Foreign Tongue (14 page)

I stopped. I suddenly felt like a voyeur. I sort of liked it.

I cracked a window and went into the kitchen for some water. When I dunked ice cubes in my glass, they made a crackling sound. The French word was
“grincement”
: it meant creaking, grating, gnashing, and it sounded like it should exist in English: “grincing.” It would be a good word for the squeaking sound ice makes when you crush it between your back teeth, the way it becomes almost chewy before it melts or breaks.

I traced my finger in the fog of condensation on the glass, thinking about the translation. Sometimes finding out what other people did in bed was intriguing; sometimes, it was grotesque. Other times, it seemed the way in which people talked about sex was far more sordid than anything they actually did.

I disliked the narrator less. In fact, I was even starting to like him. If the next scene was crass or ugly, my feelings could shift back again. I forced myself back to work.

“Blow job” in French is
“tailler une pipe,”
often abbreviated to
“une pipe,”
as in the request
“fais moi une pipe,”
make me a pipe. The literal
translation means something like cleaning a pipe, though no one would translate it literally. Like no one translates reflexive verbs literally, let alone the idiomatic ones. It doesn’t make sense. And yet, I can’t resist:
“se rouler une pelle,”
the quasi-crass expression for a French kiss, translates into “to roll oneself a shovel,” which almost makes sense. “Translation is bullshit,” Eleni had said. I wondered what Monsieur Laveau thought.

Come to think of it, as I wasn’t a professional translator, I didn’t know whether reflexive verbs even exist in English. Probably not; they’re too weird, especially the treacherous idiomatic pronominal verbs, which mean one thing with the reflexive pronoun and another without it. Like
“tromper”
means to deceive, but
“se tromper”
means to be mistaken. As if the insertion of the reflexive pronoun implies you are deceiving yourself.

Or maybe I was thinking about French in English, instead of thinking about French in French. Most of the time, I heard and spoke French like a French person. Sometimes I dreamed in French, sometimes I thought in French, and no matter where I was, when driving, I cursed in French. Maybe that came from hearing my father curse in the car when I was a kid, or maybe I liked
“putain”
and
“merde”
better than “fuck” and “goddamnit.”

But my language hard drive had its own subjective, unpredictable filter, and sometimes I heard French as a foreigner, someone outside the language looking in, and I had to wrestle with whether words and phrases were fungible, even translate them into English. My grasp of French was trickier than I thought. I looked back at the text.

The narrator didn’t use
“une pipe”
during the scene devoted to the act. In fact, as I translated, I noticed there were very few slang words at all. The narrator used
“la bite,”
which fell somewhere between the dictionary accuracy of “penis” and the crudity of “cock.” It was actually a tender little scene of oral gratification. He wrote about the shape of her lips, the feel of her mouth, but also about running his fingers through
her hair, the curve of her shoulders, a beauty spot he hadn’t noticed, and how astonished and touched he was. Instead of being racy and raunchy, it was nearly
pudique
. I wrote it eight slightly different ways. I couldn’t find a way to do it justice.

The phone rang. It was Althea, calling to thank me for the chocolates.

“Excellent party,” I said. “Did you get that couple out of your bedroom?”

“They emerged around four. By that time, Ivan was making s’mores with dark chocolate and
petit-beurres
in the garden, but French
chamallos
don’t melt the same way. I have goop all over my plastic lawn furniture. How’s Mr. Handsome?” she asked.

“Good. Lovely, actually. He’s sweet and likes old movies.”

“Very nice.”

“How do you translate
‘pudeur’
?” I asked, changing the subject. “I know the dictionary says ‘modest,’ but that’s not quite right.”

“No, I agree. Like if you say
‘Je suis assez pudique.’
It’s not prudish, either. It’s a kind of modesty about revealing too much,” she said. “‘Reserve,’ I’d say.”

“That’s it, thanks.” Musing out loud, I added, “It’s funny, the French aren’t that repressed. I mean, even when they don’t talk about it, you still get the feeling they’re doing something.
Pudeur
implies reticence, not repression,” I mused.

“On the other hand, Americans are rarely reticent,” Althea observed. “Ivan just took the soufflé out of the oven. Gotta go.”

I struggled with word choices until my eyes hurt from looking at the screen. The printer ejected pages striped with words, devoid of accents. I put my head down on the desk and doodled on a notepad. I thought about sex and writing, meaning and translation, and the things that were hard to come up with words for in any language. But underneath it all, I kept coming back to something that felt like melancholy. What was
lingering at the edge of my thoughts that made me feel not quite sad, not quite gloomy? What was I missing? Maybe something in the chapter, or Sunday night blues. For the eight thousandth time that day, I thought about Olivier, and there it was: I missed him.

Maybe I was falling in love.

T
he week passed in a blur, despite the fact that it rained constantly, because I saw Olivier nearly every night. Even the nights he had rehearsal, he came over afterward. I didn’t see the time go by, and I didn’t seem to need food. I was on another planet, living on coffee, sex, and croissants, and the only real sleep I got was in the morning, after he left.

When I met Althea for lunch, she shook her head, pronouncing me “lost in Goofyland,” which was as good a description as any. I barely looked at my e-mail.

On Friday morning, I could tell from the dim light peeking out from behind the curtains that it was gray outside. The
météo
predicted rain all day. I reread my final version of the translation and printed it out.

At the 96 bus stop, a girl in a parka did multiple-choice homework on the bench. My cell phone rang. It was Bunny, asking if I wanted to grab coffee at Le Flore.

“I’ll meet you right after I drop off the translation,” I said.

“Wait, I don’t get to read it first?” he asked.

“I’ll e-mail you a copy,” I promised and hung up.

“Excusez-moi, madame,”
the girl next to me said.
“Je vous ai entendue parler en anglais. Est-ce que je peux vous poser une question?”
She had heard me speaking in English and wanted to ask a question.

“Bien sûr,”
I said, surprised at being addressed as
“Madame.”

“C’est quoi la différence entre
‘amidst’
et
‘between’?” she asked, pointing to her workbook. I frowned. I knew they were different, but for a moment, I couldn’t think of how to explain it. I told her that “amidst” meant among many, whereas “between” implied between two things. I likened “amidst” to
“parmis,”
and “between” to
“entre,”
and hoped I was right. She thanked me but looked doubtful. Just because you speak a language doesn’t mean you can teach it.

Nor does it mean you can translate it. I sat on the bus watching the rain spatter the windows, second-guessing myself about the chapter, even though it was too late to do anything about it. I distracted myself by coming up with things to do. Maybe Bunny was up for a movie. Or maybe we could poke around the used bookstores in the Fifth and Sixth. I yawned and rested my head against the glass.

As usual, Monsieur Laveau was on the phone when I got to the bookstore. I poked my head in his office, and he put a hand over the mouthpiece.

“I’m sorry to inconvenience you,
mademoiselle,
but I don’t have the next chapter for you. A mix-up with the courier service,” he explained. “I will have to messenger the next chapter.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me know. Meanwhile, here’s last week’s chapter.” I handed him the original chapter and my translation. He resumed his conversation. I walked back into the rain.

Bunny was sitting on the patio when I got to Le Flore.
The Economist
lay open on the table, next to a double
crème
. I leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Hey, kid,” he said in a wan voice. I took off my coat and hat and sat down.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He shook his head. “Something’s wrong, I know it.”

“It’s my tooth,” he said. “I need a root canal, and you know how much I hate my dentist.” He sighed and bared his teeth at his reflection in a spoon. I ordered tea.

“Ever have a day when everything goes wrong from the moment you wake up and keeps getting worse?” he asked conversationally.

“Sure,” I said.

He put the spoon down. “It’s been like that every day for the past year,” he said.

“Bunny!” I said. I half-laughed, thinking he was joking. He shook his head, sinking his chin into his neck. I put my hand on his arm. He shrugged it off.

“I’m not that guy, kid,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “You think I’m some kind of warmhearted, wise adviser, but I’m not that guy. I’m not that guy you call Bunny that you’re always so happy to see—”

“Yes, you are,” I argued. “You are—”

“I want to be, but I’m not—”

“You are too!” I said, dogged.

“I’m a bitter old man, goddamnit!” he shouted, slamming his hand down on the table. His cup quaked in its saucer; the spoon fell to the floor. There was an excruciating silence as people swiveled around to look at us. I stared at him in shock: he’d never raised his voice at me before. The waiter placed a teapot and cup on the table. Bunny looked down at his hands, his mouth working.

“They want me to retire,” he said, after a moment. “Golden parachute, the whole package, but they want me out,” he said, looking down at the table.

“Oh, Bunny, I’m so sorry,” I said. He loved working at the Acro
nym, his nickname for his division at UNESCO. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“My lawyer’s been working on it, but it doesn’t look good.” He canted his jaw over to one side and looked out through the glass. We sat in silence.

“Willya look at that?” he asked. I followed his gaze. A short, white-haired man in a navy blue coat embraced a tall, blond woman in a fur. “The Central European Love God in action. Always a beautiful dame on his arm. How does he do it?” he muttered to himself.

Years ago, Bunny had shown me a picture of one of his old girlfriends, an artist who lived in Vienna. In the photo, she had a kind face, with a gap-toothed grin and long black hair. When I handed it back to him, he’d stared at it, running the corner of the photo under his thumbnail.

Then he’d said, “You can get awfully far on memory and imagination,” and the expression on his face had been both hopeful and crafty, like a child stealing a gum ball. Back then, I’d thought it a whimsical thing to say. There had been a lot of women in Bunny’s life, and I could see how their memories might people his imagination. Now, it seemed profoundly sad.

He didn’t stay long. After he left, I stared out the window, wondering what he’d meant about not being my Bunny and whether I’d done him some kind of disservice, burdened him with expectations.

The rain stopped, the sky brightening to an opaque white. I put my umbrella in my bag and went for a walk. Gray weather always meant sugar to me. Visions of fattening, decadent, expensive pastries danced in my head. I walked down the rue Bonaparte, window-shopping every boutique, even the expensive patisserie, with its desserts that looked like sculptures, especially the pink layered
macaron
and a chocolate-and-gold-leaf bombe. I texted Olivier on his cell phone,
“Un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé.”
I’d seen the quotation from Lamartine
on a postcard, and I’d tried to figure out a decent translation—“You miss one person and the world is empty”—but nothing seemed to match the elegant desolation of the French word
“dépeuplé,”
literally, unpeopled.

I heard thunder. Suddenly,
il pleuvait des cordes
: it was raining ropes, the expression for cats and dogs, and the rain did look like silvery violin strings. It was the kind of weather that made me long for a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movie and, failing Olivier, who had a late rehearsal and wouldn’t be over tonight, a cat to curl up with and watch it. I raced after the bus and jumped onboard. As it pulled away, I realized I hadn’t gotten my check from Monsieur Laveau.

Monsieur Laveau woke me out of a deep sleep at 9:01 in the morning, his voice oozing displeasure.

“Ecoutez, j’ai lu les pages que vous avez traduites, et je ne suis pas du tout content,”
he said, his tone emphasizing his unhappiness with my translation.
“Auriez-vous la gentillesse de passer me voir aujourd’hui?”
he asked, though it sounded like a command. I cleared my throat and asked him to tell me more, but he insisted I come to the bookstore to discuss it.
“Ce matin m’arrangera,”
he added.

“D’accord,”
I said, mystified.

“A tout à l’heure.”

I couldn’t figure out why Monsieur Laveau was so unhappy with my work. Sure, there were some word choice issues, but there were always word choice issues. Nor did I understand the note of glee I detected beneath the peremptory tones. Unless he was looking for an excuse to fire me and was thrilled to have one.

I walked out of the cold damp into Editions Laveau, where the heat was cranked up to waiting room in hell. Monsieur Laveau, on the phone again, waved at me to sit down. Already sweating, I balanced on the
edge of the treacherous club chair, resisting the gravitational pull of its lumpy center.

“Oui, mais vous m’appelerez, d’accord? C’est promis? Bien. Allez, mon vieux,”
he said and hung up.
“Vous voulez un café?”
he asked me.

“Volontiers,”
I answered. As he fiddled with the coffee machine, I tried to make conversation. “I’m thinking of trying to read more in French. Read any good new fiction lately?”

He grunted and flipped a switch. The coffee machine gurgled.

“We are here,” he said, handing me a small cup and saucer, “to discuss this latest translation, which I find completely inadequate. Evidently, you did not see fit to devote any amount of serious attention to the job at hand—”

“Wait a min—” I interrupted, trying to tell him how wrong he was.

“Laissez-moi terminer, mademoiselle,”
he said, cutting me off with an imperious hand. There was something downright unhealthy about how much he was enjoying himself. “This,” he said, poking my pages with his index finger, “is sentimental fluff. I am surprised at you. It is like
un roman à l’eau de rose
—do you know this expression?” he asked.

“No, but I can guess,” I said, betting that a novel written with rose water was saccharine and cloying.

“It is like a romantic schoolgirl writing in her diary,” he explained, his mouth twisting as if he’d been force-fed the flowery pages. “I am most disappointed. I cannot give this to the author. I am torn between firing you immediately—”

“But—” I started again. My shoulder muscles were bunched up around my ears. I was being scolded like a bad child.

“Mademoiselle, je n’ai pas terminé,”
he reproached, as if I’d interrupted his soliloquy on the stage. He continued his harangue for another few minutes, essentially rephrasing the same point in increasingly elegant convolutions. I tried to tune him out.

“Mademoiselle, m’avez vous suivi?”

“Oui, monsieur,”
I said, though I hadn’t paid attention to his last few sentences.

“Et alors?”
he asked.

This was the what-have-you-got-to-say-for-yourself portion of the day’s entertainment. Looking at him, his bushy brows and bearish hands, fingertips pressed together, I had the weirdest feeling that all of this had nothing to do with me. I was a bit player in a complex, multiact drama that had begun long before I made my appearance as a mere plot device. In the script, I wouldn’t even have a name: it would say “Enter Translator,” then a few pages later, “Exit Translator.” The thought took the edge off some of my anger, but not all of it. I gathered my arguments, pressing them into a hard, compact ball.

“First of all, I doubt you’ve read the French version of the chapter you gave me, or you wouldn’t be giving me this lecture. You’re either referring to a different incarnation of the chapter, or you’re looking for something that is not in the text. It’s true this chapter has a more romantic feeling than the previous ones, but that’s because it’s a romantic story—the characters are falling in love in Venice, for chrissake!” I gestured with my hands as I spoke. Bernard watched them wave about in the air, and I forced them into my lap.

“As to whether you’re going to give me another chance, you should consider two things: the first is that I can read neither your mind nor the mind of the author, so I only translate what I see on the page. If there’s a direction I need to be pointed in, then that is your job to tell me, not mine to guess. I suggest you clarify what you want from a translator before subjecting me to such a disagreeable
entretien
.” I delivered my speech calmly, but I could feel my heart racing, and I was digging my nails into my palms.

“And the second?” he asked, his cheeks dimpling. Did he actually look amused?

“The second what?” I asked.

“You said you had two things to tell me.”

I thought for a moment. “You owe me three hundred euros.” Without a word, Bernard Laveau scribbled a check and handed it over with a regal gesture, as if he were paying off the troublesome third chambermaid on a large estate.

“Merci,”
I said.

“Je vous en prie, mademoiselle,”
he answered silkily. He picked up an envelope and slit it open. I shoved my arms into my coat and realized this might be my last visit to Editions Laveau.

“Monsieur,”
I began. He looked up. “You don’t like me,” I stated.

“Au contraire, mademoiselle. Vous m’amusez énormément.”
He chortled.

“Ce n’est pas la même chose,”
I pointed out.

“You Americans, you always want smiles and reassurances—”

“It is generally the way one conveys whether you like someone or not,” I snapped, bristling at “you Americans.”

“No, it is the way in which you Americans communicate approbation. It is not, however, how we do it in France. I am not your pom-pom girl.” I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the image of Bernard in a pleated miniskirt. He continued, “I am not going to tell you your work is good in the hope that such a lie will encourage you. You will either take intelligent criticism and work harder and or you will fail.
Un point, c’est tout,
” he said and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

I tapped my foot in annoyance. “You know, you’re right. This is a French thing. We,
les Américains,
” I said, deciding to speak for my nation, “think you work better if you are given encouragement and accurate direction, whereas you think scathing criticism is the only way.”

“I was not scathing,” he said, studying his fingernails.