Two Encounters, One Year Apart

On the last day of July 2021, I plopped down exhausted on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was one of those hot and humid days in Paris where it felt like the heat enwrapped my body like a cloak. In front of me, a game of jeu de boule was played. As one of the competitors was kneeling down to figure out whether his ball was indeed the closest to the jack (the small ball), an old man sat down next to me.

‍

While we were watching the game in silence, he suddenly looked at me and asked me an incomprehensible question in French. I answered him - in English - that I unfortunately didn’t speak French, but from his facial expression it got immediately clear that he didn’t understand a thing I said either. As I was about to grab my phone to use Google Translate as a conversation leader, the old man swiftly spoke: “Quizas hablas español?” With my limited Spanish capacities, I said that I indeed spoke a bit of Spanish. His eyes lit up and he enthusiastically started firing questions at me like I was in the midst of an interrogation.

‍

He asked me my reason for visiting Paris, where I was from, and if my whole family had such long legs. When I told him my age in response to yet another question, he looked in the distance and mumbled: “21, 21 was my age when I moved to Paris … almost 60 years ago.” He looked at me again and described how he moved to Paris, dreaming of becoming a furniture maker. How he had been apprenticed to one for a couple of years, before eventually starting his own business. How he had always lived in the same neighbourhood. The neighbourhood where his son grew up, who had moved to the south of France, and whom he only saw a couple of times a year.

‍

After nearly an hour of conversation, the old man suddenly stood up and told me he had to leave for an appointment. As the conversation came to an end, we shook hands for the first time and introduced ourselves. His name was Jean-Pierre. As I was about to leave, Jean-Pierre asked one final question. “Why don’t we meet again next year? Same park, same bench and same time. To see what has changed and finish our conversation.” We again shook hands to arrange our meeting and off he went, leaving me a bit stunned.

‍

‍

Exactly a year later, I visited Jardin du Luxembourg on the last day of July again. I strolled around the busy park for a while nervously, before I took a seat on the same bench as last year. In front of me, a game of jeu de boule was being played again. It didn’t grasp my attention. My eyes kept scanning the crowd, searching for the man I had spoken to exactly a year ago. I sat on the bench for at least an hour, when I suddenly thought about the fact that there were multiple jeu de boule-courts next to each other. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me and I mistakenly sat down on the wrong bench.

‍

As I attempted to memorise last year’s location, I realised that I had taken a picture of the setting of the jeu de boule match. I compared the photo to my surroundings but it immediately became clear that I was sitting on the right bench. The same clothes racks, packed with jackets of the jeu de boule players, were present. When I again compared the photo with reality, I saw to my surprise that a man who was present on the photo was again playing jeu de boule in front of me. He was even wearing the same red t-shirt, which had a print of the well-known cursive letters of the Coca-Cola logo.

‍

Jean-Pierre didn’t show up anymore. Perhaps he thought I would have forgotten about our appointment. Or maybe he was visiting his son in the south of France. The only certainty I have, is that I had a single conversation with him on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg on the last day of July 2021. Perhaps that’s enough.

‍

‍