some more. Then the sharp-featured guy asked, “What brings you here?”

“Well, I had romanticized this place in my teens.” I was going to say because of Hemingway (whom I stopped liking right after my teens*), but before I could continue, the flaccid man shouted:

“I knew it!” He looked at his friend in victory.

“He thinks he’s very good at understanding people right away," said his friend.

“I am amazing at it. For example, today I correctly analyzed a man’s entire character, based on his screen saver.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“It’s the thing that your computer puts on when you haven’t touched it for awhile.”

“I know that. I mean, what was the screen saver?”

“A picture of a kid-kart. Like Speed Racer.” He looked extremely self-satisfied, and somewhat nostalgic for that afternoon. I neglected to ask him what his characterization had been. After he finished reminiscing about the kid-cart man, he came back to me:

“You have come back to Paris and searched out this bar, which you visited eight years ago, for romance. I knew it – why else would you be sitting here reading what is no doubt a woman’s novel....”

Now it was my turn to interrupt. “I would hardly call this a woman’s novel.” (I was reading A Dance to the Music of Time.)

“It is not all about love?”

“The author won a Nobel Prize.” (I’m not sure on that, but in any case, he should have.)

“Did he win a Booker Prize?” That seemed to matter to them more. I shook my head.

“He wrote in the '50s.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“It follows some young men from public school onwards.”

The little man whispered, “It is British English?” He spoke in a half-conspiratorial tone, as if he wanted to hide this literary side of himself from his more blustery friend. I nodded. I read some more. They spoke French again. (I should mention that their English was perfect. I almost doubted that they were French, and were just Americans pulling my leg, but somehow, their characters could be nothing but French. No amount of language lessons can do away with one’s personality.)

The big man asked, “What do you think of Paris?”

"It's wonderful."

“What do you think of French people?”

"Very nice."

“No one has been mean? I thought all Americans hated French people. They make it sound like we are all killing each other.”

I had no idea what he meant by the latter, but his friend quickly corrected him, “It is the newspapers that say that, not the people. You’ve been reading the New York Post too much.”

“Bah, the New York Post! I will never read that newspaper again!”

I almost got the idea that the paper had mounted a smear campaign against him, so violent was his reaction. Then, he asked me what I did.

“I'm a computer programmer. Were you going to guess that?”

“Oh, I didn’t get that far. I was not even close to even thinking about what you did. My friend, here, is in computers. He is a salesman. He knows all about that stuff.”

His friend demurred.

“You have to understand something to sell it," the big man argued.

“Well, maybe.”

“Oh, yes, you do. You understand it all perfectly.”

I asked him what area he was in. He said java applications for mobile phones. What company? A small one, you wouldn’t know it.

The big guy said, “A little company by the name of International Business Machines.”

The small guy shook his head, as if he were a humble rich man who didn’t want attention drawn to his wealth, so as not to make others uncomfortable. I decided to go back to my book at this point for good. Soon afterwards, they got up and said that if I came back the next night, maybe I’d see them. They also continued to bemoan my choice in drink, saying I should have had some apple-based spirit instead.

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