The Gendarmes of Paris

Paris this time around will be a whole lot different for us than it was in the fall of 1961. The Eiffel Tower, the onion soup, the Seine will all still be there, but Mary and I won’t find ourselves flirting with a roomful of gendarmes at 4:00 a.m.

Here’s how it happened: As we told our story, the gendarmes were amiable, flirtatious (because they were French), but skeptical.

“Il n’etait pas Francais,” some insisted. “C’est impossible!” declared others.

“Non, non, c’est vrai!” countered Mary, using up most of her store of French. With her flashing eyes, long dark hair and perfect small figure, Mary was beautiful. That alone should have been enough to convince the gendarmes of the truth of what we were saying, but it wasn’t.

Too excited to sleep, we had gone out at 11:00 p.m. to find a place to have some good hot onion soup.

“Oui! Oui! Bonne soupe!” Mary chimed in. The gendarmes beamed. I was used her effect on men after being her roommate for two years, but it didn’t help my own ego.

The nearby restaurants were all closed so we had to walk a long way down the Boulevard Saint Germain before finding one that was still open. We were seated at a table on the second floor by a window with a view down to the street. A funny scene was taking place there.

Two young good-looking Frenchmen were arguing with a wild-haired “beat” girl – all in black, short skirt, tall boots -- who eventually kissed them both on the cheek and left. When we laughed at this drama, the guys turned to look up at the window and spotted us there. A moment later, they had come upstairs and were introducing themselves to us.

The nice-looking, rather short, peroxided blond claimed to be Richard Villiers, a movie actor. His friend, Pierre something, was not so handsome, but more real. Richard wore the open-necked shirt with suit jacket made popular by Elvis Presley, while Pierre’s blue shirt had a button-down collar with a thin dark blue tie. Their longish hair was slicked back on the sides and loosely waved on top, also a la Elvis.

After our soup, they asked if we would like to go to a “swinging cave,” a small bar with music and poets on the Right Bank. Excited by being able to see “beatnick” Paris, we agreed, knowing we could never find a place like that by ourselves.

We all squeezed into their tiny Citroen 2cv (nicknamed the douche bowl), Mary and I in back, the boys in front. The car, made from corrugated tin, was not very elegant transportation for a movie star. Richard excused this by saying that his other car, a Chrysler, was too wide for the narrow streets of Paris.

“Je ne te crois pas,” I laughed. His little fib wasn’t worth pursuing because we were in Paris at midnight with two young Frenchmen and it was delightful.

First he drove us along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, parking right underneath it which you used to be able to do at night when no-one was around.

While our friends chatted amiably with a gendarme who happened along, Mary and I got out and looked up through the massive angel-hair girders, all gray against the moonlit sky. What a difference mood lighting makes! When I'd seen the Tower from a distance that afternoon, it had looked like a dirty pile of old steel. Now, close up by moonlight, the transformation was magical. This stop made up for what came next, but I didn’t tell that to the gendarmes, needing their sympathy.

Driving on to the “cave”, the Citroen started acting up. It stalled, and then, after much rapid, excited, discombobulated fiddling with gears and pushing of buttons, started again. The two men were mysterious about the whole thing, and I couldn't follow their rapid French. Mary and I paid them back by speaking just as fast in English, but we were so naïve we didn't realize what was actually happening.

After wasting an hour or so fussing with the car, we were getting no closer to the cave. Finally they said they would have to get out and push. Mary and I, in a spirit of international friendship, got out to help them. For at least forty-five minutes, we pushed that jalopy through tiny streets, wide streets and the wrong way on one-way streets. Romantic, gay Paris.

Finally we spotted a service station about two blocks away which happened to still be open. Richard and Pierre consulted, again in such rapid French I got lost. After coming to some sort of conclusion, they suggested that Mary and I walk down to the station and inquire if the attendant could fix whatever was wrong with the motor, using some technical term I have forgotten. They would stay behind and continue trying to start the car.

We strode to the station, told the attendant the problem, and pointed up the road to where the car used to be! Instantly, we realized what fools we had been. Our purses were in the back seat with our money and passports!

We'd panicked too soon, though. A moment later we heard shouting and honking a block away in the opposite direction. The car had finally started. Now, because it was so late and the car was almost out of gas, they were going to drive us back to our hotel instead of going to the cave.

At this point one of the gendarmes asked why Richard didn’t go to the service station and buy gas.

“Je ne sais pas,” was all I could say, never having thought of it. Since Mary’s French didn’t cover such possibilities, she shrugged eloquently.

It was a good move because the officers grinned or even laughed.

I continued with the story.

Nearing our section of the city, Richard became quite nervous, saying that they'd have to let us off soon or run out of gas. Pierre argued that it was too far for us to walk, so they compromised and dropped us only ten minutes' walk from the hotel.

We thanked them for a strange evening and started up the street. Almost immediately I felt my purse and realized it was much emptier than when we had started out. My wallet, a nice new red one, was gone. We had been robbed!

Our evening at the Eiffel Tower and pushing a car all over Paris was paid for by losing only four dollars, my driver's license and my Social Security card. It wasn’t much, but still, why would they have done it?

The gendarmes were shocked, every one of them. Like a chorus they repeated (in French), “He could not have been a Frenchman. A Frenchman would not do such a thing!”

As they were agonizing about this inexplicable breach in the Frenchman's code of honor, their Chief, a sour-faced, grumpy, sullen, short fat little man entered the room. I could tell that he thought the whole situation was ridiculous. From his viewpoint, his men were wasting time with two young female tourists. Mary’s beauty apparently had no effect on him.

In the sudden quiet that overtook the room, I stumbled through an explanation, trying to impress the Chief with the gravity of our plight. He shook his head, dismissing our claim to justice and turned to leave.

Suddenly the tallest and most handsome of the gendarmes, with sparkling blue eyes, dark hair, and Errol Flynn mustache, came to our rescue. Championing our cause, he made it clear that it was their duty as Frenchmen to erase the evil done to the national reputation by those unspeakably insensitive creatures masquerading as French. Miraculously, the chief succumbed.

Spreading a huge map of Paris on the central table, he had us retrace our car-pushing route. All the gendarmes gathered round, looking on. After a long pause, the Chief said, “Hmmm. Tsk tsk tsk.” The others echoed him and we waited for the verdict. At last the Chief announced that he could do nothing because the incident had occurred in another “arrondisement.”

We would have to go to the precinct office near the service station and explain the whole thing again. Uttering kindly little sympathies, he waddled back to his inner sanctum, closing the massive door behind him.

“Quelle dommage,” or “How sad,” the gendarmes murmured.

To lighten the mood, one of our new friends pointed ominously toward the Chief’s door and told us that girls caught roaming the streets at 4:00 in the morning go through it and don't come out until the Chief says so.

“Verdad?” I asked, and when I saw their blank faces realized I’d mixed up my languages yet again.

By the time we left the gendarmerie, it was 5:30 a.m. What an entertaining hour and a half it had been, bantering with fifteen or so delightful gendarmes! Of course, Richard and Pierre would never be brought to justice, but because of the charming gendarmes and the Eiffel Tower by moonlight we would call it even.

And that was only our first day in Paris! Fifty years later, we will gladly leave the flirting with gendarmes (or anyone else) to the younger girls. But still, it’s fun to tell the story and see the reactions. Sorry there aren't pictures.