Republicans, Democrats and the Politics of Vision in Paris

I was a minute late for my 8:45 a.m. appointment with the ophthalmologist. Then two minutes late because I couldn’t remember what floor he was on and had to go back downstairs to look at the mailboxes in the entrance. Then three minutes late because while downstairs I held the front door for a woman coming in with a baby carriage and then held the second door for them. Then four minutes late as I waited after ringing the bell.

While waiting I heard someone coming up the stairs. It was the woman with the baby in her arms. Rounding the curve of the spiral staircase the baby smiled when he saw me. I wiggled my fingers at him in a wave.

The woman made out the essential of the situation, as women with babies in their arms inevitably do, and asked if the doorbell wasn’t working.

I tried it again and since I neither of us heard a bell ring I knocked, now five minutes late.

The door promptly opened and there was the doctor at the door of his consultation room, just off the vestibule, having released the door with his personal button.

He waved us in as he approached.

“Are you together?” he asked.

“No,” we answered.

“When’s your appointment,” he asked.

“8:50,” she said.

“8:45,” I said, triumphantly.

“You, in here.” His left hand showed me his office. “You over there.” His right hand showed the woman the waiting area.

I shook his hand, put my coat over the chair, and was about to sit down when he looked at his watch, shook his head and said, “No. No. Change of plans. You, out. You’re late. Madame, we’re going to start with you.”

He sent me out into the waiting area and motioned the woman to come in. The baby smiled. Or was it a smirk?

The ophthalmologist’s receptionist-secretary, his sole employee, arrived at precisely 9 a.m. She looked at me as though whatever had brought me there might be contagious.

“Does the doctor know that you’re here?”

“He’s the one who put me in quarantine,” I said.

In Paris a professional’s secretary or receptionist is both the professional’s mini-me and his front tackle.

She looked at the appointment list and said that since I wasn’t Madame Furmane then I must be late.

I said nothing.

When I’d called to make this appointment a month ago we’d had the following conversation:

“I’d like to make an appointment.”
“Is it urgent?”
“No, but I’m on my last pair of contact lenses and it’s been a year since my last check-up.”
“So you’re calling at the last minute.”
“I can hold out until next month.”
“Next month is the last minute. You should plan two months in advance but I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Can I get an appointment?”
She gave me the date and the time and asked my name. I spelled out my last name then told her the first.

“H-A-R-R-Y?” she asked for verification.

“Gary with a G, like George, G-A-R-Y,” I said.

“You said ‘Harry,’” she said. Not a self-effacing “I thought you said ‘Harry’” or a doubtful “It sounded like you said ‘Harry’” or even a mocking “I couldn’t understand with your accent,” but an actual, accusatory “You said ‘Harry,’” as though I sometimes mistook myself for an English prince.

The doctor now came out of his office and opened the main door for the woman to leave.  The baby ignored me.

The doctor waved me in. He said, “You understand?”

I ignored him.

He repeated, “You understand, right?” Then a third time, no longer as a question, “You understand now,” as I walked into his consultation room.

There was a time when I would suffer through such lessons, French lessons, considering it a cultural trait: live in France, accept that everyone wants to teach you etiquette and put you in your place. But that ended long ago with my first visa: it takes legal status to say Fuck you with the right accent.

I didn’t tell the doctor Fuck you, though, but rather “Why is everyone always looking for a fight around here?”

“Not a fight, you’re just late, throws off the whole schedule.”

A schedule that has one patient at 8:45 and another at 8:50 is begging to be thrown off. I didn’t say that either; I knew that 8:50 is not an appointment time so much as planning for no-shows by overbooking.

My doctor, like his secretary, may have the annoying cultural habit of always wanting to teach a lesson but he also has the pleasant cultural trait of knowing that the best way to diffuse tension is to show that one is vulnerable to beauty and good taste, so after closing the door he said, “Anyway, it’s only natural to want to see a beautiful woman first.”

“I thought you were a sucker for the baby,” I said.

“I don’t like babies,” he said, “but I can’t resist women.”

He then got down to the business of checking my vision, first one eye then the other.

As he honed in on a final prescription I couldn’t decide which was clearer, the first M C T H or the second M C T H.

“This one?” he repeated… “Or this one?”

“I can’t tell the difference. Try again.”

He tried once more but to no avail.

“I hope you don’t have to make important decisions for a living,” he said as he released my chin from the stirrup.

I said, “The decisions I make usually have vowels.”

He asked me what I do for a living.

I told him as best as I could in three words, meaning I lied.

“Do you write about politics?”

“No.”

“You must be a Democrat,” he said. “Every American I meet in Paris is a Democrat. Why is that?”

“Republicans go to London,” I said. “It’s the Americans in Berlin that we’re not so sure about.”

He liked that. We talked a while.

He said, “I used to say mean things about Bush and every American I met in Paris would agree. Now I say nice things about Obama and they all agree.”

“Maybe we aren’t Democrats so much as agreeable,” I said.

Oh, we were having a fine time. For a man with a tight schedule he was now in no rush. We even talked a bit about my vision. Rather, he told me about my vision because he wasn’t the type of doctor to be interested in what I had to say on the subject of my body.

We also talked about French politics. He asked me what Americans thought on the upcoming presidential election in France.

I said if it’s true that the majority of Americans in Paris are Democrats it’s also true that few if any would ever vote for French Socialists.

“That I can understand,” he said. “The only thing that would be good about a Socialist president is that we wouldn’t have Socialist mayor because a Socialist president in France always leads to a Conservative mayor in Paris, and vice versa.”

“Does that mean that you can’t win or that you can’t lose?”

“That’s politics,” he said.

We shook hands as I left, buddies of sorts, and he reminded me not to be late next time.

He’s got personality, that ophthalmologist. He’s cocky but he’s got a sense of humor. I’d get a kick out of sitting next to him on a train to Alsace or at a dinner party for some cross-cultural repartee.

But I’ll never go back to his office.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut