Discovering France: Its Wonders and Warts - Part 8

Written by Frank Breen Thursday, 14 January 2010 00:00

Avignon

As I sat on a bench in Avignon's large center city park, soaking in the mid-day sun, I gradually became aware of a little drama playing out on the grassy patch of ground in front of me. Other wooden benches, occupied by a smattering of people taking a break from their occupations, were clustered near mine.
A little pigeon presented a pathetic image as it hobbled about on one foot - two legs but only one foot.

The poor little bird unsuccessfully attempted to keep up with its fellows as they scrambled after the pieces of bread being tossed by the onlookers. So heartrending was this scene that the stumbling, one-footed pigeon quickly gained the sympathy of the bread throwers. They began tossing ever larger pieces of bread in his direction to give him an equal opportunity to stave off starvation.  Every now and then a particularly large piece of bread would land away from the wounded pigeon.  It was at such times that those paying closer attention to the bread battle noticed the limping pigeon suddenly drop his pretense and race ahead of his competitors to grab the prize. So quickly did he perform this transformation, and so quickly did he revert to his former hobbling state, once he had the bread firmly tucked in his bill, that his little hustle was missed completely by the less attentive among the bread throwers. By the end of an hour, the "handicapped" pigeon had eaten most of the bread and still retained the sympathy of the less observant.  How did a little pigeon learn such a clever ploy?

A block away, a beggar slumped on the side walk on a folded carpet, apparently missing one leg. People rushed by her. Every now and then someone dropped some coins into her collection basket. She appeared so weak and emaciated that she could barely acknowledge the charitable donation.  She thought she had selected a lucrative spot to gather her "pieces of bread" but the crowd quickly thinned, so she hurriedly unfolded the "missing leg" upon which she had been sitting, grabbed up her beggar's accoutrements and dashed across the street to take up a better location in the midst of a newly gathering untapped crowd of passersby.

Avignon, whose huge center city square is dominated on weekends by inebriated teenagers on motobikes who revel in intimidating foreign tourists; Avignon, the forty year home of seven popes and two anti-Popes who vied with Rome for supremacy in the Catholic Church; Avignon, who boasts an outdoor restaurant, the In and Out, in its central square, designed to make Americans feel at home by rushing them in, feeding them MacDonald's type food, reminding them to leave a tip, then rushing them out to be dispersed into the afternoon crowds.  Avignon: celestial, dirty, crowded, modern, enlightened, cultural, crime infested.

Only in such a city could a one-footed pigeon outdo a gypsy in begging for its daily bread.

---