Vignette from Paris #1
On Wednesday afternoon, as we were approaching the Musee D’Orsay on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, an older woman came into view. Suddenly she bent down and picked something up off the sidewalk in front of us. A plain but substantial gold ring. She pressed it into our hands and appeared to continue on her way.
I turned and tried to give it to her. She said (in French) that she was divorced and had no use for it. When I told her that she could sell it, she said she was an undocumented Eastern European and couldn’t risk selling it. I couldn’t convince her to take it back. I planned to turn it in at the museum. Then she started the spiel. She wanted money. Just a little, she said. I tried again to give her the ring. She wouldn’t take it. Finally, seeing that we were about to leave with the ring without giving her anything, she took it back and continued down the sidewalk.
We turned back toward the Musee D’Orsay. Before we walked half a block, another guy found another ring on the sidewalk. I sensed a trend. “Deja fait,” I said and the guy just grinned and kept going.
We didn’t see the scam again until Sunday, when we were walking back along the Seine, returning from the Tuileries to the Trocadero. In the stretch of a mile or two, we were approached at least half a dozen times by people finding rings on the sidewalk. It got so that we could spot them coming. They all had little bags slung over their shoulders (presumably filled with rings) and had vaguely Mediterranean complexions.
After the first one, I realized that they were actually pretending to pick the rings up. Some of them simply weren’t very good at it and you could see the ring in their hands the whole time as they bent over to begin their act. Others were better at the sleight of hand trick.
I started composing witty responses. Mon dieu! Il pluie des bagues!! (My god — it’s raining rings). Mon dieu! Tout le monde a Paris a perde ses bagues!! (Everyone in Paris is losing rings). The only one I got to use was “J’en ai assez — j’ai deja sept bagues” (I have enough — I have seven rings already). The guy knew I was on to him, but then he turned serious and tried to make me feel guilty, saying that he had to eat and it wasn’t a joke. After that I didn’t engage them anymore, just shook my head.
We referred to them as the ring ring. They seemed to work alone, but they were clearly all part of the same gang, and their scam seemed limited to that one part of the city. Their turf, I guess. They weren’t threatening, and eventually became both annoying and hilarious. You couldn’t go a block or two without encountering another damn ring.
