Before I get into the new new world of COVID church, I must back up to recount yet another very short and minor encounter with the authorities!
Because I am reading a very good book called The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, death, and betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, I naturally decided I had to go have a drink in the lobby of the Ritz.
Apparently I was under some kind of August 1944-type spell, as COVID-19 had gone right out of my head, and I was filled with visions of Allied liberation and Hemingway and his pals, and de Gaulle marching down the Champs-Élysées, not to forget a fair amount of accompanying celebratory champagne.
NOTE TO SELF: There’s a pandemic on, just in case you forgot! No drinks! No hotel lobbies! And even if they have a courtyard, they are not going to LET YOU IN IT!
I strode purposefully into the lobby—I know, ahem, from experience, that it is always good to look like you know where you’re going!—and was immediately accosted by some doorkeeper who surmised that I was not a guest of the Ritz. I told him I was waiting for someone. He asked me who it was, and I replied, um, Roger? Giving him his proper French pronunciation.
Fortunately, there was no one at the desk, so I gave the doorkeeper a cheery wave and said I would go outside and appelle Roger myself, just in case there had been some mixup.
Once I got out the door, I called my niece, Grace, and said, hey, it’s me, just keep talking, I need to act like I’m calling someone who’s staying at the Ritz . . . . I guess Grace knows me pretty well, because she played along and nattered and chattered, and I made gestures that were meant to convey, oh! You’re not at the Ritz??? YOU’RE AT THE MEURICE??? INCROYABLE. Etc., etc., etc.
(The incident rather reminded me of the time I crashed the Booker Prize gala dinner in London, rather by accident, I must say, and had to call my friend Dana in Buffalo to announce, loudly, with no preamble whatever: YANN MARTEL! LIFE OF PI! Only to hear her say immediately, Faith, are you somewhere you’re not supposed to be?)
I digress!
So my application to worship at the American Church in Paris having apparently been accepted, I zipped over to the quai d’Orsay for the service, which I reckon you can even watch here. I was impressed by the COVID organization—ushers directed everyone to safely spaced seats; the readers, the preacher, and the soloists were behind Plexiglass; everyone, including the choir members, were masked, as was the entire congregation. But I was astonished by—wait for it! my dear father would have loved this and no doubt instituted it right off the bat—the collection was taken up by contactless phone payments in the narthex. Apologies to all my regular church-going brethren who are used to this as a matter of course, but I was impressed.
Now, as to the communion, everyone was offered a teeny-weeny plastic doodad, which I thought was only a nanospoonful of grape juice, but which also contained a wafer encased in the lid. Apologies, as above, but I thought it was so cool I kept the lid for my journal.
Lots more to talk about, but it will have to wait. A few street scenes until then.
I love your stories! I can so see you making that phone call!
Oh yes just one night at the RITZ!