and an international driver’s licence for Alain. Only Daniel’s bit of paper still had to be arranged. Just a final formality. Or so we thought. After all we were armed with every possible official paper the child had ever received in his life, from his birth certificate to his school reports, you name it.
And then the woman behind the counter asked – with a face that said ‘Here comes trouble’ – if I could prove that I was the child’s mother.
‘But of course,’ I said indignantly. ‘Look, there is my name on his birth certificate!’
‘Non, non,’ she said. This certificate was in English. She needed one that had been translated into French.
‘But it’s only a question of a few names!’ I objected. ‘Our names are still our names, whether they’re written in English or in French!’
‘Non, non,’ she said. Rules were rules. She couldn’t issue the permit unless I supplied a translated birth certificate.
Well then, I’d quickly go and translate it on my computer, I said in an attempt to make peace (because we had to leave for Cape Town in a week), and hand it in the next day.
‘Non, non.’ Her face sagged like a soufflé that’s been taken from the oven too soon. It had to be an official translation. By an official translator. Certified with an official stamp. And that wasn’t all. (Here comes the really bad news, I knew right away.) This birth certificate wouldn’t do, translated or not, because it wasn’t the correct one.
What did she mean it wasn’t the correct one? The child had been born only once! He’d been given only one certificate to mark the occasion!
No, she explained. This was an abridged version. She needed the full certificate, freshly issued by the relevant state department in the child’s country of birth, less than three months before. At these words the prospect of our South African family visit disappeared like a ship on the horizon. No, not as calmly as that, more like a ship falling over the edge of a waterfall. I knew by now that any application for official documents from South Africa, via the South African embassy in Paris, meant a wait of two to three months. There wasn’t any way that I could get my hands on a full certificate – let alone an official translation – in the week before we were supposed to fly to Cape Town.
And at that moment of unbearable tension the clerk decided to close her counter and go and enjoy her lunch.
Our forlorn little group – Alain, Daniel, Mia in her pushchair and me – didn’t have lunch that day. We wandered through the wind-torn streets of Avignon trying to figure out how we would get to South Africa. Or rather, how we could ensure that Daniel would be able to return with us to France. Surely provision had to be made for special circumstances, I murmured half-hopefully. If I explained that it was about my mother’s death? But Alain, who knows the French better because he is one of them, shook his head sadly. Non, non. Rules were rules.
In the end we phoned the South African embassy in Paris – who fortunately have shorter lunch hours than the French in Avignon – to ask if they could help. I know a few people who work there. Well, I haven’t actually met them personally, but I’ve phoned them for help so many times that they feel like distant relations. And to be sure, the capable Ms Anker (one of my almost-relations) promised to have an affidavit drawn up, in French, to say that I was Daniel’s mother. And to fax it directly to the office in Avignon. I just had to give her the fax number and the name of the head of the office.
With renewed courage we now waited for the clerk’s return. We hoped that she’d enjoyed a pleasant lunch so that she would be in a more accommodating mood when she resumed her place behind the counter. And indeed she was looking less grim – there was even the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth – when we stood in front of her once more. Incredible how the mood of a French citizen can be influenced by a plate of food.
But the smile disappeared the moment we asked to see the head of the office. Non! Impossible! Just for five minutes, we pleaded, just to explain about the sworn statement the South African embassy was going to send. Impossible! All right then, we sighed, rules were rules after all, but could she please give us the person’s name and fax number? Impossible, the clerk said.
And suddenly I snapped. After nearly two years of silent suffering at the hands of the French bureaucracy, I’d reached breaking point. I stamped my foot on the floor like a naughty child and my face turned an unattractive red and I raised my voice. I refused to leave until I’d spoken to the office head. I would spend the night here if I had to! I would cling to the furniture if the police tried to drag me away!
Fortunately at this stage my French was still so bad that the terrified clerk didn’t understand half my desperate threats. What she did understand was that she was dealing with a woman on the brink of insanity. She grabbed the telephone and muttered a few anxious words into the mouthpiece. See, I cried to Alain (who was rubbing my back as if I was a growling dog that needed to be pacified), sometimes you have to be rude to get your way! There you are, she’s phoning the office head! He wasn’t so sure, Alain mumbled, he thought she might be calling the security guard to come and remove me.
But she was indeed calling the office head. Who still refused to see us, but did give the clerk permission to reveal the highly secret telephone number to us. Alain immediately walked outside with his cell phone and, huddling against a window for protection from the vicious wind, dialled the number. He heard the phone ring right behind him, he heard a woman’s voice answer the phone on the other side of the window, he heard the same voice in his ear. Could he see her for a few moments? he asked. No, she said, she was busy. Yes, he said, he could hear that she was busy – busy talking to him – so he wanted to know if they could do the talking in her office. When she tried to refuse again, he threatened to climb through the window.
In the end we managed to talk to her face to face for a few seconds.
Unfortunately it didn’t help us get our hands on Daniel’s travel permit. The next day when the South African embassy tried to fax the affidavit, the fax machine in Avignon was out of order. A day later the fax machine was working but it had run out of paper. And the day after that the préfecture in Avignon was closed. At the end of the week we boarded the plane to Cape Town in blind faith that the entire family would be readmitted to France.
The sequel to the story is that the French consulate in Cape Town solved the nerve-racking problem in a day. Perhaps the great distance between the diplomatic staff in Africa and the fatherland allows them to be a little more lenient about official papers. Perhaps it’s just that things work differently in Africa.
And then at last it happened. Two years after I’d first applied for a temporary residence permit I received an excited call from the secretary at the local mairie. Come right away, Nathalie said, your permit has arrived. As if it were an ice cream that would melt if I didn’t hurry. By this time the coveted bit of paper seemed far less real than a melting ice cream, more like the Holy Grail. I stuffed the baby into her pushchair and charged down the cobblestone lane so fast that the pushchair almost lost a wheel. Out of breath I burst into the mairie and grabbed the laminated card out of Nathalie’s hand – and felt a wave of disappointment hit me. Somewhere someone had made a mistake. It was my face in the photo. It was my name on the card. But it couldn’t be my permit.
I’d applied for a two-year permit that would have to be renewed at regular intervals. (Before my arrival the French had made it quite clear that this was the most I could hope for.) But there was a very important condition attached to this bit of paper. I wouldn’t be allowed to work in France. Or rather, I’d be able to work as a writer – not really regarded as work, I suppose – but trying to earn a French income was out of the question. And now I held in my shaking hands
