LITMIR.BIZ

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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 a ten-year residence permit, which gave me permission to work on top of it.

      ‘They’ve made a mistake,’ I muttered to Nathalie.

      ‘Don’t ask questions,’ Nathalie said with a typically Gallic shrug. ‘Take the permit and get out of here.’

      Which is what I did.

      But the next day I started asking questions all the same. Carefully, of French acquaintances, certainly not of French bureaucratic officials who might want to take the permit back. And that’s how I discovered that the French government’s unexpected generosity wasn’t a miracle, just a practical arrangement for the sake of the baby in the pushchair with the broken wheel. I was no longer the undesirable étrangère from Africa; I was the mother of a French child. I’d earned a certain status. The French had opened their arms to me. And I wanted to tear off these arms with rage.

      ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?!’ I raged at the baby’s French father. ‘Surely they could see that I was pregnant every time I had to hand in another stupid piece of paper at the préfecture! And now I find out that all those papers were unnecessary!’

      But Alain just shrugged, like Nathalie at the mairie, with a look that said, Don’t ask questions.

      5 Marry at leisure

      ‘Shouldn’t we just get married?’ Alain asked one afternoon when I once again lay crying in a miserable bundle on the bed. ‘It will at least solve a few of your problems with the bureaucracy.’

      Not exactly what you’d call a romantic proposal, is it?

      But at this stage nothing in my life was exactly romantic. I was living in the loveliest Provençal landscape, but I was so vehemently battling the French bureaucracy that I scarcely noticed the landscape. I was still hunting for official papers, and like any hunter worth his salt I had my eye on the prey rather than the scenery.

      ‘It won’t help,’ I sobbed with red eyes and a wet nose. ‘They won’t give me a driver’s licence just because I’m married to someone who has a driver’s licence.’

      For that was what this afternoon’s crying bout was all about.

      Well, actually it was about more than a driver’s licence. Let’s call it a cultural problem. National legislation leading to international misunderstandings. All symbolised by that shred of paper you need to drive a car.

      I needed an insurance policy for the 15-year-old Golf I’d recently bought from a neighbour. The insurance company wasn’t­ satisfied with the temporary international driver’s licence I’d managed with until now. If I wanted to insure the rusty little car with its torn seats, I needed a French driver’s licence. But with this new French driver’s licence I’d have to pay exorbitant monthly premiums on the policy – because as a ‘new’ driver I’d be considered a danger on the road.

      I therefore had to prove that I’d been a responsible driver for two decades. All I needed was a photocopy of my twenty-year-old South African driver’s licence. Did I say all? In the New South Africa the new government had just introduced a new system of driver’s licences in the form of laminated cards. Therefore my South African driver’s licence was also brand-new.

      My previous driver’s licence was, alas, in my previous identity document. This identity document had been replaced the previous year with the new identity document for which everyone in

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