A Few Certainties and a Leather Purse
by Margherita Bassi
There are, I’m sure, few certainties in this world -- but eight months, three weeks, and four days ago I was equally sure that at least two of these certainties must be as follows:
That any French man or woman, insolong as they remain strangers in regards to their relationship to you, will fulfill the cultural stereotype of acting like an asswipe to anyone born beyond the circumference of the Boulevard Périphérique.
That my purse -- an old-looking, sack-shaped leather bag, with a round hand-sanitizer stain on the bottom, and whose worn appearance makes its purple color appear brown to individuals with poor eyesight -- would never, under any circumstance, leave the radius extended by my arms (unless it was being carried by some gracious boyfriend or other).
This last point was additionally legitimized by family legacy. My mother, who moved away from her parents in small town Modena, Italy, thirty years ago to follow my father to the frigid coast of Boston, Massachusetts, habitually transferred a small suitcase, my brother, myself, and the dozens of diaper-bags, snack-containers, medical-kits, changes of clothes, and toy-bags that necessarily come with the hauling of two small children across the Atlantic Ocean ten or eleven times a year. And she did it like a pro; the only time anything did not arrive at its final destination in a timely manner was because the airline company (Air France, we’re not surprised) sent our checked-in luggage to the wrong country.
Given this matriarchal example, it was expected of me to travel in much of the same fashion—especially in the spring of 2019, when instead of flying back to Boston after spending Christmas with our relations in Italy, I hopped on a short (Air France) flight to Paris, where I’d be spending my semester abroad.
My semester went just about as you’d imagine: minimal (but intense) bursts of academic work, sandwiched between weekend trips to the four corners of Europe. The four corners of Europe are not all that far from each other; the traveling went relatively smoothly; and the only significant bump in the road from January to April was when my overpriced marbled S’well bottle spilled into the old-looking, sack-shaped leather bag that had accompanied my every trip. This, however, didn’t hinder it from, as soon as it had properly dried, magically expanding to fit just about anything I wanted on my person at any given moment in time. It was, all things considered, an excellent purse.
Thus it is on a bright May afternoon that we find me in the northern French district of Normandy, about to board a train back to Paris. My boyfriend Matthew (the one I occasionally allowed to carry my purse) and I had, over the past few months, befriended a French girl named Tatiana who’d overcome the first certainty I listed on page one with surprising agility. Now that the semester was coming to a close, she had invited us to spend our last weekend at her beach house in Trouville. The trip had been a lovely sequence of seafood, beaches, and cheese markets, but I decided to leave earlier than Matthew and Tatiana to spend my last dinner in France with my host family.
The separation was heartbreaking and dramatic. Though Matthew would catch up with me that very night, I wasn’t sure when I’d see Tatiana again. They walked me to the train station and we put on quite an emotional show, with hugging and cheek-kissing and never-ending adieu’s. The two employees who patiently waited for the heartbreak to end before they were allowed to help me onboard made lighthearted fun of us. I was suspicious of their unguarded friendliness, but was grateful for their extended hand as they lugged my suitcase onboard and I deposited my old bag in the overhead compartment. I waved to Tatiana and Matthew from the window, and then settled in for the short train ride before a connection in Louviers. The passenger across the aisle, a middle-aged man with a navy suit and thin scarf tossed about his neck despite the warm spring day, made polite eye contact as he took his seat.
I stressed about the eight minutes I’d have to drag my bags off the current train and board the following one, but Tatiana had reassured me that eight minutes was the French version of the rest of the world’s ten minutes, the minimum amount of time required to do just about anything. As the train slowed at the platform, however, I was already out of my seat, my suitcase pressed to my knee, waiting impatiently in front of the doors. As soon as they opened, I sped-walked with the same determination and mildly-rude intensity necessary to survive the Parisian metro unscathed. I was on the platform within five minutes, had pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time at six minutes, and could see the arriving train in the distance at the seventh minute. Tragically, it was only in the eighth minute, when the train slowed to a definite stop before me, that I realized my right shoulder, which was accustomed to the varying weight of my old leather purse, was carrying none of that varying weight.
With a gripping terror, I realized that this was because, as you can imagine, my old leather purse was in fact not being supported by my shoulder. I faintly envisioned it still sitting in the overhead compartment above the seat I’d occupied on the first train from Trouville.
The train’s doors before me slid open with a gentle rumble. With one hand rather stereotypically splayed across my forehead in distress, I turned to look across the train station to where I’d descended from the first train. Five minutes of brisk Parisian metro walking was roughly equivalent to three minutes of sideways shuffle-running with the handicap of my suitcase dragging behind me. The first train might have already left by the time I’d overcome the crowd of travelers between it and myself, and then I would miss my connecting ride.
“Mademoiselle?” an employee asked impatiently, standing in the open doors of the second train.
I was torn for three more painful seconds, then boarded my connecting train with trembling dread. I made my way to my seat, my panic multiplying exponentially as I listed the contents of the bag that was probably on its way to Bordeaux, if it hadn’t been swiped by an asswipe French: wallet, expensive sunglasses gifted to me by the boyfriend on my birthday, passport…
I found my seat and collapsed upon its worn cushions. I had an international flight back to Boston in two days. I began to sweat anxiously, my proficient French falling apart as I texted my host family group chat:
J'ai fait une grosse erreur...
Yves, my host father, a military man who applied his military school teachings to his everyday citizen life, called me instantly. I explained the situation haltingly, my anxiety making a fool of the fifteen years I’d studied French. An older man who was seated two rows ahead of me turned in his seat and glared pointedly in my direction. I ignored him and my Italian nature emerged as I began gesticulating with emphasis as I spoke on the phone.
Trouve l'inspecteur de billets et lui dit d'appeler la gare, Yves commanded. Find the ticket inspector and tell him to call the train station.
“Ok, ok, ok, ok…” I replied incoherently as I pushed myself out of my seat, the phone still pressed to my ear.
“Madame, vous parlez trop fort,” the old man admonished me. You’re speaking too loud.
“C’est une urgence!” I snapped back. If he’d just lifted his disdained gaze up to my face, the tears streaming down my cheeks and the greenish pallor of someone who was about to vomit her lunch into his lap would have been explanation enough. Asswipe.
Matthew, who beyond having the privilege of carrying my purse, is also endowed with a sixth sense to detect my need for a venting outlet, called as I began to travel the length of the train to find the ticket inspector.
“Eight minutes are not ten minutes!” I cried emphatically as I crossed the sixth train car without any signs of the inspector. The train passed through an underground tunnel and I lost connection. Desperate, I turned around and retraced my steps back to my seat, staring down the old man as Matthew called me again and I resumed my panicked narrative. I could only imagine how I sounded at the end of the fuzzy line with the roar of the train engine and the frequent loss of connection.
“Old stupid man… your sunglasses… expensive flight… the french are all the same!”
I assume Matthew was trying to reassure me when I miraculously came upon the ticket inspector. I ended the call and barred his way, waving my arms as I explained the situation. The man looked at me with wide eyes, holding the ticket scanner in front of his chest like a sort of shield.
At the end of the epic narrative, when, according to the first certainty stated on page one, I was certain the inspector would reply with a curt, “C’est impossible,” I realized that our interaction had trapped a passenger behind us.
“Mademoiselle,” the passenger interrupted us, “Votre sac, c'était du cuir? Marron?” Your bag, was it leather? Brown?
“Oui!” I burst, suddenly recognizing him as the man with the suit and the unnecessary scarf that had sat across from me on the first train. I didn’t think of correcting his interpretation of the purse’s color.
The man, who’d been more trusting of the French eight-minutes, had seen my purse left behind in the overhead compartment of the train. So trusting, in fact, that he’d had time to deposit the purse in the Louviers lost-and-found before boarding the connecting train. For a moment I was left speechless not just by his mastery of the French eight minutes but also by the fact that he hadn’t swiped the purse for himself. I was almost tempted to kiss him.
This epic narrative, which confirmed that there are in fact even less certainties in this world than I originally thought, proceeded to conclude in the most astonishing of ways.
The fact that I now knew exactly where my purse was (not on a random train to a random city) was unlikely happy news, but unfortunately, I was still on a specific train speeding precisely in the opposite direction.
Matthew, whose direct train to Paris was scheduled for tonight, volunteered to take a train to Louviers that very afternoon in order to pick up my purse and bring it to me that night, but I was quickly informed by my host parents that only the owner of a lost object would likely be able to recuperate said object from a lost-and-found.
Undeterred, Matthew and Tatiana returned to the train station in Trouville. By some miracle, the two train employees that had teased us about our affectionate goodbyes recognized my friend and boyfriend. Tatiana and Matthew explained the situation. Taking pity on us, the train employees called their colleague at the lost-and-found desk in Louviers, informing her that a certain Tatiana and Matthew were coming to pick up a bag for a certain Margherita Bassi, and that even though they were not the owners of the bag, the heartbreaking scene they’d displayed on the platform before parting was enough to convince just about anyone of their legitimate relation.
And thus it was exactly through the goodwill of French strangers that my old-looking, sack-shaped leather bag was returned to the radius of my arms (though I still think the old man from the second train would have kept it for himself).
Read more from Margherita here